Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

I was surprised to realize I had never read  The Great Gatsby  until last week. The 1925 novel is almost a required reading for high schoolers across the US and is consistently deemed one of the greatest American novels ever written. A recent article in the Economist extolling the relevance of the novel's overarching theme on the permanence of class differences and the meaninglessness of wealth finally piqued my curiosity enough for me to pick up the book and finish it in two days. Let's call it a belated gift to my high school self. 

My wife and I have become habitual feeders of the stray cats in our neighborhood. Several plastic bowls sit on the few stone steps to the narrow street below the front door. Filled with dry food throughout the day and wet food in the colder evenings and overnight hours, the impromptu feeding station can sometimes attract up to a dozen cats. Many have become comfortable enough to run into the house for a quick petting when we open the door to refill the bowls. We are comfortable doing so because all the neighbors also put out food, as if competing for the cats' attention.

The Pakistani man from Germany was ceaselessly inquisitive about the state of business in Malta. "I'm looking to start a new business here, maybe a shawarma shop, maybe an Indian restaurant. What do you think about the possibility of success?" He asked before proudly explaining the scale of his import-export business in Germany and the good pay his nephews are getting in Malta as signs that he has a pretty good shot at making it as a business owner in Malta too. 

The Flamenco Museum in Seville provided an unequivocal description of the dance as an output of multicultural integration. The southern Spanish city, the description read, was able to give birth to this unique dance style because of an infusion of religious, musical, and cultural influences from Catholic, Muslim, gypsy, Amerindian, and African sources. Those influences congregated so thoroughly in this city only because of its status in the past as the capital of Moorish Spanish rule and the headquarters of the country's exploratory voyages to the New World.

I recently noticed that there is something that I have begun to do without fail every time I travel to mainland Europe from Malta. Whenever I order anything in a restaurant in the city I visit, I always (secretly, of course) complain about the small portions, barely enough to fill me until the next meal, much less have anything left to take home. Combined with the high prices that almost always define traveling in tourist hotspots, it becomes a foregone conclusion that the meal ends with an expected praise for the Maltese restaurant scene.

"That's just wishful thinking," the old gentleman slowly shook his white-hair-topped head as I mentioned the plan for the Maltese government to construct an island-wide modern subway system to alleviate the ever-worsening traffic on its clogged roads. It is a largely expected answer given that the government has already announced the plan's cancellation to much dismay of the population that is looking for alternatives for being stuck in the country's narrow roads that are unable to cope with the increasing population and the proportionate number of cars.

In the remote western corner of Gozo, the three-street village of Gharb (population: 1,549) is, like every town and village in the country, centered on a gigantic church. But right around the corner from the church is a primary health clinic, in the familiar light green and red livery that also coats its siblings dotted around the island. Next to the clinic is an elementary school and nursery complex, flanked by a soccer field and playground, the grass and equipment looking well-maintained despite their clear age. 

The streets of Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul remind me of Europe. Its backstreets are flooded with the orange-ish streetlights common in Rome and Paris, with the stylish cobblestones and the tiny cars rambling by to match. Many residents dress no differently from their European counterparts, with stylish body-hugging jeans, shirts, and coats accentuating their figures. Many walk hand-in-hand with their spouses and significant others, and some engage in happy public displays of affection that find no equivalence in the Middle East or the Far East.

There is a big poster hanging above the big intersection right in front of Baghdad's Green Zone, the fortified government compound created by the American occupation forces. Underneath the pictures of Ismail Haniyeh and Qasem Solemani are the words "We will never forget the blood of our martyrs." Haniyeh is the leader of Hamas assassinated by Israel in Iran, and Solemani is the leader of Iran's elite military unit the Quds Force, assassinated by America in Syria. It is clear from the poster what the government's stance is on the matter of these assassinations.

The taxi driver I spoke to in Bahrain was right. The Omanis may be the most proactively helpful people I've met so far during my trip here in the Gulf region. But unlike what the taxi driver insinuated, the Omani "niceness" is not rooted in some sort of different culture or the national psyche compared to their fellow Muslim Arab brethren next door. Instead, it reflects how the Omani economy embraced diversification into tourism much earlier than any of the country's neighbors. The Omanis simply need to be nicer because they are used to making a living off tourism.

