HlaMin

Month: May 2025

  • Wunna

    Wunna

    It is a Pali word meaning means “good looking” (handsome, pretty, …).
    It is one of the good karmic results along with Aryu (Longevity), Sukha (Happiness, pleasure, joy, bliss) and Bala (Strength) for doing meritorious deeds.

    Sao Wunna

    He was a Kayah Sawbwa.
    He was a Minister in an AFPFL Government.

    Sree Wunna Mangrai

    She is a member of the Keng Tung Sawbwa family.
    She is a niece of Saya Sao Kan Gyi (RIT English, GBNF), Sao Biddy (spouse of Sao Hso Holm), Sao Yan Naing and Sao Yan Paing.
    She studied M.Sc. (Computer Science) at UCC.
    She worked in Singapore.

    U Wunna Sithu (SPHS65, EC71)

    He rowed for Ye Kyaung Lu Nge during his high school days.
    He rowed for RIT and RUBC during his RIT days.
    He also swam and played water polo for RIT.
    He worked for DCA before moving to Thailand and USA.
    He attended the first East Coast Reunion.

    U Wunna Ko Ko (EC96)

    He is the son of Daw Khin Mar Mar (Physics, UCC) and the grand son of Saya U Net, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Mandalay.
    He did further studies in Japan and the USA.
    He created and maintained the second RIT web site.

    Wunna

    He is the son of U Nyein Min (C79), who named his company as “Wunna Construction”.

  • Some Medical Graduates Trained at BMF Mandalay

    By Dr. Maung Maung Nyo

    1. Dr Myint Lwin MRCP, Director-General of Medical Research (Retired)
    2. Dr Nyunt Lwin (Leonard Muhammad) MD. (USA) (Florida)
    3. Dr Aung Khin Sint M.Sc.(Community Medicine) NLD (Deceased)
    4. Dr Lay Maung M.Sc.(Public Health)
    5. Dr Prakash Singh Talwar MD.(USA) (Chicago)
    6. Dr Krisna Brajwaja MD (USA) (Pennsylvania)
    7. Dr S. Kumar MRCP (India)
    8. Dr Aung Than M.Med.Sc. (Orthopedics)
    9. Dr Yash Pal M.Med. Sc (Anaes.)
    10. Dr B.S. Ko Lay Ph.D. (Anatomy) (Melbourne)
    11. Dr Tan Myint Maung M.Med.Sc.( Medicine) (Rangoon)
    12. Dr S. Hla Mong FRCS (Edin) (Deceased)
    13. Dr Than Aung FRCS (Edin)
    14. Dr Sheila San San Myint (FFARCS, England)
    15. Dr Muriel Yi Yi Myint MD (Psychiatrist) (USA) (Florida)
    16. Dr Than Yin DPM (Psychiatrist) (Rangoon)
    17. Dr San Yi Ph.D. (Dublin) (Professor, Retired, Mandalay)
    18. Dr Maung Maung Nyo Ph.D. (London), M.A.(Michigan State), FOMERAD

  • My SPHS Days

    Transfer Student

    My parents decided to transfer me to SPHS (St. Paul’s High School) after passing Third Standard from PPBRS (Private Primary Boundary Road School). My brother was then studying for his Matriculation in SPHS.

    Unpublished Rules

    • SPHS has some unpublished rules.
    • The Brothers prefer students to start from KG, or at least transfer from their affiliated Catholic Schools.
    • The applicant should have a relative who is a current or Old Paulian.
    • Sections (A) and (B) are usually assigned to good students.
    • Newcomers are usually not assigned to Sections (A) and (B).
    • Even though I placed second in PPBRS, I was admitted to St. IV(D). After doing well in IV(D), V(D), VI(D) and VII(D), I was permitted to join Section (A). I attended VIII(D), IX(D) and X(D).

    Class Teachers

    My class teachers at SPHS were

    • Std. IVD : Mrs. A Benjamin
    • Std. VD : Mrs. Violet Boudville
    • Std. VID : Saya U Pe Maung Tin
    • Std. VIID : Saya U Nge
    • Std. VIIIA : Brother Anthony
    • Std. IXA : Brother Xavier
    • Std. XA : Brother Austin

    Dr. Thane Oke Kyaw Myint wrote :

    I also joined at IVD, moving from St Philomena’ boy school (across the road from Convent). Like you wrote you start with D, then worked your way up to A. Our class teacher was Mrs Benjamin, who had to teach newcomers and plodders from earlier SPHS classes. Once when she was upset with us she shouted “Do you all know that IV D is the waste basket of St Paul’s?“. Nice to know that you were in IV D like me at the start.

