Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

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.

Finding myself on the streets of Shanghai for the first time since 2017 , I was rather surprised by the vibrancy with which the street life returned to the megacity. With major international news outlets covering the popping of the real estate bubble, the high unemployment rates among the youth, and stagnant wages, it is easy to come to the conclusion that people are less willing to spend the decreasing salaries from increasingly precarious jobs. Yet, despite the anecdotal and statistical evidence that would discourage such development, the streets are seeing more and more shops competing for customers.

The simplest of addictions can crop up at any time. Whereas being hooked on drugs and gambling requires one to make an active effort to go to the nearby dealers or casinos, there are plenty of ways that one gets buried in an alternate reality for hours and days without having to spend a single dime. A vacant hour between meetings, a sudden urge to procrastinate from an inevitable task, a desire to kill off time without a concrete purpose...something more productive is definitely there, but it is not found.  A few game downloads, watching videos, or even a session of casual banter with  ChatGPT  could all do fine.

People get old. Old people's mental processing power and ability to react quickly to new information are weaker than those of younger people. These are plain biological facts that govern the human body. Absent radical scientific breakthroughs that allow people to retain their brainpower and youth through chemical and biological enhancements, these facts will befall everyone, including the most powerful and important individuals in the world. A more efficient world requires that some older people retire from their positions and let more mentally qualified youths take over.

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. 

"It does not seem like you have native pronunciation" seemed straightforward enough. This is an excerpt from an email from a leading online English language school in Japan, rejecting my application to become part of its roster of part-time tutors. The application itself was simple: I had to submit two separate 30-second video recordings of myself, respectively explaining an idiom and giving a self-introduction. For the evaluator, that one minute of talking, plus my visual looks on camera, was enough to determine that I was not suited for their clientele of many beginners who could not even tell apart accents.

There is something incredibly different about going to the gym in Malta compared to Japan . It is not just that the Maltese gym has a nearly even breakdown between female and male members. But it is how the female gym enthusiasts in Malta dress and behave. many show up only in a sports bra and tight figure-hugging leggings, revealing ample cleavage and their round bottoms for all to see. Many of them, clearly active on Instagram, would pose in front of the many mirrors of the gym, accentuating their flat abs and muscular legs for photos to be shared later online.

I could not take my eyes off the third-floor booth. A family of six, what looks to be a grandmother, a set of parents, and kids, all in matching black T-shirts and dancing together with big smiles to the live performance on the stage they see below. Now, multiply that by some 40 booths, plus 900 seats at the first level, in one of the oldest and continuously operating opera houses on the island of Gozo . It was a sight to behold. From kids to the silver-haired, all gyrating and singing along to the tunes while standing on their feet, one of the most intergenerational concerts I have ever attended.

I used to be miffed whenever I heard those who do not come from an English-speaking background get English names. When I worked in an internship years ago in China, I was disgusted that my Chinese colleagues would not call me by my name simply because I did not have an English one. They would address each other by their English names before returning to their Chinese conversations. I found the act highly superficial: having English names did not automatically make them proficient in English, just as their choice of not addressing my Chinese name did not make me less international than they are.

I monitor the viewer stats of this blog from time to time. In recent months, the blog stats have shown some suspicious stats that make me worried about where and how the blog is viewed. Whereas individual blog posts have no more than 20 pageviews each in total in the months after publication, sometimes the blog itself registers more than 500 views in a single day, all coming from Hong Kong, mainland China, Ireland, and Singapore, none of which match my traditional viewership in the past years, the vast majority of which originates in the US, combined with the foreign population in Japan.

In his The Bible and Zionism , Dr. Nur Masalha argues over and over that the founding leaders of the State of Israel, despite being a generally irreligious bunch, attempt to leverage religious language to advance the idea that the land of Israel belongs exclusively to the world's Jewish population, while Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, are considered squatters who must be evicted to right a historical wrong. By evoking passages from the Old Testament that discuss how the ancient Israelites defeated the Canaanites and the Philistines, the Zionist leaders somehow managed to form an alliance with Christian evangelicals.

The central bus stop at the little town of Marsalforn was inundated with a sense of impatience. The dozens of people gathering in the little square could not stop staring at the road leading to the bus stop, as if a more intense stare could get the bus to show up faster. On the mobile app of Malta Public Transport, the bus was shown as a mere 4 minutes away, but with one bus coming every 30 minutes or so, everyone was getting visibly jittery as to whether the small bus could fit everyone in the bumpy journey to the central bus terminal in Victoria, the capital of Gozo Island, only some 6km away. 

Neither a teacher nor a consultant is supposed to be picky about the clients they interact with. Business logic simply does not allow for it. As long as the client is willing to pay, adhere to legal regulations, and interact respectfully, there is little reason for the client to be refused service. Moreover, it is often not ethical to refuse service for reasons that are not knowledge, law, or business-related. In the case of students seeking knowledge, the refusal to provide can be interpreted as unfair discrimination, withholding of resources that they have the right to access without valid explanations.

The little community library in the Maltese town of Mosta was, well, little. But in a small room with perhaps five shelves, a service counter, and a table, every corner was filled with books, many of them quite worn out. The main focus, as is the case for libraries elsewhere , is books that children can read. Picture books, novels, and non-fiction imparting writing skills and knowledge on young adults make up, at a quick glance, more than half of the collection. As adults turn to the internet for their readings, it is clearly the kids without their own digital devices that still carry around paperbacks and hardcovers.

It was only when the taxi sped out of Malta International Airport that I realized the meaning of the word "development." I had just spent a weekend in Tunis, only a short one-hour flight in North Africa. Fascinating as the capital of Tunisia was, with its combination of colonial French and medieval architecture interspaced with the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the city was clearly rough on the edge. Streets were overrun with trash, watery sewage, and feral cats and dogs. The pavements, buildings, and markets were crumbling from the lack of repair and random touts following tourists for a quick "gift."