-an OD of Toughts-

There’s a small slice of Lija where civilisation seems to have peaked. It’s called Rani, and it lives inside an old Maltese townhouse that’s been renovated so handsomely you half expect it to demand its own modelling contract. Limestone walls, dashes of colour, and that glorious orange traditional shop façade outside that basically shouts, “OI, YOU! COME EAT.” Inside, it’s sparkly-clean, honestly, operating-theatre clean, and the staff move with the precision of a well-oiled machine. Attentive, polite, and faster than you can say “I’ll just browse the menu,” they set the tone immediately by dropping a couple of mini potato tarts on the table. These little parcels of joy came topped with crispy strips of Bombay mix, and they were so good I briefly wondered if I could get away with ordering 40 of them and calling it a meal.  Starters included vegetable samosas that were perfectly crisp and not filled with the usual “what even IS this?” mystery mush; onion bhajis that tasted like crun...

There I was, minding my own business, browsing Prime Video for something that wouldn’t make me want to commit arson, when I stumbled upon Malice — a series that looks, at first glance, like yet another gloomy thriller designed for people who collect scented candles and call everything “trauma.” But no. This thing hits different. “Malice” isn’t just a show. It’s a psychological kick in the throat wearing a designer trench coat . It begins innocently enough: a family, some secrets, some mild emotional damage, and the usual suspicious glances people give each other when someone rewinds the dishwasher the wrong way. But five minutes in, you realise something very important: Everyone in this show is absolutely insane. And I mean,  Prime Video is insane . Not BBC “slightly stressed about taxes” insane. No — full throttle, tyres-screeching, V12-engine-meltdown insane. The Plot: A Slow Burn… Until It Isn’t “Malice” takes its sweet time warming up, like a V8 on a winter morning....

Why the quietest stand at EICMA just stole the entire show. If you wandered through EICMA expecting fireworks, half-naked influencers, and electric scooters pretending to be interesting, you might’ve walked straight past the ASTEMO stand without even noticing. And that would’ve been a tragic mistake, because tucked away in that quiet corner was something far more powerful than all the noise around it: The return of old-school Japanese engineering. The kind that doesn’t shout, doesn’t boast, and doesn’t rush — it simply perfects. ASTEMO, for the uninitiated, is the mega-beast made from Showa, Keihin, Nissin, and Mitsubishi’s automotive component arm. Basically, if motorcycles were religions, these folks would be the monks doing 12-hour meditation sessions surrounded by suspension diagrams. And at EICMA this year, Japan remembered how to be Japan again. The Japanese Philosophy: Why Rush When You Can Take 10 Years? Take their ARAS system—rider assistance based not on radar like everyone ...

There is a new show on Netflix called The Amsterdam Empire , and it is so brilliantly Dutch that halfway through the first episode you start checking your passport to make sure you have not accidentally joined it. When I first saw the title, I expected something involving clogs, cheese, and a few people on bicycles politely arguing about tulips. But no. This is not a quaint travel documentary. It is a razor-sharp, slow-burn drama about power, money, and the sort of people who could buy your entire town while pretending they are just there for the coffee. The series opens with that familiar Amsterdam calm, canals glistening, trams humming, and a city that looks like it has been painted by someone with an unhealthy obsession with symmetry. But under that polite surface something darker stirs. There is a family empire, old money and older secrets, that has been quietly pulling the strings of global trade for decades. It is Succession with bicycles, Peaky Blinders with better lighting,...