Chicagoan quirks

Yes, that's right, that word exists.  It means belonging to Chicago.  It has been 10 days since I flew into The Windy City for a 2.5 week working visit at the mothership office of SOM.  Before I forget, "windy" has nothing to do with the weather condition (otherwise why would the Chicagoans have invented the skyscraper?); in reality, there are stronger political currents than actual wind gusts, but no need to go into it here, but it had to be said!

Back to my trip.  It came about after 2 weeks of continued travel: first Malta for "election weekend", then Poland for a conference, followed by a day trip to Madrid for a workshop and finally Chicago!  It is not my first time, for I came for a few days back in December, but this was going to be a longer stay!

Besides all the logistics (bringing sufficient clothing, lodging in a Marriot Residence Inn and such), there are some things I am noticing in this wonderful city which are different from London, or any other city for that matter.  There is no specific order or logic to these; they are just thoughts that come to mind as I write.

First things first: the Chicagoans.  They are really nice people.  Warm, friendly and way more talkative than, say, Londoners.  People actually speak on trains and on the street.  For instance, I was walking down Adams Street to the office when a bloke stopped me, "Excuse me, sir, your bag is open."  It indeed was (albeit by 5cm, or shall I say 2"!) but it was a nice gesture, right?

What I still struggle with in the US is the concept of tax.  You read off a price on the shelf or on the menu and then you are charged tax.  You never really know how much the final cost of an item is!  I give up now and do not have any money ready but wait until I actually am told what to pay.

The language: I still find it strange that such a big country as the US never bothered to get a language of its own; they speak English.  Well, American English.  And it is very different!  Lift is elevator.  Ground floor is first floor.  Roof is said "ruf" and most people say "no problem" instead of "you're welcome" after a "thank you".  However in most cases there are no difficulties there, so cannot complain.

Food is generally more pricey than in the UK, at least for me as a visitor here.  $15 for a Pret a Manger lunch is a bit too much for my taste.  Talking about taste: I think food is way too salty for my taste and expats from Europe in the office have confirmed this.  I am not a fan of salt in food, so it is probably twice as noticeable for me!

One thing was rather confusing for me.  I found out on my first day here that the underground (or, subway in American-speak) is organised by colour.  So you have the red line, brown, blue, pink and so on.  Then I started to hear and read about the "L" line.  Strange, I thought, for I did not see any letters.  I checked on the map.  Only colours.  Curiouser and curiouser.  Then, whilst visiting an exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Centre, I learned that "L" stands for "El" i.e. "Elevated", after the raised train lines that run through Downtown.  How was I supposed to make that connection on my own, I do not know!

The city itself is beautiful: of course, there are all the classic SOM buildings and other tall buildings, about which I have been reading since the early noughties.  Going atop the John Hancock Tower (I was up the Sears - sorry, Willis - Tower in December) was a great experience.  But besides the skyscrapers: the river, the lake, the parks, the clean streets and pavements (or sidewalks - I missed that one earlier).  And the beautiful summer weather is much more appealing; the last time I was here, it was 27 degrees Fahrenheit and now it is 27 degrees Celcius! Maybe not today, though; it is rather foggy and drizzly but this was a perfect excuse to visit the Chicago Art Institute (the equivalent of the Met in NYC or the National Gallery combined with Tate Modern in London).

Another week to go and then I fly back to London but one thing is sure: I will definitely visit this wonderful city once more!  Maybe not alone next time round...

Roma Eterna

I do tend to have a fairly good memory of my childhood, even early parts of it; this includes the time in August 1990 when my parents took me to a trip to Italy from grand Rome to the Tuscan beauty that is Florence and the one-of-a-kind Venice, with some other stops in between.  It may well have been the trip which sealed my fate in the architectural profession.  In my naïvety, I believed that, thanks to that trip of almost a full 3 decades ago, I "knew" Rome and indeed I had vivid visions of it, not least getting lost in the Vatican, in a remake of sorts, of Luke Chapter 2, albeit just for a good number of hours rather than 3 days.  We decided some weeks ago to revisit Rome (Marianna had been thrice to the city and, although more recent than me, her last trip was in 2001).  

