Malta Trip #8 – Making the Best of it

 

The reason that that taxi ride was important was the driver. It was a lady called Phylomena who picked us up. Yes, yes, I know it’s usually spelt with an “i” but there was nothing usual or ordinary about this lady. For one thing, while other taxi drivers were willing or talk or not talk, she wanted to chat. Nothing wrong with that. She asked what we were doing in these parts and as soon as she heard about our aborted mission to visit Wied-il-Mielah, she said there is another route that leads to the window and gets you closer to the window but drivers don’t like that so they don’t go that way. We found out later why they don’t like that. She told us that she usually takes her clients that way so they can get some good views on the way as well.

 

We liked the sound of that. She told us she likes her clients to take home good memories and not just go from passenger to passenger like other drivers. Well, that did sound about right but our day next day was already planned quite tightly. Still, we took her number when she dropped us at the Citadel in Victoria and told her we would call her if we wanted to use her services.

 

It was about 1630 when we entered the Citadel just before closing time. Roberta said it’s her practice when visiting a city to find the highest spot and take a photo from there. We tried to find
the highest spot in the Citadel and found a few. We kept going up and down steps. For me the view was not of much interest because the light was already fading and it wasn’t good for photography. And to be brutally honest, the view of Urban Gozo dwellings didn’t do much for me.

 

After spending about an our in the Citadel we came out and started thinking about food. I also wanted to buy a couple of tshirts. I had deliberately packed fewer tshirts than I needed in Malta so that I would be forced to buy some there. This is something I want to make a practice. I bought a couple of tshirts in Paris and whenever I wear them there are good memories of Paris associated with which makes me feel good. I should have bought some in Copenhagen as well but we were there a short time and I forgot.

 

I think Victoria has only one long main road (not long by Delhi standards) and most of the shops and businesses are there. We agreed that we will decide what to do next based on what we came to first – fashion shop or restaurant. We didn’t find either. We found several shops and even a couple of malls but nothing for menswear.

Using Google Maps we looked for a restaurant then. As I have mentioned, Roberta and I generally agree on Italian. We found one called Hav Senso. Roberta’s problem is that she is picky in food. My problem is that I am vegetarian and picky. Not only do I not eat meat, I don’t eat mushrooms. I don’t know many Indians who do. There’s a reason for that. But it makes life difficult for me when eating out. In most places if there three vegetarian options in the menu, two of them would have mushrooms. This is different in Italian cuisine. There are many things that I can eat like pizza, pasta, bruschetta, ravioli, garlic bread etc.

 

 

In Hav Senso, I ordered Gnocchi de Patate which was ok, but maybe a little too salty for my taste. Still, it was good enough. After dinner, we took a taxi back to the apartment. A taxi could drop us all way through the gate and near the car park which was preferable after a long day of walking.

 

That night when I went to bed after putting my gadgets on charge and doing my writing thing, I was thinking that while Malta was pretty and all it had not blown my mind like the Scottish Highlands had blown my mind the first time I saw them. The second thing was that I had not had a nice, delicious meal in Malta yet. I didn’t know that both of these were going to change the next day.

Malta Trip #7 – The Bridge of Disharmony

 

 The English lady Barbara was a lovely person who was retired and had been living in Gozo for many years. She was going to Malta for a couple of weeks to live in a flat a friend of hers had offered her. While she was waiting for her bus, she stopped us and started chatting with us. We were only too happy to chat because....well, we usually are.

 

While she was telling us about public transport and which ferry to take back to Malta, she casually mentioned that there is a ferry that goes from Malta to Sicily (an Island of Italy). It takes 90 minutes to get there and if one wants, they can take a ferry back at night after spending the day in Sicily. I have never been to Italy and this sort of thing really appeals to me. Roberta could see the mad gleam in my eye and she immediately put a stop to it.

 

“Sunny! No! We don’t have time.” Those were her exact words.

 

And I responded “Roberta, this is my bridge this time!”

 

Ok, the bridge, that was from our Copenhag

en trip. That’s a long story in itself but in short, there is a bridge that goes from Copenhagen in Denmark to Malmo in Sweden. Half an hour by train and you are in a different country. Roberta told me about it and I went crazy for it. That created lots of debate between us but ultimately we took the train that goes over that bridge. Both of us enjoyed it but Roberta had to do a lot of “Beautiful Mind” type calculations to make that fit in our plans. The Copenhagen trip was only two days. Later, in the lockdown days we were both glad we had been to Sweden even if for a few hours before all travel got stopped.

 

But this was different. We really didn’t have enough time even to see Malta properly and Sicily would be a big complication but come on, imagine one ferry, a ninety minute ride, and you are in a different country! I grew up in the central city of Delhi which is completely landlocked and even if you travel for four hours you would still be in India. Europe just drives me crazy that way.

 

Even after we left Barbara, we talked about it a little bit. I didn’t tell Roberta this because I like pulling her leg but I dropped that idea very quickly after I did some research on it and found that while the trip is all that Barbara indicated, in the current climate Sicily had more formalities and processes for Covid-19 precautions. I didn’t want to go through that hassle and I also knew we were short on time.

 

That afternoon, we went back to the Mgarr harbour and took a Hop-On-Hop-Off tour bus for Gozo sightseeing. Because it was only for the afternoon, the nice lady selling the tickets only charged us €10 each. She did want it in cash though. There was an ATM there so cash was no problem. I saw a lot of free ATMs in Malta that didn’t charge us for withdrawals and I was using my Monzo card so I didn’t have to worry about currency conversation rates or non-sterling transaction charges. Monzo is fantastic if you travel.

