Eat Your Own Fruit

Read to the end! There's something really good to think about !

OK so where do I start from ...  when I got here it was really hot, and sunny, it was almost as if the hot summer weather followed me from Malta to Guildford. But now, merely two weeks later, here I am in my room, cosying up by the heater, with a warm mug of coffee. The sun hasn't shone properly in probably more than a week now, and whenever one is to look outside, the bright colours that we usually see in Malta, aren't anywhere to be seen. Instead, a greyish hue is in the air. Don't get me wrong, I am genuinely loving it! - not in the McDonald's kind of way, but you get what I mean. It's nice to have something different for once. Temperatures outside have already gone down to nearly 10°C, and it doesn't look like its going to get warmer any time soon. I was quite fascinated when I read on Wikipedia that the average amount of sunshine in England is of around 1130 hours every year. Apart from that, its always overcast. -- Dammit! I started writing this post on Wednesday and I wasn't finished ... and you guessed it ... yesterday and this morning have been realllyyyyyyyy sunny days! Oh well, nothing to complain about, at least some colour is back in the air.

But so far its been great. Fresher's Week, London, and then back to Uni where shit just got real. So far its been already four assignments, a tutorial and the title for my thesis, and one can just assume that so much more work is coming my way - sarcasm alert - let the good times roll! But even though it looks like its going to be a tough year, at least the courses are really interesting and I guess the sense of achievement when I'll - hopefully will manage ... shhh ... *fingers-crossed* - finish the course would be immense. 

But now that it's been nearly three weeks, I feel settled down, and I cannot imagine myself not being here. Of course I cannot deny that I miss Malta and all of my friends and family, but so far, living in England had been good. I met most of my class mates and we've quickly become good friends, hanging out and going to the pub. And the same thing I can say for most of my flatmates. I guess it just takes a certain amount of time to just settle in and get used to the routine of the place. Same I can say for my flat mates. This week we had a pizza night between us and it was quite a nice time hanging out with everyone and getting to know each other.

But what really hit me this week, was a story from a book which I got as a present before I left Malta. The short story was titled "Eat Your Own Fruit". And I decided to write it down for you, so that maybe everyone else can get something from it too.

A disciple once complained, 

     "You tell us stories but you never reveal their meaning to us." 

Said the master, 

     "How would you like it if someone offered you fruit and masticated it before giving it to you?"

That's it! And since I read this story I couldn't stop thinking about it. The book just stops there, and moves on to another short story, And it's left up to the reader to question himself the meaning of these short stories and try to understand how they apply to him in real life.  And in the same way the book decided to stop abruptly, so am I, 'cos now, I got yet another lecture - what fun!

Take care guys and gals!

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

P.S.: For the "tune of the week" I cannot resist not to post this amazing cover of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" by Foxes. Her voice is so hauntingly beautiful ! And the fact that it was performed for a Doctor Who episode makes it even more cool.

The Stag, The World and I

It's quite a long blog post, but I haven't posted anything in a while so this is to make up for it. I hope it doesn't bore you to death ... and if it does .. oh well, it's not a problem I have to deal with ... 

17:37 ... Its been a very busy week. I finally made it to my new university, the University of Surrey.
It's located in Guildford, a very old and picturesque little town of not more than a 100,000 people, located in the South East of England. And so far I've loved it ! I moved into my new apartment on Sunday morning, and quite understandably, I'm still settling in and figuring out what's what and who's who. Thank goodness I have a friend who I knew beforehand, and she was already staying here for her Ph.D, and she's been extremely helpful in showing my around the place and introducing me to some really cool people. By the way, the photo on the right shows the view from my front door ... look carefully at the picture guys and gals ... I hope you're jealous. 

The university is amazing. Its full of greenery and friendly people ... but most importantly it is full of opportunities. I was impressed when in one of the introductory sessions we were told how the department I'm going to be a part of (Electronic Department within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences) has four major research centres, these covering the topics of Space; Advanced Technologies; Vision, Speech and Signal Processing and also Communications, which employ hundreds of academics, researchers and Ph.D students, and together they make a turnover of more than £60 million every year. So far I already made a few friends but it's now that I'm realising how different doing a postgraduate degree is when compared to going on to Erasmus. I have to stop for a second here and link you this really good track by Boys Noize simply called Yeah. It's cool, at least by my standards.

