Dhi Youth Movement

You might have read me blabber about DYM, which is this awesome thing started by Nawaf, who is this awesome guy. Our slogan is "Keep Moving Forward, Open New Doors, Do New Things, Be Curious and Have Fun!". I might have written about a group we met in London called Refugee Youth which is a place where people who are from other countries, but residing in London come together and share their stories, network, eat, play and generally have an amazing time. We were so inspired by them and the things they were doing to spread awareness and for the causes that they believed in.

image from Nawaf 

Nawaf is the main guy behind DYM, who came up with the logo and idea (It was called Dhi Heart before) but after Shaam's idea of DYM (which can also be acronym for Do You Mind. Cool, eh!) and after everyone found it a better name, we are working under DYM. Our mission is "to meet like minded youth, socialize, share knowledge, learn and most of all have some fun. We will be doing things out of the ordinary, make people turn around and give it another look, we are going to prove that change is possible and the Youth can be One ". Its mostly compromised of Nawaf's friends and mutual friends of our friends so basically we know each other, and we are constantly meeting new people as our activities happen and so far it has been a great journey with DYM.

image from Iyad 

Our first activity was inspired by the Grand Central Freeze by Improv Everywhere (seriously, read about their missions, which are pretty cool!) and we froze for 5 mins during different times at the Earth Hour Rally. It caught a lot of people's attention and was successful, and fun and we got to meet so many different people, while promoting a cause we strongly believed in. Our next activity was during the Mother Tongue Day Dhivehi Bahuge Dhuvas (Thanks to Liam for correcting me), where DYM made this huge Dhivehi scrabble board (that I blogged about last week) and it was amazing. I was unable to participate in the making due to uni stuff, but I did go to the event, where we played the game. Again, met many new people and kids and had a really good time making dhivehi words. 

We are always in the lookout for people (people who are enthusiastic and really want to be part of it), and we are constantly planning fun new things to do. You can check us out at

Twitter: @dhiyouth

Blog: dhiyouth.posterous.com

email: dhiyouthmovement@gmail.com

Weekend Reads

Hello Friday! I am not a huge fan of Friday, but these days it seems to be getting better. Fridays always remind me of Rebecca Black and that's not exactly a good thing. ha!

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Adi's beautiful story is coming together nicely, while Isha has been writing words that touch my soul. Bakerella's Peanut Butter brownies make me drool, even though I'm not a fan of PB. Mara and Kendi's style has been influencing me lately with their pretty polka dots and pencil skirts. Also fell in love with Katie's blog post about cute kitties, and the other Katie's happy things list. On more informative things, check out the awesome post about custom PowerPoint backgrounds by Carly.

This weekend, I am super busy watching too much Glee and Cougar Town, making a business plan for a very educational service, holding two focus groups on women and employment and attending some classes as well as Muntha's Scout ceremony. Busy days! Have a happy weekend guys!

Twenty things

Its been nearly two months since I turned the big two oh, but I've been only able to come up with my twenty things list because I have been super busy since my birthday. I loved being nineteen, and so far being twenty is not that bad. Yes I miss the teenage years, but I'm liking being mature despite the awful things it brings with it. So, here's my list.

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1. Have a wonderful relationship with my parents

2. Get into a volunteer program

3. Get a job

4. Start saving up to send my parents to Hajj

5. Start the "Pretties"

6. Graduate college

7. Finish an entire coloring book

8. Be in a relationship

9. Change my name for a day

10. Crash a wedding

11. Write a letter to JK Rowling

12. Make a jar of lucky paper stars

13. Throw an un-birthday party for classmates

14. Make an yearbook

15. Get a manicure

16. Improve my relationship with god

17. Learn to love people no matter what

18. Be a better friend

19. Become an early rise

20. Enjoy being 20

Basically I have stuff from my life list, and a bit of other things important to me, and some fun stuff. Mostly I want to do the twentieth thing. As much as I love making these lists, some of it always end up being not done, so this time, I'm hoping to get everything done by the time I turn twenty one, which I am dreading right now but then again it is the inevitable. Graceful passage through time, as Gigs say. ^^

The busy life

I am sorry for the lack of updates as I was really busy the last few days weeks doing all sorts of things including but not limited to stenciling, writing, and eating not in that particular order.