 

If I am completely honest, the HOHO bus was a bit of a snoozefest. Later we agreed that it was kind of a slow way to go sightseeing. I don’t have any data for a comparison that was just a feeling. One big problem is that although you can see a lot from the open deck of the bus, you can’t actually take any good pictures. I have tried that before in Glasgow and it didn’t really work. Here are a couple of examples of photos taken from the moving bus in Gozo, you can decide for yourself if they are any good.

 

We drove through Victoria and passed the remnants of a big, historical viaduct. Then we left the bus at Dwejra (pronounced: dwayraa). This was the site of the old Azure Window. I didn’t know about the Azure Window until Roberta told me before the trip. It was on her list of things to see and when I read about it, I was fascinated as well.

The Azure Window was a natural rock formation that looked like a window (hence the name) which was a unique natural feature. I am using past tense because unfortunately the window collapsed in 2017 in a storm. Now it’s a site for people to take photos of the hillside that remains while braver souls go scuba diving there to look at the ruins of the window in the water. Nevertheless, it was a nice spot, very pretty.

 

After we were done taking the photos we had to wait for the next HOHO bus to pick us up. In the meantime, we had ice creams, well, I had a milkshake. It was ok. The HOHO bus in Gozo has two routes - purple and blue. The funny thing is where they meet, in Victoria, nothing changes. You stay on the same bus and it starts driving on the Blue route. Yep. It must make sense to somebody somewhere.

 We stopped at a big church, Ta’Pinu, just for 10 minutes to take photos. Then back to Victoria. 

Victoria is the capital of Gozo, a small city. I can’t say whether it’s great or not great because, well, it’s just a city. It has the famous Citadella (or Citadel, if you wanna be English about it.) Roberta wanted to get there but she was not ready for the bus to become Blue route and carry on before we could get off. We left that behind and stayed with the bus as far as Marsalforn (pronounced: Marsaal-forn) which is a seafront. I don’t want to be disparaging about it but it was just a seafront. There were some kids learning to dive there so it was more for doing than looking. Actually, I changed my mind the next day but we will get to that.

 

From Marsalforn, we took a Bolt taxi to Wied-il-Mielah (I am leaving out accents in my laziness) which is another natural window like the Azure Window except that it’s still standing. Well, we tried to get there. Remember I told you there’s always work going on everywhere in Malta? That’s what happened to us here. Our taxi could not take us to the window because the road was blocked. The taxi driver dumped us there saying it was just a ten minutes walk from there.

 

We didn’t have any choice except to get out but neither of us is the doe-eyed innocent bumpkin that we used to be. Roberta checked on Google Maps and it was showing 23 minutes to walk down. We started walking down and it was all downhill. But before going much further we asked the road workers how far down was the window. Have I mentioned that the Maltese people were really easy to talk to? You could ask directions from anybody, you could chat with anybody, you could ask stupid questions, they were always friendly and responsive. One of the best things that I liked about Malta was the people.

 

One of the road workers told us that it was straight down on that road about 15 minutes walk. His colleague said it was more like 30 minutes. We raised this point with the first guy.

 

“Yess...fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, like that.” He said.

 

What? There’s a huge different between 15 and 30. We talked about it. Roberta raised the point that going down was all downhill but a 30 minute walk uphill to come back? We had been doing a lot of walking, climbing etc. all day today so that was not a good prospect. My objection was that the light was already fading. In 30 minutes it would fade even more. I had seen the photos of the window, it needed good light for photography. You will see what I mean. But given our tour plan, if we didn’t go to see the window today, we wouldn’t be able to fit it in our itinerary again because we were leaving Gozo the next day at noon.

 

Have you heard the expression “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”?

 

Retreating gracefully, we walked back to the road closure and called a taxi. And that taxi changed the course of history! Ok, I am exaggerating so you would read the next post but honestly, that taxi ride did have a big impact on our Gozo trip the next day.

 

Malta trip #6 – Day 2: The Gift of Sunrise

 

I slept well but also woke up easily at 0530 by the alarm. The sunrise was scheduled for about 0715 but you always need to be there a little before to capture the colours in the sky. I peeked out of the balcony but everywhere was dark so I waited and used that new keyboard to do some more writing. Not wanting to miss the boat like I had done in Bangkok (that story some other time) I gathered my equipment and got ready to go about 0630 while it was still a little dark. Here is the beauty of this apartment, I didn’t have to go anywhere out to greet the sunrise. I simply walked out of the apartment, went down to the pool area and just there beyond the pool was the big Mediterranean sea promising all kinds of golden hour glory. The weather was nice but I had put on a jacket because, you know, morning hour.

 

Roberta joined me there shortly. Before leaving I had said good morning to her through her bedroom door and she had said she would come down later. We loved that sunrise! For one thing, there was the ocean, then there were ferries adding another beautiful subject and motion if you wanted to capture a video. There was an island, my guess is the Comino island, and well, it was just amazing in every way. Down below we could even see waves crashing on rocks. I used my Panasonic GH5 mirrorless camera for the photos and my smartphone Samsung Note 20 Ultra for the videos because the phone has a better form factor and more advanced optical image stabilisation for videos.

 

 

You can see some examples of the photos we took and I am showing remarkable self-restraint not to upload the hundreds of photos I took because they are all gorgeous. It was easy photography because everywhere you pointed, there was beauty. If you could nail the exposure in your camera, you could take a great photo. That’s why the first and last hours of the day are called golden hour because the soft light makes everything look pretty. It would not be unfair to say that both of us revelled in that like kids in a candy store.

 

After we were finally done with the sunrise, we took our time getting ready and then went to a grocery store. It wasn’t far. It was near the extra bus stop where we had got off the bus last night. We easily walked there. And this time I was really like a kid in a candy store because their aisle of sugary treats was epic! I was so excited I took a picture. That picture shows only half of what was there on offer.

