M

Maldives Celebrating Independence Day of India?

2009-08-06T16:01:00.004+05:00

The Maldivian High Commission in Malaysia sent an e-mail today about the new date for the postponed Independence Day celebrations. Is it a coincidence or an impending reality of our future integration with India, that the Independence Day celebration is on India's Independence Day, August 15? Besdies, we already have absorbed their culture from Bollywood and Kasauti series.

ހިންދު އެމާ ކަނޑު ތެރޭ، އަލި ރަން މުތް ހެން ދިރޭ، މީމަގޭ އުފަން ބިމޭ، ދީބު ދިވެހި މޭ

Disrespect by Name

2009-07-30T07:46:00.006+05:00

The name Abdullah (عبد الله) can be (and is allowed to be) written full form in English (in Maldives) but not in Dhivehi (ޢަބްދު الله). Actually, it can be, but because of the utmost respect given to Allah (الله), Maldivian linguistic and religious authorities impose the use of its original Arabic form wherever it occurs.

However, it is a fond Maldivian culture to call people by nicknames or shortened pet names. In this case, Abdullah gets twisted to Abulho (އަބުޅޯ) or Alhlho (އައްޅޯ) or Allo (އައްލޯ) and are widely used in referring to people with the name. Clearly this is not in alignment with any form of respect; especially the use of Alhlho and Allo, which sounds like a grossly twisted form of precisely Allah.

How and where the respect lie in this two faced standard does intrigue me. And whether this is acceptable on the grounds that language goes hand-in-hand with culture and tradition.

Repentance Day

2009-07-25T21:05:00.005+05:00

We the Mahiladiva people have a lot to be thankful for about today. But this is not the thanks giving day. Nor are there much to be thankful about. Today we remember how independent we are from the people who made us slaves to their will. And who are they? The Porched Geese, Mars Bars, Brishit, and last but also the least, an Ekkauvantha Zaeemu the Maai Manikufaanu.

Today we should repent the role we had in kicking his ass to the curb (Oprah speak) and why?

Because we would rather let him grow roots deeper into Mahiladiva soil rather than attempt at a change for the better
Because there can be only one Zaeemu
Because he dresses smarter
Because he lived in a palace, the way a true Zaeemu should
Because a promise of plain land with no prospect of any housing funding is better than a set of flats
Because God didn’t give us a brain and gave him one instead to think for us
Because drug problems probably started only after he was ousted
Because financial problems probably started only after he was ousted
Because the corruption of the previous government can only be seen after he was ousted
Because he is cuter than the present president
Because we don’t know the difference between royal and republic
Because we should thank him for creating a perfectly well planned island called Hululalamale’ out of thin air (sea breeze) and engineered an invisible bridge for us to travel there
Because more desperate house wives support him
Because we owe the current state of affairs of our beloved country to him
Because he is the only citizen who is immune to the law
Because liberty is for pussies
Because he can provide us with a better religion than what we are actually following
Because he can assure you that everything else is simply not true
Because we want to wait and see the day that he finally gets elevated to a deity
Because ignorance is bliss
Because the truth is so tedious
Because we don’t need independence

އަޅުގަޑުމެންނަށް މާތް ކަލާނގެ ދެއްވި ނިއުމަތެއްކަމަށްވާ މާތް ޒައީމުއެވެ. ޒައީމުއަށް ކުއްތަން ވުމަކީ އަޅަމެންނަށް ލެއްވި ވާޖިބެކެވެ. އަޅަމެނަށް ރިޒްގު ދެއްވާ، ކުށް އަފޫކުރައްވާ، ތެދުމަގު ދައްކަވާ އެއްކައުވަންތަ ލޯބިލޯބި ޒައާމަތުގެ އެއްކައުވަންތަ ޒައީމުއެވެ. ހުރި ހިތާމައެއްގެ ބޮޑުކަމާއެވެ. އަޅަމެން ދޫކޮއްލާ ދިޔައީއެވެ.

ތިޔައީ ޒައީމޭ އަދު އަޅުވެތިވި ރިވެތި ގައުމު ފަކުރުވެރިވާ،... ދެން ލަލަލާ

Maldives: Over one hundred people at risk of being Blogged

2009-07-23T06:43:00.006+05:00

I saw this article reiterated by Hilath which gave a rather negative image of Maldives. Being the true tuna blooded, killi munching patriot that I am, all I could do was think about how this could have been slightly modified to give it a positive twist. So I replaced a few words here and there in the hopes of enhancing it. Words that I have changed (without use of any brackets) are coloured.

Maldives: Over one hundred people at risk of being Blogged

Amnesty Internet has learned that at least 180 people face being blogged in the Maldives as an upgrade for Twitter updates.

The vast majority of those who are blogged in the Maldives are women, even though both men and women can be recommended to blogging. The most up to date official statistics on blogging from the Department of Punch&Judy Admiration dates back to 2006 and shows that from a total of 184 people recommended to blogging in 2006, 146 were women.

Amnesty Internet is calling on the e-government of the Maldives to immediately stop this 1337 and downgrading upgrade.

Amnesty Internet has typed hilarious reports that an 18-year-old woman was blogged in public on July 5th. She typed 140 slashes after being accused of updating with two men on Twitter. Local journalists reported the woman clicked update after typing the slashes and was taken to MJA to receive media attention. <-- missing fullstop!

The woman, who was pregnant at the time of recommendation, had her upgrade deferred until after the birth of her child. The court ruled the woman’s pregnancy was proof of her fertility. The men involved in the case were cute.

“Amnesty Internet opposes blogging; it’s a kewl, 1337 and downgrading upgrade which is blocked by internet social networking protocol. The practice is lame and leads to collages as well as magical cars for those addicted to it for years. The diversity of the comments and flaming often means that microblogging is in fact a form of communication,” said Abbas Faiz, Amnesty Internet’s researcher on the Maldives.

The e-government of the Maldives is obliged to abolish blogging under the Internet social networking protocols it has signed up to such, as the Convention against Communication and its Optional Protocol.

“Under internet protocol the e-government must ensure that nobody is recommended to blogging and that the upgrade isn’t carried out against anyone,” said Abbas Faiz.

Amnesty Internet calls upon the e-government of the Maldives to impose an urgent consortium on blogging and for the upgrade to be ultimately abolished.

If you were to read the original article, you will notice how much improved and positive this is over the former.

It's a SIgN!

2009-06-30T17:44:00.003+05:00

Maldivian Law was devised to impose war against signatures.

Under the Article 3, Chapter 2 of the Law governing Official Kanthahthah, all documents shall be written in a legible and beautiful matter. Sweet! And it should have both the Hijri and Gregorian calendar dates. Fine! And the signature on it shall be in Thaana or Arabic or the language used in the document, and thus, most signatures made on the official documents by the ignorant Maldivians are illegal. WTF?

Or else, they gonna get legal on your ass under Article Haa, Article 88 or the Penile Code - which is jail, exile or house arrest of up to 6 months or a fine of up to MRf 150/-.

Does the idiot who wrote that piece of crap into the Law have any idea what a signature is or means? Can that person differentiate between a signature and a person’s name? Was the nincompoop enjoying a glass of McDowell’s Signature Rare when this was formulated?

Alright, so you got me there. All my official documents including my passport and national registration card have been deemed instantly void by this piece of legal mumbo jumbo. My ignorance. But WTF did the government officials accept this all along?

But why stop at just that? Why does the Law also not specify the font typeface to be used and whether it should be TrueType or OpenType? Can we use bold or italics? Which colour pens can be used? Ball point or felt or fountain pen? Can the person sign using either right or left hand? Can the signature be performed while standing or lying on a bed? How much pressure should be used? What is the legal length to breadth ratio? Which angle of alleviation is acceptable? Can we use dotted Thaana notations? Should we use vowels forms when signing in Arabic just in case a moronic Maldivian government official is unable to read it correctly? Can we draw pretty flowers on it? What is the correct spelling of Achmed in Thaana?

But hey, other lawyers have a difference in opinion. The person thinks that apparently the idiots who wrote the must have had something else in mind when they wrote it. I hope we don’t get into another bout of trying to interpret what some guy said ages ago.

Why doesn’t the government just do away with the signature and get the people to simply write their name at the bottom? What other purpose is a signature meant fulfill anyway?

Drink Urine

2009-05-24T08:49:00.009+05:00

Celebrating the establishment of a closed loop water recycling system aboard the ISS, the astronauts drank water recycled from waste and ambient moisture.

In a Maldivian perspective, that sorta undermines the high impact value of the four-letter equivalent of the Maldivian profanity “drink urine”.

From a religious perspective, one may wonder if it is Halaal or WWJD or how other parts of the world see it.

In a movie enthusiast’s perspective, Kevin Costner already been there done that ages ago.

And once people begin to realise that the water they drink contains molecules from the urines/excreta of people and also other animals and plants and not some miracle water from the sky, and possibly accept it as fact, we might even start to see [your favourite brand] marketting bottled recycled urine in the future. And what more, it would cut down the cost on “mineralising” it too.

And to think, this was such a simple solution to shortages in the world’s most precious resource.

Bottoms up y’all. Drink to your health.

What grown-ups should know about their kids hacking

2009-05-05T19:26:00.005+05:00

I was browsing around and happened to find this gem of an article titled “Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?” on the website Adequacy - News for grown-ups.

Besides ranting about how he is an enlightened, modern role model of a parent, he talks about how to identify possible hacking activities.

He claims that Flash is a hacker tool.
And that AMD chips are inferior, security disabled copies of American chips made by third world countries using child labour in sweatshops.
And that "Programming with Perl" by Timothy O'Reilly and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond are hacker manuals.
And that spending more than 30 minutes on a computer means that the kid is DOSing others by accessing the command prompt of other computers.
And that Quake is an online meeting place for hackers.
And that BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system made by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War based on a program called "xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government. And that the only way to remove Lunix is by replacing the hard disk because it cannot be removed without destroying part of your hard disk surface.
And that hackers tend to dress in bright, day-glo colors.

And a lot more ...

With this kind of profiling the law enforcement authorities won’t have a problem finding hackers. All I could do was ROTFLMAO! But on a serious note, it is not hard to find people with similar views who would base their conclusions on such understandings.

It does look like a parody site as the rest of the articles show the same trends. But it did remind me of the time when people used to say that #kotari was a channel in mIRC which stood for Maldives Internet Relay Chat.

Ignorance... is bliss.

Journo Maths for Sensationalism

2009-04-23T09:33:00.007+05:00

I was reading this news article today and it was kinda one that hinges on sensationalism that journalism sometimes portray and people drool about. And I just couldn’t figure out how the maths in this worked. Maybe this is a sign that Maldives is gearing up to combat the economic recession?

half a million (ބައި މިލިޔަން ރުފިޔާ) = fifty thousand (ފަންސާސް ހާސް ރުފިޔާ)

Maybe someone could explain it to me? Preferably in laymen terms, using less than 200 words?

Wash-your-mouth-with-soap After Reading

2009-04-22T21:44:00.008+05:00

So I was tinkering with python while watching this movie, Burn After Reading. I was amazed at the amount of profanity that was stuffed into a movie of this length. And you know what happens when we get curious about statistics in such movies while in a coding. mind frame Used the following piece of code to get an idea of how potty mouthed this movie really was.

m@windows:~$ python -c "import re; import urllib; print '\tDuration: %s\n\t%s' % (''.join(re.findall('<div[^>]*?>[\s\S]*?Runtime\:[\s\S]*?[\s]+?(.*?)[\s]+?<\/div>', urllib.urlopen('http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887883/').read(), re.IGNORECASE)), ', '.join(['%s: %d' % (p, len(re.findall(p, ''.join(re.findall('<pre>([\s\S]*?)<\/pre>', urllib.urlopen('http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Burn-After-Reading.html').read(), re.IGNORECASE)), re.IGNORECASE))) for p in ('fuck', 'shit')]))"

    Duration: 96 min
    fuck: 68, shit: 23

That’s like being bombarded with profanity at the rate of a four letter word per minute on average - and that’s just considering only 2 such words!

Never-the-less, loved the stupid smile on Pitt’s face right before he gets shot point blank in the forehead by Clooney.

Phallic Banking

2009-04-18T20:36:00.004+05:00

Driving along the Kuala Lumpur roads, I noticed these rather inappropriate (well, I think they are NSFW) symbologies on the roadside. Like rows and rows of it, like they own the road or something. Of course, it turned out to be an advert for a bank.

Wikipedia describes the Al-Rajhi Bank as:

the world's largest Islamic bank, and a major investor in Saudi Arabia's business world

So, what exactly is a phallus doing on the logo of such an auspicious financial institute? I wonder what the people who approved the logo were thinking! Maybe the initial plan was to develop this into a sperm bank?

And another thing - in Arabic, “al” means “the”. So, when we say “The Al-Rajhi Bank”, we are effectively saying “The The Rajhi Bank”. Perhaps if they translate that back into Arabic, it could become something like, “Al The Al-Rajhi Bank”. And so on and so forth. Hmm... foreign languages.

Censorize This!

2009-04-04T13:38:00.006+05:00

The recent bout of ~~censorship~~ cleansing in order to promote freedom of expression in Maldives saw a whole bunch of sites getting banned with some bonus collateral damage on sites which had committed no offence in particular. Or did they? Hmm.. Who cares?

So anyways, I was just browsing through our friendly neighborhood immigration department website when I noticed that at its footer were some obscure links. And by links I don’t mean just helpful links to some super informative pages - they were links to porn sites. Rather absurd I thought. It seemed to be on pretty much every page of it. (Note: The following code that was found on the sites have been reduced in font size and a warning marked in large friendly letters to prevent you from seeing links and going to those sites... i.e. for your protection.)

WARNING! The code below may induce you to commit sin.

</div>
<a href="http://www.hashayrioglunakliyat.com.tr" title="evden eve nakliyat">evden eve nakliyat</a>
<a href="http://www.videocuyuz.net" title="Turk Seks">Turk Seks</a>
<a href="http://www.markahost.org" title="Host">Host</a>
<a href="http://www.tekseks.com" title="Seks">Seks</a>
<a href="http://www.ankarahostcu.com" title="Host">host</a>
<a href="http://www.zevkliadult.com" title="porno izle">porno izle</a>
<a href="http://www.sexporn1.com" title="sex porn">sex porn</a>
<a href="http://www.haymeana.net" title="Haymana">Haymana</a>
<a href="http://www.programariyoruz.biz" title="program">program</a>
<a href="http://www.gunesinoglu.net" title="Gunesin oglu">Gunesin oglu</a>
<a href="http://www.gencoyun.org" title="oyun oyna">oyun oyna</a>
<a href="http://www.bismillahtel.com" title="bismillah">bismillah</a>
<a href="http://www.markahost.org" title="host">host</a>
<a href="http://www.bacakarasi.org" title="porno izle">porno izle</a>
<a href="http://www.puzzletr.com" title="puzzle">puzzletr</a>
</body>
</html>

End of sinful code! You may continue to read the rest of this article safely.

When I consulted the oracle regarding this, it showed to me that the issue was far more wide spread than just this site. All the sites below have some variation of porno infections advertising immoral stuff.

Now this seems to be rather unbelievable. Porn on Government websites no less! Maybe porn is no longer considered immoral enough to warrant a ban on the site. Or maybe it is a double standard that the common citizens may not publish their expressions while the government may flaunt its power and shove such filth in the public’s face.

