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September 4, 2009

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Things I wanna share

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Newspaper Titles Do Matter!

One of my previous English teachers posted this on his facebook. I just had to post this here because I laughed so hard reading through all of this. Hope you guys enjoy as well!

1.Something went wrong in Jet crash expert says
2.Police begin campaign to run down jay-walkers
3.Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted
4.Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case
5.Survivor of Siamese Twins Joins Parents
6.Farmer Bill Dies in House
7.Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
8.Is there a Ring of Debris around Uranus
9.Stud Tires Out
10.Prostitutes Appeal to Pope
11.Panda mating fails: veterinarian takes over
12.Soviet virgin lands Short of Goal Again
13.British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands
14.Lung Cancer in Women Mushrooms
15.Eye Drops off Shelf
16.Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
17.Reagan Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead
18.Squad Helps Dog Bite victim
19.Shot Off Woman’s Leg Helps Nicklaus to 66
20.Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Axe
21.Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told
22.Miners Refuse to Work after Death
23.Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
24.Stolen Painting Found by Tree
25.Two Soviet Ships Collide, One Dies
26.Two Sisters Reunited after 18 Years in Checkout Counter
27.Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Years
28.Never Withhold Herpes Infection from Loved One
29.Drunken Drivers Paid $1000 in ’84
30.War Dims Hope for Peace
31.If Strike isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last a While
32.Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
33.Enfields Couple Slain Police Suspect homicide
34.Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
35.Deer Kill 17,000
36.Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
37.Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
38.New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
39.Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in spacecraft
40.Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
41.Chef Throws His Heart into Helping Feed Needy
42.Arson Suspect is Held in Massachusetts Fire
43.Ban On Soliciting Dead in Trotwood
45.Lansing Residents Can Drop Off Trees
46.Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
47.New Vaccine May Contain Rabies
48.Man Minus ear waives hearing
48.Deaf College opens Doors to Hearing
49.Air Head Fired
50.British Union Finds Dwarfs in Short Supply

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September 1, 2009

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Ramblings about this & that!

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Darn Windows Live Hotmail!!!

Ever since I opened up an email account in Gmail and Yahoo, I rarely use my Hotmail address. The only time that I DO use it is just to get online using the Windows Live Messenger.
When Hotmail ruled over almost all email services available back in the 90’s, I guess it was okay enough to use. But since the Live version of Hotmail was introduced, it became real cumbersome, at least for me to use. And depending on the size of the inbox allocated for each user, Hotmail’s then 25 MB didn’t even come close to the 1GB and 2GB being offered on Yahoo Mail or Google Mail. The messages seemed to take forever to load and when it did load there was some crappy advertisement that kept swishing across in a panel next to the email viewer. All in all, Windows Live Hotmail made me grit my teeth everytime I had to check my email.
And now, I believe the condition has much worsened since then. Today when I signed in on MSN, I saw that I had 300 something unread messages in my email Inbox. Since mostly junk email (which says a lot about its junk email filters!!) which I almost NEVER read through comes to my Hotmail these days, I decided that I would just mark all of the darned messages ‘Read’ and be done with it. And lo and behold, I could only manage to do that for the first couple of mail items displayed. There was no way of sorting by my unread email & that itself just pissed me off.
This reminded me of a conversation that I had with a colleague of mine at work. We were discussing the difficulties of using Hotmail as an email account, and wondering why people tend to bother with opening accounts in Hotmail. We managed to come up with our own theory that in times to come, Hotmail would diminish its email viewer panel so much and tend to give space for advertisements to rake in the ‘millions’, one day users would find the whole email viewer panel with flash advertisements, with a countdown: “You email will load in 60 seconds. Please be patient with us!”. God, commercialism and its effects on poor us!

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August 31, 2009

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Cartoon Cartooons!

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Thundercats – Ho!

Thundercats was a cartoon that was released in the US in 1985. It was a favorite amongst all kids when I was growing up. A total of 130 episodes were aired out of which few were aired on Television Maldives (TVM). But the episodes that were aired, were awaited for with barely contained impatience. I remember that back then, in every household there existed one or more Lion-O, Cheetara, Panthro, Tygra, WilyKit and a WilyKat. Snarf would also be included if necessary. Those who were fast enough in choosing got the good guys, whilst the ones a bit slow to react to the choosing game, gets left with the evil characters. Some even went as far as to shape a Sword of Omens from some plywood lying around the house. Good times!.

Even though, back then the conversations in a cartoon didn’t interest us much, the concept of good vs bad/good winning over evil reached out to us. The theme remained central that the thundercats would come under attack from the mutants mainly lead by the mini-skirt clad Mumm-Ra who wants the power of the Sword of Omens and to destroy the Thundercats so that he could rule the Third World. (sort of reminds me of Maumoon!)

Based on the fact that the cartoons were produced in the 1980’s I would say the animation is pretty good. Am currently watching all the episodes that were aired, and only now do I understand that behind the fight between good and evil, their lies a good background story as well that continues development throughout giving insight into what life was like before the Thundercats came to the Third World.

