So about this explosion...

I got woken up this morning because my wife saw a news story about the "bombing" in Male'. I ran out to the TV but they had already turned to another story. My thoughts then were that it must have been pretty big to make the news here in Australia. Either that or it has been a very slow news day.

So anyways I got on the internet and the Maldives blogosphere was overflowing with posts about this incident. Someone had made an IED which had exploded in Sultan Park injuring 12 tourists. Two Brits who got the worst of the deal had about 50 percent burns to their bodies and are still in ADK hospital. The ten other tourists have been treated and discharged.

After this morning's news I kept an eye on the TV and about an hour ago SBS World News also reported this story. They also reported that the Australian Government have issued travel warnings to Maldives.

The CCTV video of the explosion has bveen posted on Haveeru. There is also this video on Youtube showing a news report by the BBC. It is a small explosion but given the place it happened, so close to home, it sends chills down my spine.

So Maldives seems to be following in the footsteps of Sri Lanka, Burma and countless other countries where this sort of thing is almost commonplace now. I have friends in Sri Lanka who have relocated to escape the fighting there. I hope, I hope that it doesnt get that bad, that this was just a one time thing and that someday I would be able to bring my wife home with me.

Disappointing...

I was expecting today to be full of excitement what with the planned strike at work and all, but nothing happened! No one went on strike! No one talked about it! It was as if there had been no plans for it at any time and I was only dreaming about this! So it turned out to be just another routine day at work.

Well, on thing did happen. One of my colleagues had her last day of work today. She resigned as there was some conflict between her and her immediate boss. I am not gonna go into details but it was sad as I had been working with her for almost a year now and I probably won't see her again. Good luck to her anyways!

Motivation Pic

Just an update

It could be the onset of Ramadan or it could be all the turmoil happening with my work but I have been feeling a bit lethargic when it came to updating my not one but four blogs. Whatever it is, I decided the best cure for it is just to sit and force myself to type something down and post it.

Last Tuesday was my birthday. I got presents from my wife which include a humongous cheesecake that I am still struggling to finish off a week later. My mother and father called me to wish me Happy Birthday and I got text messages from my siblings. And my niece parroted off a happy birthday to me as well which was kind of nice. The best wish came from my mother in law who sang me a happy birthday song and I did not realize it was her until she finished and started talking to me. Her English was just BEEYOOTEEFOOL.

Whats happening at work is pretty complicated so I am just going to touch on it a little bit. It seems that the contracts I am currently on are not fair or up to standard so I maybe getting a new contract sometime soon which would mean better pay. And when I say sometime soon it could be next week or next month or even next year. These people are not well known for their sense of urgency when it comes to dealing out more money to their employees. Still my coworkers are threatening to strike and I have already said yes. What gets my goat is that they just hired some new staff this month and they are already on this new contract which means us on the old one who have been here for a year now are getting less pay than these new people who get penalty rates as well which is something that we don't get either.

Anyways hopefully I will hear something positive by the end of this week. I am gonna go work on that cheesecake a bit more.

Happy Birthday Laisha

A very happy birthday to my wonderful niece who turns two today. I am sorry I could not send it to you for your birthday and I hope you get it soon. Hope you enjoy what's left of today and hope I get to see you and wish you a Happy Birthday in person before too many birthdays come and pass.

Why?

My loving sister sent me an email the other day titled "pics". Me, being the trusting and loving older brother who has been starved for pictures from back home and who immediately thought this was some of those long awaited pics that would show me what I was missing back home quickly clicked and opened the email.

Yes. The title to the email was correct. They definitely were pics. Also they definitely showed me what I was missing back home but that was not something I really minded missing out on.

The pictures were that of the murdered and disemboweled expatriate found in Kulhudhuffushi. I'm quite sure you all must have heard about it. I read about the murder in Haveeru and was quite shocked. I was even more shocked when my sister starts sending me emails with all the gruesome pictures attached to it.

So my dear sweet sister. If you are reading this, please don't send me any emails like that ever again. I like to think of you as sweet and innocent and not exposed to all these wicked goings-on all over Maldives. Please let me maintain that illusion. Please.

Facebook

A co worker recently told me how much she hated facebook. She went on and on about how much a waste of time it was and that it was just the most recent internet craze that would just fade out over time. How all the people who joined up just wants to collect online friends and boost that number up so that others could see that that person had so many friends.

That is her opinion and she is welcome to it of course.

As for me I love facebook. I have found lots of my friends with whom I lost touch on this thing. I have learnt what they have been doing since I last saw them mebbe ten or so years ago. I have seen their grown up pics. I have seen pics of their wives and their sons and daughters. These were missing last time I actually met some of my friends.

Its much easier to keep in touch with my friends through facebook. And i keep learning new things about them all the time. I learnt my sister had a boyfriend through facebook. and I learnt that they broke up also through facebook. Some might say that this is a sign that I am not close enough to my sister. But when you are thousands of miles away with just a few phonecalls to keep you in touch with each other, you might be surprised just how much of someone's life you are missing out on.

I commend the people who created facebook and I hope that more of my friends join up so it would be easier for me to keep in touch.

Weekend

First weekend since I got back to work after the time off. I must admit I am looking forward to this weekend since I am more tired than I thought I would be and will welcome the chance to sleep in a bit. I am also going to go up to Frankston to visit friends. Should be a fun trip.

New Feeds

I have put in new feeds from my other blogs so that when and IF I update them they will show up on this blog; this still being my main blog. I also changed the colours and fonts so that all the blogs look sorta alike except for khuscensations where there is a giant IRONMAN picture in the background. That pic was just too cool not to put there.

One of my friend told me I was very ambitious to start on three new blogs. Either it is ambition or its just plain madness. I was having problems updating one blog so I thought I could just as well continue to do that even if I have three or four blogs; that is continue to have problems updating them...

Of course the only way to get around a problem is to set certain goals and then work hard to realise them. At least that is what all the self help books and motivational speakers are saying. Still I am gonna have a crack at this.

Back to work

The people at work have been very good to me over the last month. What with the new IR agreement that I signed, I was expecting to be fired after taking so many days as sickies without once submitting a medical certificate. But they have been pretty cool to me. We got a big bunch of flowers and cards signed by everyone. Of course my own team sent their own cards and messages throughout letting me know they were thinking of us.

I am going back to work starting tomorrow and the good news is that I am rostered on for some extra hours this week. Hopefully this will turn out to be something permanent and not just until they find a replacement. And its a good thing they called me to let me know, otherwise I would have gone without taking any lunch and probably starve to death.

With the extra hours that means I will be working an eight hour day. That is almost the same as full time work and it really does not sound too bad. I will see what happens tomorrow though before I give this turn of events my blessing.

September

The past month has been a blur. So much has happened in such a short time that I am feeling like I have been hit by a truck, then bounced off a train coming the other way.

My son, Sami Muaz Hameed was born on the 6th and moved on on the 10th. Those four days were the best and worst days of my life. But we will see him soon enough. Angels will take care of him till then.

Before august I had been toying with the idea of creating another blog. Not because I am so adapt at updating but because I figured that if the blog was created for a specific purpose then I will probably be able to do more updates more often. So with that in mind I renamed this blog "khuscen" and this will be specifically for personal updates.

The other new blogs I have created:

Khuscensations: all the movie stuff such as posters and trailers about upcoming movies, news and even mebbe a review every now and then if i can write one.

Khuscentiments: for my fiction writing. Hopefully by the end of September I will have started on at least one short story.

Khuscentinel: news and stuff that I find all over the intranet.


Thats it for the moment.

Wish me luck.