 

For the next one hour while Roberta went about carefully selecting what she wanted to get for herself and her family, I went about grabbing stuff off the shelves, then putting it back because it would be too much then grabbing something else...and so on. I think I spent about €30 there in that one visit, most of it was chocolates. But at the end of it, I feel that I had been smart because the two bags I had walked out with were not heavy. I could have easily carried them back to our apartment whic
h I ultimately did.

 

But first we stopped for coffee. The coffee shop was in a weird corner away from the main market, in front of this great building. Don’t ask me what it is, but it looked like a church. In Malta there are cranes everywhere because there is always work going on everywhere. One weird thing about coffee, or about me, is that I love Latte Macchiato which is a layered coffee – espresso, milk, foam – served in a tall, tapered glass. Don’t buy it in Costa, it’s not the same. You can’t anyway because you can only get it in Europe not in the UK. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with Brexit.

 

However, this coffeehouse did have it and they did it right. We sat on the patio, enjoyed the view and discussed our plans while we sipped the great coffee. This morning’s original plan was to go on a Segway tour of Gozo which I was very interested in because I have never ridden a Segway but it had been cancelled because the roads were closed. Roberta called the host and arranged it for the next day. That made me happy. It takes very little to make me happy. And there was lots of it in Malta.

 

When we were walking back from there to go back to our apartment, we were stopped by a woman at a bus stop. She was a chatty Cathy, actually her name was Barbara and she told us many interesting things about the islands. But then she said something that introduced a discordant note between I and Roberta. This is long, I better save it for the next chapter.

Malta Trip #5 – An Evening in Malta

Yeah, it was not as glamorous as the title makes it sound. We got off the ferry, the last passengers to get off because we were clicking and filming until the last possible moment. Then Roberta wanted to find our flat so we could try and capture the sunset from there. I was a bit more realistic, the time was gone. Still, we hurried and took a bus from Mgarr 

Harbour, Gozo where the Ferry had deposited us.

[Photo credit: Roberta] 

We only had to go 2 stops on the bus but we went three because we missed our stop. Then we had to trek back. Thankfully it was all downhill....until we came to our actual stop. Then it wa
s uphill. For our stay in Gozo, Roberta had found this great plate which was a two-bedroom flat within an honest-to-god fort called Fort Chambray. As a photo location that place was epic. But to climb up the hill to get to it....? I don’t know if you are keeping track but we still had our suitcases with us. Everything we had carried with us from UK plus whatever we bought in Malta, namely the keyboard, we were carrying with us. So, it was not a fun climb.

[Photo credit: Roberta] 

There was a big gate which was closed. Roberta called the flat owner and he opened the gate for us by an app on his mobile. Technology, huh? A little more climb then we hunted around for the actual flat. Didn’t find it. Walking up and down the dark corridors of the fort was not fun. Thankfully, the flat owner was available on phone for directions and after a couple of false starts we found the place.

 What a lovely place! The fort was old but the flat was new and fully furnished including dishwasher, fridge, microwave and anything you wanted. First thing we wanted was to rest our legs. So we plopped down on the sofas and talked about food options. The flat had a fully functioning kitchen but we were missing two things – groceries and the stamina to cook. We took the easy way out and ordered takeaway from Bolt Food. We had to walk down to the big metal gate to receive the food but now we had a remote to “Open Sesame” the big gate.

 In the Bolt Food menu there were many different restaurants and we had ordered Italian because that’s one cuisine Roberta and I agree on. More on that later. I had ordered a plain Margarita pizza and garlic bread hoping that at least one of them would be good. Boy, was I wrong. The pizza was burnt and tasted like it. The garlic bread, let’s not talk about it or your stomach will turn. I had two slices of pizza from the non-burnt part then lost the determination to continue. I threw away the garlic bread then and the rest of the pizza next morning. Roberta was more forgiving and about finished her pizza. If you are keeping track, this had been a longass day and we were both tired so after the “dinner” we retired to our rooms.

 While I might not be a kickass professional photographer, I do try to cultivate good habits of the professionals. One of them is to put all my gadgets on charge before going to bed. Malta has the same electric sockets that we have in UK so we didn’t need to pack international adapters but I had packed one anyway just in case and also because it served as a multi-plug. I had also packed an extension board that gave me 3 electric sockets and 4 USB charging sockets. Using these two, I set all my stuff on charge – phone, camera battery, smartwatch etc.

 

The second good habit I follow is to copy all the media from a day’s shooting before going to bed no matter how tired I am. If I took photos in Malta and lost them through a mistake or accident, I would be kicking myself because they can’t be reproduced easily. My phone has a big storage and I was carrying a few solutions for the USB-C port that is offers. Using a USB-C card reader, I copied today’s photos and videos from the camera card on to the phone. From there they would automatically get sync’ed (I used an app called DriveSync) to my Google Drive. Two backup copies. The photos I take on my phone get sync’ed to the Google Drive instantly anyway.

 Once that was done, I had time to check the keyboard. It worked like magic. I was able to do all that I wanted to do on the tablet including writing fiction. Touch typing was possible at almost my full typing speed. Then it was time to sleep because sunrise was expected about 0730 and I wanted to be there to greet it.

 The next morning the disadvantage of living in an impractical, hard-to-reach fort paid off in full. 

Malta Trip #4 – Running, Walking, Ferrying

 

[Photo credit: Roberta]
 

From the internet I knew what the electronics store was called and even the stock of keyboards they had. Then Roberta used her navigation expertise (Google Maps) and found out which bus we needed and from which stop. We got out and took some photos but there was still about half an hour to the bus time so we came back into the airport to wait. This was the problem we found with the Malta buses that the services were about 45 minutes or an hour apart.