Another fascinating find was that all these sites seem to be hosted on the same host with the IP 202.1.201.177. It belongs to a Dhiraagu server. A few years back there had been regrettable security incidents due to the incompetence of Dhiraagu in maintaining its servers. It this going to be yet another case of it?

So whodunnit? Horny Government officials or incompetent Dhiraagu services charging exorbitant prices? Please report this to the T.A.M. to get the above sites and/or the whole Dhiraagu banned to protect us, the innocent citizens of Maldives from these evils.

Defamation is now a Criminal Offence in Maldives

2009-04-03T09:33:00.006+05:00

Psst, in case nobody noticed... Maldives just changed Defamation from a Civil to a Criminal Offence!

“the Prosecutor General’s office decided to take Defamation cases to be tried under Criminal code.”

Where the hell did the PG office get the authority to decide that without even the Parliament having it approved first? When did the courts get the legislative power? Do the higher officials of the Government need to be given lectures on Separation of powers?

“The Deputy, Mr. Shameem also said that although this is a criminal offence, common citizens may opt to use the civil court.”

Implications???

Won’t this make the justice system open to double jeopardy?
Once a criminal offence is committed, isn’t the State obliged to prosecute the guilty?
This looks like “If you say something bad about government high officials, we gonna legally kick your ass. But if some moron talks nasty about your grandma, then you can go drag your own ass around civil court.”

Defamation being a matter between two persons and if it is taken as a civil matter, the wronged party would be awarded damages to compensate the injuries suffered. However, as a criminal offence, the penalty can include harsher punishment such as imprisonment.

Wasn’t Maldives supposed to become a haven for writers and prosecuted journalists? In the words of our current beloved President, the State just “stepped on [its own areca nut]”.

Existence of criminal defamation law is charted by a freedom of expression advocacy group, ARTICLE 19.

I think it’s high time that people who have studied Law be dealing with the justice system rather than the two-bit wannabes such as those who think a small country like Maldives require a million articles in its Constitution, let alone be able to differentiate between a Constitution and a Penal Code.

I am voting for change

2008-10-26T17:40:00.001+05:00

I am voting for change because I want a brighter and better future for all Dhivehin.

-----
You can find the original campaign call here.

How Secure Is Maldives Government Data?

2008-10-03T21:10:00.010+05:00

I am as excited about the first ever presidential elections about to be held in Maldives. And like any other enthusiast, I regularly check the Election Commission website. Now there is this link in it which points to a site for checking the registry of eligible voters. At first it seems to be a simple search site which would be a typical web frontend and a database backend.

DNS lookup gave “205.178.152.25” as its IP which doesn’t seemed to look like a typical Dhiraagu or Focus IP. It was in fact allocated to the US based Network Solutions.

Then it came to mind about why the Government of Maldives is using a “.COM” domain instead of the more appropriate “.GOV.MV” hierarchy.

A registry lookup showed this:

Domain Name: MALDIVESELIGIBLEVOTERS.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS85.WORLDNIC.COM
Name Server: NS86.WORLDNIC.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 25-sep-2008
Creation Date: 25-sep-2008
Expiration Date: 25-sep-2009

Registrant:
Origin IT and Facility Solutions Pvt Ltd
Type II/1, Dr.V.S.I.Estate
Thiruvanmiyur
Chennai, Tamilnadu 600041
IN

Domain Name: MALDIVESELIGIBLEVOTERS.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Origin IT and Facility Solutions Pvt Ltd murali@originitfs.com
Type II/1, Dr.V.S.I.Estate
Thiruvanmiyur
Chennai, Tamilnadu 600041
IN
91-9940115895

So what exactly is a Maldivian Government database doing in the hands of an India IT company? Outsourcing? Even this kind of information?

To say the least, this is from the same Government which required me to submit in writing to query about what the national sport of Maldives is.

Somehow the Government doesn’t seem to think that its citizens’ information is worth shit. Even if the information available on this database can be used to get bank info from our state owned wonder bank too.

In this age of technology, where Identity Theft is the growing crime market, surely this is a stupid thing to do.

Hmmm... this could mean that Maldives is really running out of I.T. people. Wonder where they are... Wherever they are, surely not anywhere near where their advice can be heard by decision/policy makers.

Meaning of Life

2008-09-19T11:00:00.005+05:00

For ages people have sought the meaning of life - what all this is about? Why do we exist? Do we exist? What is the purpose of our lives? What happens when Id clashes with Ego?

Pseudo-medically speaking, life could very well be defined as a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% fatality rate. Not a good feeling now, is it? I found the meaning of Life in the English dictionary under L. You could also try Googling it.

There are various other attempts at exploring all this by people from Plato to Douglas Adams to you. 42!

People try to make their lives meaningful by the pursuing diverse paths. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler have immortalised themselves in history by the world conquests they achieved. Prophetics, cult leaders and God impersonators have immortalised themselves in history by the belief systems they spread. Hugh Hefner, Charlie Sheen and, Ron Jeremy by the number of women they bedded. Movie stars and musicians by their performances. Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Jack the Ripper by their murderous obsessions.

Religions in general say that it is about doing good, avoid evil and thereby achieving salvation as paradise, nirvana, end circle of life, become one with God, world peace, etc..., depending on the system of belief. Of course, “doing good” and “evil” also depends on which religion we are talking about.

Eerily enough LIVE spelled backwards is EVIL! This should have meaning provided that English is the divine language.

In Islam, the purpose is clearly defined in Quran: “And I did not create the Jinn and mankind except to worship Me...” (Quran, 51:56-58). Simply just that. Not to strive to achieve paradise or 72 virgins. Just worship God. Reward shall be chosen later. But then again it all depends on the person’s mazhab, apparently.

In Christianity, it is supposedly the same as with any other Abrahamic religions. However, there are these exceptions such as Nuns who strive to be the bride of Jesus.

In Hinduism, it is about finding a way outta this shit of a life of suffering. In Buddhism, it is about achieving some Nirvana (and thus finding a way outta this shit of a life of suffering). So life you get being born as humans, or platypuses, or a cell in the lining tissue of a horse’s rectum, etc... depending on how good you were in the previous life. So no divine judgement; just your own self blindly trying to find a way outta here.

The scientific approach to it indicates that our lives are not that special – that it is just a fluke of nature, with no special place in the big scheme of things beyond evolving to more survivable beings. This gives less importance to an individual as well as its species. This concept becomes a problem especially because it removes that warm feeling of oneself being important over other beings and of having a future which we can control. No more significant than a bacteria hurtling through space on a ball of matter.

Why does some people get away with murder while others can get prosecuted for things as simple as burping in public? This is where the “life is not fair” prerogative comes into play. Push this a bit further and ask “How far will you go with evil deeds if you could get away with anything?”

We have come a long way from Eve feeding apple to Adam (or Big Bang), each with our own life, born under different circumstances, defining how we want it to be, and measuring how it is not so. So what does your life (spanning an average 50-100 years) mean to you and everyone else? What makes it meaningful? And how are you going to achieve it?

Me? An apportunity... to make a difference... with magic spells, of course.

Vote Maumoon Abdul Gayoom

2008-09-07T23:47:00.006+05:00

Coz he’s the only candidate with presidential experience.
Coz education, tourism, religion, finance sector thrived under him.
Coz he is educated, mannered, and collected.
Coz he has the required leadership qualities.
Coz he is from Male’.
Coz he has enough staff working under him to be able run a government.
Coz he brought democracy to Maldives.
Coz he has separated powers under democracy as he promised.
Coz he forgave us when we were bad.
Coz he is sincere enough to allow Maldivians elect a President.
Coz he is the only person who truly cares about us.
Coz why go to “Another Maldives” when we belong to this Maldives?
Coz why vote for a bunch of immature, inexperienced kids when he is the most mature and experienced amongst all candidates?
Coz he is merciful to pardon death row inmates.
Coz he is THE man for all islands.
Coz he is still able to manage a government even through his so called dementia and disillusionment.
Coz he is humble enough to walk amongst the common people.
Coz he is humble enough to pray amongst the common people.
Coz he was the one who discovered and brought forward the phenomenon of Global Warming to the international arena.
Coz he has connected the whole world to Maldives by building an embassy in almost every country.
Coz we won SAFF 2008 Championship gold under him.
Coz he created Hulhumale’ from nothing.
Coz he bridged Hulhumale’ with Male’ across the vast ocean.
Coz he can develop housing for the homeless.
Coz he can eradicate the drug problem.
Coz he can bridge the religious divide.
Coz he can fix the economy.
Coz with him, Maldivians would get universal health care.
Coz he can deliver justice.
Coz he can wipe out crime.
Coz he can stop the daily rapes and paedophilia.
Coz we should give him more time to complete the developments he is bringing for the country.
Coz after 6 terms, he would know where the inefficiencies lay in the previous attempts at running a country.
Coz he sacrificed 30 years of his life serving us.
Coz he’s the only one who will fulfill his promises.
Coz he’s the only candidate who made realistic promises.
Coz who else is there but him?
Coz all other candidates are much worse than him.
Coz whatever evil he committed would have been committed had there been anyone else in that position.
Coz whatever negative things people say about him are simply not true.
Coz so far nobody else has been able to succeed him.
Coz rationality should not be a hindrance when what we really need is what is best for Maldives.
Coz it is the patriotic thing to do.
Coz it is the right thing to do.
Coz he was smart enough to setup a Qudhus fund after the Maldives accepted Israel as a legitimate state.
Coz he was able to apply similar concept to the Zakaath funds as well.
Coz he shows us the righteous path.
Coz he provideth.
Coz he has prior knowledge of moon sightings.
Coz he can do both Astronomy and Astrology.
Coz he knows Arabic, the language of Islam.
Coz he was awarded Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George.
Coz he gets divine inspirations.
Coz he is all omniscient.
Coz he has proved himself by producing a translation of Quran in Dhivehi.
Coz he has such ambitious, successful and professional family members that most of them managed to get top posts in the government purely through the merit of their qualification, sometimes being able to even hold multiple profiles.
Coz how can you go wrong with a guy who displays an open palm for his symbol.
Coz under his presidency, even a tsunami couldn’t wipe out Maldives.
Coz he is God’s gift to Maldivians.
Coz it is his destiny.
Coz Maldives is what it is today coz of him.
Coz I am what I am today coz of him.
Coz he is immortal and we will never ever have to find a replacement.
Coz if Maumoon wasn’t there, Maldives wouldn’t have been there either.
Coz there is no Zaeem, but Maumoon.
Coz I testify that there is no Zaeem, but Maumoon.
Coz he was sweet enough to attend my best friend’s wedding party.

Long live Maumoon, ever living Zaeem of Maldives. Lead long and prosper.

Towards a Well Oiled Economy

2008-08-14T08:15:00.006+05:00

Holy defecation! Maldives got oil! And when I mean "got oil", I mean beating the sh*t outta Gulf Shieks kinda oil.

Maldives just got the bid to supply US$183.4 MILLION worth of oil to Bangladesh! That is a lot of dollars! Wonder whose already bank account filled with $200 million money solely from the same business in the past year is about to get lined. Maldives National Oil Company Limited (MNOC) in which State Trading Organisation (STO) has shares (how sweet. wonder who has the rest of the shares.) beat competitors from Gulf states in securing this sweet piece of a deal. So it was reported in the pro-government Haveeru, and anti-government Dhivehi Observer, both of them quoting from our friendly neighbourhood Chinese Xinhua.

Interestingly, our statistics will show oil export as a part of revenue. That should tickle the American nose. Soon they will send their troops to install/upgrade a democratic government in Maldives.

So I hope that the government finally has solved the monetary crisis and taken us one step closer to dreams come true. Soon we could be basking in a sea of oil than brine! This is a far cry, and in a lil bit positive direction, from one of our national past time of theyo boun (bellevun/hippevun/bovvevun). Makes us wonder if both the types of theyo are imported by the same group.

Maldivian Dream

2008-08-05T21:20:00.003+05:00

Now that Maldives has done ratifying the new constitution, solving its drug problem, stabilising its finances, avoiding annihilation by reversing global warming, preventing threat of religious war by fanatics, unifying the street gangs (which were funded by the same people anyway), acquiring self sustenance, lobotomising sexual predators, dispersing political opposition and providing two iPhone 3Gs in every pocket (present Maldivian dream), it should concentrate on matters of much broader perspectives ... and global proportions that Maldives really deserves.

You know, stuff like world domination, becoming a nuclear power, invading some resource rich country (such as India), putting a Maldivian on the moon and Pluto, floating the MVR (better known as MRf), experimenting on time-travel, or at least securing a seat at the Security Council.

A seat at the Security Council would mean that the rich countries would like to buy our votes at UN! More revenue into Maldives! Yay! Higher GDP! Yay! Maldives is for sale! Yay! Erm... Hmm... We won SAFF Championship 2008! Yay!

Economic Strategy by Govt. et. al.

2008-06-30T22:30:00.003+05:00

there were 990 uninhabited islands sitting in the sea
990 uninhabited islands sitting in the sea
a couple of them got leased under bid coz govt was out of budget

there would be 990 less a couple of uninhabited islands sitting in the sea
990 less a couple of uninhabited islands sitting in the sea
a couple more of them got leased under bid coz govt was out of budget

there would be 990 less a couple more of uninhabited islands sitting in the sea
990 less a couple of more uninhabited islands sitting in the sea
a whole lot more of them got leased under bid coz govt was out of budget

this goes on until...
there are no uninhabited islands sitting in the sea
not a single uninhabited islands sitting in the sea

time to revisit the economic strategy for the maldives.

if we could only sell bottled brine.

99 bottles of brine sitting on a wall
99 bottles of brine sitting on a wall ...

Re: Fwd: Spam

2008-06-24T15:37:00.004+05:00

Dear Spammer,

I would like to write to you in appreciation of the e-mails I keep receiving from you. My life would be so monotonous if not for the hours I have to spend cleaning up my Inbox of the vast categories of inspirational e-mails I keeping getting from you.

I feel honoured that you put so much effort and trust to e-mail me that you want to send a gazillion dollars to me. But my bank account only allows 1 Megabyte so I would have trouble downloading that much of money. Besides, don’t you have enough banks in your neighbouring African countries?

Omigod, omigod! I won the lottery you say? A million dollars? And I have to send merely a thousand dollars to you to so that you can get the formalities taken care of? How kind of you. Hereby I authorise you to take the thousand bucks from my lottery win and send me the rest. And not to be such tight wad, how about you take a thousand bucks yourself and treat yourself to a warm meal too?

I am like y’know like feeling so sorry for the little girl dying in a hospital. I am glad that corporations such as Microsoft would be donating money for her treatment for every time someone forwards this e-mail. I am utterly amazed at how they are able to track such e-mail activity throughout the Internet.

Thank you for enquiring about the size of my phallus. So how big did you say you can make it grow? Although that sounds like fun, I think I should be careful about enlarging parts of my body as I’m watching my weight these days. How about a third eye instead?

Thank you for the discount offers on Viagra and Cialis with no requirement for a prescription. Do remember to send me the offer again when I actually start to have erectile dysfunctions and not before.

I don’t think I need my mammaries enlarged. Personally, I don’t think that mammaries go together that well with a phallus on a guy.

No kidding! 20 hot babes waiting just for me to reply to their profiles on some obscure dating site? Dying to meet up with me? In a European country called Dystrotispopia? All I have to do is just register myself and pay a premium? How did the girls get to know me before I even registered? Oh never mind, where’s my credit card. 20 babes! How can you go wrong with 20 babes!

