Category Archives: Rants and Raves!

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April 2, 2010

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Rants and Raves!

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Would they or wouldn’t they?

Anyone who avidly follows the various series that comes out in the US would definitely know what I am talking about. Especially those that follow the crime dramas such as Bones, Castle, The Mentalist etc would by now have a gut feeling on what exactly I am talking about here.
Out of all the dramas that I do collect and watch, the three mentioned above are those that I do watch regularly most of the time the day after they air in the US. Its not only the aspect of crime solving that leaves me coming back for more, its the character development and storyline that keeps us viewers grasping for something that will never reach fulfillment, at least not anytime in the future.

I got hooked on the series Bones because for one thing David Boreanaz is the lead actor in the series. Combined with the fact that Emily Deschanel who plays the role of Dr. Temperance Brennan, the scientist who remains sort of clueless to actual human emotions spars with Booth (David Boreanaz) on regular basis whilst Bones (Dr. Temperance) tries to convince Booth that heart is just a piece of muscle whilst Booth wants to convince Bones otherwise and added to that the story development of the various other cast members in the series makes it highly entertaining. But what keeps me and most of other Bones fanatics on tenterhooks every new freaking episode is the age old question, would they or wouldn’t they at last get together on this episode? Would this be THE episode and so on!

So far us viewers have been cheated out on this in really sneaky ways. Take for example the season finale of the last season of Bones. After watching the episode after such hype was created regarding it by the producers of the show, I was so disappointed that I felt like smashing the screen of the televison and went as far as to vowing that I wouldn’t watch the current and new season of bones. Alas, it wasn’t to be, because maybe I am just a bitch on myself? This season the story is all about how Booth surviving his brain tumor surgery, at last wants to confess of his love to Bones, but is prevented by Dr. Sweets, the FBI’s psychiatrist’s advice against it for the time being. And I let myself be tortured every single frigging episode of this season waiting in breathless anticipation for the final moment in which Booth would declare himself to Bones. Duh!!

And yes moving on to Castle, which I got hooked onto pretty quickly after watching the first episode is the next torturous element. Why do the blasted producers have to create the chemistry between two characters and not deliver on it I would never know. I have read several discussions on the topic and most agree that its because producers are mostly afraid that viewer ratings would drop once the climax of the show has reached. Others are convinced that getting the two main characters involved romantically ruins the crime solving aspect of the show and that there would be no more room for growth in the series to which I totally disagree. We have all witnessed how great the Friends series was because it had the best of endings that anyone could ever hope for. And the currently ongoing comedy The big bang theory doesn’t seem to suffer any such horrors of drops in viewer ratings just because Leonard and Penny at last got romantically involved together.

And don’t get me started on Mr. Patrick Jane (whom I continually drool upon) and Lisbon in the Mentalist. Jane is so appealing and sexy and Lisbon is the opposite of all that (which I don’t mean in a bad way) but rather that they complement each other on these levels, seem to be headed towards the same dismal storyline as well. At least Jane has his revenge and vengeance to get over before he can even bring himself to acknowledge that he is a free man. Sigh!!

But being the stubborn headed fool I am and the one who always spins romantic tales in the air or build castles or whatever it is that you build in the air, I would continue to watch every episode that comes out, bear it whilst gritting my teeth, and wait hopefully for the next episode or the next season where at last my dreams may become realized, or NOT!

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January 11, 2010

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Rants and Raves!

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BML and it’s ridiculous service policies

It has been sometime since I have wanted to close down my savings account and open up a current account under my name. So finally last week I got round to doing this on Thursday morning. Opening up a current account proved to be a smooth process. Since my VISA debit card as well as online banking accounts are all linked to the said saving account, I inquired regarding what is to be done in order to change both to my new current account. This too was taken care of once I filled out the necessary forms. The clerk then informed me that I had to go to the customer service counter and request them to transfer all my funds in the savings account to my current account and close the savings account under my name.

I headed down there and I was requested to send in a letter with my cheque book requesting all that to be done to my account. I managed to send in the letter with a friend of mine during my lunch break hour and at around 14:00 hours in the afternoon I received a call from the bank requesting that since there was a pending payment of some Rf 113.00 or so, they wouldn’t be able to transfer all my money as requested and close the savings account and that I was to come back and retrieve the letter of request that I had sent in upon their request. I was like *What the f***?*. Whoever heard of anyplace on earth that asks you to go in and retrieve a letter of request from a service provider? And the personnel who spoke on the phone managed to tell me that it was my responsibility to check whether the card centre has processed my payment and then again get back to the branch where my account was opened. I was like ugh! What kind of a service provider is BML if their customer has to toggle and communicate between two branches of its bank, and that also within this godforsaken teeny weeny island of Male’?

Upon my protests, the personnel on the telephone said she would check again on Sunday whether the transaction of the payment has been completed and let me know. So to my surprise she calls me up again today and tells me to come and collect my letter quoting that if I didn’t then the letter would just lie around meaning no one would remember to attend to it and check whether my request has been completed. What sort of shit-assed service was this I wondered and told that her that it sounded ridiculous to me that I had to call up the card center and check whether the payment has been made from my account. She replied that the card center wouldn’t let them know any information regarding payments made unless I myself made an enquiry.

Even before all this I had half the mind to move my account to some place much hassle free such as HSBC. But the thought that the convenience of paying all my bills online would be a foregone conclusion at this stage I decided to keep my account in BML regardless of the fact that people always continue to talk about the horrendous amounts of lost money and all other shitty service related stories about BML.