 

There was a taxi driver at the bus stop who offered to take us to the harbour for 15 euros which was very cheap and if we didn’t have to buy the keyboard first we could have taken his offer. But I wanted that keyboard on the first day so I could use it during my trip and Roberta never cribs about my projects even when they introduce more hassle. I think she goes into everything with a sense of adventure which is quite the right spirit for any trip. Anyhow, we declined the taxi driver’s offer and waited for the bus.

 

The buses are quite punctual we found and ours came right on time. Roberta knew which stop to get off at and I followed her. Then we had a jolly old time trying to find the store itself. We found the mall it was in and then shunted around until we saw the sign across a car park. They did have all those keyboards but no Bluetooth keyboard. Anyway I had brought a USB-C to USB-A adapter for my tablet so I could buy a USB keyboard as well. The staff was very nice and spoke excellent English. They showed me multiple keyboards and let me try them, but it was slow going until I realised I was trying to find a £100 quality in a £20 keyboard. That made the decision easy. I bought a Logitech USB keyboard-mouse set for €24.99. Honestly, it worked very well even for my touch typing. My tablet had a touch-screen so I ended up never using the mouse.

 

We needed the same bus to go ahead to the harbour and I had wasted so much time in picking out a keyboard that we didn’t have much time before the bus was due. We knew that the next one would be 45 minutes later and didn’t want to waste that much time. So, we ran, pushing our suitcases and carrying the backpacks plus a big bag containing the keyboard box. We made it to the bus stop with 4 minutes to spare.

 

Unfortunately, the bus was much crowded this time. We had to stand and you know it’s not fun to stand with a heavy backpack on your back and a suitcase that wants to roll around on the smooth bus floor. But when you travel by public transport you get an insight into the character of the place. You meet the real people on the bus, going about their normal daily activities. Even if I don’t want to, I would notice those things.

 

For example, there were some other people there as well with big bags, bigger than ours. The bus was only one deck so it was quite busy. When somebody had to get off, people had to move around to give them space. It was quite awkward. But I didn’t see any scowls or frowns. People smiled when they made eye contact. It was good to see that and the rest of my experience with the Maltese people in the coming days confirmed my impression of them that I made in that bus journey. Or actually, even before that. There was a health desk at the airport where they were checking our vaccination records. I met with smiling officials with no hurry. If I take two extra minutes to find the PDF on my phone, why, that’s perfectly fine. I saw that relaxed attitude in most things there.

 

We got to the harbour which is called Cirkewwa with a circumflex on the C (that hat character like this ^?) . Did I mention that Malta the country is an archipelago which means a cluster of islands? Our stay for the first two nights was on the Gozo islands. There is a ferry that runs between the two islands which we now needed to board. It was due at 1630, if I remember right. The funny thing was that you don’t buy a ticket on the Ferry. You buy a ticket from Gozo to Malta. If you think about it, it makes sense, Malta is the main island. Everybody ultimately has to come back to Malta. I will tell you later how we cheated this system.

 

 

I love ferries because they are big enough that I don’t get motion sickness but also they are specious. It’s a very luxurious feeling. The best thing on this ferry though was that this 25 minutes ride was at the exact time when the sun was setting. Can you imagine, we were at the best spot to take photos of the sunset exactly when it was happening? We could not have planned it better. But it just worked out.

 

We just lugged our suitcases to the top deck and took out our cameras. Oh, man, was it glorious! I have hundreds of photos from that session but I will only share a few of them here to keep you from running away.

 

 

Malta Trip #3 – Day 1 – Landing in Malta

 

 

We left at 0725, our flight was only 3 hours long but we still landed there at 1125, how?

 

It’s simple really Europe time zone is one hour ahead of UK time so when you travel East  you lose that time. Coming back you gain that much time. We were two of the first few passengers out so we got to the immigration desk quickly. Then we waited near the top of the queue while we could see immigration officers in their little glass cages, also waiting. After about twenty-five minutes one guy came around and handed each of the officers a print-out. Then they were ready for business. Paperwork even before our paperwork. Fun, right?

 

I have this weird habit of wishing “Good morning” or “Hello” to the immigration officers. I want to see their reaction, if they acknowledge with a smile or say it back or just ignore it. This lady gave a slight smile so that started my impression of Maltese people on a positive note. The paperwork didn’t take time. One benefit of Brexit that Roberta pointed out later is that you get stamps on your passport.

 

There are two things you should always look for when you arrive at an airport – where the toilets are and is there public wifi. After collecting our suitcases we went on search for both. The toilets were clean enough and the wifi was free. Score on both points. I use a VPN when connecting to public networks like that so I fired up my SurfShark mobile app and found that they don’t have a server in Malta. But they had a server in France and in Italy. The app connected through the Paris server and I checked the speed – 25 Mbps. I could live with that.

 

In case you are curious why I use Surfshark
when there are so many choices of VPN providers, consider this a lazy choice. I have tried several before and this is the one that’s the cheapest, keeps no logs, works on PC, tablet and smartphone and basically is totally hassle-free. If you decide to check them out, use my referral link, this will get us both free time on the Surfshark account.

 

https://surfshark.club/friend/uHhT78zz

 

Once I had the VPN connected my first task was to search for an electronics store. I usually have a project when I go on a trip. Last time the project was to find a spanner in Copenhagen (long story, another time.) This time the project was to buy a keyboard in Malta. Recently I have started fancying myself as a kind of writer and I wanted to keep doing some writing while in Malta. I had my Samsung tablet with me and I planned to buy a keyboard to use with it just while I was in Malta and then discard it before going home. I found a few stores online, one of them had a good selection of keyboards as well.

 

But we first took time to feed ourselves. Thanks to the KFC and Burger King in the basement of the airport that part was easy to accomplish. I remember my food was about 8 Euros for a burger, soft drink and a bottle of water. Not bad for airport prices. Generally, we found the prices normal in Malta. Good restaurants had London-equivalent pries or sometimes cheaper.