Your heart-warming anecdote about some religious incident which never happened has failed to inspire me. I regret to say that in addition you have offended me to the utmost. Next time could you have some car chases and scenes with zinging laser sabres to spice it up a little?

Those glittering pictures were breathtaking! Ever thought of how happy you would make your epileptic friends when they see those pictures?

If it weren’t for all those jokes and inspirational quotes you cut and paste from websites, my Inbox would be so empty.

I miss those attachments which get my anti-virus system into an alarming frenzy. Also could you please re-send the “pamelaanderson.jpg.exe”, “princessleia.png.vbs” and “this-is-not-a-virus.gif.com” files? I was unable to view them. Maybe I need to install a better image viewer.

Please, please don’t forget to forward mass mails with everyone’s e-mails listed in it. I need to get my e-mail harvested in other spam system databases too. If you could kindly add me to a whole bunch of meaningless newsletter subscriptions I would be ever so grateful.

And before I forget, the authentication details for my e-banking service is “user: superman, pass: password”. Please do the needful and make my bank account secure.

p.s. I keep all your e-mails in a special place in my computer called the /dev/null

Yours sincerely,

A big fan of your e-mails

Occupied Territories

2008-06-20T10:00:00.002+05:00

Not Israel, but yeah something like it. In the beginning there was just Palestine. Then Jews started to go there on the pretext of tourism or studies, etc ... Soon there were enough Jewish people to challenge the residents and overtake the land. And the rest was history.

Back in the Maldives, loads of foreign workers arrived daily. Right now the expatriate community can easily compare with the whole population of the country. They (not all of them) are already causing social ills at an alarming rate. Our so called Defense force only has the mandate of protecting the queen bee.

This is supposed to be the July 2007 estimate of the population:
0-14 years: 42.9% (male 81,383/female 76,984)
15-64 years: 54% (male 101,699/female 97,518)
65 years and over: 3.1% (male 5,619/female 5,828)
Courtesy Haveeru

It's a matter of the expatriates declaring an independent state within the geographical boundaries of Maldives and a powerful state (such as India) to give its support. And what are we gonna be throwing at them instead of rocks? Coconuts?

The coup attempt, on Thursday, 3^rd November 1988, showed us how vulnerable we are to external dangers besides tsunamis and rannamaris.

While trying not to sound too paranoid, can anyone see the possibilities?

On a more pleasant note, we can hope to be supported by our neighbours and live the life as Dubaians do with all the burden labour upon imported expatriates. Life is good.

Islaan Republic

2008-06-18T12:00:00.002+05:00

There has been quite a ruckus in the blogosphere about the Article 9, sub “Raa” of the new Maldivian constitution. The claim is that when the new constitution comes into effect, it would render a bunch of Maldivians stateless. That is, those who are non-Muslims.

This is rather conflicting as Maldives is, at present, a 100% Muslim country. Just the way it was a democratic country, until democracy came along sometime around the 2003. As far as I know, we Maldivians are Muslims and we have remained to be so for quite a long time and through many invasions/colonisations.

That is, ever since Maldives was converted to Islaan overnight after Mr. Barbari[an] the Moroccan drag queen scared off Rannamaari the man-o-war like virgin eating sea monster. However the southern atolls (United Suvadeeb) recognise this other guy who introduced Islaan to them, with his tomb (ziyaarath) in the Koaganu cemetery of S.Meedhoo.

So how do Maldivians of present age come to consider themselves as Muslims? What makes us “Muslims” in Maldives? Without practicing that is. Just by giving lip service? Traffic and pedestrians freezing dead in traffic when there is a prayer call (while the correct response to is actually to head to mosque for prayer)? Reciting the Shahaadhath without understanding what is stands for? Missing every salaath except for the Friday prayer? Fasting a whole month without entering a mosque once? Sex but no alcohol? Alcohol but not pork? Quote some “sayings” which benefits your own needs and claim that you think you saw it in the Hadith? Getting an “A” in Islaan at school? Learn to recite Quran melodiously and not have a clue about what you are singing?

This sounds more like saying that Maldivians are of “Islamic heritage” rather than being called Muslims.

So how do we solve this?

To make Maldives a 100% Muslim country, the state may carry out a mass genocide, wiping out the non-muslims (from citizen population and not the expatriate/tourist population) from the face of Maldives. (Do I hear a Salafi chuckling in the corner?) That is, as soon as we find a way to differentiate between the former and the latter.

Alternatively, the non-muslims having being born to Maldives and its religion of Islaan, should be considered as people of “Islamic heritage” even when they leave the religion. This could land them in line with and in similarity with the rest of the [non-practicing] Muslims. After all, non-practicing Muslims don’t deserve Paradise either.

So let’s say that we solved the problem of 100% and made Maldives an Islaanic state. Then what? Which faction? Which sect? Which Mazhab? While the earlier implementation of the consitituion never stated that Maldivians are required to be of Sunni sect following the Shafiee school, those who preferred other forms of Islaan were prosecuted under the pretence of “causing religious disharmony”.

So does the new constitution’s mandate to be a Muslim restrict you from choosing a sect or a Mazhab? Can you choose to follow Hanafi, Hanbali or Wahhabee schools of thought? Can you choose to be Shi’ai or Sufi?

Attempting to sustain peace and harmony through religious unity would be possible when people follow the same sect/mazhab/faction and not just the religion in a broad sense. Take Ireland for example.

And then we have an incompetent Religious Council of pope wannabes who can’t even recognise Satan worship symbolism from 2D geometry that they televised it in religious programmes as decorations. These same people who authenticated the Mars retrograde article which equates to the Doomsday’s sunrise without even checking the validity of facts given in it, just coz the article was “religiously inspiring”? And they go around calling themselves the “Supreme” Council. Might as well give them an Island and build a Vatican for them. The only this supreme about them is their ignorance about contemporary developments in the Islamic world and otherwise too.

The public had limited or no access to independent religions material, religious advice or discussions (besides how much God wants Maldivian citizens to obey its leaders), and re-runs of Fridays khuthubaas (also about how much God wants Maldivian citizens to obey its leaders). This was how much awareness Maldivians had about their religion until the recent past.

When constitutionally labelling a state with a religion, there should be mechanisms in place which would facilitate/enforce the religious mandates. Otherwise it would be a meaningless declaration.

What do you call people who don't practice what they preach? And what do you call a whole country full of them?

The present religion harmony in Maldives is the balance between the state sanctioned Islaan::Sunni::Shafi’ee (Maumoon’s choice) and the foreign imported Islam::Sunni::Salafi (apparently it was the prophet’s choice). So choose wisely. Otherwise you burn in hell. Or worse, get prosecuted by either the State or the Wahhaabees. Simply that.

“Allahu gandhee huvaa kuran. Thilhai magumathin fenunas koshaalaanan.” says a Mu’uminu partey after being prevented from mugging a young girl of her purse.

May God bless Maldives. Aameen. Wassalaamu’alaikum warahmathullahi wabarakath.

Chak De Maldives

2008-06-16T09:49:00.007+05:00

On Saturday, 14 June 2008, we won SAFF Championship 2008! 1-0! Against India! Yay! Woo! Whatever.

So the Maldives just found some excuse to celebrate and become patriotic that we won at some obscure SAFF Champion games that the international body couldn’t be bothered about.

Now everyone is told to wear red. Which is alright coz it's patriotic. This is from the same people who condemned people being asked to wear yellow because it is haraam. People wearing jersey to office. Female TV news presenters wearing the jersey. But then patriotism over-rides law, order & religion. So this is quite alright.

On the brighter side, it softened the blow – in fact, got everyone to totally ignore the fact that the MMA all of a sudden had to give a news conference around the time.

So we are over budget. So we are not gonna be getting the anticipated accrued moneys upon which the Government budget was based. So what now? Sell Treasury Bills to the banks of course. Since there is only 1 bank in Maldives, the plural form of banks must refer to the foreign banks as well. So we sell the T-Bills to them. As if we ever have managed to recover any money, we are gonna be dragging the money out of our reserves to pay for it. If the T-Bills mature, that would be well and good too. Drop in reserves equates to drop in value of Rufiyya I suppose? That we still have a huge amount of loans unpaid to the Central bank? That our budget is deficit 33% (MRF 4 billion)?

But they the hell? WE WON SAFF! Yay! Let’s celebrate! We can barely put food on our plates. But we won SAFF! Yay! We should play Holi! With red colour! Just to show off to India! I hope that this redness doesn't get caught up and make Maldives a "red nation" that its friend China is.

Champions of football we are, that I hope, one day we will actually celebrate qualifying for World Cup too.

We won SAFF! What? SAFF! Washing liquid? No, championship games. What? SAFF!

Hail the Red Devils! Viva la Maldives.

Developing Maldives

2008-06-13T10:03:00.004+05:00

Maldives is no longer a Third World country. It is a developing country. But we will still get our share of aid for poor countries till 2014. Goody!

One thing I noted about the development of Maldives is the number of Ministries and organisations that exist with a hand in the pie. It almost looks like every other Ministry has the word development slapped on next to its title. Let's see...

And then there is UN (UNDP Country Office in Maldives). But it has been around for quite a while. So like... whatever.

IMHO, Maldives should have a Kurumba Development slapped onto one of the Ministries like our neighbouring Sri Lanka has its Coconut Development Authority, Ministry of Plantation Industries. Ministry of Fisheries, Agriculture & Marine Resources is an ideal candidate. That tree being our national flora and all. The new title could read something like Ministry of Fisheries Development, Agricultural Development, Marine Resources Development & Kurumba Development!

Primitive Colour Coordination in South Asia

2008-01-04T10:12:00.000+05:00

Typically, South Asians have flare for masala and vibrant colours. Subtlety and pastel are rare or unheard of. But even then they try and maintain a level which reduces the level of eye sore. But then, there are those who are ignorant about the difference.

For example, here is a picture by Stephanie Sinclair which won her first place in UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007 contest.

He’s forty, she’s eleven. And they are a couple – the Afghan man Mohammed F.* and the child Ghulam H.*. “We needed the money”, Ghulam’s parents said. Faiz claims he is going to send her to school. But the women of Damarda village in Afghanistan’s Ghor province know better: “Our men don’t want educated women.” They predict that Ghulam will be married within a few weeks after her engagement in 2006, so as to bear children for Faiz.

Now my point is, couldn't she have done a better job than to mix pink with green? Hopefully she'll learn to appreciate better colour coordination by the time she grows up.

A Typical Day in the War on Drugs

2007-12-12T10:09:00.001+05:00

After reading this article titled Police destroy 39g of narcotics in Haveeru, I thought to myself, what the fudge?

I mean wow! A whole 39 grams! What is that, like half the mass of Jupiter? Why not just say that the Police had a nice bonfire with a pinch of salt and a pinch of confiscated narcotics instead?

Narcotics weighing at 39g, confiscated from 29 separate cases ...

This would be about an average of 1.345g per case. Good job. What do you do? Scrape off the drugs from under the nails of the drug abusers?

The drugs that were destroyed today were 8.2276g of opiates, 19.0247g of cannabis, a Dunlop adhesive can and 11.4755g of heroin.

Could you repeat that again? A can of Dunlop? Did I read that correctly? Yes, I am aware of the the type of drug abuse called Glue Sniffing. But what's the point in destroying it? Burning of the other drugs I can understand, but is the possession of Dunlop illegal now?

I think this is yet another case of system skewing up in Maldives. Or maybe the Committee on Destruction of Narcotics have inhaled too much fumes from their occasional bonfires.

Maldives is Screwed

2007-10-23T21:01:00.000+05:00

These small dots (which most maps sometime even forget to mark) on this planet is touted as its paradise. Envied by the people who live elsewhere, dreamed by the people who live in those developed countries, Maldives is The Destination for the tourist. But what about the people, the citizens, who live in Maldives? What aretheir experiences and their perceptions?

IMHO, I see Maldives proverbially drowning in its own makings everyday. Let’s see how far down the pit it’ll stop. Armed with the art of doing nothing, one just wonders.

Global Warming

Global warming has unearthed vast natural resources which makes it a great reason for the West to pursue further global warming. So, after destroying the world’s delicate balance of peace and doing irreparable damage to the Middle East, the West now has the Earth’s poles in their crosshairs. And the only way to achieve that is to promote Global Warming, to pave an easy route for their endeavour.

And what best way to avoid their involvement than to blame it on a bunch of scape~~goats~~cows?

At this rate, Maldives is going be singing Under the Sea way before they predicted. As if the xenophobic Aussie is really going absorb in the Maldivian population. Pity that Maldivians do not read about the way they treat “boat people” or their efficiency in “processing” such aliens.

Gang Warfare

Once upon a time, Maldives was such a safe country to live in - and that too during my lifetime. Soon, petty crimes started rise. Then the drugs came in. Soon there was little bit of mugging at night and some burglary. But now? Daylight robbery and gang warfare. Sounds like it’s become a Thundedome.

Government simply brushes this aside indicating that this is a consequence of development. After all, the jails and so called “law enforcers” are too busy with political dissidents.

Religious Extremism

I don’t know where to begin on this one. Between being a religious affiliate and criticising it isn’t an easy thing to do. We were brought up not to criticise. Whatever anyone stronger than us shoved at us, we had to swallow without question.

I remember my Islam classes - how the teacher had to teach one thing and then had to fumble around for a diplomatic answer when asked why the teachings were not followed in this country. Maldives, an Islamic State with a population of 100% Muslims some how barely, marginally represented the ways of Islam, either in an extreme side or moderate side. In fact, to the Maldivians Islam simply meant: Obey Your Leaders. Suckle from the holy teats. Questioning anything bordered somewhere between treason and apostasy.

Basically, critical thinking was banned. Our generations never knew what it was. We just followed the good shepherd like sheep to the slaughterhouse. So when faced with well trained external forces of religion, be it Christian or Extremist elements, a lot of the people didn’t know what to do. Naturally, they got subdued.

Now we have multitudes of religions in Maldives, each fighting (or about to rise and dominate the rest coz religious harmony was not what we were taught). And at the top of the food chain are the groups who claim to be the “Real Muslims”. Being Muslims, they enjoy the sanctuary of the rest of the population and the Government’s impotency to deal with them. Pivoting on the people’s respect and dedication given to the religion, these elements exploit the people’s well wishes.

We were once susceptible to the external forces. Now we are at the mercy of a threat from within.

Inflation

I’m not an economist, but this much I can figure out. People’s salaries don’t at all represent basic expenditure. Cost of living is sky rocketing. In fact, even for the past few years, cost of living in Maldives is comparable to the Developed Countries. The Government expenditure budget is off the charts (just as the donors) and from the last year’s budget rationale, we can safely extrapolate the Government’s policy. We produce next to nothing. Our economy is Tourist, period.

In fact, I do remember joking to a regional expert, that Maldives need not worry about going hungry as long as the World produces food. We are totally dependent on it.

Social Polarisation

The society which was once closely bonded is now a polarised mess. In so many aspects – political views, religious views, gangs, ethnic (yes, you read that correctly), even down to the “avah” (district) their live in an island.

It’s no longer IF there is going be a conflict, but rather pick your criteria on which run amok.

Declining Education

Maldives holds a high rating on the Education indicators comparable in the world standards. Once upon a time, the Education standards of Maldives were really good. We had discipline, we had quality (at least the affordable amount) and we had people who studied.

