Thoughts

A news article on Haveeru Online caught my attention today ( http://www.haveeru.com.mv/?page=details&id=114841 ), not because of the fees mentioned in the article, but because they have a website online which publishes "official minutes of meetings" of the council. It achieves two things: 1. Transparency - the minutes of meeting show individual stances taken by councillors on specific issues. Their constituents can actually know what they said in the Council Meetings. It's a great thing to do and I salute Male' City Council for taking this initiative. 2. Accountability and disemmination of information about Council's Activities - this is agaisnt the trend of the current political climate and again, I commend for this initiative by the Male' City Council. The question now is, will they continue this in the future? I hope so, and urge them to do so. Even if only for the sake of instilling the "democratic values" in the rest of the councils. ...

The fundamental aim of any business can be expressed as “maximizing profit for the shareholders.” There are several ways of achieving that. However, those goals and targets should be reached through widely accepted moral norms within the society including adherence to Laws governing business conduct, and employ fair trading to achieve the goals of the business through legitimate and just means. It is also about doing what is right and refrain from doing what is wrong in carrying business activities. Although some aspects of business ethics differ from society to society due to different laws governing different societies, the broader aspects of Business Ethics are still the same across all the societies in general. Some examples of Business ethics are conflicts of interest issues, corrupted and fraudulent procurement practices, abuse of confidential and critical business intelligence information, deliberate ignorance of applicable laws, ignoring responsibilities towards the emplo...

‎"1,658,266 cu.ft of marshy soil will be removed from Maakilhi wetland area to build the Convention Center for SAARC Summit according to EIA Report.... and for backfilling the area, 4,145,665 cu.ft of sand had to be mined from Hithadhoo lagoon! A reliable source has confirmed that the sand is being mined from an area planned for future reclamation..." Now I was asked if this is sustainable development in a facebook thread by Ahmed Nizam (Maavahi NGO Founder member and current Maldives NGO Federation President). I still  vividly remember that night as the darkest night of my entire civil society engagement. The public consultation meeting was ordered by the president's office, but it remotely resembled a discussion forum. It was more like a muzaahiraa against a handful of us who were trying to reason against a politically charged crowd of more than 70 people. Here is my reply to in the thread which summarizes the night and the subsequent difficulties we had. In the ...

My ranking of Apple products lie somewhere between utter rubbish and expensive toys, but I have to admit, Steve Jobs is a great visionary and a genius at his trade... and inspiring too. Steve Jobs Lays It Down For Playboy http://gizmodo.com/5821429/that-time-in-1987-when-playboy-interviewed-steve-jobs iPlayboy — In 1987, a young, brash Steve Jobs sat down with the world's preeminent gentleman's magazine. With yesterday's launch of the Playboy Commission , an editorialized guide to Heff's archives, we can take a look inside the mind of Mr. Apple. Depending on whom one talks to, Jobs is a visionary who changed the world for the better or an opportunist whose marketing skills made for an incredible commercial success. In jeans and worn sneakers, running a company that prides itself on having a mixture of Sixties idealism and Eighties business savvy, Jobs is both admired and feared. "He's the reason I'll work 20 hours a day," says one engineer. O...

We have seen a lot of campaigning by many candidates during election time using social media (during the parliamentary election, during local council election, even to a certain extent, in the Presidential elections),but what I fail to understand is why the same people, when elected are not using the social media to spread word about their activities, get the view of their constituents using the social media, or even defend some of the policies of their party using them. I have personally tagged many politicians about serious issues related to their scope of work, especially the local Councillors (Addu City Council) and I am personally very sad to see the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, Councillor Hussain Hilmy not responding to those questions. In the MDP elections, Mohamed Aslam (Environment & Housing Minister) is also using FB to promote himself, while he has failed to answer serious questions related to Southern Utilities Limited which is mandated with carrying out the projects under ...

One of the happiest days of my life. I am blessed with a princess around 0830 pm on 7th February. I feel that my family is complete with two adorable boys and an a princess to compliment them!!! I love you all god bless you all. My Princess on the day she was born... and the rest of the family....