 

Roberta had done a lot of research and even made a call while we were in the Immigration queue to find out how to buy a travel card. By the way, our UK phones worked in Malta, both of us had mobile plans that gave us free roaming in Malta and 12GB of data roaming. It sufficed for our stay and we had WIFI in most indoor locations. There was a Public Transport counter in the airport so we stopped there to buy a travel card. There were many options and we chose the one that gave us full access to all buses and ferries. I had read online that in Malta buses you need to have either the travel card or exact change in cash, you can’t pay by bank card on the bus. It did not prove to be true. The buses now have contactless readers and you can pay how you want.

 

I am sorry to we did not get our money’s worth from the travel card for which we paid 21 Euros each. We found that the buses were a little too crowded and we did not enjoy standing for long journeys. So, we often ended up using the Bolt taxi app for such journeys. But at that time, we wanted to have the travel cards to have the freedom of choice and 21 Euros was not a bad price to pay for that.

 

The card were fast and easy to acquire on the spot. We paid with contactless payment and went out into the sun to find how to get to the electronics store I had found.

Malta Trip #2 - Day 1 - Journey Starts

 

Goes to show you what lengths I would go to for photography, I had slept a few hours in the evening so I could leave in the early hours of the morning. I am one of those people who can sleep at any time, you will hate me. The flight was at 0725 but as I live in Oxford I needed two hours to get to London Gatwick airport as well as some buffer time. Roberta and I agree on that, always get to the airport earlier than you need to. There is a bus that goes from Oxford to London airports called Oxford Airline. It's a nice, comfortable coach that costs between £23 and £28. It used to cost me much less when I was a student but...sigh. Moving on. I took the bus service that picked me up just before 0300 and deposited me at the London Gatwick airport North terminal just before 0500.

 

Roberta had deliberately not picked the cheapest flights this time. She had gone for the flights that could give us the maximum time in Malta for our travel dates and also worked with our accommodation choices. More on that later. We checked-in and dropped our suitcases then directly went to the security rather than hang around.

 

I was really nervous about airport security, I always am. Most of my worry is about holding up the queue behind me. Quick tip, when you get to security, turn left if you can, most people turn right as its their dominant side and as a result the queues are longer on that side. I carry a lot of electronics so I am worried about taking time to take them out of the backpack. No problem this time. I had packed my liquids (just lip balm) in a plastic bag already. My electronics were also packed in small travel boxes with transparent tops. My strategy is to put everything that I can, including my phone, in my jacket pockets before getting to the security conveyor belt. After putting the jacket in a separate tray I walked through the metal detector. I winced as I went through it as I remembered I was still wearing my smartwatch. Then I worried that my expression might trigger an alarm in the security lady watching me walk through the scanner. None of that happened. No beeps or alarms and she didn't pull me aside for personal manhandling. On the return journey, when I was taking my smartwatch off, the security agent there told me not to do it. So, I guess they don't trigger the alarm. My watch is a Ticwatch Pro 3 which is mostly a plastic body anyway.

 

After we went through the security and immigration checks, we still had about half an hour to hang out. So, we had a coffee and shared our Etsy shops with each other. Roberta and I are both new Etsy sellers and didn't know that about each other. Links for our shops in case you want to check them out:

 

Sunny: https://g7printables.etsy.com

Roberta: https://chromaticautomatic.etsy.com

 

The flight was almost full but we got lucky that we didn’t have anybody sitting in the third seat in our row so we had some extra space. Photos from the flight are hardly ever worth the trouble but the views are so amazing that you have to try. I think the ones I got this time were better than I have had before, partially because of my new phone Samsung Note 20 Ultra which has a great camera module, but I am also becoming a better photographer with practice. Some examples here from the airport and the flight.

Malta Trip - Why Malta?

[Photo courtesy: me. Real photo taken from my camera on this trip.] 

I will be honest, Malta was not high on my list of places to visit and I didn't know much about it except that there is a fruit by the same name. But just about the time when I was feeling cabin fever from not having done any travel since December 2019, my friend Roberta was making a travel plan to Malta. She is great at planning such trips and my last trip in December 2019 was also with her to Copenhagen for the Christmas markets. Since she was planning the trip it gave me an incentive to look up Malta. 

For those whose geography is as bad as mine, Malta is an archipelago, which means a group of islands, in the Mediterranean sea. Roberta had chosen it after her own research which showed that this was one of the rare places in Europe that still had sunshine and warm weather in November. I had very few leave days left because I had taken most of them for my studies earlier this year so I told Roberta that I would like to tag along but I could only go for 5 days including a weekend. She agreed to that. We both regretted that later because...you will see. 

Travelling in 2021 has its own hassles and one of my main reasons for not travelling even after lockdown opened was that I didn't want to wear a mask on my travels and I didn't want to take photos of people in masks. But I give some of the blame to my friend Ania who had recently travelled to London and some blame to myself for staying too cooped up during lockdown until it became too depressing. In the words of Anais Nin 

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

So, I took the hassles. Malta was one of the few countries that was accepting UK visitors. But the condition was that you had to be fully vaccinated and bring evidence of it. The evidence in our case was to get the NHS app on the smartphone and get the "NHS Pass". I had to jump through so many hoops to prove my identity before I got the Pass. But I got it. You can save it on your phone as a PDF file or print it out. Both are acceptable at the airport. We also had to fill out a Passenger Locator Form on the Malta govt. website. Again, we could keep it as a PDF on the phone to show when asked. 

Roberta is an expert in finding cheap flights and accommodation so I left those details to her and only insisted on one thing - advance seat booking in the front part of the plane. In case you don't know, the front seats get less turbulence in the plane. My research had warned me that Malta being an island gets a lot of winds and the landing can be a bit shaky. I am a coward when it comes to turbulence, and other things. You will see. 

