(I am a bit late in posting it here but...) I would like to convey a big thank you to all those who attended my recent lecture, "We, Machines" at the 6th edition of the Buraasfathivaru series, and the organisers "26". I hope the lecture imparted something of value and provided some food for thought.

At some point in your life, when you looked up at the night sky, chances are you spotted the unforgettable three bright stars in a line that make up the "belt" in the Orion constellation. It was the first constellation I learnt when I was a kid and started to grow a fascination towards the cosmos. Male' has too much light pollution to take a decent picture of the night sky so I took the chance to snap a shot of the constellation which stood out of the dark night canopy when I made a stopover at GA. Nilandhoo recently. Orion and Hyades are both distinctly visible in the picture.

The three stars which make up the Belt of Orion lie at different distances from the Earth despite appearing to be in the same line-of-sight. The reddish coloured star in the constellation is Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle-juice) and is one of the most brightest stars in the night sky. It is nearing the end of its life and is expected to be so bright when it explodes that it would be visible during the day!

There are over a billion people across the world that are in perpetual hunger, starving to death. Being hungry for these people is not the same as what we experience when we've missed a meal or two or had very little food. For these people, they are forced to bear with the hunger day in day out, without a clue to when they could have some food - ANY food. Their body burns through the fat reserves, if any, they might have till there is no more and fails to function: death. The World Food Programme estimates that 10 children die from starvation every minute. 1/6th of the world already live in constant hunger and that's something we the more fortunate should be sad about - really really sad about.

What is equally sad is that hunger exists not because there is not enough food in the world. Food production has outpaced the growth in population and there is a surplus of food across the world. While there are many reasons why there is hunger, the problem can largely be attributed to unequal distribution and poverty. Unequal distribution results from political and economic obstacles that control the flow of food from food producers to those in need. Poverty, especially extreme poverty, means that people who really need it cannot afford to buy food or grow food. Natural disasters, political instability and wars push the financially challenged to poverty and starvation. People are dying of hunger essentially because they are too poor to stay alive.

Maldives, where there is so little food production, where almost every single food item we consume is imported, is an especially fragile society. Were there to be a war (and not necessarily within the country) or any other event that breaks down the import mechanisms, we'd all join the billion starving just as Maldivians have in such past events.

Help put pressure on governments to end hunger. Donate towards feeding the starving. Do what you can to help end poverty. If you are looking to get inspired, read up on Norman Borlaug who is credited with saving a billion people from starvation thanks to the high-yield, disease resistant variety of wheat that he engineered.

Hope none of you has to ever face chronic hunger.

Two months have passed since I came to the Maldives and I've stayed way beyond my originally intended holiday. I am spending most of my time working on a few projects that catch my interest. I am also incubating a few pet projects that had been on the backburner and slowly driving them towards completion.

I'll post details and updates soon. Toodles

The increasing ill treatment of expatriates in the Maldives that I was witnessing upset me so much that I wrote about it in 2007. I have not spent any appreciable amount of time in the country since then until now. Sadly, the situation seems even more worrying as the number of expatriates has continued to rise and now amount to about 34% of the population of the Maldives!

The US State Department's "Trafficking in Persons Report 2010" places Maldives on the Tier 2 Watch List and describes the situation in Maldives, among other things, as:

An unknown number of the 110,000 foreign workers currently working in the Maldives – primarily in the construction and service sectors – face fraudulent recruitment practices, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or non-payment of wages, or debt bondage. Thirty thousand of these workers do not have legal status in the country, though both legal and illegal workers were vulnerable to conditions of forced labor.
...
Trafficking offenders usually fall into three groups: families that subject domestic servants to forced labor; employment agents who bring low-skilled migrant workers to the Maldives under false terms of employment and upon payment of high fees; and employers who subject the migrants to conditions of forced labor upon arrival.

Anyway, this little outburst was brought forth after reading the highly disturbing piece published this week on Minivan News on the plights of Bangladeshi workers in Maldives as described by the former High Commissioner of Bangladesh to the Maldives. Do read it.

I am now in the Maldives, back in my home city Male', and will stay put for a few weeks while I tick off a few things on my to-do list...

After five long years spent in the town of Reading in the UK, I have finally packed up my belongings and bid farewell to the city and the country. As regular visitors to this blog may already know, I graduated mid last year from the University of Reading after completing a MEng degree in Artificial Intelligence and Cybernetics, which brought to a close what I had originally moved to the UK for. I loved the UK and will especially miss the friends I made there.

For now, I am homeless...