Let me get straight to the point: I did not know Rome and now that I went and came back, I daresay it is the most beautiful city in the world.  It is really and truly the eternal city; to partially quote Venerable Bede (a quote which, incidentally, I remember from the 1990 guidebook my father had, and still has, of the city): when Rome falls, the world shall fall.

I now believe that Rome is the most beautiful city in the world.  It breathes history, culture, beauty.  If the Italian phrase ciao bella was coined for a purpose, it was to describe the Italian capital.  Every corner is a photo opportunity, every street is adorned with palazzi, every corner and angle is Baroque, par excellence.  

It was magical to walk, quite literally, in the shadow of Bernini, Borromini, Michelangelo and see their works in the flesh as it were, after 3 good years of architectural history of many years ago and having seen and read only sketches and drawings and essays in Bannister and Pevsner and Vasari describing the masterpieces that made and defined the beauty of the Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque.  

Every visitor to Rome must have a crash course in architecture prior to landing.  How can you visit the churches, basilicas, piazze and ruins of Imperial Rome without knowing what the architectural orders are, how a dome works, what a pendentive is, why those at the Vatican are trapezoidal in form and not the usual pointed triangular ones?
  
I always found fascination in how a race as sophisticated, intelligent and refined as the Romans, who dined and drank well, built impeccable structures lasting 2000 years and counting, could then be as savage and barbaric as what they were: feeding men to lions for entertainment, nailing supposed criminals to trees and murdering inhabitants of whichever land they deemed to belong to them.  I now extend fascination at how contradictory it was for them to establish new cities in new lands on strict linear grids - with a decumanus maximus and cardo maximus to define it - but then their own capital laid out in a rather haphazard way?  How ironic is it that all their settlements were centered on a river, but the Tiber is now only a sidelined attraction?  Having said that, the ample fountains make up for this apparent loss of water in the urban fabric.

These last few days, I ticked off an endless list of masterpieces that I have longed to visit for a good 20 years since the first classes of history.  Not just the Sistine and the Gesù and the Bramantes but lesser knowns like hidden Berninis, the Accademia di San Luca, San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane and the Sant'Ivo and even 1 or 2 Melchiore Gafas.

Which brings me to Malta: it crossed my mind whilst walking around the cobbled and wobbly deserted streets leading from Hadrian's Temple to the Pantheon after a rainy day that Rome is the only place as beautiful or more beautiful than Valletta, where every building, simply, is architecture and not construction.  But then I had another epiphany when strolling past Castel Sant'Angelo of Laparelli who himself masterminded Valletta: it is the latter that emulates Rome.  The best Italian artists formed and defined Valletta from the original war machine that Laparelli built to the Baroque stage that Buonamici, Carapecchia and others transformed to what it largely remains today.  The original Roman grid, lacking in Rome, is perfected in Valletta and the latter has the added bonus that all its streets lead to the sea.  And Valletta has no outskirts.  No Greater Rome, as it were, where graffiti and utilitarian buildings dominate the streeyscape.  Valletta has a clear start and end, inside and outside.  Beautiful and not, with apologies to Il-Furjana, of course.  Perhaps it is truly the case that Rome is a reflection of Valletta's perfection in this sense?

The food?  Many pizze romane later (and carciofi alla giudia and trippe and coda alla vaccinara and spaghetti cacio e pepe and so on...did I mention carbonara?), I can safely state that during our 4 day visit, we were very well fed.

Back to the future now. 
 
Since 1990, I have re-visited Venice 4 times and have not changed my view that it is the most unique city in the world.  

I have now been to Rome again and, well, you get the point.  

Florence, anyone?

Man is a complex animal

With apologies to Aristotle, of course.

Yes, we may be social, even though sometimes some people tend to be anything but social, with eyes glued to the shiny screens in their hands, more often than not hooked into what is going on in - ironically - their social media following.

We may also be political, but sometimes what seem as massive failures of democracy worldwide similarly cast shadows into how beneficial the 'political' tag is to mankind.