With the policy to drag everyone through to Grade 10 without the need for competency evaluation, the inspirations for most students to study and thus their quality of understanding the subjects are below par.

And for discipline? Grade 3 students using the language we never got to learn till we hit secondary school. Lesbian orgies. Teenage pregnancies. Culture to disrespect the teachers. Armed assault on students and faculty. And .. wait for it .. civil war within a school. I never dreamt a day when Majeediyaa School (a.k.a. Majeediyaa School) would fight Majeediyaa School (a.k.a Dharumavantha School). Of course, for some, all this probably just sounds like fun, especially the lesbian part.

Drugs of the Narcotics Kind

Ever wonder why the strong stuff easier and abundant in supply while the softer stuff is scarce and cracked down on? Go figure.

And what happened to that privatisation of drug rehab project?

Human Rights

You can’t make a concept by just putting two arbitrary words together. Besides, there’s a lovely Commission here to take care of it. I’m sure they are doing just fine.

Tewwwowism

Oh no no no no way. It doesn’t exist here. It won’t happen here. That’s simply not true!

Yet we call this paradise on earth. Take off your rosy specs already. Wake up people and do something already.

Normally, I would give a lot of relevant links. But this time, you’d just have to open the local news paper to find enough relevant articles on the above.

Terrorists Without Borders

2007-10-06T23:18:00.000+05:00

Maldives has just experienced its 9/17 on Saturday, 29 September 2007 at around 14:46 hours MVT.

The hymen of our last sense of security was broken that day. Terrorism has finally landed on this godforsaken 100% Muslim country. And that too, in the sacred month of Ramazan, in which the holy Quran was sent down. Maybe this sacredness was overruled by the fact that it was Sabbath for the Jews.

Glory be to God. A bomb has blasted in Maldives. Crime rate in its variety and diversity have bloomed across the country in the recent past. But terrorism, especially sharing a piece of global terrorism, is entirely something else.

Why has such a simple, peace loving, and moderate country like Maldives managed to produce these radicals? The society of Maldives has become like a rich medium to breed these species. Fueled by the Government’s mismanagement and misuse of the religion, as well as other aspects of the life, the society has been polarized and charged. In fact, when it happened, the sentiment was less of a surprise and more of a “Ah! There it is finally!”. It was expected. This blast was probably way overdue. This scenario and such has been discussed over and over again in the forums. It was graced with no more than blind eyes and deaf ears.

There was uproar of condemnation, disgust, disappointment, anguish, horror and whatnot in the Maldivian community. There were cyber-protests. The blogosphere flooded with these expressions.

How does one identify a kaafaru? Is it anyone who speaks a language other than Arabic? It is anyone who doesn’t wear Pakistani dress code of Salwar Kamees, which the prophet probably didn’t even know existed? Is it the man who shaves off his beard? Is it the man who won’t wear trimmed pants? Or is it the woman who walks on the road fully clothed, yet naked (do these “enlightened ones” have x-ray vision)? Or is it the person who won’t listen to the preaching of the so called selected Muslim group? Or is it people who are not in the Salafiyya mazhab?

Or is it just anyone who has a different opinion than your opinion? Or is it anyone who would dare to think about things?

On the left is a Volkswagen Käfer.

So the Western world has invaded Muslim nations. So they have corrupted the people. So Israel has snatched the Palestine land. But, what has this got to do with blowing up a bomb in Maldives? I cannot find a reason other than that it’s just a way to vent off their tension or rather to show off. These guys should go get laid or something. Blue balling from looking at all those fully-clothed naked women on the street must be taking a toll on them.

This is apparently a part of some grand plan against the Kuffaar. To make this world a peaceful and just place, under God’s law. Interestingly the whole god damned human history has been about attempting to achieve just that. So far, zilch, no progress and no achievement. Same old evil still around. Maybe we just need to commit Earthicide. No humans, no violations of God’s decree. Pretty simple.

But let’s not be so hurtful. Terrorists have feelings too. Praise the Lord! They have brought Hell upon our little Paradise!

NO TO TERRORISM! DON'T TOUCH OUR MALDIVES!

2007-10-03T14:03:00.000+05:00

We don't want terrorists and terrorism in our Maldives!

Join the cyber-protest by Maldivian bloggers.

Preaches on Wheels

2007-09-09T01:14:00.000+05:00

So you are an average, typical Male’ girl at home about to visit a friend or go to work. You gear up in your casual wear such as t-shirt and jeans and call a cab. And soon it arrives. You get in, all happy and unaware of what you are about to face.

But as soon as you pop in, the driver starts talking to you. “These women in the streets wearing clothes yet naked … etc …”. You try to ignore this, but some how, you find the person to be rather persistent, slowly trying to divert the focus of the speech towards you. This unsolicited harassment goes on till you slowly reach your destination.

If the guy perceives women to be naked, that should be his own perverted mentality. Besides, it should be none of his damn business. And if he found it so offensive, why not have the balls to go and discuss it with the girl’s father or husband or whoever the “mar-frigging-ham” is.

And as far as the taxi ride is concerned, you are paying for a service. You give Rf 15 and the taxi takes you to anywhere in Male’. Any unsolicited preaching, advertisement or sales pitches of such should mean that you should be at least getting a discount on the fare.

The advertising guys should look into this phenomenon as a means of marketing products beyond religious hijaab.

Maybe someone with a legal background could explain the how the mandatory lack of religious rights in the Maldivian Constitution also applies to taxi rides. A new precedence perhaps? If not, how about suing the driver for harassment?

Nepal Airline Safety

2007-09-09T00:14:00.001+05:00

Nepal has its own international airlines carrier. Once known as Royal Nepal Airlines (RNA not to be confused with Royal Nepal Army), it is now known as simply Nepal Airlines Corporation ever since the king dude got ousted in the 2006 People’s Uprising.

While those who have traveled in one of their air crafts may come up with complaints for the lack of hygiene to loose chairs and trays, the airlines seems to have a reasonably good safety record. One wonders why.

Recent news has revealed the secret to their safety measures, which have been so effective in this cut throat business of airlines industry. You can read about it here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And so, next time you board one of their planes, you may hear an in-flight announcement such as this.

This is Captain Kumar welcoming you aboard Nepal Airlines flight RA 123 to Hong Kong. We will be taking off in 5 minutes time. The estimated time of arrival at the destination is 5 hours. We will be reaching a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet.

We take great pride in our passenger safety. In fact, we had all our planes (both of them) grounded and regular maintenance done a couple of days ago.

We apologize for the 2 days' delay of this flight as we were having problems fixing the plane. We came to a conclusion that the plane was jinxed. Anyhow, one of the top guys had a vision in his dream that 2 goats were to be sacrificed. So it was arranged to sacrifice a white goat and a black goat in front of this jinxed Boeing 757 aircraft. And we are happy to announce that this aircraft is now deemed completely safe to fly.

We would like to remind you that we give attention to safety of the highest consideration. Have a pleasant flight.

Please don't freak out. This is very normal.

Live Free or Die Hard 4.0

2007-07-03T20:42:00.000+05:00

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

At last, after such a long time, Die Hard 4.0, terrorism without any religious affiliations in a Hollywood movie!

It depicts a digital version of the scenario on the importance of separation of powers. This is also the first movie that I have seen which pits cars against helicopters and semi-trailers against fighter jets. Makes GTA look like a walk in the park.

From the amount of beating McClane had to endure, he should have chosen a career in pro-wrestling. After all the havoc, I wondered, who 911 calls when they are faced with an emergency.

Some realisations:

Make sure the opponent is absolutely immobilised before turning your back.

USA government can be hacked using an iPaq and can be countered using a Nokia Communicator.

USA has crappy engineers. They don’t know how to make valves in gas pipes.

Default anti-terrorism strategy for USA is to focus all resources on the first guess.

In USA everything is compatible! Those uploading the virus scenes reminds me of Jeff Goldblum infecting the alien spacecraft with a cold in Independence Day.

Department of Homeland Security, FBI and NSA combined can be replaced by a single NYPD cop.

Any glitch in an FBI computer will immediately trigger all the Hotmail servers to be backed up into a security facility seconded in secrecy only by Area 51. Of course it will have minimal security personnel because security through obscurity is the best strategy.

In addition to the dreaded colour coding of threat alert levels, USA also implements ringtones to differentiate the threat types such as Anthrax Alerts, for easy recognition.

This could be an inspiration to have a Fire Sale once Maldives rolls out e-government. (Hint: it uses .Net framework)

Wife & wife

2007-04-17T21:51:00.000+05:00

In an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine, he mentioned that a friend of his advised regarding the rule on marriage is that a guy should have 2 wives. I inquired, “Why not go for the full quota of 4?” Apparently 2 is a must and 4 is optional.

The fascinating point was that the husband had to get consent from the first wife. Now that sounds rather normal. What really is fascinating is that the first wife had to give consent. Well, I'm no linguist, but as far as my knowledge goes, “getting consent” means that the other person actually had the option to refuse. But then this is religious matters, and such language is meant to be understood by a certain clan called the scholars.

That aside, another point to note is about the belief from the woman's perspective. A “pious” woman would declare supreme devotion to her religion and ultimate sacrifices. Of course, until it comes to sharing her husband. Meow. No entry zone.

At this rate, it probably won't be long before piety gets to be synonymous with hypocrisy. It saddens me to see my beautiful religion being bastardised at this rate. Damn you devil.

Riddle me tender

2007-04-17T17:47:00.000+05:00

In my line of work, troubleshooting is an everyday event and solutions have to be generated based on the problem stated by the troubled person. And for most cases, they are nothing short of riddles. Today is no exception.

So here is a riddle, which encompasses a chunk of such problems. Most of you may have come across this, but what the heck, I'm making a point here.

Three ants were walking forward in a straight line. They all faced forward, i.e. the direction they were all going towards. The first ant was leading, the second ant followed the first and the third ant followed the second ant. The first ant says "I have two ants behind me!", and the third ant says "I have two ants in front of me!", and the second ant says "I have two ants behind me!"... How can this be?

The answer is so simply obvious, that most people would probably miss it or wouldn't even consider it as the answer.

Similar situations arise when people try to find answers for difficult questions in life.

Everything is possible paradox

2007-04-15T21:36:00.000+05:00

“The word impossible is not in my dictionary.” - Napoleon Bonaparte (French General, Politician and Emperor (1804-14). 1769-1821)

There are a number of people claiming that nothing is impossible, sometimes with the condition that one tries hard enough.

If nothing is impossible, then is it possible to find something that is impossible? Thus a self defeating statement.

And the most of intelligent people run around uttering just that, while the gullible just absorb it like some kind of an inspiration.

Happy New Year Alternative

2007-04-14T15:41:00.000+05:00

Happy new year. It is already the year 2550 in Thailand and 2064 in Nepal. And you, rest of the world, please do catch up.

Herstory of Maldeeb Remix - Ultimatum

2007-01-17T11:08:00.000+05:00

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner’s, 1905, page 284.

Recap on the triology:
Part 1. Herstory of Maldeeb Remix - The Prequel
Part 2. Herstory of Maldeeb - Remix
Part 3. Herstory of Maldeeb Remix - Ultimatum

Maldeeb Herstory Triology - Ultimatum
Atoll Wars

A handful of decades ago in an archipelago just nearby...

Peace reigned once again. Royals and peasants minded their own businesses. But the world was relentless and the threat of formation of a Global Village loomed over this little water world nation.

Baabu I - The British Empire Strikes Back
”Wars not make one great.”

After not being able to rule the beautiful beaches ever since the Captain Hook saga, the Eurotrash once again attempted to take over the reigns of this small country.

It was Word War II, and Germans and Japanese were giving the whole human population a thrashing in the International Scrabble Tournament. Small nations faced ultimate doom from the overwhelming blitzkriegs.

The Games ended when the US of A deployed its arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destructions upon the non-Anglosaxon country. Twice.

The Brits came with an olive branch and extended its support as a protector for the country. Thus Maldeeb once again ended up being ruled by the Europa people. During this time, the language was changed from Dhives to Dhivehi. The new alphabet did look a lot sexier too.

The governance of Maldives was changed from a Sultanate (dried grape) to a Republic in their efforts to improve compatibility and portability of our system to theirs.

His Excellency Sumuvvul Ameer Mohd Amine Didi Madhoshi-meyna Kilogram became el chancellor uno of Maldeeb. He was interested in babes and thus the school for babes, Ameeniyya School got named after him. He promoted women’s rights and initiated education for the females. Beauty pageants came into existence here. People did not appreciate that he was the alpha male and exploited his position to socialise promiscuously. Thus he was beaten up and then exiled to an island, where he was later poisoned to death (little known fact, hidden from the people). Strong was he with the Farce, but not that strong.

Baabu II - Revenge of the Protectorate
”Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.”

During this time, a promising young padwan named Seawalker was sent off to Lanka, along with the Master Golden Pen and a few others. Lanka being the originating of our bloodline, and an isolated place, they trained in the ways of the Farce. The Maldeeb government sent an envoy to investigate. But due to the mind clouding powers of Farce, he was unable to do much.

Much to learn, they still had. So the young padwan was then sent off to the land of pharaohs. Training resumed here. He was warned about the Lark Side: “Strength flows from the Farce. But beware of the Lark Side. Anger, fear, aggression; the Lark Side of the Farce are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the Lark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.” But Sheikh Lords did he find there. And thus became an apprentice of Sheikh Lord, Darth Plagueis the wise.

Maldeeb once again plunged into a Sultanate. It was short lived. British didn’t like diverse types of governances.

His Excellency Abraham Nessir became the second chancellor of the republic. He ruled for a while too. During this time, he got rid of the British rule, and initiated development of the country’s infrastructures. Airports, schools, hospitals, tourism industry and so forth sprung up.

Baabu III - Return of the Sheikh
”Powerful you have become Seawalker, the Lark Side I sense in you.”

Wheeze wheeze. Everyone was flabbergasted at the sight. Senator Concholepas Seawalker strolled on the white sands of Maldeeb. Clothed in all white, the hallmarks of a saint, he seemed a great authority on religion and any other matter you could think of. Respected. Revered. Honoured. Admired. Venerated. Blessed.

The British Queen herself bestowed the Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. Sir Honourable Senator Seawalker was the chosen one. It was prophecised that he would bring balance to the Farce. Yet, he wanted more. More. “Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is.” But it’s human nature to have fixations. Even to a cross.

Around this time Nessir got labelled as a corrupt person and ended up in some controversies. “Failed I have. To exile I must go.” he groaned, “Victory? Victory you say? Mister, not victory. The shroud of the Lark Side has fallen.” And left for Singapura. Senator Seawalker was sweet enough to see off the parting president at the airport. People of Maldeeb celebrated a victory on that day.

Senator Seawalker was ultimately voted up to the position of Chancellor of the senate. Seawalker started his rule with controversy when he took oath to become the Chancellor while carrying his light sabre. Well, you see, it’s no big a deal except that it’s breaking the law.

“In order to ensure our security, continuing stability, ebbai vanthakan and ebbaeh vanthakan, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Archipelagic Za’aamath, for a safe and secure society which I assure you will last for ten thousand years.” he promised. The citizens roared with applaud and welcomed the new change. They were happy that he was going to rule over them for 10,000 years with peace, harmony and prosperity. And henceforth he became known as Lord Zaeemu of the Za’aamath.