  • Sharing and Caring Blossoms in Myanmar

    ဒါနပန်းဝေ မြန်မာပြေ

    By Hla Min, Aung Myaing and Bagyee Myat Myo Myint

    ကိုးဗစ်ကာလမှာ ပြသခဲ့သော မြန်မာတို့၏ ဒါနစိတ်ဓာတ်ကို ဂုဏ်ပြုသည့် ကဗျာပါ။
    ဒါနဟာ ပစ္စည်း ပညာ လုပ်အား မျှဝေလှူဒါန်းခြင်း နှင့် အဓိကအားဖြင့် အခက်အခဲကာလတွေမှာ တဦးကိုတဦး ကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်ခြင်းတို့ဖြစ်ပါသည်။

    In honor of Dana spirit of the people of Myanmar, demonstrated in COVID19 pandemic, Hla Min(EC69), Aung Myaing(ChE72) and Myo Myint(M73), alumni of Rangoon Institute of Technology(now known as Yangon Technological University) present the following poem and attached paintings to Myanmar in particular and the whole world in general.
    Dana covers sharing and caring:
    Sharing one’s assets(wealth,
    knowledge,volunteer work..)with those in need,
    Caring about fellow citizens especially in
    times of crises.

    “ဒါနပန်းဝေ မြန်မာပြေ”

    အမိရင်ခွင်ထဲ
    အူဝဲပေါက်စန
    ကြားရစကားစု
    “ပြုပြုသမျှ ကုသိုလ်အဖို့ဘာဂကို
    အမျှ အမျှ အမျှ ယူတော်မူကြပါ။
    သာဓု သာဓု သာဓု”
    မျက်လုံး ကလယ်ကလယ်
    လူမမယ်အူဝဲ
    အသဲထဲမှာ
    စွဲကာသွားရ
    “အမျှ အမျှ အမျှ
    သာဓု သာဓု သာဓု”
    ဤအခြေခံ စိတ်ဓာတ်
    တဖျတ်ဖျတ်တောက်နေ
    အမိမြေမှာ
    ဒါနမျိုးစုံ
    ပြုကြကုန်၏။
    ပစ္စည်းလို ပစ္စည်း။
    လုပ်အားလို လုပ်အား။
    ပညာလို ပညာ။
    လိုသူတွေကို
    ပိုသူတွေက ဒါနပြု
    တုမရသည့် ကုသိုလ်တွေ
    အမျှဝေ မောင်းထု
    ကောင်းမှု အဖို့ဘာဂ အဝဝကို
    အမျှ အမျှ အမျှ
    သာဓု သာဓု သာဓု။

    အုတ်ဖို မောင်ရင်မောင်
    Rangoon Institute of Technology
    27th June 2020

    (English version)

    “Sharing and Caring Blossoms in Myanmar”

    First words heard
    as a toddler
    embraced in a mother’s breast
    “For all our meritorious deeds
    we share our merits to all beings, saying
    Ah Hmya, Ah Hmya, Ah Hmya
    (responded in unison)
    Thadu, Thadu, Thadu
    (Well done, Well done, Well done)
    Sparkling innocent eyes
    gentle cries
    the infant
    gets the learning and lifelong impact
    of the words Ah Hmya and Thadu
    deep down in the heart.
    This fundamental spirit
    is ubiquitous and shining
    in our motherland
    manifested by
    various forms of Dana (Sharing and Caring)
    Donation of possessions
    Offering volunteer works
    Dissemination of knowledge
    The needy gets help
    from those who can afford
    Incomparable wholesome deeds
    shared physically, verbally and mentally
    to the pleasant ringing of a gong
    We joyfully proclaim
    “We share all our merits
    Ah Hmya, Ah Hmya, Ah Hmya
    (and respond in unison)
    Thardu Thadu Thadu”
    Translated by
    Hla Min
    Rangoon Institute of Technology
    27th June 2020

