I decided to add dhivehi songs to my music playlist recently - started listening to them a bit. However, since I didn't have any dhivehi songs on my hard drives, I was left to scour the internet. Luckily, there is a Maldivian website that boasts an impressive amount of dhivehi songs on its pages - GNAtoll.com. The site seems to be a portal aimed primarily at the people of Gnaviyani atoll (a.k.a Fuahmulah).

Since the above mentioned site stocks quite a lot of dhivehi songs, many people seem to use it to get their fix. Copyright issues and the related legal mambo jumbo aside, this is quite handy when you are abroad (or broke) and want to get hold of some or even a particular song. Sadly, the site does not allow one to directly "download" songs and instead plays the songs via a webpage embedded music player. This forces one to visit the site everytime to listen to the song. I can't be bothered with all that hassle and I suspect many of you can't be either. So I wrote a few lines of code in a hurry to have the site crawled to get the direct links to exactly 546 songs - all ready to be downloaded off the site and onto the computer!

Anyway, I thought I'd share the list. It has the song name and the associated download link to the song. Click here to download the list

Enjoy!

I am missing home today. Home as in Maldives - the people, the sun, the blue sky, the humid air, the lagoons, the sea, the beaches and wind...

A friend of mine sent me this video ad of Maldives titled "A little bit of Maldives". Apparently it is currently being shown on BBC and used for tourism promotion in the European markets. The video is a little bit over-the-edge, with shots mostly of the sculpted landscapings from the resorts and paints a dolled-up image of the country. Despite that, it still is good to watch the sunny beaches and idealize the homeland. The images trigger warm feelings of nostalgia. Plus, the ad carries a catchy tune which does a good job of lingering around in the crevices in the head, ready to pop up in mid thought - especially on these winter mornings.



Enjoy!