In constant motion!

Im busssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! will b back soon with new posts. Until then, keep looking at this picture of Addu link road. Cool huh? U can get the high resolution version by clicking on the picture...Great picture for your desktop background.

Hey dude, have you got a spare phone?

Everyday, even before I have my breakfast, I come to my PC to check mails, and to see if there is anyone who’s in need of me urgently. Today added another ring to that chain. I met a close friend of me online in MSN, who is working in Malé. He is a cool charming buddy with the best of sense of humour. He never keeps me bored when I’m with him. He always had the best way to tell a story; even the most boring ones in his words are the best ones. Yes, he is smart and attractive in his attire. Hey guys don’t think I’m gay now. I just wanted to describe him.

As usual I met him online today and he asked me for a favour. Whenever a friend of me asks me for a favour, almost always it’s about a suggestion or an opinion. His favour was no different form the usual ones. The first thing he asked me was; “hey dude, have you got a spare phone?” This almost shocked me. Well not because he asked me for different kind of favour. It surprised me because he’s the kind of person who would always have a cool phone. He gets a good salary; he has no wife no kids. Neither had he a girlfriend until recently. So I was thinking that he would have saved most of his income from the job. But to my surprise he told me he’s left with nothing. He has no money to buy his phone. This really made me worry about my dear friend. When I said I have no spare phones, he sadly asked me “what shall I do now Hassan?” Yes he’s desperate, and he needs a phone. I’m writing about this not because I want to embarrass him, rather I want this to be a lesson for all of us, including myself.

How could I help him now?

Saving money has been a hard job for the youth in Malé, especially during their teenage. In fact I was one of them who didn’t know how to manage the income. But God willingly, now I have at least some degree of tolerance to live a so called “cheap” life. This problem is so common among the youth in Maldives is mainly because of the culture in Malé. Everyone loves to live a posh life. Everyone wants to dress up like movie stars. Everyone wants to have an ipod and everyone wants to have fancy mobile phone. Some one who lives has a different style is considered “uncivilised”. And also there are some challenges faced by the youth, especially guys. Girls admire those who appear smartly with most expensive motorbikes, with the most expensive costume. Most girls don’t consider the fact that, physical appearance doesn’t reveal the personality. This is a wrong attitude. Unless every one of us change this attitude, it is hard to change the current culture among the Maldivian youth.

Here is a simple balance Sheet for a typical Maldivian guy’s expenditure per month, who earns 6000 as a salary. This balance sheet was drawn based on the expenditure of some of my friends and my personal experiences. When we spend for our personal things we need to consider our income. Our target should not be using up all the money we have by the end of month. In fact it has to be saving as less as possible, in order to make the savings maximum. There are many ways we can cut down the expenditure. There are many more that we can save in a typical month. There are many things for which the expenditure could be reduced. Below is an example of how much we can save for the same salary!In fact we can save even more. We all need to think that we have a life ahead of us. The more we do now for that life, the happier with it be. So let’s save money for our future starting form now, with the intention of leading a good life.

These are just my thoughts. I’m quite sure there will be others who would have different thoughts. So why don’t you guys send your views to the “comments” box below.

“you had your way... I'll handle this my way”

Someone entering another’s premises without permission, allowed or not allowed? Obviously it is not allowed. The constitution of the Maldives strongly bans such an evil act. In fact there is strict punishment for such behaviour. But what if a police officer gets into a house without its owner’s permission? Except for very extreme cases, even the police officers need to have prior permission of the premises' owners before they enter the premises. For some people this might be an exceptional case, for me certainly not!

Well here is what im talking about; yesterday I read an article in Haveeru daily about an angry father who beat up a police officer who attempted to have s*x with her daughter in her own house, during mid-night hours. According to the news article in Haveeeru, the police guy was caught red-handed while he was trying to remove the clothing of the girl while she was asleep. Ouch! Guess what would have happened if she was your daughter and it was your house where there was an intruder? The girl’s father simply could not tolerate this, so he beat the guy up with a spanner! His right limb was fractured and he’s now in hospital for treatment. Fair enough?

This isn’t the end of the story. Now what happens to the man who beat the police officer? Will he be charged? But before we talk about what will happen to him, let’s go where this started. The police officer entered the house without the house owner’s permission! So at the beginning, he has done wrong. This is a serious offence. And this is the actual cause of the problem here. But the statement released by Maldives Police Services today stated that, “following our investigation, necessary administrative actions will be taken if he is found guilty, and his case will be passed to court for further consideration.” This statement simply doesn’t make sense for me. He was beaten up while he was inside someone’s premises without the owner’s permission, so the case should be passed for a judgement by the court, without any further investigations by the police. This makes it questionable about how this case would end up. Whether we accept it or not, I can forecast that the girl's farther will be prosecuted, for beating up the policeman and nothing will be done for the policeman.

