Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

My wife made a great observation in our day walking around Malta's historical sites: while the country is a hotspot of globalization , with worker residents coming from around the world, the same level of globalization is not reflected in the country's international tourist traffic. Whereas the country's buses, shops, and indeed, the workforce of tourist hotspots like hotels and restaurants, are filled with people of different colors, the crowds of tourists that come from outside the Maltese islands are overwhelmingly white, sprinkled with some Asians.

In his heavy Maltese accent, the middle-aged man declared, "You know the Europeans give us money, so we get to renovate all this." Pointing at the big construction site in the middle of the historic town center, the man intended to be both comical and proud. As he casually struck up a conversation with me in my little self-guided tour of his hometown, he was clearly glad to see that there were so many foreigners who were willing to walk its winding stone-cobbled streets, gawking at the Instagram-ready white-washed houses fronted with potted plants.

The local takeout burger place was manned by three youngish workers when I last visited. One yellow, one brown, and one black. Clearly from three different countries (none of which is Malta) and they communicate in perfect English amongst themselves and to their equally multicultural clientele and delivery personnel taking orders for various meal-order apps. This little spot is a perfect microcosm of modern-day Maltese society: a society that is, quite literally, full of people from around the world, working and living together to make the island economy tick along.

Walking the narrow streets of Malta, I cannot help but notice a distinct lack of the usual big names in retail. In place of the Walmarts and the FamilyMarts of the world are small no-name mom-and-pop shops specializing in one type of product or the other. From Paul's selling only stationery to the hole-in-the-wall household goods stores peddling towels and plastic baskets, the little towns of this island country remain dominated by small enterprises, the kind that have long been killed off in other countries by major retail chains selling everything from A to Z.

Every line of work ebbs and flows based on a calendar of deadlines. When no imminent projects are on the horizon, employees enjoy their downtime, taking vacations and going home early from the office. When clients call in with urgent requests, employees reluctantly do overtime, trying to get through all the tasks while their managers and customers breathe down their necks for constant updates. The deadlines vary greatly from industry to industry, with expectations being three months for management consultants to three minutes for the fry cook at McDonald's.

Home. It is a word that is often laden with so many emotions: a sense of belonging when there, longing when not, indifferent when ridden with conflict, joy-inducing when filled with loved ones. People say that what makes a physical place "home" is what is inside: the people, the neighbors, and that feeling of being safe from the elements and troubles brewing outside. For them, a home can be mobile and ever-shifting> As long as what one associated with the home can move together with the person, then the home can be anywhere, in any building.

One thing that this blog does not particularly do well is "specificity." Often, posts start with a concrete event that triggers a line of thinking, but then dive deeper and deeper into the philosophy and values behind the thinking, until the reader is left thinking, at the end of the post, what do the abstract thoughts developed across multiple paragraphs have anything to do with the event that triggered the post in the first place. And too frequently, I am inclined to agree with the readers: as a space to freely jot down my thoughts, the thoughts are prioritized over structure or narrative.