University has been going pretty well despite how many new people there are who are probably taking a degree in staring, or perhaps a diploma. Classes have been intense with too much lectures on strategies and marketing, but I've been enjoying them, especially the marketing parts. Last weekend we had to sell a destination in our International Marketing class, and our group chose NYC! We did an amazing presentation (and by amazing I mean megafreakingawesome) where we wore I <3 NY shirts and told every one how brilliant NYC is, and the lecturer was impressed. Another job well done.

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I have also been participating in Dhi Youth Movement which is this amazing thing where youth come together and use creative measures to celebrate special days, network and mostly have fun. On saturday because it was the Mother tongue day, we made a huge Dhivehi scrabble board and made words with kids. It was super fun. I shall hopefully blog about DYM and its fun-tastic activities soon.

 

image from Nawaf

This week, I am reading some Chinese literature attending lots of classes most of which keep getting cancelled, writing letters to organizations for internship, thinking of Maldivian products to market internationally for a class, being exciting for getting sorted into Slytherin in Pottermore and celebrating birthdays. 

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On a personal level, I feel like people keep going away, ignoring me and generally being very distant. Life is good otherwise.

Post London Life

I just had to include London in the title. :P

Anyhow, since coming back, I've mostly been sick (STILL coughing constantly, not a good feeling) and unable to adjust back properly. I came back on 24th and slept for nearly 23 hours, and got up the next day (my record still stands at 26 hours after I came back from India) and had an exam the very next day, of which I was so sure I was going to flunk, but Masha Allah I passed. I had a tough week last week with lots of classes and catching up on studies, etc.

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This week is worse. I had an individual assignment due on Tuesday (on Entrepreneurship of which my assignment was mostly about Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Bieber.You see, when I have to resort to writing about Bieber on an assignment, it is the hieght of un-inspiredness!) and a propsal due today, which I have submitted, phew! Apart from this, Nawaf and I had been working every night till 12 (and him until the wee hours of  3 and 4 at dawn!) on the narration for our London documentry. Yes, we're celebrities and no, we are currently unavailable for any intereviews due to time constraints. I'll have my people call your people when I'm free. 

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Also so many exciting things have been happening such as un-birthday presents (Thanks to M for the Cakepops and HP cookbook and Lilly Pulitzer folders! Totally made my year!), Dhi<3 and its projects, lots of drama at Uni, getting my stories published and love from many people. I feel blessed to be here right now.

My classmates and  I are planning a picnic tomorrow, a family outing on Saturday, so its gonna be a busy weekend. Life is just good!

London Trip: How I Felt

Because London is a metro city and because I have been in love with it since forever, the whole experience was magical. I'm one of those people who like a lot of things, and have a generally good view of most things, things that other people look upon with an unamused face, such as airline food. I do enjoy airline food and traveling, especially the on air entertainment. While on the way to London, I spent the time in the plane watching old Hindi songs, and listening to Adele and sleeping while coming back. I also had the window seat and therefore saw the beautiful views during both the Dubai landing and the London landing.

 

London is a beautiful city with its good infrastructure really old buildings and nice people. The roads are HUGE and very clean. There are bins everywhere and I even loved the cold. In fact, apart from having a bad reaction to the cold (especially my lips) I was all OK. Because we lived in-front of a beautiful park where daffodils grew and the view was fantastic, I got up every morning and spent around 10 minutes looking at the view, memorizing every little detail from the building next to us with its marble floor to the big green dome of the British Museum that we could see far away. Everything about it was magical. I felt exactly how I felt while I was at Taj Mahal a few years back, at the second floor looking down the rivers Ganga and Yamna and wanting to freeze time cos that moment was perfect. That was my happy place. Now, I have two happy places that I go to whenever I feel down, and that feels good.

