Two friends, two destinies, one life

In the spate of 24 hours, two men passed away. Two friends, who had two completely different upbringings and lives. Yet they were relatively young and in so many ways inspiring for their positive spirit and more importantly hard work and creativity. They had so much to offer. 

They lived worlds apart; the only thing they shared was that they lived in Malta. 

One was born here, the other in Serbia until he moved to Malta in the 1990s and obtained citizenship through naturalisation after years of battling with the citizenship department in Castille. 

I shared many pleasant moments with both of them and they were uniquely serene and composed, but that didn’t mean they did not suffer the tensions and traumas of life. They had many challenges. They were both soft-spoken, unassuming and never lost time with angry outbursts, or ugly expletives or blasphemy.  They had dreams, big ones, and though one was of entrepreneurial spirit and in a sense the other not, they both had great creative minds. 

One man was a born entrepreneur possessing the two most important qualities to be a success story in business: The ability to process costs and revenues in a millisecond without sitting down and wasting valuable time and money with an audit company; and the capacity of seeing an investment when others did not.   

In the case of my other friend, he had an eye for the image, the beauty in the micro detail, whether it was a font, a page design, a photograph, paper, a book or a logo. 

He also had a particular grasp for the meaning of true culture and the value that should be given to presentation. And curiously he orbited in a milieu where the Maltese language was the lingua franca when he himself did not speak the language. 

The two men have their legacies. The first friend for setting up a unique logistical company with his two brothers in Malta and abroad. The other for giving birth to MaltaToday’s design and his own publishing brand. 

Their departure is very disheartening. I find it very sad that one tends to appreciate someone when they are gone. It is sadder and even more frustrating that I did not spend more time with friends when I could have. I could say so much more, but I am not too sure they would have wanted me to be so open. 

It was great to have been your friend. Saħħiet Sandro Mallia; adieu Zvezdan Reljic. 

The pettiness of the past year 

Looking back at 2023, I get the feeling that something was not quite right. At least in the media, things are not as they used to be.  Social media is serving people just fine, feeding them short titles and clips of videos with little in the way of fact-checking and content. And worse of all, people think that just by venting on a social media platform they have achieved their goal. 

Malta has become more cosmopolitan, more modern, more consumeristic, and more ugly.  There are more single-minded people than ever and community is a dying phenomenon.  Malta is still home and will remain home to more than half a million people, including thousands of foreigners who reside here. No matter how claustrophobic it still offers a comfortable home to many. 

Maltese political leaders are uninspiring and political parties boring and stagnant.  The Nationalist Party in particular is in dire straights with no compass and no direction.  The other parties: boring. 

Discussion in Maltese society is dominated by the interminable debate on how well off everyone is or is not. It appears that nothing of consequence is happening. 

People are lost in their own worlds and detached from the concerns of others.  Gaza and Ukraine, Libya and Yemen are distant worlds.  

As Islanders we have always perfected the art of insularity and lived just fine. 

‘Fuck you Jack’ has been our motto. 

The most significant challenge for any journalist and writer is the knack of overriding the fragile attention span of the readers and secondly of keeping them glued for enough time to read the title and first paragraph. 

Thankfully Christmas is here and we can dive into bowls of cholesterol and triglycerides and consume copious amounts of alcohol to lessen the pain and forget the pettiness of the past year. 

A happy Christmas to all!