Movie Review: Hum Do Hamare Do - Rehne Do

*** Some spoilers in this review ***

While this is not a toxic movie or one which I would need to warn you against, it's not really a great movie either. It's bland like last night's pizza that you didn't bother to heat up. 

The story is extremely predictable which is not bad because you know this going in so there's no disappointment there. Performances are good by all actors.

From my point of view, there are two big issues which make this movie a bland snoozefest rather than a feel-good formula movie. 

One, the screenplay is bad. The story itself while predictable, is quite promising. It's the story of Dhruv who is an orphan and meets a girl who wants a family to marry into. He arranges a pair of fake parents to get her to marry him. From there, even a child of five years can tell you every single twist the story takes. 

As I said, I did not mind that, but I feel that the screenplay misses out a lot of good spots where nice moments could have been created. You might have heard the expression "It's not the destination but the journey." The filmmakers here have been in such a hurry to get to the destination that they missed out a chance to take the audience on an interesting journey. 

For example, Kriti Sanon and Rajkumar Rao's romance has been done at Shatabdi Express speed. They go from first meeting to falling in love to marriage proposal so fast that there is no opportunity to create some heartwarming romantic moments. You see, marriage and the hassles of marriage, the Indian people have that in their own lives. They go to the cinema to see the romance and to feel not just entertained but inspired. Nothing for them here. 

When Kriti comes to live with Rajkumar's family before the wedding, that situation while highly implausible, is ripe for many opportunities to create comedy, romance and drama. It has been completely wasted. Remember Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and the sweet moments between Madhuri and Salman? That's the kind of thing they could have created here but missed it entirely. 

Many occasions like the big reveal which could have been dramatic dyanmite proves to be Diwali's cracker because of the way they have been written and directed. 

The second issue the film has is its extremely weak dialogue. This is already a predicable, formula story but good dialogue could still make it entertaining and watchable. But the dialogues here are so boring and mundane that you feel like they were written by someone who writes phone directories. 

The scenes that could have been explosive drama are simply yesterday's kadhi-chawal because of the boring dialogue. Rajkumar Rao has tried very hard to bring some drama to such scenes and Kriti has supported him well but if the drama is not written in the screenplay you can't create it out of thin air even with great acting. 

Just like the rest of the movie, the climax is also rushed and does not feel realistic at all. The end is unrealistic and quite unjustified. 

My recommendation is that this is not a movie worth watching in the cinema at all. You can watch it on streaming while you are making dinner or ironing clothes. You would not watch it again that I can already guarantee you. 

Me: Bilingual

Warning: Strong language ahead

The other day I was cooking dinner and instead of using the microwave I decided to use the oven to make some nachos. It was a noble thought. 

I managed to cook them well then put the hot plate on the tray with an oven mitt taking the utmost care. Then being a professional numbnuts, 2.5 seconds later I moved that plate with my bare hand forgetting that it was burning hot. The plate, having a zero-tolerance policy towards all numbnuts, promptly burnt my fingers. It hurt. I screamed like a little girl. 

After yelling "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" for 37 seconds straight, I suddenly had an epiphany. Hey, I am bilingual!

Based on a story read long time ago, the language you use in times of emotional stress, that is, the language that you curse in, is your native language. So, now that I can curse both in Hindi and English when the chips are down, there is no denying the fact that I am bilingual. Hurray for me! 

Are you bilingual? I don't recommend my method of testing though. Save your skin, it's the only one you have. 

Peace!

What resolution is your life?

I have been fortunate enough to live through a period of world history in which technology has gone from a child's play to science fiction level. I have seen the time when mobile phones didn't use to exist and to now when there is one in everyone's pocket. Every year there there are many new models and they fight over features like dogs over a bone. One feature that is usually hotly contested is the camera. Let's forget about the point what is a camera doing in something called a phone and just talk about the state of the art. 

The most popular part of the camera and its improved features is resolution. A quick sidebar to explain - every digital photo is made up of tiny dots which are called pixels. Resolution is just the notation to show how many of these pixels are there in a photo taken by a particular digital camera (phone camera or DSLR). For example 1920x1080 which is lovingly called Full HD or 1080p means that the photo has 1920 dots widthwise and 1080 dots along the height. The more pixels there are the smoother and "higher definition" the photo will be. 

While this is the most publicised metric in a camera, people argue that that's not the best or only measure of quality. There is camera sensor size, image processing software, the glass (a fancy way of saying lens) and a few other things that contribute to the quality of a photo. But I want to ask what is the "quality" of a photo? 

Exhibit A: look at this photo below. 

This photo was taken in the 1990s before google was a verb and youtube was not even in its mother's womb. The "three moustacheers" in the photo are Harry, Fazil and yours truly. This was a time in our life when we had finished high school (we went to the same school) and were doing college. We were trying to find our place in the world and searching for our guiding star. From this search we used to take time, maybe once or twice a week, to go on an evening walk to this park about 2 miles from our homes. 

Obviously, you can see how "bad" the photo is. It was taken on a film camera, degraded over time and then scanned into the computer. [Kudos to my nephew Sagar for preserving and emailing it to me.] 

Exhibit B: This is a picture from a Matheran trip (a 'hill' station in Maharashtra, India) with Bhuwnesh and his family. Bhuwnesh and I became friends in US out of necessity because we were the new people there and all the other Indian colleagues were already settled in their lives. Plus, we got along well despite being very different in personality. That's the reason we stayed in touch no matter how many times he or I changed cities and countries. 

This photo was taken in 2006 from an Olympus camera which was 1.3mega pixels. Don't laugh, that's the best I had then.  

