Sometimes it is external forces that determine how the next chapter of your life plays out. This was true for a very good friend of mine who had to leave the Islands for an indefinite period in order to help sort out some family issues. It was my privilege to be entrusted with the task of looking after his apartment, particularly his pet rabbits.

It turned out to be a very interesting period. The weeks stretched to months. It was an ideal opportunity to escape to a place of solitude, and I took advantage of this opportunity very regularly. This, combined with the availability of a Wi-Fi connection, would also have been a good opportunity to revive this web log – except that it clearly didn’t happen.

This period followed rather tightly upon the heels of the dissertation saga, the month of June slipping by and the murcury rising. As such between looking for work and tending to small fuzzy creatures I spent most of my time either watching the television or playing games while listening to the radio. Both generally helped to take my mind off my relatively idle status.

I did find some time to indulge in some self-taught skills however. While I did not really manage to get my head around coding in a more practical language than those taught in the Maltese education system I did become somewhat familiar with some aspects of computer aided design as well as rabbit care.

That pretty much sums up the period until the near year-end when this friend returned to reclaim his home, life and pets. It was certainly a more relaxed time than the preceding months had been and I do not recall waking up from half-hour power naps to slave at a deadline.

It is the beginning of March and it is as good a time as any to get things back on track. It may as well begin on a slightly personal note, bringing readers up to speed with the past 18 months – the period this web log has been idle.

Well first a bit of context. As of around the time I logged my final post I was getting set to tackle the final academic year of the course I was reading at the University of Malta. I was also wrapping up my summer role as welfare officer and getting set to take on further work by night.

My decision to take up the offer to continue working was probably a mistake on my part and that choice did come back to haunt me later on, compounded as it were by a couple of setbacks that ultimately served to sap my will. It was just a year ago today that I respectfully resigned from my work position.

By that point things were looking rather bleak. It didn’t help that I had been working on my confirmed dissertation topic for just a few months following the scrapping of the foundation work done on earlier prospective topics.

I’ll admit that I did lose composure at times but it would have ended badly were it not for the several persons who were very supportive. Good advice, encouragement and tolerance of my repetitive (and depressing) play list at 4 o’ clock in the morning all served to grant me doses of inspiration and motivation. If it weren’t for such individuals I likely would be in much poorer shape today.

Thankfully that phase is over and done with. I’d consider returning to expand upon it, but I think that an informal note would be more palatable for the foreseeable future.

As one door closes others shall open. This is the way of life even if the doors may not immediately be clear. I do recall referring to this same phenomenon upon an older web presence of mine several years back and yet it remains just as relevant if not more so.

This web log has floundered. It has become an online fossil floating upon the cyber waters of the information ocean. It fell silent for a number of reasons and I shall not delve deeply into them, and not at all for the moment.

The pace was broken and I apologize to those readers who have been left wondering what would become of this space. Well I can finally give a proper answer to this question.

It shall be made whole…

Up until now this web log, while it operated, was one of a reactionary nature. I looked outside and observed and came back to this space with my observations. It has thus far been too political, too aloof and too impersonal.

I am not entirely certain what I would like it to become but I do have a number of ideas, most importantly of these will be the dispensing of a few myths and discarding the unnecessary and the unjustified.

It is time to take a step towards humanity and break the silence. This moment is not now – I have yet to determine how extensively things may or may not change – but things shall change.

We shall see.

During the course of any serious police investigation a key question that needs to be established is the motive for the crime concerned. The vast majority of all crimes are carried out for some reason or another. Crimes that are carried out without clear motive on the part of the perpetrators are more likely to involve a degree of insanity than not. Even in the event of a crime where no suspects have been immediately available for questioning, potential suspects may be identified through the establishment of likely potential motives.

Unfortunately it does not immediately appear that the Maltese authorities are seriously investigating the continuous flow of illegal immigrants to Malta and neighbouring landmasses. If the patterns that I perceive in the media’s reporting and lack of reporting are anything to go by then one might be forgiven for pointing out that the lion’s share of analysis ever carried out gravitating around the question of motive has typically centred around the collective motives of the illegal immigrants themselves.

Yes, we know that the vast majority of them have economic motives, in search of greener pastures, that a few are escaping famine and war; and that a few others are possibly escaping the law of their respective countries of origin. This is all well and good but such information is about as useful as health authorities asking restaurant-goers why they choose a particular fast food chain to dine at – it is of limited value in the context of determining the health impact of such a fast food chain.

More relevant questions would be levelled at the traffickers themselves and those who aid them. Why do they do it? Does any question really begin and end with the money that changes hands between trafficker and would-be immigrant? Are there no entities beyond these that bear a potential interest in aiding or perpetrating the inundation of southern members of the European Union with illegal immigrants?