I loved how everything was so fast, yet so slow. The people were always at a rush, a different kind of rush than in Maldives but because the place was old, you could feel that time was going slow, that you were a part of this big historical event. Maybe all this might seem a little dramatic to you, but it all brings such good feelings, like that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you touch a cashmere sweater or feel the wind in your hair. London brought with it a new inspiration by just being there. 

There is so much to do and it's beyond crazy. Maybe its because we come from this tiny country where if you have two places to go at the same day, you feel like life is so amazing, but when you've been to a place that is just so happening, coming back here feels so dull. It's like there's almost no life here. People walk so slow in broad daylight as if they were strolling down a park, which makes me very irritated. Maybe because I've been so accustomed to the London walk. My friends joke about this all the time.

 

This all brings me to a question I've been asked several times, most recently during a conversation I had with Nawaf on whether I'd go live in a place like London forever. I love London and everything about it but somehow forever seems to scare me. I love Maldives, even with its staring people, its congested roads, its unfairness to people and all the crap about politics and power. For me, this is always home and always will be. I might go live somewhere for a year or two or even ten, but I'll always come back home, because no matter what, I'm a Maldivian girl at heart.

PS, I have left the posts about places and London life which I hope to do sometime later, since you are probably going to be bored hearing about London all the time. :P

London Trip: The People

Super sorry that I was unable to update this sooner, you see my hard where I had stored all pics caught a virus and I'm getting it fixed and therefor have no photos to show whatsoever! >.< Don't you just hate when you have an awesome story to tell, but no pictures to prove it? Me too!

 

Well, I met lots of amazing people throughout the trip, and my favorite is definetely Susanna Darch, who was our chaperon the very first day and came to pick us up at Gatwick. She is extremely friendly and has been doing community work for nearly 12 years. She is also involved with British Youth Council (BYC) which is one of the organizations that thought us a lot during the trip. We also met several people from BYC including the chairperson (methinks) David, James (who is absolutely charming and taught us about democracy and various aspects of it), Alex (the youngest person we met from BYC who was a member of the British Youth Parliament and is very passionate about climate. I love this guy! He even took us to see Platform 9 3/4, Kings cross.) and Liam who is super tall (making us look even shorter than our original heights) and he took us to the parliament. We also met Derek who made us come up with an objective of what we should do next, and was of great help in making us learn about the challenges we would face and was a great inspiration. On our free day, Lisa also from BYC were with us and she was absolutely brilliant. I love how passionate she was about her area of child protection and she spent the entire day with us. One of the things that made me respect her even more is that when we entered this Muslim award funstion that we were invited to, she put on her scarf to cover her hair. The respect she showed there was inspiring.

 

Harriet from the Parliament house was just sweet and she was there for the two days we visited the parliament. I was lucky to get the chance to shadow the work of a House of Commons memeber and I got John Glen, whose constituency was Salisbury, the same town that our former president Nasheed studied in. He and his assistant Stuart was more than welcoming and spent the entire time with me. We discussed about the political environment in Maldives, about John's work and his constiuency, the proceedings of HoC, and how he reaches to the people in Salisbury. Stuart was friendly and took me to lunch with his friends who were an amzing bunch of pretty people. He even took me to see the queen, who we saw from a distance as she entered the HoC to give her address.

The young and fun people from Refugee Youth; Blake, Paul from England, Frederico, Sian, Abera, Hinda and all the rest were really friendly and we played so many games with them. Each of them had a cause that they supported and they cooked us an Indian dinner, which was delicious. These people inspired me so much to create something that would last a long time and involve lots of people.

 

Saad and Aishah from Young Muslims Advisory Group (YMAG) were too kind. They spent two days with us, and introduced us to many people. They ven hosted a social for us where we met Fran from debatemate, a very enthusiastic guys named Mohamed who was extremely sweet and had lots to ask us, Jasmine and Rukiah from Love Life generation whose spirit and determination was something I wish I had. Khadijah from the Ilford youth centre was inpiring with her girls team and how they got together to learn new things like gardening. 

The little kids we met from the school we went were excellent. They were hardly thirteen but they carried out a very well researched and interesting debate on Syria and I was stunned at how informative they were. 