What I think is true is that man is, more than anything else, a complex animal.  And increasingly becoming so.

Take what I do for a living.  I am concurrently working on 3 projects: 1 office building covering some 25,000m² and 2 residential developments (1 covering over 200,000m² including 3 towers and the other a single tower creating some 75,000m²).

Whenever I fill in my weekly time sheets, I am increasingly amazed at the sheer number of hours I put into each of these projects, and I am one member of fairly large design and construction teams across many disciplines, firms, offices and countries!

I ask: is it really required?  Do we need to spend thousands of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of pounds (or Euros or whatever currency it may be) to create houses?  Mankind has been living in some form of sheltered spaces for millennia.  The basic requirements have not changed since the Neanderthals: all we need is a space to feed, fornicate and eventually sleep.  Why then all the complexity and 'fighting' and arguing over millimetric discrepancies or differences?  What distinguishes today's (or tomorrow's) homes from those of yesteryear?  I was about to say "except that those of the past were more beautiful" but beauty is subjective and I happen to work with extremely talented people who can indeed create beautiful buildings.  Beautiful but complex.

And then the offices.  Why all the effort, time and money to design and build a structure which is typically used for only 33% of the time, to be left empty for the rest of the time (to occupy the houses for remaining 67% but sleep for 50% of that time, but that is another argument)?  And what more, creating workspaces which are sedentary, leading to disease and unhealthy lifestyles.  Why has the workspace become a desk and a screen?  What was happening a mere 50 years ago?  People did not go to work?  What was happening 1000 years ago?  Did people not work?

I think we need to step back from the complexity of the modern age and go back to basics.  And stop creating massive buildings which are used only Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm and to remain empty for the rest of the time and then in parallel another suite of equally massive and intricate buildings for evening and night use only (and potentially weekends, unless people are away and/or out at the weekend, and rightly so).

By some twist of fate, I am listening to some Beatles playlist and Lennon's "Imagine" found its way in it; am I a dreamer, too?  I do hope I am not the only one.  Alas, I am just a simple structural engineer and what I am suggesting shakes the fundamentals not only of architecture and urbanism but probably of society at large.

Dream on.  Aerosmith, anyone?

What I did whilst awake in the city that never sleeps

I cannot say that I am a traveller - time and money do not permit - and neither can I say that I have travelled extensively, albeit I visited practically every European country and even ventured into North and South Africa.  However, one big continent had been calling for quite some time and Easter 2018 proved to be a good opportunity to visit the country that has lured Europeans since 1492 (some argue even before that) and what better place to start if not the Big Apple?

NYC has always been a fantasy city for me.  From those scenes in the first 'grown-up' movie I recall seeing in the mid 1980s i.e. "King Kong" (the 1976 de Laurentiis version, i.e.) where Kong scaled the Twin Towers instead of the Empire State Building in the 1933 version.  Or being the fabled home of the Ninja Turtles during my early 1990s obsession with the heroes in a half shell.  Or as the setting of "Home Alone 2" around the same time.  And the countless movies featuring the city streets, Central Park and the yellow taxis.  And later, as my love for buildings developed, as the home of some of the world's tallest and iconic buildings: the Empire, the Chrysler, Hearst, Seagram, Guggenheim and more.

Living in London gives wonderful opportunities to travel to virtually everywhere in the world and we decided without much difficulty to book a ticket to NYC during the Easter week.  The trip started with a surprise upgrade to 'premium' economy on the outbound afternoon flight.  We landed at JFK in the evening and immediately set off to our hotel at Canal Street in SoHo or South of Houston - I soon found out the Americans are obsessed with acronyms.  I also noticed that American WCs operate in slightly different ways than European ones; this was never really highlighted in the movies!

As much as we are told not to judge books by their cover, I think that one can safely judge a new place by first impressions.  It was immediately obvious that NYC does not invest heavily into its infrastructure as much as, say, London does.  The subway was consistently dirty, trains are vintage by almost any standard and signage is not entirely foolproof.  Same for pavements, streets and the urban environment in general.  I guess my expectation was that NYC is to America what London is to Europe, but I was mistaken on this count.