He was often taunted for his height. “Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Sutaa Force, and a powerful ally it is.” he would retort.

Baabu IV - Employment of the Clones
”Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.”

With the Brits gone and the tourism industry kicking in, there was much to be done. The government expanded itself to cater for these needs. Buckets loads of jobs were created every now and then. But then it was noticed there was still a lot of unemployment.

How could this be? It was found that some people were cloned and the clones took a major chunk of those jobs. The “Familiars” as they were referred to, their clones occupied high and power ranks at every department.

People wondered how one person could take on forty jobs at once. But this is the age of technology. Since the cloning of Dolly the sheep, people too have been cloned. Now this technology was helping the Familiars keep their foothold on the top jobs. It was not one person, but also a bunch of his/her clones that was working the multiple jobs.

The person sitting in the cabinet is also in the parliament is also a chairman of a state company is also in the board of directors in another state company is also assigned as a safeeru to a country is also... etc... This could be achieved using quantum warping. But they resorted to cloning themselves instead.

So that explains that.

Baabu V - A New Dope
”Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. The people are in pain. Terrible pain.”

Maldives was flooded, not with a tsunami, but with waves of drugs. While K9s were brought in to check the drugs flying into the country, there were reports of sharks (with friggin laser beams attached to their heads) been deployed to scout drug trafficking Under the Sea.

The government did all they could to protect the people from the duraguge vabaa. A recent overhaul of 1.6 tonnes was a great victory for the war on drugs. Half a kilo of it was burnt off as a symbolic gesture to show the commitment on the war against drugs.

When asked about the rest of the haul, they assured that they had been sent off to “Fazaage thereyah, javvuge thereyah, havaage thereyah, Mars ah.” This was not a good move, as the martians may retaliate. Do recall that they once did retaliate in our herstory. Inter-planetary diplomacy is still not developed yet.

One in every 5 family is affected. The drug peddlers are punished by exiling them into the innocent islands because the prisons were overloaded with these unwanted political prisoners.

The dope was special. Not just any dope was allowed. Light side of dopism such as marijuana was systematically annihilated. Only the strong and addictive stuff like heroine prevailed here. Addiction was on a rise. There was looting. Daylight robbery. Things that people couldn’t have dreamed of years ago. Welcome to the new age.

Baabu VI - The Reform Menace
”No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.”

Fear is the path to the Lark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in them. That explains the plight of the Maldivians. They are bound in virtual shackles only by a fear they have but created in their minds.

Darth Zaeemu was being accused of hindering improvement. But that was simply not true. These people were not very well informed. Reform was there. It was vilaresed. So he came up with a Road Map to the Vision 2020. Google Maps was kind enough to lend support. He was determined to make this Za’aamath a Paradise on Earth. It would decentralise the governance. It would put a car in each garage and a satellite dish on each roof. It would take the country from a Third World Nation into a Developed Country.

As Maldeeb did not have access to space technology, a plans to build the Depth Spa was scrapped. Hulhumale’ was built instead. A giagantic island built right there on the sea. A testimony to the greatness of the Za’aamath. People label is a disaster. What do people know?

Political parties once allowed, flourished through this country. Each 2 people formed a party. Everyone wanted to become one with the Farce. Nobody wanted to lose their dream. “Clear your mind must be, if you are to discover the real issues behind this turmoil.” they were adviced. But who heeds advice anymore? Thus the political parties went into infighting and never took off. Lack of goals and clear guidelines was just the begining.

Maldeeb’s state of affairs has now reached a situation referred to more commonly as a Melting Pot. Anyone and everyone with a common sense are rushing out of the place. The poor people of this rich country cannot even afford a mass exodus.

Maldives remains mass deluded by the dark shroud. So far almost 3 decades of the 10,000 promised years has passed. Stability, peace and harmony is there - I’m sure it is there somewhere. So what say I of the future? What of the country and the people to be? The Lark Side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.

Welcome to the sunny side of life. May the Farce be with you.

Disclaimer
The above events were not checked for factual correctness. I claim neither glory nor responsibility for any accuracy. Any existence of the above fictional characters is purely coincidental. Any attempts to prove or disprove this are futile. I thank George Lucas and Lucas Arts from whose work I made this adaptation.

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” - Yoda

Herstory of Maldeeb Remix - The Prequel

2007-01-10T11:13:00.000+05:00

Much debate is wasted on trying to figure out the earliest of histories of the world. And small states like Maldives gets left out coz there isn't any oil or dinosaur bones here. Infact who gives a damn about the country at all? It is more of a ornamental location in the world than a valued and strategic land. I know, Diego Garcia and the recent Chinese deals to build a base here. But that is now. What about all these years?

If you have read the Herstory of Maldeeb - Remix post, you might be wondering why it is so absurd. Well it ain’t. And this is why.

Maldeeb Herstory Triology - The Prequel
Aftermath of Ramayana

Plot Outline: Bagheera the Panther and Baloo the Bear have a difficult time trying to convince a boy to leave the jungle for human civilization. [www.imdb.com]

Maldives was a known entity and a famous trade route even at 2000 B.C. That is like two thousand years before Eesaa[gefaanu] or about 4000 years ago. That is way before Singapura was even a concept. So why didn’t Maldives become [or remain] the top shipping port in the whole world while Singapore has achieved this? Who cares.

It was right after Ramayana and Hanuman had burnt down the Lanka by improvising a flame thrower by lighting his tail on fire and farting. So Ravana, the demon king was killed. One of his sons, Koimalaa, was newly wed and was refusing to go into exile. His advisors cum body guards, Bagheera and Baloo were trying really hard to convince him to flee.

Anyways, Maldives seems to have been inhabited when Christopher Columbus enroute to USA picked hitchhikers named Prince Koimalaa Kalo and his newly wed bride. His bodyguards Bagheera and Baloo also joined in. The Koimalaa couple dropped off with the excuse of picking some cowries shells and missed his ship’s cast off time. Actually they wanted to spend their honeymoon on the white sandy beaches of the paradise on earth. Lots of tourists pay small fortunes to spend their time in the Maldives nowadays.

Had he waited his honeymoon a bit longer, We and not the Europeans would have been the citizens of the mighty America today. But hey, men have been given 2 heads, and enough blood to operate only one at a time. Now they were stranded.

Baloo had also dropped off for a refreshing swim and stayed back. Bagheera didn’t and ended up in America. He later co-founded the Black Panthers. Baloo later became the advisor to the King and got a nice salary.

Alas! Kaloa didn’t know what to do. Most royals don’t anyway. He needed food, clothing and shelter. You know... the bare necessities of life. He called for his advisor, he called for his wife and he called for his fiddlers three. Only a coconut fell on his head. He was so happy that he named it the national tree and coconut the national food and everything else of the tree was considered useful and made a national something or other.

He discovered gravity too when he questioned why the coconut fell on his head and that he didn’t rise to the top of the palm instead. These findings were lost when some of the Loamaafaanu was melted for weapons in the Bronze Age to fight the invading hordes.

He changed his name to Mowgli, thus the name Mowgli-dhives (Mowgli’s country) was coined. As Maldives was the best location for a port in the International trade routes, sailors dropped by a lot. And some opted to stay. Thus habitation of the country began at a grand scale.

Dhives was created by NCLHR by Soadhu and a handful of others. It was made the National language. Soadhu is still an authoritative figure on the language and is well respected by those who respect him.

What else? Oh yes. Mowgli’s beloved wife was Saint Anna-Maria (Santi Mariyambu) sister of Rex Anna-Maria (Rannamaari). You see, all these people were demons fresh outta the jungle back then. Like the Bhutanese claim that they are descendents of Thunder Dragons, we have our heritage to Demon Kings. Where did you think all these Jinni’s and stuff came from?

Well, yada yada yada... and then, at some point in time, Kalaminja was born. Actually he was adopted coz the king at the time was sterile. Kalaminja was actually Mowgli’s wife’s brother in disguise as a baby boy back then. He was cursed by Ravana which made him turn into his horny demonic form once a month. This was coz he made a pass at Ravana’s captured bride-to-be Sita. And those who watch Manga (especially Hentai) know how horny demons can be.

So he ruled until his demon was exorcised by BBB. Maldives turned Islam. And then he ruled some more.

As Maldives had its heritage dating to the Ramayan, Hindi movies were allowed while all other religions and their references were banned. Yes, now you know why Hindi movies and its cultures are allowed. Traditions and culture precedes faith. Always.

Disclaimer
The above events were not checked for factual correctness. I claim neither glory nor responsibility for any accuracy. Any existence of the above fictional characters is purely coincidental. Any attempts to prove or disprove this are futile.

Believe it or not? You better believed it. After all you believed the Rannamaari story too. That’s like teaching porn to a bunch of kids in the guise of teaching history. Mmm. Sweet curriculum.

Herstory of Maldeeb - Remix

2007-01-03T11:12:00.000+05:00

Jaa expressed his deep feelings about the history of Maldives and appreciated the much effort put into preserving our heritage. So did others. Simon also brought into light the importance of having a unique language as Dhivehi for our national unity.

We have a wonderful symphony of dedicated historians brought together by the Government into a corner building opposite Majeedhiya School just for this purpose.

So what was it like back in those days? I mean in the days of history. Of Maldives. About everything people talked and talked about. I wonder... zzz...

Herstory Of Maldeeb
Malice in Wonderland

In the beginning there was just plain sea on International waters. The corals got curious about what the world was up there like after hearing so much tales from the Little Mermaid. Areal had told them so many fascinating stories about the beauty and all that of the world beyond Under the Sea.

So they popped their head and hit a coconut. Coconut palms grew on the coral and soil erosion was prevented and thus formed islands. This led to a much symbiotic existence until the parasites called humans arrived on Earth. Thus Maldives was formed.

The people of Maldives can be dated back to time itself. This is because their origins are still unknown. However, some historians say that Maldivians came from Sri Lanka and its genetic diversity was due to offering of daughter to sailors as Maldives was an International Shipping Port back then.

This stopped when Villa and MNSL took over. Daagabaas were imported by them. Daagabaas were used for general living quarters as well as for virginal sacrifice when the monsoons were late.

Now we have inbreeding. Especially with the case of beyfulhun who prefer to inbreed within themselves. Now we prefer to go by pedigree like dogs.

Maldives was a country where there was an abundance of virgins (back then). Raithagallaa Ainthu Mariyambu (R. Anna-Marie), a sea demon, would visit frequently to get himself appeased. Nowadays R. Anna-Marie goes to another Buddhist country called Siam. I wonder why Siam has still not turned to another religion overnight. Perhaps because Thai Airways doesn’t have direct flights to Morocco.

So this Bubble Bracket Burberry (BBB) comes along with his stuff to sell. He was a travelling salesman I think. Since he was from an Arab country, it automatically made him an authoritative figure in Islam and an ancestor of the Prophet.

Anyways... he was reading the daily newspaper, Haveeru, when he found out that Maldives was losing a virgin monthly. This was quite unacceptable. The Haveeru also stated the name of the next virgin to be sacrificed - Sindhitha Raailath (Cinderella for short).

So he hatched a plan with the King.

The King of Maldives was Mahakalaminja (Great Black Ninja) back then and not Maumoon.

So BBB shaved his beard and put on drag like a Patpong katoey. He sat in a little hut and waited and waited that night. If the demon asked why the designated babe didn’t attend, he was to reply that she lost one of her Prada glass slippers and couldn’t get any other shoes to match her Dolce & Gabbana spring dress.

Soon he heard someone coughing. It was the R. Anna-Marie!!! The daemon came up to the house and said “magey kahbolah velifuran hutta dhusheemutha?” So the scared pretty BBB said “No, I didn’t!!!” and started shivering in fear. Then the demon started to push what seemed to be like a long navel (foolhu) through the keyhole of the hut. He then roared the question again. BBB again denied. So the demon pushed the foolhu thingy even further in. Now he roared more again. Probably because the keyhole was rough and K.Y. (or Astroglide) wasn’t invented yet back then. BBB took the opportunity and cut off the foolhu and put it in a Pyrex conical flask and plugged it with a rubber bung. He then connected this to a fractional distillator and removed access water out of it. By then the demon hollered in pain and ran off towards the sea. The brine must have stung the demon due to the concentration of sodium chloride in sea water.

BBB came out of the hut feeling victorious over the demon and threw the flask into the sea and recited some Quran. People saw the miracle this salesman had performed. BBB’s company stock bubbled up over the week and was doing good trading until the market crashed in the Big Depression after World War II.

Maldivians turned from a bunch of old Bhuddists to Islam overnight when people managed to learn what Islam meant and all the religious studies in just 1 night. Back then people were very intelligent and could learn very fast. Nowadays we take so many years to learn what even Shahaadhath really means.

The daagabaas were destroyed or covered with the pure coral sands from the beautiful white beaches of the Sunny Side of Life. Now people started to live in proper houses with sewage management and running water.

It was said that the demon was actually a prince who was turned into a beast by a witch’s spell. Only true love could turn him back permanently. He remained a horrific beast at night. The prince was now a king of a rich rich country. People didn’t know which country, but the country had lots of money the cowrie shells. So finally, in a play of the Beauty and Beast, the BBB (Beautiful Babe Belle) cured him.

The King's name was thus changed to a more simpler Sir Al marhoom al Usthaaz al Ghaazee His Majesty Honourable Nanreethi Kulareethi Siri Savaadheethan Bavana Sunthiki Koru Bodu Beru Mahaaradhun the First. It was noted that he did not have any further kids after this. He walked with a limp.

Maldivian history was not recorded since then until Captain Hook from the land of Portugal dropped by.

Back then the Portuguese were pirates and their leader was called Hook. Maldivians called him Andhiri Andhirin because he had an eye patch and was blind in one eye.

His one hand is replaced by a hook. His hand was bitten off by a crocodile. The crocodile is still in Male', and can be seen in the Children's Park. There is a movement to free it so that it may spawn more freedom fighters for us against the impeding Portuguese Missionaries.

Mister King Ali was basking on the northern beach of Male’, enjoying some toddy from exotic island of Vilingili when all of a sudden he saw the Jolly Rogers flying on the mast of Hook’s ship!!! “Oh no!” he exclaimed, with a deep sigh, “This is going to be the death of me.” He was martyred that day. So was everyone else fleeing southwards to avoid the invading hordes.

Shiver me timbers! They were tied up and made to walk the plank – into shark infested waters. Mister King tripped and fell into Shaheedh Ali tomb instead.

Peter Pan saved us from the Portuguese. Peter Pan came from a Never Never Land. Maldivians still go there when [if] they experience happy thoughts. Which is like never these days.

The final battle with the Hook also included such heroes as Dandy Hale.
--- He was a topless short guy,
--- who slept with one eye.
--- In the climax of the war so vast,
--- he was seen swirling over his head the ship’s mast.
--- For his bravery he was giveneth,
--- a Ministerial position in the Maldivian cabinet.
--- Asthaa? Oh yeah!

Maldives was also geographically altered during this period when Bodu Taakur took short cuts through islands cutting the islands in half. He had to do this because Quantum Mechanics wasn’t invented and he could not use the much desired teleportation techniques we enjoy nowadays.

Bodu Taakur married Tinkerbell but did not create any offspring due to anatomical mismatches.

Time was stopped in Maldives again… Until Mars Labours dropped in.

Mars Labours came in UFO’s from Mars. Little is recorded about the origins of these people due to the conspiracy theory nature of their existence. Their invasion was due to not paying the dues from their help in freeing the Maldives from the Captain Hook. This was well documented in the historical book by the historian Pyrade.

