No-u-velty in the Park

There is more than one legitimate reason as to why I have not written much lately.

Firstly, soon after my return from Budapest, the World Cup 2010 kicked off, quite literally. The event is of course much awaited but soon turned out to be quite a dismay; in case you do not know, I support the Italian team. Need I say more? The performance of the team was absolutely rubbish, unlike that of 4 years ago when the azzurri were crowned champions. I was not too upset by the early departure of my team from South Africa since I think I have had my fair share of soccer joy this year for Inter has won a record 3 cups this year. So I cannot complain really. Anyway, I still watched almost all of the games and this kept me quite entertained and thus refrained me from doing much other stuff, including blogging. So that's reason no. 1.

Secondly, I was quite busy with work. As usual, I will refrain from giving to much details, primarily because it will bore the reader to death and/or confuse you beyond any level of understanding. In addition, if I do so, I am afraid I will have to..well, kill you? Bond style! The work is slowly but steadily progressing and am getting some positive results, though I am anxious to get the materials over and start doing some lab testing which might prove to be slightly more interesting than handling and manipulating equations and tens of thousands of numbers. So that's reason no. 2.

And I guess those are the only reasons and will now get back to London. For 5 or 6 consecutive weeks, we have had unusual consistent sunshine and heat; on some days, it was actually hotter here than Malta (albeit only by 2 or 3 degrees, but still!) and temperatures were up to 30 or 31 degrees! And I can say that I got my first suntan for 2010 in the UK! Unbelievable! Of course, this was too good to be true and now things are back to "normal" at 21 or 22 degrees, but we are still getting decent levels of daily sun. I hope it remains so!

A couple of weekends ago, the wife and I went up to Oxford for a day. This was my second visit to the intellectual city but still managed to entertain myself anew and visited a few places I did not see before, including the Natural History Museum there, which is quite exciting. I wish only to add that I am so glad to be doing my Ph.D. in London rather than, say Oxford and this is not a case of sour grapes: (a) Imperial rules over Oxford at engineering anyway and, (b) what on earth would I be doing in Oxford after school hours?! I wonder how people entertain themselves there (besides binge drinking)...once you have seen the colleges etc. there is virtually nothing much to do! No wonder students there are such "nerds" for they have nothing else to do but study!

The highlight of the month was probably the unveiling of the 2010 Serpentine Pavilion. This year's design was entrusted to Jean Nouvel (for the architecturally illiterate, this is the guy who did the Agbar Tower or the Barcelona Gherkin). He is surely one of the giants of architecture of the 21st century and seeing one of his "free" creations (free as in not limited by pure function, planning, cost and whatever usually restricts 100% creativity in a normal building) is already a big bonus. But the real bonus was the fact that Nouvel himself was present at the opening in Hyde Park and explained the concept behind the design. And after the presentation he was available to take pictures and give autographs. Yes, well guessed: I managed to get my copy of his book signed and dated by him and also have a picture taken with the master (courtesy of the wife!)

And to round things up, yesterday we went down to Guildford/Cranleigh in Surrey at my cousin's place for a BBQ, which turned out to be tastefully (pun intended) successful and which also served as a massive gathering of the Micallef UK-based cousins and their spouses and children (were applicable). For over 50% of them, this was the first time they met my wife and to be honest, given that they have always been in the UK, I have not seen them as often in 25 years as I have have in the last 2, so such a gathering is also somewhat of a novelty for me too. It was a fun day, with loads of talk, laughter, child-rearing training (I can successfully keep a 1 year old happily entertained in my lap but that is all) and, of course, food and drink. Thanks again, K+A.

I think this summarises most of what has been going on in July. Now it is time to conclude the week with a good meal, a power shower and a massive sleep to boost me up for yet another week of Ph.D-ing as I count down for my sole summer trip to Malta in precisely 3 weeks' time!

