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 awa ..read more

What do you get when you cross a large, thriving city and a constant city-wide tourism campaign? Rome might be something close to the answer. The attraction of the city needs no highlighting: its illustrious history as the capital of a sophisticated ancient empire, the headquarters of the global Church, and a cradle of art from the Renaissance to the modern-day gives enough reasons for enough people for it to consistently be ranked among one of the most visited cities in the world. Rome needs no marketing: opening a book on Western history is sufficient to motivate someone to visit. And the ..read more

Few can argue with the natural beauty surrounding the Popeye Village. The theme park is situated in its own little cove, surrounded by jagged cliffs reflecting the warm afternoon sun into the pristinely clear seawater below. Its remote location, distance from major population centers on the island, the lack of regular public transport connection, and the inconvenient fact of having to pay an entrance fee to enter the theme park, all contribute to the pleasant lack of boorish sun-bathing tourists that have inundated similarly beautiful locations all over Malta. Yet, even as the natural beaut ..read more

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 e ..read more

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 pa ..read more

The first Dune movie was beautiful but predictable. Gorgeous cinematography courtesy of endless deserts simply could not make up for the predictable plotline. On the eve of being reassigned to rule another realm, a powerful house of aristocrats was backstabbed and wiped out by another house with the acquiescence and assistance of the emperor. Just as predictably, the native population of the realm was unconsulted, or even acknowledged, in the entire process, leaving the new rulers of the realm, just like the one before it, fighting a constant insurgency that disrupts economic production. The ..read more

The non-Japanese portrayal of the Japanese salaryman is often an illustration of the unenviable foot soldier of Japanese economic success. Overworked and exhausted, they drag themselves into similar-looking office buildings in their equally similar corporate uniform of black suits with neckties. Admired for their individual sacrifice and hard work as a sign of devotion to help their companies and country grow and prosper, the non-Japanese observants would nonetheless loathe to emulate the way these salarymen worked and lived. In the Japanese narrative, however, the salaryman lifestyle is not ..read more

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 ..read more

Watching the Super Bowl and its (some would call, underrated) Half-Time Show this year made me realize once again just how invisible Asians are in the American entertainment industry. As the Chiefs and the 49ers battled it out on the field and Usher reminded us of his hits from the 1990s, not an Asian face was projected, even for a split second, onto the TV screens of more than 100 million people around America tuning into the biggest sporting event of the year. The biggest representation of Asia in this Super Bowl, sad as it is, is whether prominent visitor Taylor Swift would get there in tim ..read more

As someone used to the world-leading obesity rates in America, it is interesting to read about the equivalent in the EU. Malta, with only a quarter of the population classified as obese, is considered one of the most obese in the bloc. It speaks to just how healthy the average European is compared to the average American. But the figures also point, perhaps only marginally, just how the Maltese lifestyle, in a rather unfortunate way, may be much more similar to the American one as compared to other places on the continent.  Squint hard enough, life in Malta can be quite similar to the U ..read more