I also have a new favourite animal. Well I don't think I had a choice over the matter. Its the Stag. The logo of the University is a majestic stag holding a comically large key with its front hoof. What's it planning to do with the key ... I have no idea. I'm not sure if the University's logo is a stag because it is located on Stag Hill, or the hill was named so because the University logo is a Stag,but I guess it doesn't really matter in the end. I was quite sad at first that the Kokka days are over, and I am definitely going to miss all the fun I had at all of the events that are held at the University of Malta (I think I'm going to miss Students' Fest mostly). However, once I met Steve the Stag, I couldn't resist warming up to this new animal (shown on the left). I've checked and yes, they have got the Surrey Stage Crew over here, a student society which I'm definitely going to join and hopefully pass on the traditions of stage crew in Malta to the ones here. So far I've been to a comedy night, which I have to admit I both was going to die of laughter and also got quite drunk after having a substantial number of beers with shots of whiskey in them. Well, I guess some things never change.

23:17 ...  I'm still going on writing this post cos I have to admit that I took a break from writing and went out for a couple of pints with some friends.

Over here in Guildford everything looks to be fine and dandy, however all over the world, all tons if shit is happening. Because of my moving I had a very limited amount of time to read any articles from the usual news agencies and stuff. However, today I make it a point to do so and took a look at what's going on around the world. And so here's a really short summary of what I figured out is going on and my opinions about them in short.

• Hong Kong is full of pro-democracy protesters which do not want any involvement by the Beijing central government in their elections ... which, by the way, I fully support. The protesters are mostly students, which I have to admit, I really admire what they are doing for their home town in the name of democracy.
• The IS/ISIS/ISIL insurgency in Syria and Iraq is being bombed left, right and centre by the US-led coalition made up of nearly a fourth of all of the countries of the world ... good! Even though it took the Western powers long enough to decide to do it, its still better late then never ... and hopefully Turkey will soon join the fight, and the western powers will increase their involvement, against them too. So lets hope that we'll soon see the end of their ideologically ridiculous regime. I wish to see Russia and the US agree for once and aid each other in crushing the insurgency. 
• Ukraine's president, Poroshenko, is implementing reformative steps to ensure that his country applied for EU membership by 2020 ... which is quite soon in my opinion. Hopefully, the truce he managed to agree upon with the rebels in Luhansk and Donetsk three weeks ago, after he promised them further autonomy, will hold and peace will eventually return to the region. Good luck to them and I genuinely hope they do make it into the EU, for their own sake.
• Ebola is finally being managed in a more efficient manner in the West African countries whoich have been hardly hit by it. Hopefully they manage to find both a cure and a vaccine for it in the recent future and also identify the best possible process to identify the illness and treat the patients without infecting anyone else, especially the nurses and doctors. 

00:27 ... and I'm still writing stuff after I stopped again for a couple of Skype calls with my parents and some friends of mine back in Malta. After the sad things I mentioned in the previous paragraph, here's a picture of a puppy to lighten up your mood again.

Actually there is a lot more stuff going on around the planet which I really wish I could discuss. I really wish I have the time to discuss more even about the stuff that I mentioned above, however, if such a discussion were to arise, then I think the blog post would be too much to read. Before I leave I want to link you another really good track by Bangkok Impact. I have to admit that the name is a bit weird. It's in German and it's Junge Dame und Freundliche Telefon Stimme which translates to Young Lady and the Friendly Telephone Voice. I never really understood what the song is about but I genuinely like it. Its one of my favourite tracks and I'm actually listening to it right now ... 

Anyway ... to para-phrase Looney Tunes cartoons ... That's all folks. See ya next time!

Vale Melita

In 8 days and approximately 20 hours from now, (this is the link for the exact time Countdown Timer), I'll be landing at Heathrow Airport for a new adventure in my life, that is moving abroad for a Masters degree, and hopefully, eventual employment, in the UK. Well, UK ... till today at least, since today there's a referendum taking place for Scottish independence (see Scottish independence: Voting under way in referendum).  If a "Yes" vote passes, then the future of the United Kingdom as we know it can be anything. But that's another discussion, for another post. For now, I'm just focusing on the University of Surrey. 

Anyway, I still got to make sure that everything is fine with the University, and pack and so on and so forth ... but that's last minute stuff so I won't bother doing it, at least not until the last couple of days. Since I am  a huge Doctor Who fan, recently I was re-watching the final episode of the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant), where he regenerates into the Eleventh (Matt Smith), a scene which is accompanied by an amazing piece of music written by Murray Gold and played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. (The music can be heard in the YouTube video underneath this paragraph.) The song is in Latin and its name is Vale Decem, translating to Farewell Ten. Well I'm quite sure you're not dumb so and can easily deduce my train of thought from the name of that soundtrack to the name of this blog post, Vale Melita, which translates to Farewell Malta. 