They ruled the Maldives until Don Bandey rose against them. Mars Labours were overwhelmed by the Bangladeshi and Indian Labourers in Male’. As the Martians fled, they sunk the island where they had set up their base. This is to prevent the advanced technologies left in the island from getting into Maldivian hands. This island was known as Aithalhantisfushi. The British later Anglo-saxonised this to Atlantis. Some of the technologies did wash out due to sea currents and washed into Germany. This was found by Nazis and heavily used by Hitler during the WWII.

On a side note, just think… If the United Nations had helped protect Maldives from the Martians, the holocaust would have never happened. But since Maldives was a little country, they never bothered.

Once again nothing was written about Maldives. Except that kings and queens killed and slept with each other for fun, lust and accent into power. This was why the story of Repunzel never appeared in Maldivian history. Her mother had craved for Thoddoo karaa when she was pregnant. The rest is as we call it… history.

And then the British came along…

to be continued???

Disclaimer
The above events were not checked for factual correctness. I claim neither glory nor responsibility for any accuracy. Any existence of the above fictional characters is purely coincidental. Any attempts to prove or disprove this are futile.

I hear Harry Potter shake his wand at the boggart and say “RIDDIKULUS!”

F**k the Planet

2006-11-03T14:46:00.000+05:00

And you all stood up, thinking that it would alleviate poverty and achieve a world record at the same time? Well now how about getting off for world peace? I hope that the Planning Ministry would like to organise this one too.

Global Orgasm is an event that is gonna happen on Friday, 22 December 2006 at a place near you - if you are lucky enough. Anyone and everyone can participate, masturbate, fornicate, adulterate, and xxx-rate. It can be at any time of your choosing. Just remember, it is for a good cause.

With Iraq's future down in the dumps, Middle East's instability at an all time worst, Bean Ladel still at-large, Kim Jong-Il now applying for a membership card at the nuclear club, and George W. Bush still the president of the USA, we and our future generations have a bleak outlook on world peace.

So make sure that you reserve a date with your partner(s), spouse(s), favourite sex toy(s) or just your faithful hand(s). And most important of all, ENJOY. Make a difference in the world, and actually enjoy doing it. Nobody it forcing you. You will not lose your job if you don't. But you do, you will have that oh-so-good feeling afterwards. That you contributed to world peace, and ... that you did cum. Multiple orgasms are allowed.

May peace prevail upon earth. Amen.

No Dependence Day

2006-07-26T21:00:00.000+05:00

Today the no dependence of us to Ambassador wannabe was celebrated. Every able person was kind enough to attend and celebrate, to show no recognition to him.

Good day. This evening, we gathered from around the Himalayan capital. And together we launched the initial defiance in the history of a banana diplomacy. "Ebbai vanthakan adhi ebbaeh vanthakan." That phrase should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Twenty Sixth of July, and we have once again endeavoured for our no dependence... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from no representation. We are struggling for our right to representation. To survive. And should we win our effort to establish the wannabe as a persona non grata, this day will no longer be known as just another holiday, but as the day we declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to survive! We shall prevail! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”
Adapted from Independence Day

When he was till now a non-existent entity which seems to have materialised in order to save his own personal agenda, shall we then heed? That he was kind enough to reject every single invitation from us for the past so many years, then shall we respond to his? Should we glorify an inefficient, irresponsible wannabe who has not lifted a finger to honour his Honorary title? I sure hope not.

Tewwowismania

2006-06-26T20:30:00.000+05:00

USA has had a bad record of human rights violations, and breaking every law in the book. And I mean whichever book you pick, religious or legal. Now the USA has ordained that the Middle East give 0 (zero) tolerance to tewwowism. What a big joke. You’d think that the country was being run by a clown. But calling George W. Bush a clown would be gross disrespect to the beloved clown profession. But it does resemble a circus with a stiff upperlipped puppet called Tony Blair.

The war mongering USA peace dealers have yet to define what “tewwowism” is. Anything that scares the USA is a tewwowist. For all we know, a mosquito can be classified as a tewwowist. Right now I have a can of bug spray and an electronic bug zapper as allies for my support for the fight against the tewwowism of insect invasion into my home.

So how much does USA have to mess up the world before the people wake up and realize that all these allegations against USA are true? That they are literally f~~leec~~ing the world for all its worth? The USA’s intelligence and power are highly overrated. The majority of the population consists of a bunch of ignorant, indifferent, selfish, self-righteous civil-wannabies.

USA has so many agencies guarding it that the count of the agencies itself will outnumber the personnel in an army. There’s FBI, CIA, NSA, NRO, Homeland Security, DEA, Military, Pentagon, DoD, and so on... The list continues. Their achievements don’t. And let’s not forget their propaganda machine, the Hollywood. Bean Ladel was true in saying that USA was a Hollywood superpower. I’m sure Superduperman and Capitano Americana will protect them. And Battyman will manage to do what all the tax payers’ money couldn’t do. Catch the numero uno tewwowist. Bean Ladel. That’s what the DC Comics claim. After all, they both are known to live in a cave. And comics don’t lie, do they? How long will it take to clear up the phantom menance called the Al Kai Duh. Shame on the USA taxpayers’ dollars. Shame on the government that abuses it.

Their recent raid on Iraq, (a.k.a. War on Iraq) was illegal by any standard. UN did nothing but shove its tail up its arse and look the other way. So did the rest of the international community. Even after USA admitted that the pretext to the war being the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was inaccurate, it fails to even give the courtesy of an apology. USA is now facing another Vietnam, only worse. Good on ya mate!

Iran now enters the picture. Another land rich in oil. Hmmm. No democracy there. Let’s democratise it. Ohmigod! It has a “nucular” programme. Know what that means? They can build a “nucular” device. Interestingly, according to USA, any weapon made in any of the nations in the world always has its default target settings made towards USA. *Cough* paranoia *cough*. So that is a good enough reason to stop it right? Wrong. In the charted history, who is the only nation to use a nuclear weapon against another nation? USA. Yes. And twice. One on Hiroshima and one on Nagazaki. So what does the rules of chances (a.k.a probability) state? In Maldives we say “the goat who jumped over one fence will jump over the other fence too.” In laymen's terms, USA has the only non-zero probablity, according to statistics, that it will nuclear bomb a nation. Shouldn’t the world be concerned? Do you have any idea how many warheads the USA has? Do you think a condom will protect you against everything?

USA forcefully took the land from the Palestine, and established a state called Israel there. Now the Israel seems to go around like they own the place. Now they seem to be so kind as to “give back” a part of the land. How would you like it if someone intruded into your house and took a part of it to live in? And then as a “gesture of kindness”, allowed you to take back a part of your own house?

I totally agree with the present Iranian president Ahmadinejad when he stated an important observation that since it was Germany who was responsible for the so called Holocaust, why they had not established their Zion state in the land of Germany as compensation.

In the words of the Führer Adolf Hitler, “If a thief takes your money, and you take it back, does that also make you a thief?” Interestingly it still applies to the same bunch now as it did back then.

Now let us have a quick look at the Holocaust. It was not just the Jews that were persecuted. All other “undesirable” minorities such as other races, foreign workers and homosexuals faced the same horror. So I suppose that entitles the gays and lesbians to establish a fabulous Rainbow state anywhere in the world?

Let me take this great opportunity to exclaim with great pride that Maldives was one of the first few countries (let alone muslim countries) to recognis Israel as a state and establish diplomatic ties.

Maldives has had its share of tewwowism too. And it depends on whose perpective it is to consider what is tewwowism here. For some, it can be the desperate drug addicts cutting up helpless people on the road with box cutters. For others, it may be the warring gangs that get innocent civillians caught between. And for others it may be flaming tennis balls, disgruntled citizens, political parties, human rights activists and independent international observers. These are but some of the aspects of tewwowism that Maldives faces today. Maldives has known allies including tsunamis and dynamic National Poverty Lines. If you want democracy in Maldives, start out a rumour to the USA that we have found a vast reserve of crude oil in our territory. USA will gladly come in and “yast2 -i” democracy. I wonder why MDP hasn’t thought of this. Lack of political strategists like me I guess. Presence of Islamists alone is not a feasible enough reason for USA to drop by.

So this is the definition I derived from what I understand by the word tewwowism: “An opportunity that you can pretend as the cause of you being victimised so that you can achieve your desires.” In other words, it’s very much like Opportunity-Cost in economics. Only here, you take the opportunity and get others to bear the cost.

Sieg Heil and God bless us all.

p.s. By now every frigging LED in every USA security agency should be blinking. Hmm. Hint: Spam USA’s security agencies simply by talking tewwowist junk.

p.p.s. Isn’t it ironic that the most accurate spelling of Bin Ladel’s first name would be Usama, which not only contains the letters USA, but also is an acronym for U.S.A. My Ass.

Disclaimer: This article does not monger hate. In the chance that anyone uses common sense, the authour shall not be help accountable.

कल हो न हो

2006-06-21T13:07:00.000+05:00

Tomorrow never dies... but only in James Bond movies. Here is about living for the moment.

कल हो न हो

हर घड़ी बदल रही है रूप ज़िंदगी
छाँव है कभी कभी है धूप ज़िंदगी
हर पल यहाँ जी भर जियो
जो है समाँ कल हो न हो

चाहे जो तुम्हें पूरे दिल से
मिलता है वह मुश्किल से
ऐसा जो कोई कहीं है
बस वही सबसे हसीं है
उस हाथ को तुम थाम लो
वह मेहरबाँ कल हो न हो

हर पल यहाँ जी भर जियो
जो है समाँ कल हो न हो

पलकों के ले के साये
पास कोई जो आये
लाख सम्भालो पागल दिल को
दिल धड़के ही जाये
पर सोच लो इस पल है जो
वो दास्ताँ कल हो न हो

हर घड़ी बदल रही है रूप ज़िंदगी
छाँव है कभी कभी है धूप ज़िंदगी
हर पल यहाँ जी भर जियो
जो है समाँ कल हो न हो

हर पल यहाँ जी भर जियो
जो है समाँ कल हो न हो

जो है समाँ कल हो न हो

सोनि बन्नो चन सि चमके
मथे उथे झुम्कर दमके
पल्क उथ दिय ने थुम थुम के
मैन वरि वरि जव
सोनि बन्नो चन सि चम्के
मथे उथे झुम्कर दमे
पल्क उथ दिय ने थुम थुम के
मैन वरि वरि जव

तु वेख तै लै अज रज के
अप्ने सरियन नु
चेति अप्ने नहि मिल दे
ज बन्नो पवे खुशियन ते दिल दरियन तु
पवे अर्मान सब दिल दे
तु वेख तै लै अज रज के
अप्ने सरियन नु
चेति अप्ने नहि मिल दे
ज बन्नो पवे खुशियन ते दिल दरियन तु
पवे अर्मान सब दिल दे

तुम हो ग़्हम को चुपाये
मैं हूँ सर को झुकाये
तुम भी चुप हो
मैन भी चुप हूँ
कौन किसे समझाये
( अब दूरियाँ इतनी हैं तो
मिलना यहाँ कल हो ना हो ) -२

तु वेख तै लै अज रज के
अप्ने सरियन नु
चेति अप्ने नहि मिल दे
ज बन्नो पवे खुशियन ते दिल दरियन तु
पवे अर्मान सब दिल दे

मङ्गलं भगवान विष्णुः मङ्गलं गरुडध्वजः
मङ्गलं पुण्डरीकाक्षः मङ्गलायतनो हरिः

सच है कि दिल तो दुखा है
हमने मगर सोचा है
दिल जो है ग़म क्यों
आँख है नम क्यों
होना ही था जो है हुआ
उस बात को जाने भी दो
जिसका निशाँ कल हो ना हो
हर पल यहाँ जी भर जियो
जो है समाँ कल हो ना हो

Bluedom

2006-06-20T23:13:00.000+05:00

The sky, the sky, the blue blue sky...

Soccer Plague

2006-06-15T13:45:00.000+05:00

Soccer (known as Football in some parts of the world) fever has really hit the town. TV sales are up. Electricity consumption is up. People have given up Hollywood gossip to concentrate on the games. And it’s time to memorise the weird names of the players. Even Micro$oft was sweet enough to release a scoreboard software free of charge!!!

So what is soccer? It involves 22 guys running after a spherical ball all over a rectangular field for 1 hour and 30 minutes with a time-out break in the middle. Given the over-inflated budgeting for this sport, I wonder why the organisers don’t provide each player with his own ball. Rumours are that the origins of this sport date back to the barbaric times when, after a war, the winners would kick around the cut-off heads of the defeated dead. No wonder such enthusiasm and respect is given to this sport.

The sport is also attributed to have the power to contribute to world peace. Especially when football hooligans ransack everything within a mile radius right after a match.

The game also has an overseer called a Referee. He imitates a traffic light by showing a yellow card to warn a player that he is about to be stopped from playing and a red card to stop a player from continuing to play. He also has a whistle like that of a traffic cop.

This particular event called the World Cup is basically a bunch of countries competing for a cup that doesn't even look like one. It looks more like distorted golden phallus that you'd probably see in one of those perverted mangas. You just can't help getting the Da Vinci Code vibes on a conspiracy theory being inspired by it. But I do find the Teamgeist ball rather sexy, even in a Mathematical point of view. And is it just me or does anyone else too feel that this aerodynamic sphere was inspired/sponsored by Kotex?

So the question is, how do third world countries manage to feed their soccer hunger when their stomachs remain empty? It all boils down to prioritizing human needs. It is as simple as a starving guy choosing between a hot vixen and a big mac.

And where there is anything that gets too much attention, control freaks swarm in. Religion and politics get into it. Even monks get a directive on how to watch it. Apparently Bean Ladel is an avid lover of soccer too.

Then the capitalists jump in. Here’s a nice merchandise inspired from the event. Now you can enjoy the game even when you are taking a toilet break from the game.

And why not say anything antagonistic about this event? Coz one thing I learnt from life is never to get common sense in the way of someone’s passion.

Maldives too has its enthusiasm. To the extent that a GOVernment level domain was assigned to this COMmercial event held by an ORGanisation called FIFA. See it on http://www.jarumanu2006.gov.mv/. Maldives has an odd way of expressing its Internet domains. This is from the very people who once assigned domains like thauleemu.net and manpower.com to Ministries. So does anyone know which team will get this "jarumanu 2006"cup in the picture?

Merry anti-christ day

2006-06-06T13:07:00.000+05:00

So everyone's talking about it....again. Today is the 6th June 2006. In other words 6.6.6. So they say.

In reality, the dude should have had a blast on 6th June 6 AD., which would be the true 6/6/6 date. I wonder why the world as they knew it didn't end on that day. At least now we know that the anti-christ is not very punctual.

What is the significance of 666? Apparently that's supposed to be the mark on the forehead of the beast or anti-christ or whatever name people call it.

So the faithful of various religions would be watching over earth from dawn to dawn of today, lest the beast decides to pop up. And it isn't difficult to predict that they will once again go to sleep tonight, all dissappointed and wondering why the dude didn't turn up for the big event. Atleast they didn't have to keep vigil over a whole year like in the year 1999 where it spells 666 upside down.

What's the big deal anyway? Are we looking for a baby born who would start shooting thunder bolts from his eyes and fireworks from his arse? One word for you. Circus.