But this is something serious. Police officers are the people who are appointed to protect us. They are the ones who should look after the citizens when they are asleep. They are the ones who should catch the people who enter the houses without permission. But now the situation sounds entirely different for me. It seems as if we need a new group of people to take care of these so-called policemen who try to intrude houses whatever the reason might be. I hope we learnt a lesson from this. Perhaps its time for me to ask you to comment on this. But before i conclude I would say that the man’s decision was wise in my point of view. Perhaps he said to the policeman, “you had your way... I'll handle this my way”

How would Muslim astronauts pray in space?

Malaysia is due to send an astronaut into space with the Russians next year. The country's first spaceman is almost certain to be a Muslim, which raises a number of practical issues. For instance, Muslims wash[ablution and/or ritual bath] before they pray but not only is water a precious commodity in space, but it is also impractical in weightlessness. Likewise, the faithful face Mecca[Qiblah]. However, that will mean pin-pointing a moving location while in zero gravity. And Muslim prayer times are linked to those of the sunrise and sunset, but in orbit the sun appears to rise and set more than a dozen times a day.

Serious discussion

Malaysia's science ministry has called together a group of experts to thrash out these and other questions. It is being billed as the first-ever serious discussion of the issues. It is in keeping with the Malaysian government's mission to promote what it calls Islam Hadhari, or civilisational Islam, which encourages Muslims to embrace education, science and technology. It will doubtless be hoping that a conference of Muslim scientists and scholars debating such cutting edge issues will not go unnoticed in the rest of the Islamic world.

Source: BBC News

The pleasure of accepting weaknes

We, human beings are born having the tendency to ignore, hide, deny and compensate personal weaknesses. However, it is not surprising that many of us have never realised this. Well, we might believe in this when we see or hear about the reality. However, we all deny the fact that we all have these mysterious qualities within ourselves. The habit of wasting time trying to get others attraction is a common and an undeniable fact. Whether we believe it or not, we all have this habit. The most familiar of all these is beatifying the physical attraction. This does not mean titivating physical appearance is unacceptable. However its consequences are considerably high when we notice that a combination of all these factors leads to be in a state of denying personal weaknesses. Or in other words it can be said as denial of accepting what we do wrong. Hence, it is worthwhile calling this as the self-defeating syndrome.

It might be impossible to find the symptoms or the cure for this disease in a medical reference book. Yet, it is not difficult to cure this disorder with effort. Almighty Allah has provided us, all the facilities and amenities we may need to live a successful life in this world. Allah has granted us the ability to think and make decisions. Using our own brain we can solve this common, yet hidden disorder. We all know that human beings are not perfect. According to psychologists a complete human being should have both positive and negative qualities, hence he/she believes in them. However, we do not truly believe in this universal fact. If we credibly accept this, certainly we will find the weakness in our own lives. We can notice them on our own. And those around use can do too. But the main dilemma among us all is not having the courage to confront this truth. We hesitate to embrace weakness.

Embracing weakness seems embarrassing for most of us. We believe it as something which leads us down among others. Nevertheless, the fact is entirely opposite. Accepting weakness among others makes the person more attractive than mere physical attraction. The person gets others respect and is treated in high dignity in the society. Like the way we accept the greatness in us we need to accept weakness, in order to be a real person. We all do mistakes, and we sometimes regret what we have done in the past. Yet, we are reluctant to apologise for them. Apologising may not undo the past. It may not erase the consequences of our mistakes. However, certainly it restores the dignity and the respect we have among others. What is better than having the feeling that we are forgiven?

We all have met people with different beliefs, people with different levels of knowledge and people of different nations. There is one similarity among us all, despite being human beings. We all aim living a successful and a stress free life. The most important factor we have ignored to achieve this is accepting weakness. Let not be among those who are ignorant of this. So let us achieve successful lives. Let us be people who accept the reality. Let us face the truth, rather than facing the bitter consequences of denying weakness. Let us all achieve the pleasure of accepting weakness, rather than drowning into the hatred of others.

Originally posted In Nine Six Zero by Hassan Ali

Search the meanings of dhivehi words!