I have to admit that even though I already did it once, when I moved to Nottingham for my Erasmus Exchange semester , I still feel a bit nervous at times. I know what I am leaving behind and I hate to admit it, but I'm definitely going to miss this place. After some time daydreaming lazily, I managed to identify what things I am going to miss the most, and listed them down (in no particular order of importance).

1. Cisk Lager. Yes, it definitely is the best beer ever. To my luck, it is sold on Amazon.co.uk with free delivery in packs of 24 cans. Yes, I'll be buying that multiple times.

2. Pastizzi, Imqaret, Twistees and Qaghaq tal-Ghasel. Those are the best four culinary items originating on our island. If anyone dares to disagree ... fuck off. On the bright side, some Maltese friends of mine had taught me how to make pastizzi when I was in Nottingham, and Amazon.co.uk sells Twistees too ! So there will not be any shortage of those, thank goodness.

Those who are reading might be asking themselves "Did he forget to mention Kinnie?" No. I did not. I hate Kinnie. Moving on ... 

3. My friends and family, definitely. I am going to miss my friends a lot. I never had any siblings, and thus I always considered my closest friends to be part of my family too. 

4. My dog, Skippy. I got her 10 years ago, and she's been always there, waiting for me to get home drunk at any time of the night, or after university, just to sit there next to me and be a man's best friend. 

That is what I am going to leave behind and miss the most, however, what scares me is what am I going to find over there. So far, all I know for sure is that I am going to find a box full of kitchen items such as pots and pans, and another one with  a couple of pillows and stuff for my bed, both of which I have ordered in advance.

I've been searching all over the internet to see what am I going to find in Guildford, and looking all over Facebook to from other people's photos about hows University life over there, and how much different is it going to be from what I'm used to in Malta. I already got an idea how English University life can be from when I used to live in Nottingham, but somehow I still cannot stop wondering about what am I going to find, after all, it still is a different place. However, I am going to take a lot of stuff with me that will remind me of Malta. My UoM hoodie and a couple of t-shirts of the local band club t-shirt are at the top of my list ! Hmmmm and looking at that photo on the right, I need to buy a University of Surrey hoodie as soon as I get there, you know, to keep up the collection.

Anyway, I ran out of stuff to blab about ... and so I'm off to watch more episodes of not-sure-which-series. 

Vale Melita ... soon ... very soon ...

---

P.S. ... I know that it is a complete waste of money, but I am so gonna buy this eventually! It's so awesome !  Amazon.com: Spinning Floating Tardis

"A World of Troubles"

This blog post is dedicated to James Foley, the brave journalist who was beheaded by members of the Islamic State currently terrorising and occupying northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

This morning I woke up, just another random day during the summer. I do not really have anything to do since I am currently without a full time job and simply waiting for my masters degree to start, and since recently I have developed an interest in current affairs, the first thing I did was turn on my laptop and visit the usual Times of Malta, BBC News, CNN and so on.  And wow, it was not even 9:30 a.m. and I hadn't even had my coffee yet when I read the words "IS warns US", and there was a picture of some random dude in orange on his knees, and another dude with his face covered and wearing everything in black holding a knife in his hand. (picture is actually provided below)

Well ... you have to be really dumb if you haven't already realised where I'm going with this. The guy in orange is James Foley, an independent US journalist who was kidnapped in late '12 by Islamic extremists while heading from Syria to Turkey while the other guy, is a member of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State. To cut (yes, I know that its gruesome, but the pun is intended) the long story short, James Foley was beheaded on video, with  message from the Islamic State to the United States, telling them they they will drown in blood.

But why? Since the departure of all US troops form Iraq in 2011, a new insurgency has risen. Previously it was part of al-Qaeda, but then it moved off to form a separate organisation. Along the years it has had a variety of names such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and more recently, simply the Islamic State (IS).  Recently, even al-Qaeda itself distanced itself from this terrorist group because of, and I quote al-Qaeda itself here, "for its brutality and notorious intractability." The aim of this group is to establish a new state in the greater middle east areas for the Sunni population of the areas and introduce the Sharia Law of the Quran as its main legislation. And the worrying thing is that it has made huge territorial conquests in northern Iraq and eastern Syria, with the execution thousands of innocent civilians and the generation of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the process. Recently it has also established what it calls a Caliphate, ruled by the terrorist group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and has imposed its brutal interpretation of the Islamic Sharia Law across these lands.

The above map shows the lands actually controlled by IS in dark red, the areas claimed by IS in light red, and the rest of Iraq and Syria in white.