A trip to the land of Magyar

It has become quite a habit of mine to break my own rule in keeping this blog entirely devoted to my stay in London. However, my recent week-long trip in the city of Budapest surely deserves some mention and, in fairness, it is indirectly an extension of my London work; the whole idea started off with my interest in attending a conference related to my Ph.D. in the Hungarian capital. I will try to be as brief as possible but not fail to portray my impression of the Magyar culture...

I am not sure where to begin for I have loads to write, but I think I will follow an approximate chronological order. The adventure kicked off on the first Sunday of June with a direct flight from Gatwick to Budapest which was all smooth. Upon landing for the first time in eastern Europe, I was surprised to find out that the climate is almost as good (or bad!) as the Mediterranean. Actually, the month of May was the wettest month in Hungary in the last couple of decades, causing widespread flooding all across the country. I thought it would be rather fresh, but that week probably happened to be the hottest week of the century, for I was greeted by fierce sunshine and temperatures roaring up to 40 degrees. I took a shuttle to the hotel, freshened up, left my stuff and headed off to the conference venue to register.

As I later found out, Budapest has a very good public transport system of trams, buses and metro. One minor detail: tickets are sold only in post offices and metro stations. The former are closed on Sundays and the nearest station was miles away from the hotel. Or else, you can get tickets from machines at bus/tram stops. Great, there was a stop just outside the hotel, but the machine takes only coins and I had only banknotes of several 1000 HUF! And this made me walk, which I do not mind doing at all. Being in possession of a map, walking about was a simple task so I could afford to look around. I was immediately impressed by the sheer amount of graffiti on buildings. And by the rough appearance of shops with dense metal grills outside shop windows. The same can be said for the housing blocks with repetitive window and balcony patterns, clearly an inheritance from the communist era. The occasional contemporary buildings were then obvious signs of capitalism slowly infiltrating within the landscape.

After registration, I headed off to the famous River Danube, which Strauss had described as "blue" in his famous waltz. I soon found out that the composer was either totally colour blind or had a great sense of humour or, more likely, was too optimistic and thought it would be better to describe the subject of his music as blue rather than a hue of brown (like all rivers, after all). I was amazed by the width and flow of the river but even more by the presence of a "30mph" sign in the middle of the water. I thought to myself, "The Hungarians even have speed limits for boats." I walked a further 50m and encountered a traffic light...some 20m away from the river bank. I was even more amazed to see that the Magyar people also have traffic signals for boats. But, 50m later, I saw a zebra crossing sign! Clearly this was not intended for swimmers! So I quickly realised that the river had actually flooded the embankment road and the water level had risen by a good 1.5 or 2m! And then I recalled the floods...

The first half of the week was mainly characterised by the conference and the persistent hot weather. The lectures were interesting and useful and I met one of my academic idols whose papers have been the subject matter of several weeks' worth of reading and subsequent work. But conferences are not just about academic work: there are also the social events, which will give a good taste (quite literally) of the local culture. The welcome reception was held at the splendid Gellert Hotel, where I visited the spa baths and pools therein. And then the gala dinner, which was held in an equestrian park in Godollo outside of Budapest. The dinner was preceded by a horse show, which was quite amusing but also made it quite obvious why Dracula originated in east Europe: I never was tormented by so many blood sucking mosquitoes in my life until that day. The dinner was great: the Hungarians know how to eat. Their food is all about meat; a vegetarian will not survive in Hungary. The goulash soup was brilliant and the paprika-infested meat of all kinds which followed was unbelievably tasty.

The conference came to an end on the Thursday, but this meant that my wife was flying over to Budapest on that day and then 3 days of holiday were about to start! Thus started 3 packed days of sightseeing, walking, snapping, eating, drinking and chilling. Accompanied, of course, by the burning sun during the day and the annoying insects at night. During the travels, I was impressed by the sheer level of manual labour replacing automated systems doing the same tasks in other European cities. For example, you get paper tickets written off by hand by a ticket seller. The tickets are checked by inspectors at the entry of each station rather than by an automatic turnstile. And virtually every single shop, be it a Tesco express or a Burger King, has its own security guard employed. Surely there are no unemployed people in Hungary.

