Happy New Year 2019!

This blog seems to have really have turned into a space to post my annual year end musings. The years are whizzing by too fast. Anyway, it’s the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, so let’s rewind and take a look back.

2018 had generally been more or less same around the world. However it had been a roller coaster ride for events in the Maldives. The year started off with the Supreme Court turning against the government in February with a subsequent State of Emergency being declared and said Supreme Court justices and opposition leaders being arrested. Mid year was full of election campaign chaos, with the opposition arguing who’d be their candidate and the government using all available state resources for their campaign. There were memorable moments in all this, with Hulhule’ and Male’ finally being connected by the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge and the first A380 landing in Maldives in September; both events I had the privilege of witnessing. Finally in November, we had our Presidential Elections, ushering in a brand new government after 5 long years.

2018 had been a busy and hectic year for me. The year started off with me working on unfinished work from the year before and frequent hospital visits for my recovery from the Pilonidal Sinus surgery I had in 2017. The hospital visits dragged on for the better part of the whole year, with me having to undergo surgery again in March for a third recurrence of Pilonidal Sinus. Alhamdhlillaahi, I was finally fully healed in August by the time I had gone for a small vacation in my island during the Al’haa Eid holidays. While dealing with all this and my busy work schedule, I hadn’t been able to keep up with my creative outlets of posting on my Instagram (@dash8x) and Flickr. I also ended up gaining a lot of weight through out the year, which I’m trying to get rid of now. I sold my DJI Mavic Pro in September and got my hands on the brand new DJI Mavic 2 Pro towards the end of the year, which I hope to make more use of in 2019. I ended off the year with a week long family trip to Sri Lanka to visit my sister studying there.

Professionally, I had been fully committed to my work at “Javaabu“. Alhamdhlillaahi, our new office had been great and we were able to equip it with all the amenities we planned when we initially moved in. We conducted our first Internship Program and hired two talented interns who ended up working with us even after the program. We started a spin off called “Javaabu Academy“, conducting short courses, first offline at our office classroom and subsequently online through our virtual classroom portal. We got selected for the Niru Accelerator Program organized by Ooreedoo Maldives after competing in their hackathon. Me and my long time friend and business partner Jailam gave a talk at P.I.E events and we gave an interview on TVM. Along with all the high points, we had our fair share of downs as well throughout the year. The social media marketing gig that we started the year with dropped off after the first month with the client failing to pay us as agreed. Several of the large projects we took on got dragged on as the help we had hired didn’t turn out to be reliable. Despite our challenges, In Sha Allah, 2019 is going to be an even more prosperous year for Javaabu.

As we embark on this new year, take a moment to enjoy my New Year’s Eve tradition of light painting. This year’s edition was near the Sinamale’ (China-Maldives) Friendship Bridge in Male’ City, Maldives. Special thanks to my cousin Adhuham (@adhoo21), for helping with the light graffiti process. Hope you like the photo, and wish you all the best in 2019 and beyond.

Happy New Year 2019!