Written by Alex Whydell
One of the biggest problems I thought I would face within Pavlis would be finding a direct application of what I’m studying within the sort of situations that I thought I was being prepared for. Even more so than the other people in Pavlis I would need to think really creatively about how I would find work and projects. That didn’t mean that this was a complete waste of my time; on the contrary, I think I can learn plenty about dealing with different kinds of people for when I eventually earn a job in teaching.
From a creativity standpoint Malta, as a travel location, is very much the same: compared to the location choices in Africa where immediate project ideas are easier to devise, and fit into the engineering aspect of the university, Malta is not in a state of development where our group can simply enter the country, co-design a water filtration system or other piece of infrastructure, and leave. In Malta, we have to carefully approach our contacts in order to find available work, and while this means it can take longer for our group to get started on a project, it also means that we are invested with a very high form of trust that we will do a good job. Working in Malta has so far been all about making strategic gambles in order to advance our goals, either by us when we approach specific contacts and prepare how we will ask them for work, or by the contacts themselves by making the decision to allow us access to their projects. Malta can become an iconic location within Pavlis so long as we keep it available and reassess our approach to it.
It’s sort of amazing to see how my American colleagues encounter the world of Malta since it is reminiscent of a group of Primary or Secondary School students on a school trip, such as to a zoo or to a different country; the sense of wonder at seeing things they have never been up close with before. I really do feel like the old man of the group sometimes as I consciously observe how these people get animated about whatever’s being discussed, as they try sea swimming and compare it to Lake Superior, as they sample the different varieties of food and drink and go around the landmark sites of the island. These are all things I have lived with since my early days and I guess I am just used to seeing them where I go.
On to business then: I have been recently looking into a possible project idea involving the city of Bormla/Birmula. The issue is that the city, due to the current economic conditions, is seeing a demographic shift occur whereby the younger members leave the area to find better jobs, wealthy developers and contractors buy up the vacant and condemned buildings in order to renovate them into hotels aimed at attracting rich foreign students, and so the elderly retirees and low-income citizens who cannot afford to easily leave the area are becoming the only groups that remain in the city. The city shows its age even more so than other areas of the island, and this also concerns the layout of the city. There are stone staircases that have existed since the medieval and post-Roman settlement of the island, and over centuries of use the steps have become slick and weathered; elderly and disabled residents are averse to leave their homes to complete grocery shopping because of the risk of injury. To that end I have been talking to different faculty members of the University campus who are involved in some of the possible solutions that Chris and I have drafted a few ideas for how to approach this problem: from how to arrange disability ramps, what other methods of moving people up and downhill safely we could use, to what kind of artstyle can be used to decorate the ramps/steps in order to make the areas look more vibrant and lively (can draw new people to the area and otherwise make it look less depressed).
This will have to be a project for future Pavlis groups to look into, and I firmly believe that many engineers would leap at the chance to work on a problem as textbook as this one. I simply want to use what time I have left to get as many preparations made as possible to help guide the project: what the heritage groups of Malta would demand of any intended work on such historic sites, what material options are available to tie the project to both universities.
I have followed up with a contact who is working on a project involving stone that is reduced into a powder, combined with a particular binding agent, and can then be piped into latex molds to create shapes made of limestone that set solid in minutes. This works especially well for the small island setting where the existing structures begin to produce rubble in old age. There is limited space to place this stone into landfills, so the professor in question has pursued a research project aiming to recycle the stone waste into a usable material. At the moment his team is trying to work with a stone supplier to secure a means of larger scale production as well as what uses this stone can perform: currently looking at creating cladding for buildings with options for having specific sculpting and motifs added to the latex mold.
I’m pretty sure I fumbled through my interview with him, but I think he is interested in being a contact for future collaboration between our universities on this project.
I have been given some ideas of possible contacts to talk with and places to visit to provide inspiration about how to design the items in a way that is not an eyesore and not unnecessarily expensive. The reconstituted stone group does not believe it is prepared to begin creating purpose-built structures yet, which is reasonable. I would like to see what research articles they have produced during their testing periods after they have had their patent approved, and see what forms of collaboration we can have between Michigan Tech and U of M; who knows, we might have a use for this kind of procedure in the States with our Jacobsville sandstone in Houghton! Also, the architecture people might get a kick out of the prospect of an artificial stone material that can have a pre-determined durability, density, and grain size. There can be plenty of work for artistic and imaginative people here.