I was impressed by the number of superb Baroque, Neo Classical and Neo Gothic monuments - the Parliament, the Castle, museums, palaces, churches, avenues and monuments. The buildings on the Pest side lack any of the graffiti found on the Buda side of the river. Of noteworthy mention are the Liberation Monument, which is sited on top of some 200m high hill, which we went up on foot and, given that the temperature was high 30s, the gradients were over 45 degrees and the water supply was lacking, once on top, I felt I was as triumphant as the 3 Maltese who recently scaled Everest. The view was definitely worth it, though. Another demanding exercise was going on top of the 95m high dome in St. Stephen's Basilica, which entailed some 30 floors of stairs! Again, the view was breathtaking. I was impressed by the quality of the metro: the stations are airy, modern and all clad in marble and the platforms are clean, wide and even. Surely unlike some of the London underground! In fairness, there are only 3 lines in Budapest, but still I think they are an example to be followed. On the other hand, the train carriages are vintage machines, probably discarded prototype trains from communist Russia.

On Saturday night, we had dinner in the Castle in a very nicely decorated restaurant which was surprisingly quiet. The food was awesome; we started off with a bowl of goulash (naturally) and then I had pheasant and the wife had pike. And mentioning food, I forgot to mention the trip to the Market Hall, which was entirely dominated by meats of all sorts and all animal body parts, including tongue, tripe and, erm, genitalia. We did not fail to buy some Magyar sausages to bring back to London with us; half of the supply is shamefully gone already! And another aspect of Budapest: spa life. My wife and I enjoyed an hour or so in the hotel's jacuzzi and sauna and this was very welcome, given the aching muscles and blistered feet after several kilometres' worth of walking! The sights are beautiful, especially at night, with the illuminated Castle, Chain Bridge and Parliament defining the skyline in a most appealing way, probably even more than daytime. Needless to say, this deserved many, many photos and attempts in getting the right exposure and shutter speed to get the desired product...some things never change!

The week soon came to an end and on Sunday afternoon we headed to the airport and back to London, where we were welcomed by sun but cooler temperatures and fresh air. Besides bringing back a considerable level of suntan, a dozen or so mosquito bites, 1.5 GB worth of pictures and (of course) sausages, I can now say that I have visited an eastern European country, with official proof in form of a stamp on my passport. I am sure the nation has come a long way but I think it takes more than the pulling down of a wall or the replacement of a communist regime by a capitalist ideology. The biggest change is not a physical or political one - it is far easier to dismantle a concrete wall the size of the Berlin Wall or to replace an entire government system rather than changing people's mentalities overnight. It will require a few generations to go by for the western mentality to sink in and make the city a rival to other European capitals. Albeit all this, the Hungarians have ample potential to make their capital a modern, western-world city and are well on their way in realising this potential.

Of course, now I am back in London and the holiday mode is switched off. I had a terribly busy week at work, trying to catch up with my modelling work and am obtaining some good results. Budapest was a welcome trip and a deserved break which renewed my energies for more work. And, on top of all, the 2010 World Cup has started, which is keeping most afternoons and evenings busy! Forza Italia!

A trip to a Kentish town

For those readers who are familiar with London, especially the Camden area, you might initially suspect that this post is about a trip to the bohemian part of the city. I am afraid you are incorrect - this post is about a day trip to a real town in the county of Kent: the Royal Tunbridge Wells (referred to hereinafter as RTB for the sake of fast typing, or laziness). This trip was brought about by one of many departures (short and long term) in the office in the past couple of weeks, but perhaps this particular departure brought about a serendipitous trip outside of London...