We also met several other people who were all very friendly and people that I hope to keep in touch with. I am glad to have met them and learned about their work. All these people inspire me to become a better person, and to be the change.  

PS, All pics from Nawaf's facebook page. They were all taken by Nawaf and I don't own any of them.

London Baby!

Hello everyone! I am alive, in case you are wondering. Where have I been? I've been to London to visit the Queen. Well, not really but I did see a glimpse of the Queen in all her glory walking from her car to the Parliament house wearing a gorgeous yellow gown. I still can't believe it. The last ten days were clearly the best days of my life so far, except for the day when I visited the Taj Mahal. I'd love to tell you all about it, but it's so long, so I'll do three different posts about the people I met, the places I went to, and how I felt about it all. Here in a nutshell, lemme tell you about the trip.

Remember me going to Youth Leadership Program (YLP) last year? well, we wrote this essay and nine of us got selected for a study tour of ten days to LONDON! We went around to different places of importance to democracy and learned about issues that we as youth need to be concerned about. We met with lots of different and very passionate people who does great work and all of them are inspirations to become better and to be the change. We met organizations, saw their work. We went to fun places like the London Eye, and me being the HP fan, I had to nag Naafi (who BTW is amazing. She is one of the people who works for an NGO here called Democracy House which works for Democracy and participates youth in its work.) several times to take us to Kings Cross to see Platform 9 3/4 and finally on the second to last night of our stay, we managed to get our chaperon Alex to take us there. IT WAS MAGICAL. I could finally say that I've been dreaming of that moment for my entire life and mean it. It was not what I expected, but yeah; a lot of people did tell me to lower my expectations. Anyhow, it was worth going and I would have regretted if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

So now that we're back, we've learnt a lot from the people we met, and from UK in general with the nice and polite people with their good discipline and friendliness. We now hope to build a platform for the youth to create something that would give back to the community, both at separate individual level and at a group level.

For now, I must get back to my life, which is calling me with an exam in about 2 hours and an assignment due in two days time. I also have a bad case of cold and I think I left my voice in London, cos it's not there. ha! I hope you guys had an amazing time as well.

ALSO Blitzy (my laptop, who's battery died last month) is back on track with a new battery and is doing splendid.

PS I also finally developed a BRITISH ACCENT! How does it feel? Brilliant!

And life goes on

Apart from being too excited about the UK trip (we will be staying quite near to Kings Cross, and even if they don't allow us, WE ARE GOING TO SNEAK OUT AND GO TO KINGS CROSS STATION TO PLATFORM 9 3/4 EVEN IF WE HAVE TO WALK ALL THE WAY! That would be the most magical thing ever.

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Classes are pretty boring, but now that Sir S, my favorite teacher is back it's getting better. It's sad that he won't be there next semester so I can't choose him as my supervisor. My classmates are so fun these days, I am so gonna miss all this next year. On Friday, I went to Kuda Bandos on a  FMC Student Association trip, since this is my last year I wanted to participate and it actually went better than expected. Mostly I missed YLP and the trip to Kuda Bandos through it, but the feeling you get when you are at sea and looking at the clouds is pure bliss! I should go moodh-ing more often, preferably at night, so I can stargaze while floating. 

I also went to the Novelty book fair with the Galhees and Nawaf, which was too crowded in the evening. SERIOUSLY, NEVER GO IN THE EVENING UNLESS YOU WANT TO SUFFOCATE AND DIE. So we near the beach and talked and talked. I love these people! Later, we went it at around 7 30-ish and the crowd was gone. The collections are pretty nice this time, and the special offer table was my favorite. Hisherm scored THREE poetry books, two of which I found (super regret giving him the one by Aditya, it was so beautiful!), and I scored pretty pretty sketch books for designing and a great book of selected poems for just 5 bucks! Total bargain. ^^

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This week is going to be hectic, since I have an exam and an assignment due on the week that I come back, so I won't have time to study thus I have to study this week, and have a LOT of people to meet with, and lots of shopping to do. The only thing bothering me is HOW THE HELL I AM GOING TO SURVIVE IN THE FREEZING COLD. I can't even tolerate 20C so I can't imagine how I would do in 13-8C. 