So what has the US journalist James Foley has to do with all this? We'll get to that soon. First of all: the main opponents of this group are the the Iraqi Government in south east Iraq, the Kurds in north east Iraq and the several Syrian tribes, or what is left of them after the Syrian civil war, in south west Syria. Secondly: these opponents have gained the support of western countries like the US and EU member states, and also of other Islamic countries, even Iran!

However, so far, only the US actually did anything to help the IS opponents, by air dropping humanitarian aid in the areas where refugees are located, and more importantly by using air strikes against the Islamic State to aid Kurdish and Iraqi fighters. And that is where James Foley comes in. Foley was beheaded on video as a message that the Islamic State will launch terrorist attacks whenever it can against the United States and all the other countries that oppose it if they continue, or try to intervene and attacking their militants.

I am no expert on war or international politics, and even though I have my opinions on what should be done, that is beside the point and I will not discuss it here. All I want to do is raise awareness about what is happening in the Middle East, which realistically, is not that far away from our own shores. We might be going to work, the beach and to some bar for a couple of drinks everyday while enjoying our summer, and over there western citizens are being beheaded, innocent civilians hanged or crucified, or flogged to death, just because some idiot motherfucker who blindly believes in his own twisted misinterpretation of the Quran, and his followers, decided to do these atrocities.

Just take a minute, and think of the lives that are being lost, even of those who just go there innocently to report the news, for us to know what is going on.

James Foley, all I hope is that your death wasn't in vain.

P.S. The name of this blog post, "A World of Troubles" is the name of James Foley's blog, to whom this blog post is dedicated.

Dystopia

I just got home from a relaxed night at Sliema with some friends of mine, and as usual the first thing I did was to turn on my laptop. I still had several tabs on my browser still open from earlier on during the day. Amongst several random tabs, including some really cool music a friend of mine had sent me earlier on and the usual Facebook, Twitter and Gmail tabs, a particular article on the Time Magazine tab still open caught my interest. However, and this might be the half dozen Long Island Iced Tea's talking on my behalf, before I proceed with my usual rant, I feel the need to mention this cool track, The Bay, that my friend Andrew sent me earlier on today (see video below.)

Wasn't that an awesome one?! Anyways, where were we? Ah yes, Time magazine, well this article was just a new update regarding the political crisis going on in Ukraine currently (the link is given right here: Ukraine’s Lawless Warzones Recede as Rebel Fighters Fall Back), however it quickly got me thinking about the current situation in Eastern Europe and how sadly, it is at its worst since the time of the cold war and the Balkan wars of the 90's. For all those who know me, you all know how random  my train of thought usually is and I wondered a but about the planet we live in, and even though we might live in the part of the world where the situation is not that bad for the average person, and to which most people from other places try to get to, the brutal truth is that the world is a very very ugly place and many countries are riddled with civil war, poverty, religious oppression, so on and so forth.

A lot of people dream that someday in the future, the world will unite and generations yet to come will live in an idyllic society. However, I do not believe that humanity will ever live in such a utopia. If one took a small look at the world's history, consider Communism, it has failed miserably both as a social and also as an economic experiment. And what about the American Dream? If one took a small look at the current situation of the United States, 49% of the American wealth is held by only 1% of the population, and as time goes by, the gap between the rich and the poor keeps becoming wider and wider.

People can call me a pessimist as much as they want, but I think that in the future there will never be any utopias or perfect altruistic societies. I think eventually we'll degrade to a dystopic society which we read about or see in several science fiction books and films, and to quote the great Sheldon Cooper, "society [will break] down into small feral bands of tattooed motorcycle riders fighting to the death over the last few cans of tuna fish". Anyways, I can make several more arguments like the ones of the failed ideologies such as communism or the American Dream, however its 02:03a.m. and I'm really tired. Probably all of this will happen a long time after all those who are reading this article, are dead, myself included, and thus it will definitely not matter. However, if there are any time travellers out there (YES! I'm talking to you doctor!), please do seek me out and answer this one simple question for me: Was I right about all of this? Good night!

'da fuck is going on ?

00:37 a.m. ... I just got home from a bar-be-que with some friends, and after a couple of glasses of wine, I remembered that I hadn't written anything for quite a while now. And ironically, my last post back in February was titled "I'm back !" and it was supposed to be my return to writing after the mid-year examinations at uni. But a lot has changed since then. The second semester has come and gone, I finished my thesis, and also my final examinations at uni and winter is long gone and the scorching summer sun is out ... not right now of course but you know what I mean ...