In the last week of May, one of my colleagues went off for a mini Euro trip across France, Holland and Germany; I cannot comment much on this for, to date, I have not seen the guy (though he is back to the UK but clearly taking his time to resume with his appearances at Imperial). Another one of my colleagues went off for a weekend in Riga, which I heard a lot about and I would say, diplomatically, that such a trip is not exactly my cup of tea. Yet another colleague took the Eurostar to Brussels for a weekend in the first week of June and all I know for sure about this trip is that his mobile phone ended up at the bottom of a swan-infested lake. Finally, another colleague of mine was about to head off to Valencia for 3 months on a research placement and thus, before she departed, she invited a group of friends over for a BBQ at her house in Kent, precisely in RTB.

My wife and I promptly booked tickets for RTB as soon as we received the invite and decided to go "slightly" earlier than the given time to wander around the town. And so we did. And on that particular weekend, I had to prepare my suitcase for my own departure, precisely on the next day! The packing was done and dusted in no time, mainly due to the assistance of my wife and also due to my frequent travelling which has made me an expert of short-term packing. Back to RTB. The trip was pleasant - just under an hour and amidst countryside and blessed with sunshine. We soon found out that RTB is not as flat as London but is rather hilly, which at first was exciting but then proved to be stressful in the unusually hot and sunny weather!

RTB is a little town which has nothing of the hustle and bustle which dominates London but has plenty of English charm that I find very relieving given that London tends to get so busy most of the time. The Pantiles area and the spring were particularly interesting and (needless to say) merited a generous number of photo taking. Wandering around the town centre, shopping areas and various parks brought the morning/early afternoon to an end and then off for the BBQ, which was the main motivator behind the trip to RTB!

Of course, I love BBQs and this one in particular even more since I could sit for the entirety of the do and not bother with grilling stuff as I usually end up doing in most BBQs back home; it is somewhat taken for granted in Malta that the men are "in charge" of BBQing. Consumption of meat, bread, sangria, cheeses and cake made it extremely hard to leave my seat and the fact that it was virtually still broad daylight at 8pm did not motivate me much further to leave! Alas, around 9pm, I had to bid my friend farewell before her departure to Valencia and my own departure to Budapest in 15 hours' time! But that is another story...

"This is my dream"

I am aware of the fact that this blog was meant to be devoted to London and how my times in the city are unfolding. However, I broke this continuity in the last post since I referred to my last visit to Malta and described most of the events which took place over last weekend. I am afraid I am going to proceed with yet another post which is more or less Malta-specific but which I cannot help not writing about: the Eurovision song festival.

For the past couple of years (I could almost safely say "decades"), the Eurovision is the highlight of Malta's cultural calendar. There are 101 issues which need to be tackled in Malta from various aspects of life: social, economic, political (I will illustrate just one aspect later on)...but around the beginning of February, the country pauses all its operations in order for it to hold a Song for Europe festival. This usually features the same couple of singers singing songs written by the same couple of songwriters - a totally predictable affair of Mr.X singing a ballad-type song, Mrs.Y singing a pop-style song and so on and so forth. This year, the winning song was a ballad (surprise, surprise) and was won by a newcomer to the local music scene. Hundreds of minutes worth of airtime on all TV channels followed, discussing the song, the video, the dress, the singer's likes and dislikes and other such stupid waste of time devoted to these futile matters rather than discussing more useful matters relevant to the country's well-being. And all this built up a momentum up to May, when the real festival takes place.

Since last year Malta failed miserably in securing a decent placing, this year's song had to first qualify through a semi-final night and then be "promoted" to the final night. And, yet again, the country came to a standstill on Tuesday night when the semi-final took place. Unless you are Maltese, you might not know that Malta failed to qualify. I predict that once this poor lass returns back to the rock, another limitless array of TV discussions, analysis, debates and intellectual efforts consumed in trying to decipher why Malta failed to qualify will follow. My opinion about all this: stop this nonsense once and for all! Stop participating in this damn festival and set up our own annual music festival, in the same way the Italians have done with San Remo years ago. I can find a thousand reasons why we should not take part in this Eurovision anymore but will illustrate myself with one: financial.