My second contact I approached with questions about how to contact the appropriate heritage group about approaching them with a project that would involve work in an area of cultural significance, and then ask if he had any work going on at the moment that I could either join in or take back to Pavlis. It turns out the contact in question is not an archaeologist but is more or less the technician of the department. He wasn’t confident in his ability to give me the answers I was looking for, yet I took some good notes anyway and I think he had some pretty creative ideas about approaching the project as a whole.
This got me thinking about how over polite the people I meet are: they are so respectful and over polite to each other, so quick to leap on people who aren’t being politically correct that I almost the crudeness of my days in English public schools. I honestly don’t because the people were horrible, but least you had to earn their respect; most of the time I feel like Sylvester Stallone’s character in the movie Demolition Man. The refreshing openness of the discussions with the Rector, Josann, and Dr. Crech at the Mater Dei hospital is a welcome change from the over-calculated words of the Americans; in the States I am reminded of how the medieval nobility had to meticulously control their every action and phrase to communicate double meanings and avoid upsetting foreign dignitaries. Point is, people need to lighten up so that we can have really constructive and meaningful conversations. Could you imagine a world where everyone was comfortable with talking about their deepest held beliefs?
In any event, he gave me ideas about who to actually follow up with in order to continue the project in the way I want.
It is at this moment I realize I have written more for this one blog post than I have for most of the assigned reflections to date. Therefore, the reflection assignments need to be revised to fit the new modern times and break out of the overall feeling of stagnation that Pavlis has gained, according to discussions I have had with other students within the program.
Another good one is that if you want to keep writing in the travel journal or write post cards to people, you really need remember to do so. It is too easy to end up needing to write about entire week’s worth of events retroactively or to hold on to the post cards for too long while trying to find the time to buy the right stamps.
Speaking of discussions, it is really nice to have the late night philosophy conversations with the group members. It helps break down the walls between each personality at the table. We definitely don’t do this enough at MTU and this feels really humanizing, like the people I am surrounded with have grown and experienced real things in the world rather than being factory-produced robots.
One of the biggest problems I thought I would face within Pavlis would be finding a direct application of what I’m studying within the sort of situations that I thought I was being prepared for. Even more so than the other people in Pavlis I would need to think really creatively about how I would find work and projects. That didn’t mean that this was a complete waste of my time; on the contrary, I think I can learn plenty about dealing with different kinds of people for when I eventually earn a job in teaching.
From a creativity standpoint Malta, as a travel location, is very much the same: compared to the location choices in Africa where immediate project ideas are easier to devise, and fit into the engineering aspect of the university, Malta is not in a state of development where our group can simply enter the country, co-design a water filtration system or other piece of infrastructure, and leave. In Malta, we have to carefully approach our contacts in order to find available work, and while this means it can take longer for our group to get started on a project, it also means that we are invested with a very high form of trust that we will do a good job. Working in Malta has so far been all about making strategic gambles in order to advance our goals, either by us when we approach specific contacts and prepare how we will ask them for work, or by the contacts themselves by making the decision to allow us access to their projects. Malta can become an iconic location within Pavlis so long as we keep it available and reassess our approach to it.
It’s sort of amazing to see how my American colleagues encounter the world of Malta since it is reminiscent of a group of Primary or Secondary School students on a school trip, such as to a zoo or to a different country; the sense of wonder at seeing things they have never been up close with before. I really do feel like the old man of the group sometimes as I consciously observe how these people get animated about whatever’s being discussed, as they try sea swimming and compare it to Lake Superior, as they sample the different varieties of food and drink and go around the landmark sites of the island. These are all things I have lived with since my early days and I guess I am just used to seeing them where I go.