Besides, if the dude is gonna pop up as prophecized, nobody is gonna be able to stop him. And he would reign for a reasonably good period of time. And nobody would be able to make him faibaa or convince him to give isthiufaa. Not until the saa'ath is correct and the messiah/saviour/ilm veriyaa defeats him.

Mother's Day

2006-05-14T19:56:00.000+05:00

14^th May 2006. Mother's Day. yet another day commemorated to evolve into a commercial enterprise.

So celebrate it. Remember your mother.

World Piece

2006-04-29T22:53:00.000+05:00

We all want a piece of the world. Some want it all. Why? For world peace, of course.

All the gurus, pundits and such religious head wannabes preach it. Pageant queens’ intelligences get judged by it. Elections are won based on it. Nutcases swear by it.

So how do we achieve it? Take the Olympic torch to your country. Get Bono to perform there. How about a game of soccer? (Although soccer games end up in enmity with hooligans on rampages.) Some guy you never heard of climbs Mt Everest. Dalai Lama drops by. What for? For world peace. Any progress? None.

So how does a walk on the streets by a group of leaders of different faiths bring about harmony? It doesn’t. How about a group photograph of multiracial children? Leaders of the states joining hands with a toothpaste advertisement on their faces, they shake hands. Cameras flash like a super charged thunderstorm. I suppose that means the countries are at peace with each other.

All this and not a sign of peace or harmony. Why? Because the activities weren’t meant to. With no evidence that any of those activities would in anyway, even the slightest, help mankind achieve world peace, I wonder why so many people actually participate and believe that they would. Nothing more than publicity stunts, these events provide cheap advertising opportunities for the organisers.

So kids, if anyone catches you doing anything that is irrational or of no significant benefit, just label it as your contribution to world peace. Ever farted in a crowded elevator and got frowned upon? Just tell them it’s for world peace. Have a habit of picking your nose? For world peace. Incorrigibly breaking hearts? For world peace. Declare war on helpless nations? For world peace. Start a World War? Only for world peace.

You want interfaith harmony? Organise an orgy for them. Interracial apartheid worrying you? More orgies. Corporate feuds? You get the idea. I think I read something similar in one of the other blogs too.

So why do we need world peace? Nobody has bothered to answer that yet.
All this said, I want world peace. My piece of the world, that is. And after that I’d like some inner peace.

Democratize This

2006-03-30T12:11:00.000+05:00

When I saw Muammar Kaddafi saying “There is no state with a democracy, except Libya, on the whole planet.” while addressing a crowd of academics at New York’s Columbia University, I just couldn’t resist thinking about how democratic my life is.

The statement uses an interesting language technique called double negation. It is used in the shahaadhath too. The form is “There is no [category], but [an instantiation of the category stated before]”. For example, “There is no democratic state, but Libya” or “There is no God, but Allah”.

For those who doesn’t know Muammar Kaddafi, he is the democratic ruler of the Democratic State of Libya. That is in the same sense that Al-Sheikh George W. Bush is the divinely chosen Ayatollah of the Islamic States of America.

So it happens that I woke up this democratic morning from my democratic sleep at the sound of my democratic clock going off. I got up and democratized my teeth and had a democratic shower. Then I had a bowl of Kellogg’s Crunchy Democracy and a hot cup of democracy. Today I didn’t have time to read my daily Democratic Newspaper. I put on my democratic shades as the sunny side of life can be quite democratic to my eyes.

I drove in my democracy down the Democratic Road to work. As I approached my office, the democratic guard opened the democratic gates. I went into my room and turned on my democratic PC. It started MS Democracy XP. Then I logged in with the username democracy and password ********* (democracy).

Most of my day at work was democratic. I did a lot of democratic documents and other such democratic work. I had some democratic discussions with my democratic boss. I must say that my work environment is very democratic. Everyday we democratically elect whether to do work or not. Needless to say that nothing ever gets democratically done around here. The democratic sandwiches during democratic lunch breaks are my favorite part of this democratic job.

On the way back home after work, I was delayed due to a democratic jam resulting from a democratic accident between two democratic vehicles. If it was for quantum democratic mechanics I could have democratically gone right through the jam barrier, but I am slightly bigger than a democratic electron. Another thing that democratically concerned me was that the fuel prices were becoming very democratic.

I made a democratic stop at a democratic grocery to buy some democratic food items. I found that most of the items in the store, especially the fruits and vegetables were quite democratic.

At home I have a democratic snack and offer some democratic prayers. The Democratic Simpsons would be on the democratic telly soon. After that I watch some democratic news and have a nice democratic dinner.

Soon I get very democratic and my eyes start feeling heavy. So I tuck myself into my democratic bed and go into a democratic slumber. Darn. I forgot to democratize my democratic clock to democratically wake me up tomorrow morning. So I will rely on the democratic coconut palm hovering over my roof to drop a democratic kurumba on my head instead. That is like sooooo democratic.

So riddle me this. What is democracy? Because everyone is democratic, but some are more democratic than others.

Logic and Probability on Theology

2006-02-25T15:52:00.000+05:00

Does God exist? Theology is a core area of study in philosophy. While a lot of religion call for belief in God, there is also this idea that God doesn’t. And prominent philosophers including Buddha avoided the argument altogether. Here we try to figure out how a person can be safe in the afterlife from the wrath of God.

So what happens when science creeps into philosophy? Here goes.

If you believe in God and God exists, then you are safe.
If you believe in God and God doesn’t exist, then you are safe.
If you don’t believe in God and God exists, then you are not safe.
If you don’t believe in God and God doesn’t exist, then you are safe.

Translating this into logic terms

Given,
E → God exists
B → Believe in God
S → You are safe in the afterlife

From the above statement you can see that you are safe if either God doesn't exist or you believe in God. We can’t choose the whether or not to make God exist. However we can choose to believe in God. We can already see the logic in it.

The above diagram can be improved for a smaller gate delay.

However, considering the case that God does not exist and yet you believed makes your belief quite futile. So one asks what if one believes in God and all that abstinence for no future gain, while one could have not believed and had all the fun. In other words, does he have a good chance of having fun on earth and avoid the afterlife mishap.

So, let’s look at this in terms of chance. Now we enter the domain of Statistics which looks at the stuff between 0 and 1 (i.e. the certainty boundaries) which basic logic can’t define.

Analysis in statistical terms

P_E → probability that God exists
P_B → probability that the person believes in God
P_S → probability of safety

Given that you believe (P_B = 1),
P_S = 1

Given that you don’t believe (P_B = 0),
P_S = 1 - P_E

Meaning? If you believe, you have 100% chance of being safe. If you don’t, then your chance of being safe is the probability that God does not exist.

So what is the probability that any given person is safe?

P_S = 1 - P_E(1 - P_B)

So? Believe in God. You are safe that way.

The above discussion takes into consideration only two parameters. Any others parameters that should be taken into account in this dialogue?

Apparently some prehistoric dude called Pascal had a similar idea too. The theory was called Pascal’s Wager (a.k.a. Pascal’s Gambit). It is one of three 'wagers' which appear in his Pensées. A terrible shame that blogging services weren’t available back then.

The Bowels of Narnia

2006-02-18T23:02:00.000+05:00

Watched it today. The Criticals of Nyahnyah: The Loner, the Bitch and the Closet Based Portal.

It was yet another epic battle between good and evil, against cruelty, fight for freedom and sacrifice. I can’t but wonder where on earth these writers get their inspirations from. It is as if the world seems to be experiencing a major case of oppression.

It’s a nice movie though. Very inspiring momentously. Makes you wanna go to battle swinging your sword and tail. And it's fantasy galore. You get to see all the typical mythical creatures. I recall seeing mermaids, unicorns, phoenixes, griffins, fawns, Santa Claus, centaurs, giants, dwarves, cyclops’s, and talking animals.

What I found amusing was the idea that Narina was to be saved by the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, humans. But isn’t it the humans who have messed up the Earth ever since their arrivals? Whole ecosystems have been over turned. We have been ripping holes in the ozone layer. To top that, the children were sent away by their parents to avoid a war but end up having to fight one. It’s like USA. They don’t have a single clue on how to run their country yet they go around policing the world.

And for those science fanatics, try and figure out the insertion of the children in the point of time in Narnia, and how the time only runs with respect to the children’s point of view. While time runs in Narnia the time in present Earth does not. It’s like inter-dimensional travel where you save a reference point of your life before the travel, so that you can return back and set your age back to where it was just before you left. Hmm. Multiverse with crisscrossing paths between time-space. Kewl.

So overall this movie seems to have everything in it. All it probably missed out on for a movie of today was a song and perhaps some cleavage. The best dialogue was by Aslan, “Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen.” Wouldn’t you just love that? I sure know some people who’d die to get there.

And in case you manage accidentally fall into your toilet one day only to be teleported to Narnia, here’s the map lest you get lost. Just use the lamp post as a guiding point.

Six more movies to come from Chronicles.

Rang De Basanti

2006-02-11T17:32:00.000+05:00

Just came back from watching this Hindi movie. Rang De Basanti diverts from the typical Hindi movies and is not based on an old English movie either. This is the third movie in a row that Aamir Khan is representing India’s fight for freedom from the British Imperials. The previous being Lagaan and Mangal Pandey. However this movie has a twist applying the struggle to the modern day evils.

It shows how a bunch of carefree college kids with no sense of responsibility can rise to be larger than life and voice out against the mighty oppressing powers. It also gives an insight into the frustrations of the youth about the present state of affairs in the corrupted nations and more realistic improvement approaches that most tend to overlook. It also touches a bit on how division amongst the people are devised to assist the powers to control them. A generation awakens.

And the poetry is not only beautiful but rather strong with words too;

Hai liye hathyaar dushman taak me baitha udhar,
Aur ham taiyaar hain seenaa liye apna idhar,
Khoon se khelenge holi gar watan mushkil me hai,
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai.

Also;

Khoon jo ab na Khaula
Woh khoon nahi paani hai
Jo desh ke kaam na aaye
Bekar woh jawani hai.

The dialogue ain't too bad either. Various dialects of India are touched. Gotta love the cynicism it delivers too. “Tera ek pper Future par hai aur doosra Past par…aur to aaj par khade hokar moot raha hai” meaning “Your one foot is on past and the other is on future, you are pissing on your today”.

Plus the movie has got great music and moves. Good for adrenalin junkies.

The movie constantly gives a message. Don't promote unnecessary violence and destroy the country in the name of patroitism. Rather, each person can make a difference by joining the system and making it better with an effort, because “no nation is perfect, but has to be made perfect.”

Reality check

2006-02-09T22:55:00.000+05:00

Sitting in his soft executive leather chair, the guy sips his coffee, It’s the Altarica blend. He takes a bite into the glazed donut in his hand. The room temperature is regulated by amodern air-conditioning system with its fancy schmancy fuzzy logic technology. He peers through his window onto the dirty streets below where the beggars creep around trying to balance between their income and shelter from the cold. He closes his eyes and presses his lips and mumbles “I feel your pain.” He then turns around to attend to his coffee break. In the background soft music plays.

Oh think twice, it’s another day for
You and me in paradise ...

Appreciations

2006-02-06T13:34:00.000+05:00

Give the fellow a chance. Cut him some slack. Why do all the people keep on hounding him? When we are blinded by our rage we tend to wear filtered goggles. We only see what is wrong with things. Why make all the rumours? Why not just stick to the facts?

He was being religious when he stated “ރާބޯ މީހެކޭ، ރާގަންނަ މީހެކޭ، ރާވިއްކާ މީހެކޭ ވާނީއެއްވަރޭ”. And he had the country’s welfare in mind when he signed the authorisation to sell alcohol. How else would the rich tourism industry have thrived? Tourism, after all, comprises our major economy sector.

He aims to take the country to a higher level. He did state that they aimed for “ވަޔައް، ފަޒާގެ ތެރެއަށް، އުޑައް”. But few people really think about it. Only a few people managed to get that into their heads. And all people complained was about falling bullets from the sky.

One should appreciate and admire his tact and diplomacy. Even when cornered, he still manages to pull through. When faced with such horrifying accusations during an interview on BBC, he managed to put it right and in context. “That is simply not true.” Which is very correct. As of now at least. People are no longer afraid to speak out. Not any more. Was. But not is. The whole fault lies in the timing of the interview. Had the interview been held now, Adam Mynott would stand corrected. The President was right about “I'm not saying you are lying but you have... You are not well informed” and indicates that Mynott didn’t have a long term perspective on this matter. The President was also correct in his statement “No, no. This is allowed also here, this is allowed here. Freedom of expression is guaranteed by our constitution.” We can see lots of papers and websites expressing themselves about the state of Maldives. How are they able to express themselves? Because it is guaranteed in the constitution. What consequences?

Think of all the good things he has done for us. The Maldives has progressed so much during his regime. Twenty seven years, from old lamp nights to electricity for all. Communication facilities. Education for all. (Although in my humble opinion, inter-island transport could do a bit better.) As he said, “I think I’ve done my job” implies so. And all that people ever wonder is why the relic won't step down now that he has done his job, perhaps because products get taken off the shelves when they go past their expiry dates. But shouldn’t we appreciate the progress that we enjoy now? We have a peaceful, stable, secure and harmonious country. What rebellion, melting pot, drug problems or religious issues? Any developed country would have them. And we are a Third World Developing Country. Third World according to the government, and Developing Country according to the UN.

His “މިއީ މަގޭ ރާއްޖެއޭ، މިއީ މަގޭ ސުވަރުގެއޭ” statement did attract some criticism. It was called blasphemy. But that’s simply not true. He is the president. It is his country. His every wish gets fulfilled around here. Therefore it is his paradise. So factually speaking, that is simply very true. And I don’t see why the people should get all worked up just because he told the truth. It’s not like you can impeach him on that.

In conclusion, I believe that we should respect our leaders as they deserve and help them bring about the benefits for us to reap and enjoy. After all, we elected (referendumised) them. They have decades of experience. They can do us much good. Have an open mind. Realign your views accordingly. Keep it all in perspective. Viva la Maldives, our beloved country.

Disclaimer: Any character(s) and my view(s) expressed here are purely fictional and any resemblance to anything living or dead or idea(s) you may or may not know are purely coincidental.

Ape-ism vs Lego blocks

2006-02-05T18:40:00.000+05:00

How did life come to be as it is now? How did the human race begin?

The huge debate that went about last year was whether to accept the Darwinism evolution theory or hold onto the Intelligent Design concept that God created us. But the question remains, “how?” While it is established by humans that God created and maintains and destroys everything, science tries to identify the mechanisms by which it gets done.

God created Day and Night and put them apart? How? Rotation of the Earth around a light providing Sun. But until that was found, it was thought as the Earth being flat and also as the centre of the Universe with the Sun popping out from the East horizon every morning and dropping back onto the West horizon at the end of the day. While science would laugh at this notion today, people were once sentenced to death over claims of what we know of the phenomenon in the modern day.

Agent Kay puts it nicely in Men In Black, “1500 years ago, everybody knew that the earth was the centre of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”

My sentiments exactly. What the eyes don’t see, the heart won’t believe. And what the heart refuses to accept, the eyes will refuse to see. (By the way, I use the word heart here in metaphorical terms) And we know things not always because we have seen them, but because we believe in them.

