Is it possible to make an Actor wait for X amount of seconds to receive any message, and if a message is received, process it as usual, otherwise send a message to some other Actor (pre-determined in the constructor)?
Yes, if you want to wait for any message, you simply set a receiveTimeout: http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/current/scala/actors.html#receive-timeout
(The docs is slightly misleading here, you can set the receiveTimeout after every message also)