Let me start off my argument with a set of case studies from the local context and which prove that one should not talk of absolute numbers but rather in terms of relativity (do not worry, dear reader, this is not a discussion of Einstein's theory of relativity).

For almost 20 years, the Maltese have been constructing a new general hospital which turned out to be a subject of controversy and debate but which finally was completed a year or 2 ago and is now one of the largest medical complexes in Europe. This monster of a project costs the Maltese tax payers about 2,300,000 Euro each week to run. This works out to be almost 300 Euro per minute (there is a specific reason why I am working out the cost per minute). Considering that this is a noble cause which provides such a service to the population, then I can safely conclude that it is money well spent.

Next, the Pope's visit to Malta last month. This visit of just 26 hours cost the Maltese tax payer 750,000 Euro. The 750,000 figure might be much less than the 2,300,000 I mentioned before but this blessed visit (pun intended!) works out at 480 Euro per minute. I will not even dare mentioning whether this was money well spent or not for I do not want to risk being banned from Malta for life, but let us say that the Pope's visit was of spiritual benefit for Malta and also "promotion" of the island on BBC and CNN (although this was more due to the famous Luqa phallus rather than Ratzinger himself). So far, so good.

Now comes the bombshell. Malta's participation in the Eurovision (or rather, attempted participation) cost us dear Maltese 400,000 Euro. This is almost 50% of the last figure but considering that there is a rule which states that Eurovision songs must not exceed 3 minutes, then this works out at 133,333 Euro per minute (thus this explains why I was considering cost/minute). Need I say more? The damn Eurovision costs Malta more than it costs to run its new state-of-the-art general hospital! It might be the smallest costs of these 3 case studies I chose, but it is by far the most expensive! Malta, wake up!

And considering the fact that Malta has a national debt of 4,000,000,000 Euro (in case you got confused with the many zeros, that is 4 billion), or almost 10,000 Euro per Maltese citizen, I am sure that we can find better things to do with 400,000 Euro each year rather than spending it on a festival which is nothing more than a political lobbying exercise disguised by some scantily clad singers singing crap songs to s****y tunes.

I am not a visionary like Martin Luther King, who had a very noble dream ages ago of a world where racism does not exist. I am not Malta's 2010 Eurovision singer with a song entitled This is my dream, which dream turned out to be a nightmare. I am just an ordinary Maltese citizen who has a very simple dream: the day when Malta bans Eurovision for good! Am I asking too much?

The land of smells, yells and bells

In my last post, I hinted out that I will be soon visiting Malta and indeed I did! This was the first trip back after the wedding, almost 2 months to the day since the last time I was there in March. The trip was relatively normal, albeit that the flight was from Luton and not from the convenience of Heathrow, but luckily there were no delays and the flight itself was not cancelled due to the famous Icelandic volcanic ash which recently caused distress to thousands of travellers. Three hours after leaving Luton on Friday late afternoon, I landed in Malta and there began a 3 day trip on the rock....

Saturday morning kicked off with an interesting errand which, once more was related to the wedding but, in this case, a post wedding affair: collecting the fully edited and finished wedding video! This provided entertainment for a couple of hours and the repeated viewings of the hour long movie in no way did bore me! Such good memories now set for posterity on a cool Blue Ray disc which will be useful in future narratives (in the style of How I met your mother) to the "kids" down the line. Back to 2010. Lunch consisted of a typical Maltese bread (ftira) garnished with tomato paste, tuna, olive oil, fresh mint from the garden, goat's cheese, olives and pickled onions - heaven! Nothing in London could ever compete with this! The "smells" part from the title of this post are definitely most enticing (unlike the smells referred to by the author of that phrase which was meant to describe Malta in the 19th century). A power nap in the afternoon got me ready for the highlight of the day: the final of the Champions League, i.e., Inter vs Bayern Munich.

