Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The concept of time in the Maltese summer can take some getting used to. The cloudless brightness can start as early as 5am, and darkness does not revisit until 9pm. During the day, the sun can be blazingly hot, making any outdoor activity that does not involve jumping into the cold water of the nearest pool or the sea too physically demanding. The result is towns that were empty during the day coming alive with people after 7pm, with the crowds not departing well after midnight, as the loud music and artificial lighting keep the folks jiving. 

Malta's infrastructure is bursting at the seams. An island of narrow streets is now having to handle ever-increasing inflows of foreign tourists enjoying summer holidays and foreign workers lured by the growing economy. The quaint two-lane "highways" crisscrossing the island are now frequently home to snaking traffic jams, with motorists having nowhere to escape amidst the lack of alternative thoroughfares in densely populated towns and rugged rocky terrains of the mountainous interior. As the economy and population continue to grow, Malta will see more frustrations on the road.

There are many good ways to remember and share the memories of a trip. Plenty of people take pictures of sights and food, many others record videos of the sounds, the people, and their reactions, and a few, like yours truly, write down thoughts and reflections in prose. But these remembrances cannot fully do justice to how wonderful or awful a trip was. For all the audiovisual and mental recollections that can be registered and replayed, the tastes and smells of the place cannot. Plenty of storytellers try to do their best job to verbalize the olfactory and gustatory; none can beat the real thing.