I also have a lot of photos which are taken with good cameras in high resolution but don't mean half as much to me. 

Let's take an exception, exhibit C, taken in 2020: 

This is a high resolution photo taken with a proper DSLR last year. Given the condition the world was in when my nephew Sagar married his girlfriend Harsha, I had no chance to go to attend their wedding in Canada. Had it not been for the technology I could not have watched their wedding ceremony on a  video call and I would not have been able to see their smiling faces in the lovely photos. 

My point is not that "Old is always good". My point is that it's not the resolution in the camera that matters, it's the resolution of your life that matters. Surround yourself with people who enrich your life, guide your mind to thoughts that add meaning to your life and make sure that your actions and words enrich other people's life. That's the resolution that matters the most. 

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness. Not!

[Photo courtesy Cottonbro at Pexels.com]

There was a very popular example that my parents, teachers and other grown-up's used to overuse when I was a boy. "Even the dog wags its to tail to clean its spot before sitting down." Every single grown up used to love this example.  Any sign of laziness or untidiness spotted, and they would whip this out like the cowboy in the wild west whips out his six-shooter. 

If I were as much of a smartass then as I am now, I would have said "Yes, he does but he also runs around naked all day and drinks from the toilet. Will you please choose my role models more carefully, mom?" 

But I wasn't. But now I am. So, here I am to prove that cleanliness is NOT next to godliness, it's quite the opposite. Dirtiness is the godliness. What happens when a clean thing and a dirty thing come in contact? Who wins? The dirty. One rotten apple can ruin the whole basket but one good apple can't make a rotten apple good. What's more powerful?

And dirtiness is indestructible? When you are "cleaning" things, you are not cleaning anything, you are just transferring dirtiness from one place to another. Think of any activity where you are cleaning something, you will realise that you are making something else dirty. Dusting? You dirty the duster. You wash the duster. You make the water dirty that you wash it with. There is a whole cycle of dirtiness that's unbreakable and unescapable. Dirtiness like the soul is indestructible. "Nainam chhindanti shastrani..." Weapons cannot kill it and fire cannot burn it. 

What is the dirtiest topic in the world? Sex. But without it the human race could not survive or propagate. So, dirtiness is essential in this world. 

I hope I have made you feel better about not doing any cleaning this Easter weekend. 

Loved and Lost but Why?

Shakespeare has this famous quote (among his many quotes) "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Other than the general principle that having experienced something is better than not (not always true) have you ever wondered why it's better to have loved and lost? I will tell you. 

If you have never loved than you would not understand 100% of the world's songs, plays, music, TV shows, novels, stories and films. Okay, I might be exaggerating by about 1.7% but generally it is true that if you have loved, ever, you can understand how a character behaves, in real life or in a fictional world. No matter how stupidly a character behaves you would be able to understand why they are doing it. You may have done that exact stupid thing in your life when you were in love or maybe something even stupider. My money is on the latter. 

By having lived through that kind of intense emotional experience you can understand how someone can be so short-sighted, petty, jealous, insecure, unreasonable, illogical, or loyal, committed, determined, selfless and devoted. You may or may not agree with their logic, but you get it. 

These days I am totally in love with this Hindi TV show called "Mere Dad Ki Dulhan" (My Father's Bride). It's the story of a father and daughter - Amber Sharma and Niya Sharma. They lost her mother 8 years ago and now they have the most co-dependent, emotionally stunted co-existence two people ever had. After a few preliminary incidents, Niya becomes convinced that her father should marry again so that he can be happy and they can both be emotionally independent.

Varun Badola and Shweta Tiwari are in the title roles with Anjali Tatrari playing the daughter. Because of the star cast, you know right from the beginning what the end is going to be. But it's not in the destination, it's in the journey. And the journey of this show is delectable. The beginning episodes can be a bit frustrating because of so much fighting and emotional drama going on but there are quite a few good scenes and episodes in them also, and the show gets better and better as it progresses. I found it on Youtube and watched it all the way through. It took a three months' break when the Covid-19 lockdown hit India, but I found the show after it had already finished so I didn't have to wait for those three months. Those episodes have a lot of gaps because it's a Sony show and they cut out all the scenes where there was copyright music playing. Lots of editing jerks, noticeable. Fortunately, I found it on their website Sonyliv.com and now I am able to watch the full versions of the episodes. Yes, it's worth watching, again and again. 

So back to my point. There are many, oh so many scenes in the show where I scream "Amber Sharma, don't do that, man!" at the screen but even when I am telling him not to do something, I can understand why he is doing that or what he is feeling. I would not have known that if I had not felt and done similar things in my own life. Loved and lost.

I might do more posts on this show to discuss some of my favourite things from it. But I already highly recommend it. 

What parlez-vous do you speak?

 

 

Recently I received the Census 2021 form in the snail mail. It said right on the envelope that I was legally bound to respond to it. Don’t you love it when they send you a letter with that text right on the envelope? Well, at least it was not a traffic ticket. But I did go on Google to check that they were telling me was truth and not like the TV licence thing. Oh, that’s a different story altogether.

 

Anyway, I know census is important and I expected that they would be doing this online this time, so I didn’t mind filling out a form. It was slightly longer than I expected but not too bad. I struggled with the educational qualifications bit, no, no, I did go to school, honest. I went to school in India though, and they didn’t make it easy to map it to the British education system on this form. I had to search around a bit on the web to find out which options to choose for that and I am still not 100% sure that I clicked the right buttons.

 

The biggest issue was the language question. They asked what was my primary language and I got stuck. French and German were out, while I do know a few words of those, at most I can say my name and that I am hungry. Spanish is even less of a candidate as my favourite sentence in that has something to do with a tomato that’s reserved for the soup.