For the non-football-follower, it is noteworthy to state that Inter have not been in the CL final for the past 38 years and last won the CL 45 years ago! Never in my lifetime! The team's recent track record has been fantastic: first Inter won Coppa Italia, then only last week won the 5th scudetto in a row and now, to complete a treble, needed to win the CL! My friends booked a table at a local football club which was going to show the game on a big screen and there we headed on the Saturday night. The setting was typical Maltese: cheap beer (think of it, a round for 8 people for 12 Euro!), constantly-topped-up small platters free nibbles, marinated bread, chicken wings, pasta and pizza to accompany the beer and the notorious Mediterranean sounds of agitation and service which thus forms the "yells" component of the title. One particular yell stood out: as soon as we got in the venue, I inquired for the reserved table and the bloke serving us replied, "Ha niccekjalek, siehbi" (Let me check, mate) and then he called his colleague, "Malcolm" or rather, "Mell-kimm" in a harsh Maltese accent and so loud that I thought Malcolm was still at home rather than at work! To cut a long story short, the game ended up as hoped: Inter won 2-0 and there are the new European champions! And thus a perfect ending to a great Saturday!

Sunday started off with Mass (and thus the "bells" aspect of the title!) and followed by a massive lunch at home: Maltese pasta bake wrapped in pastry or timpana. I still wonder why the Brits abstain from pasta so much! I love pasta (and anything which has carbs, really). Another power nap followed and then a short trip by the sea, although I must say that the weather was not terribly appealing and/or hot - it was far hotter back in London! The evening started off with dinner at the in-laws', once more, a generous helping of pasta to make up for my lack of pasta consumption back in London (this time farfalle with smoked salmon and cream). At this point in time, I could not move an inch, but this did not restrain me from a drive to Tigne' Point, where I visited the newly finished multi-million Euro project there which I must say is reminiscent of the well designed, well detailed and well finished projects of Liverpool Street and/or Canary Wharf in London. Well done, Malta. Welcome to the world of 21st century architecture.

Finally, a new week started. I did not do much, except for paying a visit to grandma and visit a furniture showroom which was opened a few weeks earlier and for which I had done the structural design back in 2007. Yet another project which I had formed part of its design team which is now a landmark building in Malta. This is the best part of my profession: seeing a building shift from being a drawing on a piece of paper to real-life structure built of concrete and steel (in this case, loads of steel!) In the evening, off the the airport and aboard another Ryanair flight which landed on time in London in the early hours of Tuesday. And Tuesday brought about normal routine life, although it was somewhat unusual since I had to visit the DSTL facility down in Salisbury for a project meeting, which started off as an intense physical challenge but then turned out to be very fruitful...

I know that this blog was meant to be devoted to my London life, but there were a few Malta-related events worth recording. The British David Niven had once described Malta as the land of smells, yells and bells, as I earlier pointed out. A few incidents from last weekend have provided an alternative perspective of how Malta can, indeed, be the place of smells, yells and bells! Apart from the replacement of Niven's unpleasant smells associated with unhygienic slum areas of 19th century Valletta by heavenly Mediterranean food which was my indulgence for a few days, I dare say that the yells and bells have not changed and are there to stay! Truly, a case of onlyinMalta.com!

A fistful of events, mk II

I almost cannot remember the last time that I dropped a few lines in this blog...I have had so much to do that I did not even have time to think about the blog, let alone write any post, so apologies for that. I will do my best to remember all that happened since mid April (well, that merits writing about, anyway!) and be concise in keeping track of my life at London...

At Imperial College, the month of May is associated with the annual graduation ceremony. This brought about two aspects to me: a looking back at the ceremony of 2009, when I received my M.Sc. and first D.I.C. (hopefully a second will follow when I complete my Ph.D.!) and a looking forward to the ceremony of 2010, when my old room-mate and "bro" was about to receive his D.I.C. and thus a reunion of 2 old roomies. A reunion which came about only a few weeks after a previous one, for this same good old buddy traveled all the way from China to Malta for our wedding. Needless to say, the reunion meant a recollection of the many adventures shared in London, a re-enactment of many a trip to the pubs in the W8 area of London and also lots of food and talk.