After all, illegal immigrants could potentially be very useful if it were in one’s interests to destabilize the economy of a country or a region. If one were to, say, turn a blind eye to the issue, or even pay a tidy sum to others to turn a blind eye… and if one were to make it such that such illegal immigrants find it very hard to find legitimate work… and if one were to also be of a disposition to offer unofficial employment, especially if one were to have one’s hands in the pockets of key individuals to ensure that such an operation runs smoothly… then mighten one not only be an opportunist but also a criminal involved in high treason?

A fantastic hypothesis worthy of Hollywood perhaps, and perhaps also similarly lacking in concrete backing, but I would say that it is not complete hogwash and find it difficult to believe that the level of incompetence thus far exhibited by the nationalist government has been a complete coincidence, but then again I take many coincidences with a pinch of salt. Perhaps if they were to make a show and actually start up an investigation of any such avenues, then I might be able to swallow that past incompetence has, in fact, just been incompetence. Faced with a choice I would rather deal with honest incompetence than dishonest competence and I am sure that many others feel similarly.

It is around five o’clock in the morning and a few creatures yet stir. The cat stalks its meal with its tail twitching, a nocturnal insect skitters over the paved flooring, the ember lights of a refuse-collection truck flickering on its nightly haunt of the Paceville entertainment district. Round the corner a waitress wearily stacks table, lacking the spring in her step that she had exhibited earlier near the start of her shift. The waves gently lap up upon the beach, each one draining away between the grains of sand in anticipation of the wave to follow, oblivious to the grudged rise of the working man and woman in preparation for another day of toil for their employers’ joy.

Time creeps onwards and a solar orb peaks over the horizon. The poorly roads grow congested with sheep and hogs on wheels, the cat narrowly misses it’s demise, the insect scurries down a dark crack and a few more loads of refuse are being dumped kilometres away. The waitress steps out of the shower and lays her weary head upon her pillow. The waves pick up and crash upon the shore with more force as grains of sand dance upon their crests.

Stuffed peacocks strut their stuff, hold their heads high and squawk in between fits and starts of preening themselves in self-gratification. They screw their expression into one of disgust as they watch men in reflective yellow jackets dragging a large bin and a broom along the road before returning to their self-professed hobby of sticking their noses of questionable worth into the affairs of those who earn their living through a means other than the peddling of misery.

By our own yardstick we are living in modern times. We would like to believe that the days when social class was accentuated are long gone and yet it does persist. There is no harm in the privileged taking pleasure in his or her good fortune but harm does come of those who would partake of the relative misfortune or misery of others for the purpose of their own self-idolization.

Is the individual occupied within the service-orientated industries truly deserving of the contemptuous treatment that they sometimes have to endure at the hands of their respective employers and their clients? Are they deserving of the ever more constrictive economic and social contractions that the employing classes would impose, given half the chance? After all, many who do work would also know that an employer is far more interested in expanding upon the fixed assets of any going concern than ensuring that their labour force is well-catered for. No, the worker, it seems, is fit only for the adequate, the minimum or as close to it as one can get away with.

Is the economic identity of an individual deterministic to a degree such that the fabric of society itself participates in a social variant of the food-chain, encouraging the dog-eat-dog world, as the saying goes?

In no way do I suggest that all individuals who serve are abused within the parameters of the law, and neither do all employers partake of the chalice of their workers’ blood, but it is a plausible guess that many of each category do. Such is a sad consequence of the structures of affluence and power that presently exist, with the welfare state as collective pacifier for the purpose of retaining control of the classes of quiet desperation.

A lot of persons remember what it used to be like to be younger, to be a pint-sized kid living out their childhood in their own unique fashion. A few such persons might also remember what its like to have one chocolate or sweet too many, that feeling that cannot be described as mere fullness but rather a feeling of not ‘ever’ wanting to take another sweet again… well… until the feeling passes, that is.

Well some people who perhaps do not recall such feelings or experiences do not need to pile on the calories in search of the feeling mentioned. Every summer they get the opportunity to experience something somewhat similar practically on a weekly-basis. I do of course refer to the ‘Maltese festa’ that some think so highly of.

Now I have to admit it. Once upon a time I was utterly fascinated by fireworks, of the strange contraptions that banged and boomed and sent colourful sparkles flying in every which direction in the darkened sky. The daytime petards were never really my cup of tea but, oh well, there wasn’t much that a kid could do other than bear them. I did very much enjoy the grounded firework’s display, watching the more colourful pyrotechnics at play upon haphazardly oscillating stands affixed loosely into the ground, and occasionally wondered if one might take off. Whether fortunately or not such never happened and the child was left to wonder over the arcane secrets of the unknown that might have been.

