Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

It is that time again in Malta. As the weather gets warmer, the swimsuited youngsters (and middle-aged folks) return to the seaside in droves, tanning on the rocks and beaches in the skimpiest of bikinis and thongs. Many of them, too sweaty and wet to put on their clothing on the way back home, simply walk the residential streets with barely any clothing on, titillating onlookers as their colorful fabrics are accentuated by the beige of the island's many traditional stone buildings. For many tourists seeking sun and tan in this little piece of Mediterranean paradise, it is a sight that they look forward to.

It is hard to keep marriage exciting sometimes. Having been together with my wife for more than three years now, we need to find some way to spice up our ways of conversation. And I do not mean that in a sexual manner. Just the day-to-day conversations about "how are you doing" and "what do you want for dinner" become a boring routine if it is done the same way, about the same content, and happen in the same context. To make the everyday a bit more exciting sometimes requires a bit of outside support, a tool to make the normal slightly more abnormal.

It feels like I have been sick for quite a while now. Every night before sleep, I cough up phlegm. And when I wake up, a dry mouth awaits me. A constant stream of lozenges during the day may suppress the itchiness in the back of my throat during meetings. However, their too frequent usage has led to occasional bouts of diarrhea that forced me on a soup-and-bread diet for days at a time...graphic as this may all seem, it is a rather apt description of the week I have had since returning to Malta from an intercontinental journey less than a week ago.

A few days ago, a marathon held in Beijing marked the first time that specifically designed humanoid runner robots participated alongside actual human runners. Rather than a display of technological prowess, the publicity focused on just how much the humanoids lagged behind the humans, with the fastest robot finishing more than an hour after the human winner, and three-quarters of the robot entries dropped out of the race. The event became a testament to just how difficult it remains for robotics to fully mimic such basic human actions as running, despite advancements in AI and precision manufacturing.

A piece of news from a few days ago gave a group of cynical netizens a good laugh. An Air India flight bound for Delhi was forced to turn back less than five hours after it took off from Chicago. The cause was a widespread blockage of toilets on the flight, leading to 11 of the 12 lavatories onboard being out of service despite the flight being less than a third of the way to the destination. Anxious passengers, upon return to Chicago, were provided with accommodation and booking on alternative airlines on their way, as one can assume, home.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Forests of citrus trees, towering mountains in the distance, and expressways as far as eyes can see... These were the first sights of Sicily, a much larger island just north of Malta. I, the first-time visitor, was surprised how the two islands could look so different despite having the same climate and coastal geography. Malta's rocky interior is filled with rocks and stone buildings, without the lush vegetation that the Sicilian hinterlands are filled with. Even with that first sight, it is no wonder that Sicily is an agricultural powerhouse that exports to Malta and beyond after filling the stomachs of its 5 million people.

The storyline was almost reminiscent of the assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a couple of years ago. A young man, with no history of violence, was driven to gun violence by a deeply held grievance, a perceived unfairness shared by millions. But this time, it was not the Unification Church and its forced donations that bankrupted families in Japan. Instead, it was the perennial shortcomings of the medical care system in America. Should the ongoing investigations shed more details on the storyline, the American assassin will likely elicit as much sympathy as the Japanese one.

"I cannot believe that people would keep all these ornaments at home for this time of the year." Until my wife uttered these words at the sight of the average Maltese residential area lit up in preparation for Christmas, I had never thought about the material side of the year-end holiday. Indeed, many houses are putting up more than cheap colorful lights. Many are putting up sculptures of Santa Claus, Baby Jesus, the nativity scene, and much else alongside a substantial tree so densely packed with ornaments that the green leaves are barely visible.

"Hey, do you want to grab a seat?" The middle-aged black man tapped on my shoulder as I walked to the back of the bus, resigned to the reality of having to stand for the hour-long ride. He gestured toward an empty seat on the window side in a four-seat configuration facing one another. With the other three seats occupied by fairly large men with long legs, cramping another man into the midst was hardly ideal. Indeed, when the black man announced his intention to have me scootch in, his two seatmates only reluctantly shuttled their feet to make room.

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.

As a lifelong traveler who, due to the meeting-heavy nature of my current job , is unfortunately not able to frequently head to new places, I watch travel vlogs as one way to quench that travel thirst to some degree. With the competitive vlogging landscape that is YouTube today, plenty of people, from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, dishing up their views on the same sites, both famous and mundane. While all are united in their love of travel, how they portray the places they visit, through their visual recording and verbal explanations, illustrates how travel, as a hobby and a job, is seen so differently. 

The much-awaited Joker sequel starts with the titular protagonist in prison, pending trial for his murders committed two years ago. The man, frail and emaciated, chooses to remain quiet in the face of constant taunts from the guards, too happy to jump on any perceived infringements to beat up inmates. Gone is the confidence of the clown defending his actions, and inspiring millions who saw him as the symbol of fighting back against the authorities that seem to exist to protect Gotham's powerful bullies. As Arthur, the man simply retreats into an inner world of fantasy, shriveling as he heads to an inevitable death penalty.