On the Graduation Wednesday, we headed off for a fishy dinner at Victoria, courtesy of the graduate, where I experienced some of the nastiest alcoholic consumptions ever; some sort of Portuguese variant of grappa which was utterly awful and alcohol content whose numeric description was nothing but disturbing, to both mind and liver alike. A night finished off at one of our favourite pubs, which trip was concluded by my receipt (and not theft!) of a very interesting Guinness pint mug which now forms part of my own collection.

Friday night was somewhat different from the usual trip to a pub, for some Chemistry society at Imperial threw a free party, with food, wine and live music. The first was limited, but the wine was flowing and good, while the music was...well, after wine any music sounds good! It was good fun but was not enough, for after all was done we headed to yet another of our favourite W8 pubs and finished off the night there...till the bell rang, of course.

On Sunday, I had an unusual trip to an unusual pub near Waterloo. I discovered the concept of an "open mic", where aspiring musicians can sign up to play in a pub hosting the "open mic", for free. For the past couple of weeks I had been playing with 2 colleagues from Imperial and we created a number of our own songs and decided it would be good to play in public. And there you go, we headed off to this place in Waterloo for a debut performance. One minor detail: I had to use the piano at the venue since my instrument is stranded back in Malta. And this piano was probably last tuned in the last millennium, literally speaking of course! The piano and guitar together were way out of tune and thus I had no choice but sadly not play! Any disappointment was soon forgotten since the night ended up with a good Chinese meal!

Before my dear friend headed back to China for his mission there, he handed me a design task which I welcomed with great pleasure. More than the design itself, which was limited to formulating an architectural layout for 3 floors of offices and 1 floor of apartments within an existing block (which is terribly boringly shaped with the most unattractive elevation ever), I was yearning to do some real design amidst my focused Ph.D. work which does not entail any design work at all. So it was really a blessing to spend a couple of days sketching, designing and draughting plans for this project. A project which turned out to be well liked by the client and which hopefully kicks off, making it my first solo project overseas and in the Far East!

And on a similar note: some time last week, my wife and I attended this presentation by William "Bill" Baker, who was the mastermind behind the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai (or Khalifa as it is now referred to). The talk was well delivered and not boring at all, and it made me somehow yearning structural engineering and design much more than ever! If I could only design a highrise which is 10% of the Burj! What a dream! As Baker said, "A tall building is a dream realised in steel and concrete"...so true...

In the meantime, I was working hard on my Ph.D. work, with some heavy mathematical computation work being done...obviously I will not bore anyone with describing all the stuff I am doing, but let me just say that it is quite intensive: even computers are finding it hard to keep up with the work...I was handling thousands of numbers a day, compiling data, plotting charts and interpreting results of my models and equations...I simply cannot imagine what people did back in the days when all was done by hand...God bless computers!

I think this is all I can recall from the last couple of weeks...but I think I will have a bit more to say in the upcoming post...for it will include my first trip to Malta since the wedding two months ago! Oh yes, by the way, two months already! Watch out for this space - more coming up soon!

Taken by Storm

In the previous post I hinted out that I was about to leave and engage on some "mission" and hoped that it would be successful. If you thought that I was going on some secret NASA mission to the moon, then I am afraid I am about to disappoint you. Or if you (more realistically) expected me to write about some overtime work related to my PhD and which involved me going to the MoD for some classified data on terrorism, then I suggest that you close this and proceed to Google and find some other interesting article. The mission was simple: seeking out to meet one of my idols from the music scene - Storm Thorgerson, the artist who created virtually all of the album covers from Pink Floyd and many other rock legends, including Muse and Led Zeppelin.