What I was not mistaken was that NYC is the king (or queen?) of the high-rise.  Yet, I never felt like I was walking in canyons or alleys.  The classic sights - an inspiration for almost 2 decades - were, quite literally, highlights.  We were lucky to have clear sunny daytime views from Top of the Rock and splendid night views of the lit gridiron city streets from the top of the Empire. 

While history in the European sense of the word is virtually non-existent, the museums were another big tick in the "satisfied" box.  Besides the Prado, I must say that I have been to the main European top galleries and museums and the Met and MoMa now sit amongst my greatest hits, even if compared with the bounty of London's freebies they do come at a considerable fee, albeit worth every penny.  Sorry, cent.

Food: great choices, as expected in a very cosmopolitan place.  Great dumplings, ramen, burgers and Katz's pastrami of course.  The 15-20% tip came as a big surprise, even after a decade of 12.5% UK "discretionary" service charges. 

The biggest surprise (and I was positively impressed by it) was the New Yorkers themselves.  Not that I had a "bad" impression of Americans; I do work for an American firm after all and my boss(es) are indeed American.  However, the level of friendliness, willingness to help and good manners, almost verging on shyness, were something I did not expect from a nation which is widely considered to be the world's ruling one.  Comparing again to London, certainly there is much more warmth in the Big Apple!

One week went by quickly, even if the days were jam-packed from morning to night, averaging some 20km of walking every day and soon we rode away from Manhattan to JFK, to fly back to London and luckily arriving with no signs of jet-lag whatsoever.

My verdict: a visit to NYC is a must but in my view it is not a city for living.  It is generally quite expensive (but probably OK with US salaries), hectic and tending towards filthy in some areas.  If nature or Swiss precision is your thing, then probably it is a risky destination, but if the skyscraper is what turns you on, then in it you will find a slice of Nirvana.  Having said that, I am not surprised that, besides Frankie's label as the city with perpetual insomnia, there is yet to be a Samuel Johnson style "tired of London, tired of life" equivalent for NYC, for London is still in my view the greatest city in the world.  And hence this blog will remain "The streets of London".

London - 10 years later

22nd September 2007: one way AirMalta flight to London Heathrow, ready to embark on a 1 year M.Sc. course in structural engineering.  22nd September 2017: London Overground train to Shoreditch High Street, ready to conclude a week of head scratching whilst working on a brand new tower in the City.

Who would have said?

So many events occurred since then.  Olympics.  Jubilee.  Brexit.  Terrorism.  Various home moves.  Various job moves.  A few extra kilos.  A little less hair.

It is indeed a city which never bores you.  A city booming with people and work, despite all the Brexit-ish odds.  A city where everyone can be whatever s/he wishes to be (which alas has had its fair share of calamities, too; some people opted to form part of the senseless Daesh).

However, as I am now caught in this commuting routine (ironically I only started commuting 2 years ago), I dare say that London or rather Londoners, in all their apparent individualistic glory, can really be put in several boxes - very unprofessionally from an anthropological point of view - based on what they...wear.  Specifically, the kind of bag they wear.  Or how their bag-wearing habits evolved over the last decade.  Surreal, but (probably) true.  So here it is.

a. The Pliage
Virtually all female Londoners nowadays don this certain Longchamp bag by the name of Le Pliage (I was not familiar at all with this, but am now after some simple market research).  The sheer commonness of this bag and its apparent 'cheap' appearance initially made me think that this was the sort of item you would redeem with your Nectar points or so, only to discover (to my horror) that this goes for a full £75!

b. The MK/LV/D&G etc.
Whilst not a new phenomenon, then there are the other kind of women who sport the 3 (or perhaps even 4) figure designer bags with initials of their designers who simply wear these items simply to state: yes, I can afford £784.99 for a handbag to put my soiled trainers in and change to Prada stilettos once I get to the office.  Mind you, so do I, but I would rather go on a nice holiday, thank you very much.

