Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

It was bound to happen sooner or later. That seems to be the unanimous verdict among Asia-watchers as another bout of Sino-Japanese conflict flared up recently. The statement from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, unequivocally calling Japanese military to aid Taiwan in case of a mainland invasion, unsurprisingly triggered a negative reaction from the Chinese government. In the face of criticism even among the more moderate members of her own party, notably her predecessor Shigeru Ishiba, Takaichi has refused to back down, showing no indication that a retraction or apology is forthcoming.

AI has arrived at the audio age. Only years after robotic voices dominated the test-to-voice space, AI producers are investing substantial resources in humans willing to contribute their voice recordings to equip the latest generation of chatbot conversation partners. The result is an ever more natural set of sample voices that can recite textual responses, to the point that a blind listener would not be able to distinguish the machine-generated from the human original. Days are not far away when voice transcription, as a human job, becomes entirely obsolete.

"Could I...ask a completely unrelated question?" One of the attendees hesitantly spoke up in our online discussion session. As I saw him lower his head in the grainy video thumbnail, he quietly muttered, "How...does your life end up like that?" And before I could inquire what he exactly meant, he intoned, his voice a bit louder and even angrier, "I'm interested in living in different countries too....but it just doesn't seem like it plays out that way." I opened my mouth and closed it again before I could say a word. I had to think for a moment after realizing it was a much more sensitive question than I had expected.

When people envision a "revolution," they often conjure images of sudden bouts of violence and radical change. People coordinate large-scale gatherings where they clash with the police and military to voice their suffering and demand change. From the protests emerge charismatic leaders whose speeches move crowds and whose ideologies are projected into the public consciousness. When the authorities refuse to budge in the face of popular discontent, protests turn into mob violence, then organized armed opposition that overcomes the defenders of the regime. 

The Japanese often attribute the country's high-quality manufactured products to  Shokunin Damashii (職人魂) in action. A historical culture of craftsmen focusing on doing one thing and just one thing well in his or her life has led to a slew of artisanal success stories, from fabled swords from centuries ago to the aged sake rice wine taking over the world's palate. Despite modern manufacturing's reliance on automation and assembly lines, the country's electronics giants and carmakers continue to suggest that this culture of perfectionism over individual lifetimes is the secret ingredient to made in Japan's fine reputation.

Ah, a Lenovo laptop. It almost takes me back to the college days, when the ThinkPad represented the pinnacle of the aspiring white-collar professional, ready to take work on the go, no matter how rough the road ahead becomes, both metaphorically and physically. Those were the days when the MacBook was the exclusive territory of deliberately non-mainstream hipsters, attracted by its quirky colors and functionalities. The serious kids, those heading to the world of finance and management consulting, needed a business laptop to accompany their business suits.

After years of popular films that portray Chinese patriotism in contemporary settings, China's film-makers finally turned back to the past, namely World War II, for more inspiration. Two recent films,  Dead to Rights (南京照相馆) and 731 , respectively depicting the plight of Chinese civilians during the Nanjing Massacre and the biological weapons experiments in Northeastern China, hit theaters. It is a rather opportune time for the pivot. The Chinese government had just concluded a massive military parade to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, reminding people to not forget a painful past.

It was not yesterday that Korea became a cultural superpower. Yet, amidst the global rise of K-pop , K-drama, and even K-cosmetics, K-food remains relatively obscure. It is not surprising. After all, learning to cook a cuisine requires skilled chefs who are often unwilling to emigrate from their home countries, especially to those with lower salaries. Finding authentic ingredients or importing them from Korea affordably requires legal and regulatory support. And it is always a risk that the cuisine may not suit the local palate, especially given Korean food's reputation for being spicy.

The word "career development" comes with a sense of increased responsibility. Outgrowing the usual routine of finishing the assignment tasks sees the mid-career professional becoming more expansive in their roles: it could involve overseeing a group of subordinates, worrying about whether they are not being overworked or understimulated to maintain motivation. Or it could be getting on the graces of major clients, striking a balance between fulfilling their whims to stop them from hopping over to a rival, and ensuring their demands are reasonably doable. 

Let's see, six meetings today...five more tomorrow...I need to reschedule one to Saturday...maybe I can get up at 6am because that's the only time slot that works with his time zone. These are some of the monologues that are going through my mind as I scan my time schedule for my coming days. As an educational consultant, having meetings with students is my main job, but in the quest to make myself available for more students more frequently, I often quickly realize just how unscalable the work can be, no matter how much I try to be efficiently ubiquitous and responsive.

My wife recently started an Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/info.catsinmalta/ . Appreciate it if you could follow and like the videos!) In a locale more known for picture-perfect shots of historical stone buildings against the azure Mediterranean waters, she is trying to show another side of the country, just as beautiful. Through shots of stray cats lounging on the smallhold farms, elderly fishermen casting nets from wooden boats, and the small backstreets with rundown restaurants, she reminds us that a truly attractive place is attractive in the everyday, not just hotspots.

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.