Last week I got an email from one of my colleagues that there is going to be an exhibition of Storm's album covers in a London art gallery. The email included a link to the event's website and, upon browsing, I realised that Storm was actually going to be at the venue on the Sunday!! After meeting Rick Wright (Floyd pianist), this was the next best "personal" link to the greatest progressive rock band of all time! So after a massive Sunday lunch, I headed off to Liverpool Street and, after a quest for an art gallery tucked away in a minor side street (a building which, in itself was also worth visiting), I walked in to meet the brains (quite literally) behind covers in the like of The dark side of the moon, Wish you were here, A momentary lapse of reason, Delicate sounds of thunder, Division bell and Pulse: pure, classic Floyd.

The girl at the desk (unnecessarily) said that, "Storm the artist was in today" and, upon the subsequent question of my Italian friend, "Where is he?", I impulsively yelled, "There he is!", as if I was talking about an acquaintance who was expected to meet me at that place and time! I spotted the man, seated leisurely behind a modest white table, sporting a Syd Barrett T-shirt (obviously), walking stick on the side, wife on the other, dog playing at his feet and a simple half-eaten lunch. I had to satisfy my initial thrill by asking Storm to take a picture with him, a request which he gladly granted. It was too good to be in the presence of a man who had so closely collaborated with the Floyd on numerous occasions, probably in the company of ashtrays with a heap of burnt out cigarettes, intentioned to fuel brainstorming debates, scribbling and album cover sketches.

The purpose of the trip, i.e., the exhibition itself was then fulfilled. A tour of the gallery which was filled with signed prints and accompanying explanatory notes by Storm himself which were completely wonderful. The insight of the artist behind each album cover, written in fluent, plain English but underlying the thoughtful concepts explored and portrayed in no 'random' or 'simple' manner totally overwhelmed me. From the simplicity and boldness of the classic Dark side prism image to the more physically challenging Momentary lapse cover with its 700 beds on a beach and the surreal Black holes and revelations cover, the genius of Storm's design-oriented mind was confirmed.

It was then time to purchase an awesome book featuring Storm's works, with full colour images and his own explanation behind the ideas portrayed. And, naturally, it was mandatory to have the book signed by the artist. In his modest, friendly way, Storm wrote a message on the first page: "To Karl, not Walter; From Malta. not Gibraltar. Storm Thorgerson, 2010": a spontaneous, simple outburst of poetry which was highly personalised and away from the usual cliches of authors but yet another unrehearsed exhibition of his creative touch. The Malta reference was added after Storm's question as to which is my home country. I incorrectly assumed that he was not aware of what/where Malta is, but Storm is quite well versed in geography as I soon discovered...

Storm said he knew all about Malta, which I thought was bluff. But then when I happened to mention that Roger did a concert in Malta back in 2006, he asked, "Was it at Valletta?" which clearly was his implicit reply, "See, I even know the name of your capital city!" And Storm likened Malta to Gibraltar in his "poem" simply to further prove that he knew Malta was an ex-colony in the Mediterranean, just like Gibraltar! I shared the memories of the magical night when Roger played the whole of Dark side in his Malta concert and then played "Wish you were here" in the memory of "all those who are no longer with us", which clearly referred to Syd Barrett who had died earlier that night but which unfortunate event had not yet been made public (presumably, Roger knew of his demise). Storm did not know this fact and retaliated by stating that he had suggested to Floyd the title "Wish you were here"...a novel fact indeed to my ears.

All in all, it was a unique experience which concluded an awesome weekend and which provided me with enough momentum to face another week of hard work, which I anticipate to be packed with partial differential equations, Laplace transforms and wave equations...but let me not infect this post with such matters!

And, by the way, the image in this post is courtesy of Luca Modenese, who quite skilfully captured me talking away and heavily exhibiting my Mediterranean tendency to make generous use of hand gestures and, at the same time, displays Storm in his split second departure from the real world whilst formulating his 'poem'.