I hope you had an amazing weekend dear readers.

Maids of honor

Life has been going extremely well for me the past few days, alhamdh-lillah. If you don't know already, one of my best friends in class, N got married, and I was one of her bridesmaids. This is my third time being a bridesmaid, the last two times for two cousins but this time was special because I was actively involved in a lot of things. For instance, the bridesmaids made the favors - pretty red flowers from wire and stockings - were on guestbook duty and basically helped the bride and groom on their big day. The two of them were so nervous throughout the ceremony and the reception. It was also my first time witnessing a real Maldivian wedding. The last time there was one on my place, I was fast asleep. Not cool! Too bad even this time, we didn't here the "I do" part because we were too busy taking pictures. #epicfail 

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The whole wedding makes me think of a wedding for myself. For those of you who know me well, you must already know that I have been planning my wedding since I was almost 10 - I am a LOT like Monica from Friends. Yes, we girls sometimes do crazy things like that. I personally feel that every girl is a wedding planner from birth! ha.  In my list of things to do for my wedding includes

• Have a fun photo-booth thing
• Take lots of candid pictures rather than the cliche' with bride and groom ones
• Do a more creative guestbook, like the fingerprint one, or chalk-board, or typewriter.
• Have a S'mores station! 
• Ask the bridesmaids, and groomsmen to give speeches.

Well, I wouldn't want to spoil my whole I-donno-when-or-even-if-it-would-happen wedding so let's see what else I've been up to.

OH YES, I AM GOING TO THE LAND OF HARRY POTTER NEXT MONTH. Super excited. I have started compiling a list of things to do in UK, which so far includes finding as much HP stuff as I can, and eating fish and chips (recommended by Kellie), so if you have any recommendation of stuff (no matter how tourist-y) I am all ears! I will be going with eight more people, and we would shadow a parliamentarian and study about English politics or whatever. 

On less exciting notes, I have an assignment due today which I should be doing rather than looking at Oscars red carpet. >.< 

Twenties girl.

Being in my twenties is not a bad thing, now that I think about it. WHO AM I KIDDING? IT'S HORRIBLE. EVERYTHING'S SERIOUS, BORING AND COMPLETELY NORMAL! IT'S LIKE I AM STUCK ON A BUBBLE THAT IS NOT MY BUBBLE!

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Other than the emotional roller-coaster, everything else is pretty fine. Classes are OK, when they are there. My friends are awesome. Life is good. On my birthday, I went out with my YLP pals, and celebrated and at night, some of my classmates and I went to see Jhonny English Reborn at FMC which was better than I expected. The setting, not the movie. The movie was OK though. Yesterday there was a class, and last night I gave the classmates and few close friends the birthday treat. Overall, great weekend. 

No, you shut up!

I have been saying that to people a lit these days, especially when they haven't even asked me to shut up. But I still haven't perfected it, since I tend to ALWAYS break into laughter right after saying that. Not cool! On the list of things to perfect, I also have "the chronic bitch-face". 

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Last week was hectic, with all the commotion and cancelled classes and feeling all scared. This week is probably worse. I have so far spent nearly 7 hours (not continuous, of course) looking at photos from NY Fashion Week, which is SO MEGA FREAKING AWESOME! I'm not a huge fan of Fall, but this Fall season is just, simply beautiful. I still have lots of shows to watch and trends to analyze and what not. -__- Still, it's enjoyable work!

Classes are going OK with me trying to be too sarcastic, and failing miserably A LOT! Well, it's a good thing since I learned in class today that entrepreneurs must always make new mistakes, and never repeat the same. Not that I suddenly turn into an entrepreneur when I'm being sarcastic, but you get my point eh? I am trying not to think about my upcoming birthday, but that's not happening either. SUPER EMO about hitting the big two oh! On the bright side, N's wedding is getting nearer and I am so excited about having to cancel two classes since I'm her maid of honor. *whee* Oh, wait I am also excited and happy for her marriage and all too.

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Dear God, please bless this nation and the people. Please show us the right path and help us become one again. Ameen.