"Oh Riyadh is way less developed than Bahrain," the Chinese businessman sitting next to me on the Saudi-bound flight blurted out as soon as I asked him about his impressions of the Kingdom after living there for the past year. I was skeptical of his words. This is the country that global mass media have constantly reminded us of Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) is leading to a head rush of modernization, investing massive sums in infrastructure and public relations of a future tourism superpower. 

There is a big secret inside the otherwise nondescript house in an otherwise nondescript suburb of Kuwait City. In front of the Tareq Rajab Museum was an elderly man, staring at the white walls of the small lobby while he fidgeted in boredom. When I visited, there was no one else occupying the more than 30 seats in the room. Excitedly by perhaps the first visitor in the afternoon, the man quickly ran over, a cardboard ticket in one hand and the credit card reading machine in the other. As soon as he heard the authorization "beep" of the machine, he ran into the rest of the house, turning on the lights as he went. 

"And here is your card, valid until December 2025," the nice lady at the Malta residency office explained as she handed over my new residency card. And just like that, I am welcome to another year of living the slice of the Mediterranean paradise. Also exactly one year after delivering my first post from this little island, I am here to summarize the year before in an always vain attempt to predict the upcoming year's trajectory. As is always the case with the first of the year, checking off what has been completed helps to focus the mind on some truly new experiences that can still be had.

As someone who attended a regular elementary school in Japan, I have always found it questionable when mainstream media extol how it is a microcosm of Japan as an unusual safe and ordered society. A recent feature from the Economist took the same approach. The article spoke of how students are shaped to be responsible and independent from a young age through collaborations to clean their classrooms, commuting by themselves on public transport, and discussions in ethics class. The article argues that this education creates adults who adhere to laws out of social responsibility rather than fear of persecution.

What do you think of when you hear the word "prostitute"? What about "a Russian bodyguard"? The chance is that the former is imagined as a cunning power player, using sex to get money, information, and whatever resources they need to get out of the dire, impoverished environment that they are in. The latter is the opposite, a mindless brute who follows the orders of the rich boss, bestowing violence upon enemies without a hint of remorse or compassion. Thanks to the mainstream media, particularly the depiction of Hollywood movies, accepting such stereotypes has almost in itself become a social norm.

I was casually strolling through the Diwali celebrations of central London. It was 2011, and I was a master's student with little incentive to do beyond the bare minimum to secure my graduation. Rather than burying myself in books, I took short journeys around the city (and beyond ), seeking to understand what makes the city one of the most diverse and attractive for people worldwide. There at the celebrations, I was casually handed a red notepad, the type where each page can be individually torn off. True to the spirit of the Indian diaspora, it was a promotion for financial services provider HDFC.

As a traveler who is currently too occupied with work to travel much, watching a few travel vlogs helps to quench the thirst. But as I watch these vloggers' well-polished recordings of their day-to-day in far-flung parts of the world, I often cringe at the effort that went into editing. In particular, given that they spend so much time talking into the camera, splicing and reviewing the output will inevitably take repeated listening of their own voice on recordings. For someone who remembers growing up hating my own voice through anything but my own ears, that effort does not sound like a pleasant experience at all.

The American college application is quite unique. Whereas one would expect that a "good" student is defined by good grades, both over years of classwork and one-off exams, the American system demands a student to be much more. So students spend years building up a list of activities outside the classroom. From excelling in the competitive world of music, sports, and academia to the more idiosyncratic leadership initiatives to show that one can change the world, one small impact at a time, high school students should be occupied even when they are not buried in books.

In some way, time in Malta almost stands still. More than 300 days of sunshine a year means the place's weather never varies across seasons. The centuries-old stone buildings, protected by centuries of renovations on the inside and regulations that guide what towns should look like, mean that the visual look of human settlement here also is unchanged since civilization set foot. Then there are the old men and women who pull up their chairs and sit for hours in front of the lapping Mediterranean coast. One could finish their oil paintings without asking them to stay still.

When people start learning a language, the goal is simple: to become more proficient in the target language. But the definition of "proficiency" varies. Some are serious enough to acquire a language to get a foreign job, live in a foreign land, and marry a foreign partner. Some are more casual: just enough to engage in basic banter during short-term travels and the joy of learning some phrases in the process is sufficient. But at all levels of seriousness, the keyword is "interaction": language acquisition is simply not something to be done alone for the sake of being alone.