 

At the moment I speak English most of the time but then I live in England so why wouldn’t I? But I was not born speaking English. No, even though I was born in Delhi, I wasn’t born speaking Hindi either. My first words were probably “ma” and “da” like most children but after that I did learn Hindi because it happened to be my mother tongue.

 

But that was years ago and since then things have changed a lot. In addition to learning English in school, I fell in love with the habit of reading and Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle contributed to my education as much as my English teacher, Mr. Kaushik. Add to that my love for the action movies in English - James Bond, Mission Impossible, Broken Arrow - and you can understand why I am as comfortable in English today as I am in my mother tongue.

 

And that was my problem. The question didn’t call for my mother tongue or any kind of official language but “What language do you use most at home?” So, I tried to sort this out with a few questions to myself.

 

What language do I think in? Both. Depends on which topic I am thinking about but these days is 80-20, 80% English, 20% Hindi.

 

What language do I dream in? Again, both. It depends on the characters in my dream.

 

What language do I speak at home? Hmmm, considering that I live alone that is covered by the thinking language, but let’s say what language do I use with my family? That depends on the family member I am speaking with but the family members I speak to most are bilingual and which language we use depends on which language we start speaking in.

 

Ultimately, I answered Hindi based on the last two questions.

 

What language do I curse in? While I do curse fluently in both languages (and a couple more) when I am genuinely pissed off and need heavy curse words that would be unprintable, I resort to Hindi.

What language do I do my calculations in? I can do maths in English and I can count to ten in French and German, if you gave me a column of figures to add and I had to it in a hurry I would have to use Hindi numbers.

 

Problem solved. But it was quite an interesting analytical trip down the labyrinth of my brain. I usually enjoy those.

 

So, what language do you parlez-vous in?

 

Blowing Your Own Horn

 Some things are so obviously good or bad that they become universally accepted as such. Like humility. 

In the Hindu epic Mahabharat there is an instance when Yudhishthir, eldest of the five brothers, tells his younger brother Arjun (who is the basically the hero of the whole piece) to put down his bow called Gaandeev (yes, they had names for all their bows, these superarchers) in the heat of the battle. Later Arjun is in distress because he had taken a vow to kill anyone who tells him to put his bow down. (Don't ask me why.)  

Lord Krishna who is friend, philosopher and guide to the five brothers comes to the rescue and tells Arjun to speak rudely to the elder brother because to use the word "thou" to an elder is equivalent to killing him. Ok, so that's what Arjun does. But then he wants to kill himself because he spoke rudely to his elder brother. Again, Krishna pitches in with great advice. He tells Arjun to praise himself because according to the Hindu scriptures he who praises himself is as good as dead. Crisis averted. 

This is how bad self-praise is in the Hindu culture. But then look at the Urdu culture. In Urdu poetry, a ghazal is not considered good poetry if it contains an element of "khud-shanaasi" which means self-praise. 

For years, this is what I used to deal from. But while it is good to have a modest, self-effacing outlook in life, (it's crucial for stand-up comedy), it doesn't go so hot in job interviews. I can't tell you how many job opportunities I have missed because I answered the questions from a realistic and more modest mindset. It took me a while but I finally understood that when I used a modesty scale to assess and portray myself in front of potential employers, my humility got transferred to them as fear that I would not match up with their requirement. Once I understood the problem, it was easy to implement the solution. I simply started answering the same questions with 110% confidence instead of my original dose of 80%. 

The moral of the story is - not everything is good and bad in clear contrast, you need to apply a grain of intelligence even before using a concept as inherently good as humility. 

The Time That Spends Us

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." - Anais Nin

I have this movie I watch once every month. It's a Hindi movie called "Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani", translation "The craziness of youth" Youth as in the period of youth in life, not a young person. 

Yes, you did read it right, I watch it once every month. I have seen it more times than I can count. Why? No, it's not like one of those "It's a wonderful life" kind of movie that's a ritual for the world to watch. It's a purely commercial movie about a boy and a girl (aren't they all?). The basic premise is extremely simple - he wants to travel the world and do everything in one life, she wants a simple life. Of course, they fall in love, but at different times. 

Spoilers below if you haven't seen the movie but it came out in 2013 so you have had 8 years. 

There are many reasons to watch this movie so many times but one of the important ones is that every time I watch it, I see different things in it. Now spoilers. In the end, the hero decides to stay in India in order to marry the girl. I never agreed with that decision. I even have my favourite shot where I would end the movie if I were the director. No, I don't turn it off there, I still watch it fully every time. But I always think he's wrong. Ambition over marriage? Ha! Until now. Five seconds before starting this post I was thinking about this dialogue that he says to her when he's proposing. 

"Beet_ta waqt hai lekin kharch hum hote hain. Aur isse pehle ki main poora kharch ho jaoun, tere saath thoda waqt bitana chahta hoon."

[Translation: We don't spend the time, the time spends us. And before my balance runs out I want to spend some of that time with you. ]

Suddenly today it made sense to me. Spending time with a loved one can take precedence over travelling, job and even a lifelong dream. I still don't know if I agree with him but at least now I can see his viewpoint. 

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." The movie is always the same, every scene, every shot, every camera angle. That doesn't change. The reason I see different things in it every time is because I change. 

Do you have a loop movie that you watch as many times as possible? I can't be the only crazy person in this world. 

Award Shows and The Divine Plan

 Film award shows strengthen my faith in the divine plan and the universe having a purpose. 

Think about it: 

• The person winning the award is always the very favourite of the person announcing the name. 
• The project they are winning the award for is the one that just happens to be the closest to their heart. 
• Noone ever wins an award for an un-special project. 
• The person who inspired our awardee the most in their life, just happens to be sitting in the first row in the audience. 

You can't explain these things without admitting that there is a god and there is a plan for all of us.