Today is the almost forgotten feast of The Three Kings. Judging by last year’s events I wonder what gifts the Three Kings would bring to the world today?

A block of ice?

One of the world’s major preoccupations last year was without doubt what is being called The Big Melt. Whether your home was flooded in the UK or you had temperatures of 40 degrees plus for weeks in Malta (which you can temporarily forget thanks to air-conditioning), all of the world’s developed economies are concerned about, and starting to take serious action on global warming. Sadly, the one exception is the US, a country that is already being badly hit by freak weather, which makes you start wondering how many Katrinas it will take before they see sense. Last year as well, ice caps started melting at a much faster rate than predicted, previously permanent iced over routes are now open and that amazing picture of a polar bear clinging to an ice floe became one of the most dominant symbols of 2007. The last 11 of the past 12 years have been the warmest since records began and, worse still, there is now consensus that it is indeed man, and of course woman, who is to blame. We, and the polar bears, need the ice to go back where it should be at least.

Some superpower

shrinking tablets?

There are way too many nasty non-democratic countries vying for super stardom. Russia stands accused of poisoning its critics. China is still totalitarian. Kenya is erupting as I write. Everything changed even in the freer West post 9/11, and countries like Pakistan, perhaps far more than Iran, could destabilise the world. An assassination leaves us disinterested in Malta, while we continue navel-gazing and obsess about local events of little importance. The endless discussions about the next general election, now likely to be postponed by weeks at least are all that grabs our attention. Meanwhile, oil hit that crucial $100 a barrel and you do wonder how political party manifestos could for once tie in with what is happening in the real world outside Malta. Tourism may take a knock too this year if we depend mainly on the UK market where operators are already slashing holidays and focusing only on the good deals for 2008. We hope Malta will still look like a good deal for the Brits this year, likely to be the toughest for the UK economy in the last 15 years.

Contraceptives or what

for Europe’s booming

populations?

The UK press was full of stories about the UK overtaking Holland, which is in second place at the moment, and becoming the most overcrowded country in Europe. But hold on, it’s actually tiny Malta at the top of the league with three times, nay almost four times the population density of the UK. The right wing press in the UK naturally blame it all on immigration. Here in fortress Malta we can hardly blame the immigrants, but it’s no wonder this island feels so claustrophobic at times. Perhaps Maltese contractors can emulate the Dutch and get together and do some serious work on land reclamation before this island explodes with over building, dustbowl-itis and general unmitigated ugliness in most of Malta’s ribbons of suburban development.

The blur of the boundary

between online and offline?

This gift is already among us. The Internet has changed the world for good, and there are now two classes of people, the hooked and the uninterested. Once the Queen managed with the help of her nieces, it is alleged, to launch her Christmas message on Facebook, grandparents and great-grandparents everywhere can do the same. Perhaps the best gift grandchildren can give their grandparents this year is some time, even if it is time making them familiar with the web and all its wonders. You can now sell virtually anything, even anything virtual on the net; you can find your way to meet your friends in any city using Google maps. The possibilities are endless and growing and the boundary between online and offline is fading faster than we think.

Some design literacy

for those who design

our buildings?

It is sad that the people of this country whose ancestors built our temples and dug out our Hypogeum continue to blight our landscape with some of the ugliest new buildings to be seen anywhere in Europe. I remember our President while still Prime Minister commenting very negatively indeed on a building block along the Cottonera that now looks like a marvellous part of the landscape. But since then no comments on the monstrosity opposite the Addolorata, the ugliness of much of Marsascala et al, the new development at Tigne. I am beginning to understand Malta’s developers and Malta’s people though. Because we can’t bear to look around us anymore we want, indeed need, to look out to sea, so we are building as bigly (!) and as monstrously as possible in order to give Malta’s hard working elite views out and away from Malta, sea views which sell apartments in this sea of ugliness that is the modern Maltese urban landscape

Good health, the most

precious gift of all perhaps?

All those of us who lost someone precious last year know exactly what I mean. Very sadly and pathetically we humans have to fall ill to realise just how blessed and fortunate many of us are. Too many live their lives in the past and with hopes for the future but not much enjoyment of the present; perhaps that is what we can all take from this feast of the Three Kings. The wisdom to appreciate the present and all the people you enjoy in the present, because before you know it they are gone. The good die young and for me, and many others who have lost loved ones, nothing could be truer.

[email protected]