Poor

Responding to a reporter about criticism that a racial component was behind the government's slow response after Katrina hit, President George W. Bush, answered "The storm didn't discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort." Let’s assume he is correct. Let’s assume that the US government did its utmost to save lives and the slow response was just the result of unpredictable circumstances.

Still, who suffered most? Millionaires or the underprivileged? Those who could afford to leave New Orleans or those who did not? Again, the poor suffered most. Living in Iraq, Palestine, Europe or the United States it’s always the poor that suffer most.

In Remembrance

Different people choose to remember different things. Today, September 11th, while most people choose to remember the events of New York 2001, I choose to remember the assassination of the controversial, democratically elected leftist leader Salvador Allende, President of Chile.

Today thirty-two years ago, General Pinochet, with the backing of the CIA staged a Coup d’Etat which ended the 3 year presidency of Allende with his death. " After Pinochet assumed power, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kisinger told US President Richard Nixon that the U.S. "didn't do it" (referring to the coup itself) but had "created the conditions as great as possible" , including leading economic sanctions." - (Wikipedia)

Lately, ex-leader of the US Christian Coalition and President Bush supporter Pat Robertson has called for the assassination of another leftist democratically elected President, that of Venezuela , Hugo Chavez. Let’s just hope that history does not repeat itself.

September

September is not one of my favourite months. To say the truth, my feelings towards September verge on to hatred. There are various reasons why I have blacklisted this month, so let’s start……

As a child September always meant back to school. Not that I hated school, I just hated summer ending. Being brought up in St. Julian’s, I spent whole days at the Balluta pitch. The sea in September was never calm so no water polo games were played.

Then comes the weather. The sticky gloomy days of this month are a nightmare. No amount of washing will make you feel clean. This is Feeling-Sticky month!

To top it off, most people, after doing nothing the whole of August, feel that September is the right month to either start something new or catch up. Apart from a few new projects that I will be involved in, most clients that I could not get hold of or meet during August, have decided to contact me all on September first. I spent the last couple of weeks working more than 12 hours a day nearly every day. This situation repeats itself every September. (By the way, this is the reason I have not been blogging much lately)

And what about the name? I can forgive October, November and December for not being the eighth, ninth and tenth month respectively but I could never forgive September for not being the seventh. Why call yourself the seventh when you are ninth? This pretentious month is why October, November and December are confused. Its like being at the butcher’s. If you ask who is last and some ugly guy says “its me and I’m the seventh”, you assume that if you should be served after he is then you are eighth.

There were so many things that I wanted to blog about these couple of weeks but did not have the time. From Katrina’s devastation to Bush’s incompetence, from the new political movement ANR (which chose the Italian word Alleanza for the name of a nationalist movement!) to Malta’s third siege, that of Ta Qali. Well quite a busy month. I will try to catch up.

Life Cycle

Yesterday a group of fifty people left Malta to make a journey of 1850km over 10 days. This is the seventh year of the Life-Cycle challenge and this year it involves 37 cyclists, accompanied by a medical team of two physiotherapists and a doctor, two cooks and translators.

I happen to know two of the participants, Bernard and Emerson, good luck guys. They have been preparing for the event for months with such dedication and commitment that it’s hard to believe that they are amateurs. Those of you who would like to know more (and donate something) can visit www.lifecyclechallenge.com.

In today’s Independent, in an article covering the story there is a hint that the cyclists might be taking illicit substances to help them through the journey. Ms. Anna Miggiani, Life cycle Chairman and official cook, said that “beans are often a staple of the diet over the course of the challenge”. If this is true this would explain the sudden increase in speed in certain parts of the journey. This would also explain the increase in toxic fumes that is expected in Budapest, Belgrade, Tirana, Delfi and the Acropolis over the next ten days.

Joking apart, those interested in giving a donation can send a cheque to the Life Cycle Organisation c/o the Renal Unit or a text message to these numbers: 5061-7351: Lm 1, 5061-8928: Lm3 and 5061-0208: Lm5.

Universal Man

In a self promoting article, Paul Smith (of Paul Smith Fashion House) in Intelligent Life (summer 2004), opens with the following statement:

We live in an age of specialisation. There are specialists for everything: cardiovascular specialists, fibre-optic specialists, divorce-law specialists. We tend to think of artists in the same way - a painter paints, a writer writes, an actor acts, a musician makes music and so on.

How true and yet how depressing. Are people really that two dimensional? What happened to the classical notion of the Universal Man? Is it that difficult to find engineers who paint, scientists who write or programmers who play music? I know loads of people who have developed their three-dimensionality, mostly man and women with a scientific background. Yet, a lot of people are surprised by this. I am always shocked that people that know me at work are usually quite surprised to find out that I spend a considerable amount of time painting. Is it that surprising that an interior designer paints? It’s like saying that a programmer isn’t able to do math.

And what about our educational system? Is it geared up to produce complete human beings? Or are we just producing two-dimensional specialists? Sometimes I feel we’re producing neither.