On to business then: I have been recently looking into a possible project idea involving the city of Bormla/Birmula. The issue is that the city, due to the current economic conditions, is seeing a demographic shift occur whereby the younger members leave the area to find better jobs, wealthy developers and contractors buy up the vacant and condemned buildings in order to renovate them into hotels aimed at attracting rich foreign students, and so the elderly retirees and low-income citizens who cannot afford to easily leave the area are becoming the only groups that remain in the city. The city shows its age even more so than other areas of the island, and this also concerns the layout of the city. There are stone staircases that have existed since the medieval and post-Roman settlement of the island, and over centuries of use the steps have become slick and weathered; elderly and disabled residents are averse to leave their homes to complete grocery shopping because of the risk of injury. To that end I have been talking to different faculty members of the University campus who are involved in some of the possible solutions that Chris and I have drafted a few ideas for how to approach this problem: from how to arrange disability ramps, what other methods of moving people up and downhill safely we could use, to what kind of artstyle can be used to decorate the ramps/steps in order to make the areas look more vibrant and lively (can draw new people to the area and otherwise make it look less depressed).
This will have to be a project for future Pavlis groups to look into, and I firmly believe that many engineers would leap at the chance to work on a problem as textbook as this one. I simply want to use what time I have left to get as many preparations made as possible to help guide the project: what the heritage groups of Malta would demand of any intended work on such historic sites, what material options are available to tie the project to both universities.
I have followed up with a contact who is working on a project involving stone that is reduced into a powder, combined with a particular binding agent, and can then be piped into latex molds to create shapes made of limestone that set solid in minutes. This works especially well for the small island setting where the existing structures begin to produce rubble in old age. There is limited space to place this stone into landfills, so the professor in question has pursued a research project aiming to recycle the stone waste into a usable material. At the moment his team is trying to work with a stone supplier to secure a means of larger scale production as well as what uses this stone can perform: currently looking at creating cladding for buildings with options for having specific sculpting and motifs added to the latex mold.
I’m pretty sure I fumbled through my interview with him, but I think he is interested in being a contact for future collaboration between our universities on this project.
I have been given some ideas of possible contacts to talk with and places to visit to provide inspiration about how to design the items in a way that is not an eyesore and not unnecessarily expensive. The reconstituted stone group does not believe it is prepared to begin creating purpose-built structures yet, which is reasonable. I would like to see what research articles they have produced during their testing periods after they have had their patent approved, and see what forms of collaboration we can have between Michigan Tech and U of M; who knows, we might have a use for this kind of procedure in the States with our Jacobsville sandstone in Houghton! Also, the architecture people might get a kick out of the prospect of an artificial stone material that can have a pre-determined durability, density, and grain size. There can be plenty of work for artistic and imaginative people here.
My second contact I approached with questions about how to contact the appropriate heritage group about approaching them with a project that would involve work in an area of cultural significance, and then ask if he had any work going on at the moment that I could either join in or take back to Pavlis. It turns out the contact in question is not an archaeologist but is more or less the technician of the department. He wasn’t confident in his ability to give me the answers I was looking for, yet I took some good notes anyway and I think he had some pretty creative ideas about approaching the project as a whole.
This got me thinking about how over polite the people I meet are: they are so respectful and over polite to each other, so quick to leap on people who aren’t being politically correct that I almost the crudeness of my days in English public schools. I honestly don’t because the people were horrible, but least you had to earn their respect; most of the time I feel like Sylvester Stallone’s character in the movie Demolition Man. The refreshing openness of the discussions with the Rector, Josann, and Dr. Crech at the Mater Dei hospital is a welcome change from the over-calculated words of the Americans; in the States I am reminded of how the medieval nobility had to meticulously control their every action and phrase to communicate double meanings and avoid upsetting foreign dignitaries. Point is, people need to lighten up so that we can have really constructive and meaningful conversations. Could you imagine a world where everyone was comfortable with talking about their deepest held beliefs?
In any event, he gave me ideas about who to actually follow up with in order to continue the project in the way I want.
It is at this moment I realize I have written more for this one blog post than I have for most of the assigned reflections to date. Therefore, the reflection assignments need to be revised to fit the new modern times and break out of the overall feeling of stagnation that Pavlis has gained, according to discussions I have had with other students within the program.
Another good one is that if you want to keep writing in the travel journal or write post cards to people, you really need remember to do so. It is too easy to end up needing to write about entire week’s worth of events retroactively or to hold on to the post cards for too long while trying to find the time to buy the right stamps.
Speaking of discussions, it is really nice to have the late night philosophy conversations with the group members. It helps break down the walls between each personality at the table. We definitely don’t do this enough at MTU and this feels really humanizing, like the people I am surrounded with have grown and experienced real things in the world rather than being factory-produced robots.