There is talk that a Thundercats movie might be released on 2010, however the videos on YouTube doesn’t shed much light onto how ‘awesome’ this movie would turn out to be. If WarnerBros. does decide to release one, I hope that it doesn’t diminish the joy that we had back in the 90’s when a rare episode of Thundercats would be aired on TVM that had us all hyped up for the rest of the week!

Mumm-ra thundercats 0606_thundercats_poster

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August 20, 2009

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Politicking, Ramblings about this & that!

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To become a more responsible civil/public servant

It is common place nowadays to always hear talk about the pay hike that was brought about effective 1st Feb 09, and the inevitable pay cut that civil servants are to face effective 1st of September 09. However, the Civil Service Commission is yet to come up with a figure on how much of a pay cut we are talking about.
All civil servants are pretty much concerned about this pay cut for obvious reasons. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time when the month of Ramazan is just about to begin, during which we Maldivians tend to go crazy spending on food, entertainment and basically as usual live beyond our means, just a tad more so than usual.
Talks keep going on in various corners. Most of us do not even want to stop for a moment and think, goodness me, yes this would have been a tough decision for the cabinet to reach. I mean even if you stop to think for a second, you would know that no ruling government whether it be DRP or MDP or whatever PP it is at the moment, wouldn’t want the bad publicity of being the ones who cut down on the salaries of more than 24,000 of the population when it was just a couple of months ago that they were happy to announce of a pay ‘increase’. Some might term it as politically motivated, I don’t want to delve into that, but the point I would actually like to make here is where the heck is the responsibility of the civil servants to try and serve the country to the best of their ability and give it the maximum they have got?
I mean even where I work, there is this one guy, who works at the supervisory level and is almost NEVER around. He breezes into work at eight, loiter around his desk for a bit and then just disappears. His subordinates have no idea half the time of where he might be, his supervisor just gets an sms on his mobile stating half the illnesses in the world are after his ass and he has to go see this & that specialist but in reality, he has his own little business that’s thriving which needs 100% of his time and attention for it to function well.
I mean come on! Does he also has to receive a fat check at the end of the month, at governments cost, for being a VERY irresponsible civil servant? Does he really deserve the pay that he is receiving while he wanders around conducting his own business affairs? I mean people, be REALISTIC. If you want the right to criticize every little thing that affects the civil servants or the public servants as a whole, then at least be responsible enough to be around at your workplace from 8-4. Then you might just ‘earn’ the right to strut around voicing your opinions about the current state of affairs affecting the civil servants to anyone who is willing to listen.
As for me, I can’t abide by these types of workers. Its high time we got rid of em’ and I will applaud (quite loudly in fact) on the day these undeserving civil/public servants get the boot.

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February 12, 2009

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My experiences, Ramblings about this & that!

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The inefficient queueing system at ADK Hospital

Early yesterday evening, I developed flu symptoms of some never-ending viral bug that’s been going around Male’. Since I am asthmatic, I’m always careful about seeing a doctor and getting prescribed medication before I develop wheezing symptoms.

So last night there I went with an aching head and a throat that was hurting like hell. I took the queue number for consultation. Mind you, that this is the token to get a token number to see the doctor. I had previously telephoned the hospital and found out that tokens for the doctor were still available. I sat down on one of those leathery cushiony chairs and waited out since there were around 10 or so token numbers ahead of me. I sat around for forty minutes (which ain’t easy when you are sick and want medical attention and just go home and lie on your bed) to find out when my turn came up that the tokens to be released for the doctor were over. Now lets do the math, 10 token numbers in forty minutes. There are five to six stations with token queue number displayed on top of them. Out of those clerks/receptionists were seated at four of the stations and work was been carried out at only three of them. So 40/10, it took around 4 minutes to process a token, which is quite unacceptable. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but deemed as a private hospital which “cares about you when you need it most”, I don’t think that they are living up to their proclaimed image if a person has to wait for a token number for forty minutes. That’s worse than the bank queuing system. At least there, you won’t be about to fall at your feet because your body was undergoing a rapid defensive reaction. Nor do they charge you gruesome amounts of money for services rendered.

It was the same story this morning when i again trudged on my way to see the doctor. However, the difference this time was, I did get to see him after around 40 minutes at the token system and a couple of twenty minutes or so to actually consult with him.

I have seen them in action without the token system, and I would have to say that ADK was more efficient without it. Then we didn’t have to stay around for the receptionists/clerks to press their dainty little fingers on the “next” button to display the token number to be serviced.

I guess the millions of Rufiya that Nashid and his enterprise rake in every day doesn’t really allow them to build a more efficient environment for patients. Oh and before I forget, wasn’t he the one who criticized teachers for being “money-hungry” since they went on a strike to fight for their rights to be paid better salaries? Or maybe I might be more racked with fever than I thought to see myself paying a hefty sum of money to see a doctor at his hospital?

Oh maybe, Nashid isn’t a “money hungry politician”, but rather a “humble man” and a “philanthropist”, giving “free” or “affordable” and “quality” medical care for those who need it the most. Blech!