Dhivehi dictionary (Radheef) is available for online uses at www.radheef.com. I belive this is a great work done for development of Divehi linguistics. This would have enormous impact on the quality of writing, especially by beginners. This program uses the information provided by the National Centre for Linguistic and Historic Research (NCLHR). So all praises go to the designer Technova Pvt. Ltd, and NCLHR. Click here to go to RADHEEF

However there are some of the things I found which are misleading when I used the dictionary. I have put some of them up for readers' comments;

“kaleyaa” – the meaning in Radheef says; “The way wife calls husband, or husband calls wife”

I have found this strange. I have never heard anyone calling his/her wife or husband “kaleyaa”. May be this is an old version of Dhivehi used by our ancestors. If so I might not have heard. But, why don’t the radheef says that this is a world used in old ages. Probably this might be what Shoadhube calls his wife, who knows!

Let me look at another example. “kaarisaa” is a word Maumoon uses in his speeches whenever a natural tragedy happens, whatever the meaning is. However, suprsingly Radheef has no knowledge of what this word means. Also I have noticed that some of the words used by the Dhivehi language have different meanings in some dialects of Maldives. Radheef does not give the meaning of such words in all dialects.

For example “mahaa”, means extremely noble, great..etc…However in Addu dialect “mahaa” is referred to as a single fish. Radheef does not tell the meaning of this word in Addu dialect.

These are just few examples. I found many such things which need to be edited. I hope as more and more people use the program, there will be better ideas about how the program can be edited, probably in the 2^nd edition of Radheef.

I do appreciate the work by Technova Pvt. Ltd.!

More than 10% men have some degree of colour-blindness!

Wonder how the vision of some one who is colour-blind would be? Wonder how dull it would be for someone colour-blind to see the blue sky touching the deep-blue sea at horizon, when he is standing on a white sandy-beach on a sunny day in the Maldives? Well, I'm one of them. But honestly, I don’t know the difference, simply because I haven’t experienced what others see. I knew I’m colour-blind very recently when a doctor confirmed that I am have a "partial colour-blindness". Then only I realised that it was something wrong with my eyes that always made my “flame-test” results wrong. I bought three pairs of trousers on three different occasions, which I thought were of different colours, but then later I realised all those three were green when my friend told me about it. It also made me realise why my classmates always teased me when I was a kid. The other kids found it is funny that the "stick-people" I drew had green faces. I tried my best to learn the colours, but then I found that I always confused similar colours such as green with red, or brown, blue with purple and yellow with light-green.

Now let’s look at an explanation of how colour-blindness occurs!

The perception of colour can be exhilarating and motivational. Certain colours give us information such as a red sign of traffic lights when driving. Some colours can calm us such as a room painted in light-blue. While some other colours can improve our concentration such as yellow. The perception of colours can be varied. Many men (approximately 10%) perceive colours inaccurately. The following information will help to give you a background in understanding colour vision.

There are many types of cells inside of the eye which help in colour vision. Cells which help us to perceive light can generally be divided into cones and rods. Cone cells help us to see colours and during daylight. Rod cells are generally more responsible for night-time vision.There are generally three types of cone cells. They include "red," "green," and "blue." cells. In a normal individual all three types are present. The scientific name for when we have all three receptors and normal function occurs is trichromaticity. If one type of receptor is not working properly, the condition is called anomalous trichromaticity. This person will have reduced sensitivity to some colours. For example, they might be able to perceive all except for green. It might be duller than normal. This is termed colour deficiency, not colour-blindness.

A person that has one of the three pigments missing is called a "dichromat." This means one of the three primary pigments (red, green and blue) is actually missing. This results in no perception for the missing pigment. Again this is called colour deficiency, not colour-blindness.
It is very rare to be completely colour-blind or a monochromat (sometimes called achromatopsia). Unfortunately the term colour-blindness is often wrongly used when colour vision is slightly deficient.

Click here to test your own colour vision

Every picture tells a story... Part 1

Picture: haveeruonline Cartoons

It's true that every picture tells a story. Pictures tell different stories to different people though. I've put this picture about the character "Kakkaako" published in Haveeru Daily.

Here is what it tells me:

The "man" in the picture represents the Maldivian government, the "Kakkaako" represents Mifco and finally the fishes represent the Maldivian fishermen. The Rf500 notes used as bait represent the counterfeit notes recently found in Mifco safe. Here the moral of the picture is that the government is asking Mifco to distribute the counterfeit notes to the fishermen in return of their catch. However, the chairman of Mifco doubts about whether he can do it smoothly without the people knowing the notes are bogus.

That’s simply what the picture tells me. I’m sure there will be people who derive different stories from this. So why don’t you guys tell me about the story this picture tell you...Just send your stories to my "comments" box.