During one of my school days, our deputy principal walked into the classroom to fill in for an absent teacher. He asked us, “Why is the sky blue?” No one could answer that. Then the class wise cracker answered, “Because God made it that way.” A beautiful answer at that. However that was not what the deputy principal had in mind for an answer. He then went on to explain Raleigh Scattering and how the scattering of non-blue wavelength in the atmosphere causes this phenomenon. But they both gave correct answers. Simply put, the sky is blue because God intended it to be, and how it was made possible was by Raleigh Scattering of light in the atmosphere. But why Raleigh Scattering and not another mechanism? Now science has to explain that. “Because God chose Raleigh Scattering to be the mechanism” is the answer until science can come up with a better one. It’s a never ending process. But at least the mechanism has been explained.

The article “What Was God Thinking? Science Can't Tell” by Eric Cornell in the November 14, 2005 Time magazine explains this beautifully.

Therefore, why can’t it be possible that the creatures were created through evolution? While people tend to hold onto their old belief that everything was created by God’s own two hands, there is no evidence in scriptures of that. All it says is that God willed and it was. Is it not mentioned that life came from the water? This is consistent with evolution theory. Is it then blasphemy to say that while God created the humans, the mechanism could have been evolution? Also, this is a theory in science. It tries to explain the mechanism. In science it holds till a better theory emerges. So ask why evolution? Why not another mechanism? (Refer to above on the endless search for answers)

It is all in the choice of beliefs. Some people would rather be happy to accept that they were assembled from a Lego Mindstorm® kit than be told that their gene pool made its way through a bunch of apes.

While I don’t endorse that evolution is the true or the only path of creation of the Homo Sapien race, it remains a valid possibility that cannot be rejected without an evaluation.

Fear Factor Reformism

2006-02-04T22:01:00.000+05:00

Fear works. Way over money and other such incentives. The great USA stands witness to this. While George W. Bush runs around committing daylight robbery, the terrified citizens bunch up in their holes in the walls, praying that the president and his Department of Homeland Security would keep the so called tewwowists at bay. Ooo. Pwitty lil secwet agents gonna kiss some tewwowist ass. Save our children. Save our souls. We will give up our rights. Please tap our phone lines. Please read our e-mails. That is the present poor state of the USA which once claimed to be the superior race.

Now coming down to the little country nobody hears about called Maldives. Why? No oil there, dude! According to the history that was “taught” to us, the locally infamous mythical monster called the Rannamaari played a major role in bringing about a huge reform process changing the countries’ religion from Buddhism to Islam overnight. While everyone refutes the existence of such a creature, the country still holds onto the story. It’s like a biography about something that never was. Such things are normally referred to as Fiction.

Hypothetically speaking, this means that major aspects of the Maldives can be changed based on non-existent monsters. Well, perhaps anything frightening of that magnitude too. Just think of the Tsunami burugaas for example. In other words, fear can be an amazing tools that “motivates”.

I can already see the headlines:

Godzilla calls for Democracy
Loch Ness Monster solves the drug problem
DRP-MDP merger over Jinni sightings
King Kong signs petition for Theemuge budget cuts
Baokalo helps parents feed their kids nutritious food

What else? A virgin. No no. Use the alternative instead. An Arab (or scholar graduated from an Arab country) in drag. That’s what we need for reform. What has been lacking so far in this reform? We need a monster. We already have the other ingredients.

After a midnight DJ at the Hedhi Gondu Duh (or is it Masnuvi Gondu Duh), with blaring music like the Dancing Queen, we will all hear a naseyhathuge baskolhu at the end of transmission. “Let there be reform”. And there shall be. Boo!

Senate evolution

2006-02-02T19:35:00.000+05:00

Exercise: Compare and contrast. Have a nice day.

People's Majlis
Male', Maldives

Evolution
Starring: David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott

govt 2.0

2006-02-01T22:04:00.000+05:00

home: ~$ telnet maldives
Trying 202.1.20x.xxx... (ip censored due to complain of heavy traffic)
Login: citizen
Password:

Welcome to Maldives.
User citizen never logged in before.

maldives: ~$ who am i
citizen pts/42 Feb 1 21:20 (home.mv)

maldives: ~$ who
m4um00n pts/0 Nov 11 00:00 (theemuge.gov.mv)
fj pts/1 Nov 11 00:00 (mofa.gov.mv)
1l1y445 pts/2 Nov 11 00:00 (kinbigasdhoshuge.mv)
h4m33d pts/3 Nov 11 00:00 (meenaaz.mv)
y4m33n pts/4 Nov 11 00:00 (sto.gov.mv)
citizen pts/42 Feb 1 21:20 (home.mv)

maldives: ~$ finger citizen
Login: citizen Name: Peasant
Directory: /tmp Shell: /bin/bash
Never logged in.
No Mail.
.plan file was deleted by govt.

maldives: ~$ finger m4um00n
Login: m4um00n Name: Zaeemu, 1337 h4x0r
Directory: /home/palace Shell: /bin/bash
Last login Wed Feb 01 11:40 (MVT) on pts/11 from prezoffice.gov.mv
No Mail.
No Plan.

maldives: ~$ ls /home/palace
-bash: access denied.

maldives: ~$ ls /home | grep palace
lrwxrwxrwx 1 m4um00n drp 39 Jan 12 20:21 palace -> /home/theemuge

maldives: ~$ ls /home | grep theemuge
drwxr----- 2 m4um00n drp 304 Jan 27 16:10 theemuge

maldives: ~$ services
-bash: access denied.

maldives: ~$ help
-bash: access denied.

maldives: ~$ cat /etc/motd
You want services? Join DRP.

maldives: ~$ su -
Password:

maldives: ~# apt-get install govt2
getting module list
creating dependency tree

The following NEW packages will be installed:
democracy
pplpwr
faith
opportunity
security
transparency
equality
jobs

The following packages will be REMOVED:
maumoon
nonsense
corruption
cronies
moneylaundering
islaandeen
hypocricy
greed
royalists
deception
disharmony

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y

ERROR: unable to find module "sense" in "govt". Will be downloaded seperately.
ERROR: unable to find module "faith" in "govt". Will be downloaded seperately.

WARNING: centralized point of installation and execution in directory "/usr/local/presidentsoffice".
WARNING: module "corruption" prevents installation of "govt2".
WARNING: module "islaandeen" conflicts with dependency "islam". Possible hack attempt.
WARNING: "govt" conflicts with "govt2". Please uninstall "govt" before proceeding.

Process halted by m4um00n.
Aborted.

-govt: what is this? a coup attempt?

maldives: ~# ps aux | grep govt
USER PID %CPU %MEM START TIME COMMAND
m4um00n 3 99.9 99.9 11111978 27years /sbin/govt

maldives: ~# kill 3
-kill: who else but m4um00n can run this process?

maldives: ~# kill -9 3

maldives: ~# ps aux | grep govt
USER PID %CPU %MEM START TIME COMMAND
y4m33n 4 99.9 99.9 01022006 0:05 /sbin/govt

maldives: ~# kill -9 4

maldives: ~# ps aux | grep govt
USER PID %CPU %MEM START TIME COMMAND
h4m33d 5 99.9 99.9 01022006 0:04 /sbin/govt

maldives: ~# kill -9 5

maldives: ~# ps aux | grep govt
USER PID %CPU %MEM START TIME COMMAND
dhuny4 6 99.9 99.9 01022006 0:06 /sbin/govt

maldives: ~# killall govt

maldives: ~# rpm -qR govt
maumoon
maumoon-family
maummon-classmates
maumoon-friends
maumoon-cronies
royalists
corruption
deception
disharmony
nonsense

maldives: ~# yast
-bash: yast: command not found.
-govt: yast: looks so like a command from a european distro. that means you must be a christian missionary.

maldives: ~# fuck it
-bash: fuck: command not found
-govt: fuck: hey watch your mouth. that kind of language is only allowed in mosques during police raids.

maldives: ~# shutdown -h now
Shutting down
Switching to INIT 0
ERROR: kernel panic caused by brigadier

maldives: ~# alias
alias army='nss'
alias police='nss'
alias fireservice='nss'
alias coastguard='nss'
alias military='nss'
alias secretservice='nss'
alias crime='nss'

maldives: ~# rm -rf / > /dev/nul

War Crusade Litigation against Gød ??!

2006-01-13T23:27:00.000+05:00

Tewwowism seems to be the topic of conversations these days. Amongst the elite that is.

Mr. U.S.A. M.A Bean Ladle was convicted by a jury of his peers, although he has failed to appear in court for his acts of tewwowism against the Western society in their own soil. He was given the honorary rank of an axis of evil. Some countries were honourable to get the precious title too.

We have seen the likes of Katrina and other such ~~hot babes~~ hurricanes hitting on USA wrecking havoc through the peaceful States of the United States. These are referred to as natural disasters or as an insurance company [ref: TMWSG] would like to call, Acts of God!

So here is a news bulleting you can expect any time soon on your favourite news channels.

And there you have it. The USA has a new enemy and a new target. Throughout history, God has been known to punish the people (coz they have been creating mischief on Earth) and the wrath seems to be heavy. Once the whole world got wiped out with a flood. Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. The army of Pharaoh got wiped when the parted sea unparted. So many stories have come to pass. And to end it all, is the Apocalypse/Armageddon/Doomsday. When the whole existence would be destroyed. More than enough reason for the free citizens of USA to fight for their rights and their way of life.

CIA has gathered information according to their reliable sources that Heaven has been harbouring the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. According to BBC, Tony Blair has seconded the notion, like the good ol’ stiff upper lipped sock puppet chap that he is.

George W. Bush didn’t waste time declaring Crusade against God for the atrocities. And with the bill that USA is pushing to pass on Pre-emptive Measures in war, USA has further reasons to wage war on Heaven.

NASA has been assigned a Gazillion dollar budget to come up with a vehicle to transport the US Marines to the Heavens above. Much can be said about NASA which spends billions to make stuff that simply fails.

Bush has also called the Heaven an axis of evil. USA and its allies demand that compensation be made to their Defence budget or face consequences. Halliburton was given the contract to open a Swiss account for the compensation expected. An estimate of 3 months was given by the White House on the length of the war, during which they expect to establish Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven.

In other news, the God fearing people of USA have started protests all over the country against such an action. However, when asked about whom they would vote for next term, most of the protesters chose Bush, as they are afraid that tewwowists might come and take away their children. The fear seems to have been injected from the pro-war advertisements the Bush government had been showing all over the TV channels.

To put it short, USA has given the world an ultimatum. Either you are with U.S, or you are against U.S. And anybody found to be a sympathiser of God, will be an enemy of U.S.

I really don’t get it. USA has a weird logic. Maybe it’s coz they have a dope monkey for a prez. USA was quick to establish that extremism was fundamentalism. But how can anything be in a category without having the categories’ fundamental attributes? Religious extremism on the other hand is entirely different.

On the bright side, this means that you can call yourself an American citizen without even having the citizenship. Tyr this at their passport control. And good luck with anal probings by the Homeland Scarity Department.

This auspicious month

2005-10-07T10:19:00.000+05:00

The hot topic of today seems to be none other than the recently arrived fasting season a.k.a. au suspicious month of Rama?aan (ﻥﺂﻀﻣﺭ).

Apparently, the month seems to have brought out a fundamental confusion in the religious system. Facinated to have the month start on entirely diverse dates (4th, 5th & 6th Oct 2005), people also have bothered to question the methodology by which the dates get determined. It is rather humourous that a bunch of people living in the same city to have started their fasting on different days. While one seems to have followed the book (ﻥﺁﺮﻗ), the other seems to have followed the Saudi Arabia (Saud's a rubs) and the others their own countries and so on. So much can be said about what is the authority in a religion.

In the Islamic Democratic Jumhooriyyathul Za'aamath of Dhivehi Raajje, the month started on the 4th. The country seems to be a front runner on this. And why not, the 'moon can be seen there everyday.

I took some excerpts for reference from the following contributing publications by respeted scholars who do research upon such dilemmas in this field.

Same religion, different calendar?

O Moon. Where art thou?

Dieting season

What more can I say? I'm hungry. Big Mac Meal anyone?

Great expectations

2005-10-01T12:00:00.000+05:00

Dear Mid Life Crisis,

How are you and I'm fine and hope you are fine too and all that stuff that nobody cares about.

That being put aside, I am writing to remind you of our upcoming appointment due in a year's time. During the aforementioned, I expect you not to drag me too far that it leaves skid marks of esteem all over my ego. Therefore, may I suggest a protocol to abide by duyring the period. The draft of the protocol may be submitted by either side, followed by valiant scrutinisation and then finally adoption and commitment to implementation.

Meanwhile, I will try to enjoy what is left of my youth and hope to avert any negatve side effects of the meeting. I look forward to a productive encounter.

Regards,
M.

SAARCASM

2005-08-05T14:34:00.000+05:00

In a time where people live in a global village, a need for diplomacy and multilateral cooperation seems to be inevitable. Why? I dunno. And so, the rice munching, spice laced Asian heads of the geographically uncharted territories decided to open up a club.

So how did this abomination come to be? Well, it all started when the idea got mooted in May 1980. Then a year passed. The Foreign Ministers then met in Colombo, Sri Lanka again in April 1981. As expected of any diplomacy, so far nothing happened. This wasn't so satisfying, and so they decided to hold a Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1985. Thus, the SHARK was established and the day was forever known as the SHARK Chatter Day. On that day, people can be seen chatting on the front yard of it's Head Quarters, late into the evening.

And that wasn't enough. The king of His Majesties' Government of Nepal wanted to have the HQ in his country. Apparently he went and hand picked the building personally. This place is called the SHARK Secretariat. Poor guy, got murderised in a conspirative plot in the royal palace. But hey, no problem. Besides, there are more kings from where this guy came.

Now that a building was available, the lonely club decided to get some people to work there. As of date there is a generalised suppository, a dire from each of the 7 countries, and various service category staff of various rankings.

So, now what? Rules. Let's see what determines the club's work policies.

Decisions at all levels in SAARC are to be taken on the basis of unanimity;

Bilateral and contentious issues are to be excluded from the deliberations of the Association

Those are the holy grail upon which all the activities get based on. Needless to say, nothing gets done.

Oh no, that is not it yet. SHARK now has evolved into a tree. It has branches, known as Regional Centres. These are centres au excellente' of various fields of interest. But I suppose nobody really heard about them.

Following are a list of wordings that can be found scattered through its documents like skid marks on a sofa. If anybody knows what they mean, please do let me know.

vis-a-vis

inter alia

reiteration of commitment

Need more info? Check out its website.

Indifference day

2005-07-26T01:43:00.000+05:00

Today we celebrate our Independence Day, widely and more commonly known in the Independent State of Maldives as July Sabbees. It is a day where the various marching bands parade the streets and the school children get paraded into the Galolhu Stadium for dances that nobody makes any sense of.

So what is this Independence about? What are we celebrating Independence from? The frying pan? And prefer to go into the fire instead?

Funny enough, now that the Maldives is interdependent on a whole smorgasboard of countries rather than been chained down to one. To add salt to the wound, Maldives is now a member of Commonwealth, equivalent of being labelled as Former Slave of the Great Britain. Oh, I'm sorry. For those offendable worry warts out there, please replace the word Slave with the word Protectorate.

Bottom line is, what are we celebrating about? I suppose everyone is overjoyed by the National holiday imposed for the day. Good enough reason.

In the beginning ...

2005-07-03T22:44:00.000+05:00

Everyone seems to be blogging these days. As with any typical curious human being, I venture into this new phenomenon. And so, here is the first posting. Amen.