c. The Herschel or Fjallraven Kanken
The new trend for guys is, apparently, the schoolboy look: rucksack on the back, with both straps on, please note.  It verges on the hilarious watching the City types in suits complete with black polished shoes and pre-teen boys (and girls) sporting virtually identical bag typologies.  Except that, while schoolboys stick to conventional Adidas or Nike or even more modest Slazenger models, the choice for grown-ups is limited to Herschel or Fjallraven Kanken (which I always manage to read as Kraken, especially during my morning commute when I am less than half awake).

d. Bonus item: The headphones
Not strictly a bag, but there is an item which was not around 10 years ago.  Back in late 2007, when the iPhone and iPod etc. were still infants, people would, say, simply sit on the train staring or reading...until everyone started walking around wearing headphones.  Everyone suddenly developed this strong urge to constantly listen to something (except words with fellow people through meaningful conversation).  To add insult to injury, some of the latest headphone models are so ridiculously and unnecessarily large that probably their users need to have a bag just to store them away.  I mean, seriously, do you really need to listen to some crap podcast with £300 Bose noise-cancelling technology worthy of Abbey Road?  I daresay, do you really need to listen to anything at all?  What freaks me out the most are the (Apple?) wireless headphones which make their users look...never mind.

Cynical and/or negative, I hear you say?  Perhaps just want to take the piss out of the 200 odd other passengers on the train, but probably yes a tad pessimistic.  But bear with me, it is almost winter after all!

Adventures in South Africa

I have just completed the longest commute, if you will, of my life: I left my hotel in Cape Town yesterday at 2.30pm (London time) and opened the flat door just under 2 hours ago at 6.30pm (again London time).  In between: a 9 hour flight from Cape Town to Dubai, a 4.5 hour stopover and a 7 hour flight to London Heathrow.  I practically did the same (naturally in reverse) only 6 days ago,  In between: a 6 day adventure in the Western Cape area of South Africa - my first trip in the southern hemisphere (which was a welcome break from the London cold) and the first long flight(s) I have ever taken.  And a few other 'firsts'.

One of the perks associated with work in academia is the rather consistent opportunities to attend researcher conferences.  In my mind, these are nothing more than glorified tourist propaganda exercises organised by the learned for their fellow peers worldwide, invariably always held in tourist magnets and close to the height of summer, which in the case of South Africa is November.  And this was the venue for the 2016 fib conference, at which Dr. Micallef II was to present a research paper.  After much deliberation, I finally decided to go along, only on a different (indirect) flight which however was £400 less than my wife's at £600, quite a bargain I must say, given that AirMalta flights at £300 or more are not uncommon, but that is another story.

And so the day came: all the summer clothes unearthed from hibernation and with a few trips planned and scheduled, we ventured to Cape Town, the place about which I had read since I was a very young child: the fateful tip of the world where explorers or merchants dreaded to go around due to its infamous weather.  But not this time of the year, or so we hoped.

It was my first time on an Airbus A380 and I was blown away (so to speak).  I am always fascinated at how a big object such as a plane can fly, but this was another level of bestiality.  The Emirates experience, complete with WiFi whilst 10km up in the air and some 2500 movies to choose from and proper meals with proper cutlery, proved to be beyond my expectations for 'economy' class (what do the business class get then, I wonder?).  Stopping at Dubai (again my first time in the UAE), confirmed my suspicions that this place was all about money; not quite streets paved in gold but not too far, for the airport is a continuous feast of marble and stainless steel, 120 person lifts, triple height internal waterfalls and sheer massiveness.  Time passed quickly and I was on my final leg to Africa.

It was hot and sunny, right from the start.  Promising.  I was met by the chauffeur and after exchanging some rand, made my way to the hotel at the V&A (that is Alfred and not his father Albert) Waterfront.  My first impression was positive: excellent road surfaces and signs, neat buildings (bar the few shanty towns along the highway), lively and very clean streets.  It was almost hard to believe this was Africa.  I noted a few highrises - obviously dwarfed by the 1085m tall Table Mountain - but these seemed old as if the city 'stopped' developing in the 1970s, but I could also note a few towercranes dotting the skyline.  And obviously the relatively new 2010 World Cup stadium close to the hotel and the Waterfront itself.  The city seemed buzzing with life.