I believe that BML should have much sounder policies and procedures in place so that the customer doesn’t have to be the one who has to run between two separate service providers under their name and get drawn into the bureaucracy surrounding their archaic procedures. I am so pissed off with them that I can’t really be bothered to call up one branch and the next trying to find out whether they have gotten round to fulfilling an official request of mine that I made in writing. Ugh!

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December 27, 2009

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~ Depressing Thoughts To Start Off 2010..

Was going through the calendar for the year 2010 and realized that there are no frigging holidays, well holidays worth mentioning for the first 6 months of the year. Damn!! Looking forward to long weekends and the fact that Eid holidays occuring twice a year bring week long holidays are the main reasons I get through the whole year of work, work & more work. But 2010 is just the pits in this regard.

On the month of February we get a lousy one day break in the middle of some godforsaken week and the dry spell goes on till the July 26th which blessedly falls on a Monday. And the most disappointing of all is the fact that Ramazan ends on a Thursday rendering Eid Al Fitr to fall on a Friday. So us poor folks would just get Sunday off meaning a three day weekend. Yay!! So much for the silver lining.

The only month to look forward to is November. The 3rd & 11th of November together with the Eid Al Al-ha holidays falling on this month would be a month which I bet everyone would look forward to since the academic calender also ends within November. I guess everyone should start making travel plans for November since rather than taking off on a 30 day break for your annual leave where most probably you stay at home and mope or watch TV and series till your eyes are red and all cross-eyed from the effort, it is just more fun when everyone gets time off from work at the same time!

So here’s to a depressing start to a new year. Happy new year everyone! xox

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December 25, 2009

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Compassionate, Are They?

I have always held the view that nursing is a profession that is held by women and men who are compassionate to a fault with their patients. I have had it up here in my head that they perform one of the most praise worthy duties in life i.e. take care of us when we are at our most vulnerable state.

However, recently when I had to be at the hospital for a couple of days I have realized that the word compassion has to take on a new meaning if it is to be applied to the nurses working at our hospitals. I have always noticed that Indian nurses who work in the Maldives tend to be bitches, well most of them anyway and I have always had the opinion that this must be because we aren’t really of their blood and culture so who are we to receive their compassion and care eh? But then to my ultimate horror I have come to know that most Maldivian nurses aren’t that better off. I was with a patient admitted to the surgical ward, and I guess anyone would realize just how much care patients at such a ward would require without me laying it out for them. I found that people who didn’t have attendants either family or friends to be with them had a really hard time at the ward. With the nurse station just within hearing distance from the beds, nurses tended to ignore those who didn’t have the guts to go up to them and give them a piece of their mind. And to hear the pain that the patients are in just broke my heart bit by bit. No nurse saw it fit to come to the patient and show him a bit of care and compassion that eases our minds when we are sick.

It made me sick to the bone to identify this trait and wondered what had happened to the current generation of nurses that have come out. Are they being bred from a factory where they are automatically wired to just do the bare minimum to earn their paychecks at the end of each month and just leave everything else  be? I have heard my mother talk about nurses who cared for her when she underwent labor to bear each of us, and she always talked about gentle touches on the forehead, quiet words of encouragement etc. which I guess was one of the reasons why my head has been up in the clouds for quite a number of years. To the contrary, one of my colleagues who gave birth around a month back had a different story to report. Nurses were callous to the point of being rude and a time where a woman needs encouragement from her fellow beings, she found it to be something straight out of a badly plotted horror movie which tends to leave your mouth with a bad taste once you have seen it.

Right after the IGMH surgical ward experience, I flew to Bangalore and there I experienced first hand how nurses should really be. They were considerate, kind and caring while effectively giving the care necessary for the patient’s survival even when at times the patient may not really be of the most gracious behavior.

I believe that compassion and care should go hand in hand and urge people of the nursing profession in our country to give compassion a whirl sometime. They might just gain a bit of satisfaction of a job well done and received to go along with the paycheck at the end of the month.

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December 21, 2009

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My experiences, Rants and Raves!

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Nw wd u jst luk at tht!

Don’t you just hate it when people start talking ‘lyk dis’? I for one find it really tiresome trying to decipher the meaning of what the person is actually trying to convey in a jumble of words that aren’t actually words. Whether it be an sms, a Facebook wall post or MSN or Facebook status message, it just raises my hackles when I see messages worded in such a manner.

I can imagine for instance if a person is pressed short for time and the only way he can convey an urgent message is to type in as fast as possible and press the Send button. But then just doing it cause its the latest fad is somehow ripping apart the beautiful language that English is.

I guess there are various reasons why people especially the youngsters tend to massacre the English language in this fashion. One reason of course being that everyone else in their peer group does it, so who would want to be left out and be the only one who is good enough in the language to make coherent sense when a sentence is put together eh? And I guess there are others who do it cause they might not have a proper command of the language and the only way English makes sense to them is to slaughter the words into pieces so that no individual who has a thorough grasp of the language would be able to make sense out of a string of nonsense!

I recently found this group on Facebook that has around 211,805 fans approximately, who hate it when people tend to talk, text or email or Facebook in the way discussed. I guess seeing that I am not the only one who gets annoyed when people do not make much of a sense in garbled bunch of words stringed together made me write this post more than anything else!