However many years have passed since those heady days when the distant musical jingle of the ice cream van’s approach, the polishing of small fragments of calcite, the sculpting of sand upon the beach, and computer games constituted matters of importance. Likewise I have grown more weary of the acrid smoke cloud that envelopes all in the vicinity of the setting off of land-locked firework shows, I have grown more aware of the implications of the shock waves left rippling through the air by each petard set off in the heavens above, and I have since realized that there exists such a concept as opportunity cost, the concept that one’s choices in life tend to come at the expense of foregoing others – particularly in the context of having access to limited resources. Last that I heard not only is Malta a place of very limited resources but we are a nation saddled with debts.

What are we celebrating for? Is it truly necessary to have simultaneous feasts in two or more parts of the islands? Do we realize just how much we spend upon fireworks in terms of money and blood? Do fireworks ‘need’ to be an integral part of ‘every’ feast?

I do realize that this all makes me seem like a wet blanket, like others before me, but would it really be so great a hardship if the number of feasts celebrated were slashed by a factor of two or three? This way collective agreements could be made between localities to pool resources in order to present a better-planned and financed show. The quality of such shows should therefore increase and overall satisfaction garnered amongst the population ought to increase also, less jaded by the sheer repetition of the fare available.

Would it also be anathema to suggest that feasts be something more than a church, a row of stalls and food sellers, and a fireworks show? Would it not be interesting if, say, a food seller’s fare were to be subsidised through some of the funds that would otherwise have gone up in acrid smoke and flashes? After all, festivities are every bit about culinary satisfaction as the visuals and the audio.

Might it also be anathema to suggest that the production of fireworks be limited to specifically licensed zones where containment is plausible and quality assurance could be easier monitored? After all, while pretty the fireworks themselves have proven time and time again to pose a potentially lethal hazard in imperfect circumstances.

It is the sort of prediction that was made decades ago, when awareness of the environmental cost of humanity’s burgeoning paper consumption was coming to the fore. For ages environmentally conscious visionaries have foretold of the end of paper as the predominant means of storing and illustrating information. They predicted that its use would petter out in the none-too-distant future and yet today each month brings desolation to yet another wooded area in the effort to keep up to present demand for the stuff.

Business entities, marketing firms and government departments all plough through countless tonnes of paper upon which they print their advertising, invoicing, communications and ever more documents with a shelf-life measured in weeks, days, hours and even minutes, academics leave no stone unturned as they decimate pads of paper in the name of recording their notes and even friends and lovers wrap their gift parcels in decorated paper. We cannot get enough paper to solidly satisfy our demands.

However were the visionaries really so mistaken in their predictions? At face value it may seem to be so but while paper demand increased there were a lot of other variables that changed significantly. Technology has come a long way since the time of mechanical typewriters and the original light bulb. Entire revolutions in communications and information systems have taken place in the last couple of centuries, including the radio, telegrams, the telephone, the television, the computer, the internet, mobile phone networks and many many more. Each invention served to change the way that we perceive distance, scale and the storage and conveyance of information.

What several decades ago used to be stored upon volumes of paper is now stored upon a microchip or a segment of magnetic medium within a hard-drive. Without doubt the volume of virtual stored information far exceeds all the written material in the World and is stored much more efficiently. The advent of electronic mail systems and short messaging systems over the internet and mobile phones has greatly reduced dependency on the postal system.

Therefore the situation is not that we have failed to reduce the proportion to which we depend upon the paper medium, although a lot more could be done, but the sheer volume of demand has increased, far outstripping the progress made, making the world ever more hungry for paper.

This being the case, it is possible that a total independence of paper documentation may be over a half-century away and so we today must think of ways to not only mitigate the impact of our dependency in terms of logging and waste, but also look ahead for the technologies that will bridge the gap between the present dependence and future independence.

There do exist plenty of uses for paper, aside from within its role as writing material, but even within this role used paper can be recycled a certain number of times. Non-recycled paper consists of relatively long fibres that provides the material with strength without sacrificing flexibility. Since the recycling process tends to break down these fibres into shorter ones the recycled product is of a lower quality and can be more brittle if untreated. Therefore it is not feasible to expect to recycle the material indefinitely.

On the other hand information technology may have come a long way but it has not come so far as to guarantee the eternal retrievability and integrity of information stored upon existing mediums. Optical disks wear down over time and use, magnetic and electronic mediums lose their charge. This is why there are many places in the world where paper is still used for official documentation purposes. Laptop technologies also have a long way to go. They need to grow lighter and more affordable, easier on the eyes and more reliable. Perhaps we shall even need to go beyond the concept of a laptop towards more futuristic concepts in interfacing and interaction. Such may be the stuff of science fiction but perhaps humanity is too distracted by other more immediate concerns to try hard enough.