I met my wife, who had arrived beforehand safe and sound, and ventured off to the V&A.  It felt very much the UK, a Portsmouth or Brighton if you like, only warmer and with a very un-flat backdrop.  A lunch of seafood ushered me into the Capetonian cuisine and the evening closed off with a conference reception.

On Monday morning, we made a trip to the city centre, in particular the District Six Museum and the guided tour by an ex-resident.  In my ignorance of non-obvious world history, I was not aware of the full atrocity of the apartheid, such as the forced removal of people in this area of Cape Town.  The most shocking aspect of this was not clearing the area for the sake of some national project or rebuilding programme, which are often met with resistance (similar to what happened in some slum areas in Malta in the past, for instance) but this was simply left undeveloped; the aim was solely getting rid of the people because of their skin colour.  Another startling fact was that non-whites were only granted the right to vote in 1994, which is terribly recent.  On a lighter note, the other highlight of the day was a short cruise around the harbour, where we spotted a couple of sunbathing seals!

Tuesday was another 'cultural' day, starting off with a visit to the 2010 football stadium, which design I found very appealing.  The sunny morning soon became cloudy if not chilly and this was not a good sign, given we had to take a ferry to hop over to Robben Island, 10 km away (on the way, we were lucky to spot a few surfacing whales and dolphins).  The tiny island hosts a maximum security prison with minuscule cells one of which hosted Nelson Mandela for 18 years, the highlight of the island really, alongside a small colony of African penguins.  The day was concluded by an excellent meal: the conference banquet.  In this case, a culinary feast of African dishes, including springbok and ostrich meat, naturally both 'firsts', and all washed down with excellent South Africa wine.

Wednesday was practically all devoted to the conference (my wife's presentation was great, as always) and the late afternoon spent exploring some of the Art Deco gems in the city centre.  Unfortunately, in the evening some intestinal issues started to crop up, which alas lasted, more or less, for the rest of the stay...the discomfort was definitely offset by a full 1 hour body massage for us both!

Then on Thursday, with a little help from Imodium, we managed to venture out of Cape Town to the winelands of Franschhoek, or French Corner.  It was like a journey back in time, where the world was still untouched by man except for the basic exploitation of natural produce, in this case the grape.  The vineyards and their spectacular settings took away some of the discomfort but unfortunately could not be as adventurous in the tasting as I wished to!

By Friday, I was feeling a bit better, but poor Marianna had her turn now.  Nonetheless, we set off for a peninsula tour all the way down the Atlantic coast to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point, via Camp and Hout Bays and the Seal Island (no need to explain its name!) and then Boulders Beach along False Bay where the highlight was certainly the big colony of African penguins.  It was at first unusual to associate penguins with Africa, but who wouldn't want to stay basking away in the African sun rather than the Antarctic icy wind?  A stop at the beautiful Kirstenbosch Gardens concluded the day tour.

Saturday was my last day but before leaving I could not not visit the Cape's most famous permanent resident: Table Mountain.  The cable car ride, albeit 2.5 minutes short, was scary to say the least but once at the top, it was worth every second of fear.  The sun was scorching hot and by early afternoon I had to stay in the shade on the hop-on-hop-off bus for my arms looked like a Maltese flag!  And it was time to leave Cape Town and Africa.

The biggest resource of all that I could see in South Africa, certainly in Cape Town, was not the vast expanses of land but the people.  Every single person we met, locals I mean, were extremely gentle and cordial and at the same time funny and friendly.  This country, almost literally at the end of the world, proved that Africa has so much to offer and my final thought, or rhetoric question, is: why do Africans bother coming to Europe?  I think we should be going there instead, for it is very much an unknown paradise and the Mother City is its gateway.

Speaking of mothers: now it is time to sleep for tomorrow is back to work and this is going to be the mother of all Mondays!