For starters, I'm not even a university student any more now. And that is quite sad actually cos I had gotten used to the idea and now after four years it feels quite strange not to be anything. I haven't even got a job yet, so that makes the situation even worse. But I'm not really worried about it to be honest since I am starting a masters degree in September, but lets not go there for now. So yeah ... basically everything is changing around me and right now I feel like a kids top spinning all over the place. I am about to leave this island in a couple of months, I have no job (or decent financial income for that matter), my car is in the shop for some reason or another, and I got a bazillion other random things going on ... 

00:56 a.m. ... Nineteen minutes later and I barely managed to write two paragraphs. I'm listening to some really cool deep house music actually. Just got to know about this really cool dj, "Ten Walls" and cannot stop listening to his track called "Walking with Elephants", one can listen to it ... its the following YouTube vid.

But anyway, I'm quite impressed by how anti-climatic life after uni is. I always imagined the moment that I would "finally leave uni" to something big and that afterwards life would be perfect. The budgie in the .gif below was actually how I thought finishing my finals at uni and leaving would be. But it wasn't. Its true that I got drunk and had an awesome two weeks at the beach and partying and so on ... but now that I am at home and have some time to reflect, it's definitely not what I imagined it to be and life is far from perfect. Most of my friends already found jobs, others are planning to do their respective masters degrees just as I am however, we're all gonna be at different universities, which means that we won't be seeing much of each other after the summer.

And the lack of money right now is also seriously affecting me. I mean, how the fuck can a soon-to-be-22-year old engineering graduate with an addiction to partying and going out live with €0, actually no, less than that ... damn that visa card ... oh well, something will come up as it always has. 

01:17 ... Fuck this shit, I'm tired after spending the afternoon by the sea (see photo to the left) I'm feeling quite tired, and this wine definitely isn't helping. Its been a nice weekend though, I nailed my thesis presentation, got drunk, England lost their game against Urugay ... and sadly so did Italy against Costa Rica. Ffs, I got fed up even of ranting about how mediocre the life of a student gets after said student finishes and until he/she finds something else to do next. I seriously don't know when I'll write anything new after today, since laziness is seriously deepinging its claws in my skin and affecting me even more every day. And like a 1950's Looney Tunes cartoon, I'm ending this post ...

 

I'm back !

Hey everyone, I'm back ! Well I wasn't anywhere in particular to be honest, however its been quite a while since I last wrote something. However, and I cannot stop emphasizing on this point ... IT WAS NOT MY FAULT. Blame the infamous University of Malta for what happened to me ... It was a tougher semester than I expected it to be and I honestly swear that I didn't have any free time to write! I even had to quit going to the gym, and even out of the house to manage to make time for my academic commitments.

So what have I been up to ? Actually quite a lot ! I managed to do five assignments, six laboratory reports, six exams, an interview ... and I still got two more interviews left, but I can officially say that the first semester of my fourth year at university has come to an end ... just one more left to get that degree! 

But I have to admit, there was a bit more to it than academic material. I went on holiday with one of my best mates, Nathan. We went for a weekend back to Nottingham, where I was doing my Erasmus exchange semester last year. And it was an AWESOME weekend ! We met with some very good friends of mine, Darren, Davynya and Arjun and others from all over the world and it seriously felt good to be back there for a couple of days. I seriously didn't want to come back! But there was no other choice, and after a great weekend full of booze, pretty English ladies, ice-skating and archery, we had to come back to face the exam period. 

Then came Christmas and New Year's, for which I cannot really complain about it because it was all about going out and having fun at the several open-bar parties we went to. Although, it still feels weird writing 2014 rather than 2013. Its always like that, as soon as I get used to writing one particular date, boom new year's is upon us and I have to get used to the new number. New Year's Eve was quite fun actually! Me and my classmates spent it at a small club in Mellieha and I actually couldn't ask for anything better.

And apart from those two main events, there were a ton of other, such as the Annual Grad Ball, which even though I am not a graduate yet, I still attended, because, what the hell, why not? And also came Nathan's Birthday, and oh, I nearly forgot to mention ... I GOT CONDITIONALLY ACCEPTED FOR MY MASTERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM !! I was so happy when I read the letter, wings were about to spurt out from my back and I'd have flown out of the window haha :-) 

But now, back to routine ... this semester shouldn't be that bad. I only got three subjects to study, and a thesis to finish! And I am going to attend Tango lessons ... don't judge me ... its something I've been wanting to do for a long time now. Hopefully, I'll manage to do everything as planned, and by December I'll be graduating with the rest of my fellow classmates.

Anyways, I'm off to watch a movie now, and tomorrow back to the gym :-3 ... I know, this post wasn't really about anything interesting, just me rambling about what I've been up to lately but I don't care, I wanted to share :-) See you around guys and dolls !