This was a comment I made to a friends status, regarding the contentious issue of Addu City.  Ahmed Nadeem   I am really pissed-off when people don't think about consequences of the ruling by civil court yesterday. I am really pissed-off when I see people, otherwise so blunt and indifferent about the rule of law and upholding the constitution, sud denly finds this as something to be proud of and how this one decision is going to make the judiciary so free and fair in all its actions. I am pissed-off when I find people talking about services or the lack of it as the sole basis for making Addu a city, bloody ignorant on the decentralization act and the authorities vested in the city council and the people through the act. I am pissed because none of the people who talks so proudly about city council with "ma ves city akah addu hadhan beynun, but ganoonai ehgothah" tagline have not read the act itself; have not understood why the people actually NEEDS a city council. I am...

Following is a chat log I have had with a DQP supporter, regarding the civil court ruling today. The funny thing is that this was a person who tried to convince me to vote for Hassan Saeed because he is from Addu. His argument to counter mine (I was in favor of MDP candidate, Mohamed Nasheed) was if we want to expedite the development of Addu the only way was to elect Hassan Saeed as the president as he is from Addu and loves the place so much that he will do everything to ensure Addu becomes the second Male'. Their campaign strategy was, and I remember as if it was yesterday, so "WATHANEE". Their main theme was (apart from the many anti-campaign slogans related to Temple Flower and how unreligious Anni was) electing somebody from Male' as the president of this nation will not help our cause; he will neglect Addu as Maumoon has done in the past. BTW, he did abruptly ended the conversation; perhaps I was playing too close to his heart and clicked a few veins which st...

The problem with Maldives is everybody but the experts chooses to express their opinions & the experts choose to sit behind dollar curtains. What's left of the media acts as a tabloid to misguide the masses and promote their own agendas quoting opinions that they think will sell the paper and promote themselves in the community.  The perfect example is the news report posted on Haveeru Daily [ http://www.haveeru.com.mv/?page=details&id=106616&category=irWfwyiv ] which was just a series of opinions expressed by a handful of people. The article lacks in depth analysis of the matter and I am sure the author has not made proper research in to the subject matter. Quoting a person is not news; it's tabloid not worthy of mainstream news media. That is my opinion.

Matt Daemon's Here After, directed by Clint Eastwood is such a boring film. Me and group of friends actually went to see this, spending close to Mrf 600.00 (that includes the Burger King bill) to Bukit Batok West Mall. What a let-off. It was like reading a boring Danielle Steel novel. I would advice anybody thinking of watching this film to pack your eye-cover for a good one and half hour sleep.

A simple question: do you know a place anywhere in this world where somebody can actually get away with accusing a president of the nation a "TERRORIST" in the public domain? Yes, you are right. It's that lovely place called the paradise on Earth; the Maldives. I tried to rationalize with a friend of mine who was calling President Nasheed a terrorist in a comment thread to another friend's photo album. And I thought I did a good a job because he actually deleted his original comment which read "Inform the terrorist Nasheed that we are going to start something like this", the something refers to what the Egyptians People are doing to overthrow their government. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=267733&id=693226722 For the record, let me just quote part of the comment thread here. Ahmed Nadeem nimal u seem to go over board with emotions by labeling people terrorists. did u know that saying things like this to other people in this 1...

This could be of importance in the future... so I am posting it here for future reference. http://androinica.com/2011/01/24/printing-from-android-with-google-cloud-print-hands-on/

I bought a new Xbox 360 with kinect. I bought on the pretense that I have promised my angels (Akoo and Koky) that I will buy them one. I could have postponed, but Singapore has become so boring and I needed to do something badly. But playing XBox via Kinect is a tiring experience. And yeah, this could be how I could lower my "low risk" high cholesterol down (by the way, I am not sure why they call low risk at all; to me it's either risky or no risk at all).

This was published on the blog sphere some time during the referendum on the system of governance. I went through this again tonight and though of publishing it here. http://barulamanee.blogspot.com/