Trumped!

It is becoming a sort of trend for me to write about worthy events one week after they actually happen.  In this case, there is a sort of valid reason: I am at home - sick - and hence had a good opportunity to catch up on what has been going on lately.

Last Wednesday, the 'GMT' part of the world woke up to the news that the President-elect of the U.S.A. is Mr. Donald Trump, in direct contrast to what the polls (and all the world, really) predicted and expected.  Since then, there has been uproar in the media everywhere: protests in the States, posts on Facebook predicting the end of the world, doom and gloom all over the place.  And Trump is not even in the Oval Office yet.

I still cannot really understand why all this fuss.  Elections in the democratic world are held all the time, certainly every 5 years in most countries (or 4 in the case of the U.S.A.) and, like every other competition, there is a winner and a loser.  Some, generally close to or just above 50% of the people, "win", and the rest "lose".  Why are people protesting now that Trump and not Clinton won?  Is it not the whole idea of the democratic process that election results are to be respected?  Or is it now the case that when a result does not match the popular expectation, the result is null or will not be accepted?  After all, voting is done by the people and for the people.  The people get what they choose and what they want.  Otherwise, it is the whole way of exercising democracy that needs to be revised, and not only these isolated cases of when people 'do not like' a result.

The same was with the Brexit vote a few months ago - the predictions were that the "Stay" will win, and so did I hope and vote for, too, but the results proved that Mr. Cameron's bluff to hold a referendum had been called by the British and now Brexit is on the cards.  From my point of view, the Brexit result truly saddened me, more than anything else.  I have been a voter in Malta and the U.K. for a number of years and sometimes I "won" and sometimes "lost".  But never was I really sad whenever I lost, except now in the Brexit vote.  But this is not about Brexit here...so back to Trump I shall go.

Trump won because the people voted for him.  There is widespread talk that those who voted for Trump were the uneducated and the like, which is ironic since such an idea is generating a sort of elitist division between the educated (the infamous "Establishment" being talked about?) and the not.  Democracy was born in Ancient Greece, where the right to vote was somewhat exclusive to the learned - in that case, the philosophers - and this was believed to guarantee that the 'best' choice would be made on who would then lead the demos, the people.  Society has come a long way since then and voting rights have been extended to everyone, irrespective of wealth, education and gender (and rightly so).  This could have worked when political propaganda was limited to sensible debates, the spoken word, genuine manifestos, ideological principles of Left, Right and all in between and so on and so forth.  However, it seems that this is no longer working in our age, where debates are mere shows, great speeches have been reduced to Tweets, what a person or party stands for is heavily diluted and often skewed by personal opinions in the social media and the concept of ideology is completely gone.  I think that the whole notion of democracy or at least how it is exercised needs serious revision.  How?  I obviously do not know.  Or actually, the desiderata in the mind of the 21st century citizen would be a government per person.  Individualism is the religion of the day.  I, me and myself.  Or a number of parallel governments to which one can belong and not to the other.  How is this allegiance maintained and not switch daily from one government to another?  I don't know, either.  Perhaps I am talking gibberish, given I am sick.

What struck me the most in this whole Trump issue was that during the campaign and prior to the election results, virtually everyone was anti Trump: leaders, Prime Ministers and the like.  Now, these very same people and sending messages of congratulations and wishes of collaboration with the new President.  I never witnessed such hypocrisy before and this was very disappointing although in a way I was not surprised at all, for I had commented about this on Facebook back on 28th September.  I am more looking forward to see meetings between world leaders and Trump than to see Trump himself.

One final word on Trump: I believe he is, in essence, a showman and all of the 'nasty' speeches prior to the election were simply propagandist in nature and served only to attract an audience and 'captivate' people, which he did.  Trump the candidate and Trump the President will surely, and hopefully, be two different people and my take is that we will not be witnessing any new Great Walls being built nor mass deportations.  I am sure, though, that these coming 4 years will have their fair share of gaffes, quips and diplomatic manoeuvres characterised by comicality.