  • ChE Sayas

    • Dr တင်အောင် (K C Chiu, ChE63)
      Past President, BEA
      Founding member, RIT Alumni International
      Worked in the SF Bay Area
      Moved to Southern California after retirement
      Brothers : Saya Dr. Aung Soe (C), U Soe Thein (EE)
    • ဦးမောင်မောင် (George, ChE66)
      Northern California
      Founding member, RIT Alumni International
      Founding member and Inaugural President, NorCal RITAA
      Provided seed money for the fundraiser to send YTU Library Staff for training
      Spouse : Eng Eng — sister of Saya U Myat Thwin (ChE66)

    Micro-gathering at Saya KC’s house in 2023

    SPZP-2000 Organizers

  • Zoology Staff and Graduates

    သတ္တဗေဒ Zoology မိသားစု မှတ်တမ်း

    ပါမောက္ခ Dr. ဦးကိုကိုကြီး Prof. Dr. U Ko Ko Gyi

    ပါမောက္ခ Dr. Mrs. J. A. Lynsdale Prof.

    ပါမောက္ခ ဦးစိန်လွင် Prof. U Sein Lwin

    1967 — နောက်ဆုံးနှစ်ကျောင်းသားများ Final Year

    Walter Su နဲ့ အဖွဲ့

    ဆရာဦးမြမောင်၊ ဆရာဦးစိုးသူ၊ ဆရာမဒေါ်ရှယ်လီ၊ ပါမောက္ခ Dr. ကိုကိုကြီး၊ဆရာမဒေါ်ခင်မေကြီး၊ ဆရာဦးဝင်းထင်

    1974 — မဟာသိပ္ပံဘွဲ့ M.Sc.

    Hazel Kyaw Zaw နဲ့ အဖွဲ့

    Dr. မာမာငြိမ်း Mar Mar Nyein

    ဓာတ်ပုံတချို့ ကို ကံ့ကော်မြေ( နှစ်တစ်ရာပြည့် တက္ကသိုလ်) မှာ post လုပ်

  • Advice from friends

    • Be mindful every moment.
    • If one is inattentive for a few seconds, then one can trip or fall.
    • Take 30 seconds to 2 minutes to change posture.
    • Don’t climb up a foot or higher without something to hang on to.
    • Maintain balance and moderation.
      With control, you can enjoy good food and even wine (or beer).
    • Enjoy BFF (Best Friends Forever).
      Meet, greet, eat and be merry.
    • Laughter is the best medicine.
    • If you perform good deeds, you get merit every time you rejoice about those deeds.
    • Be imperfectly perfect.
    • Better to get a thing done than waiting for perfection (which may never come as in Charles Babbage’s projects).
    • Que sera sera (What will be will be).
    • Do not have great expectations.
    • Buzz Aldrin became depressed after the Apollo 11 trip, because he was only the second person to land on the moon.
    • Remember the things you learned as a kid.

    “I had the blues
    because I had no shoes
    Till upon a street
    I met a man without feet.”

    “Brighten in your corner.”

    “In life’s rosy morning
    In manhood’s firm pride
    Let this be the motto
    Your footsteps to guide
    In storm or in sunshine
    Whatever assail
    We’ll go onward and conquer
    And never sail FAIL.”

    BFF (Best Friends Forever)

  • Active

    Grammar

    In our younger days, we had to study

    • Active Voice
    • Passive Voice.

    Advice by Sayagyi Dr. Aung Gyi

    Sayagyi Dr. Aung Gyi reminded us to be

    • Physically Active
    • Mentally Active
    • Socially Active.

    Physically Active

    • One can stay physically active by walking, running, biking, swimming or exercising at a gym.
      One should do proper warm up and cool down.
    • Saw Maung Maung Htwe (Intake of 64) was Inter-Institute Marathon Champion.
      He stays fit by running daily and competing in long distance events all over Myanmar.
      He is the most senior among the active Marathoners.
      In 2018, I met him in Mandalay, where he had just completed his long distance race. We had a quick chat.
      In 2019, I saw him running all the way to attend the Reunion and Acaiya Pu Zaw Pwe of the Combined 1st BE Intake of 64 and 65.
    • Khin Maung Myint (M71) stays active by competing in events in several countries.
      He represented RIT in Rowing.
      There are three Khin Maung Myint in the Class of 71.

    Mentally Active

    • One can stay mentally active by reading, writing, playing word games & cards, and meditating.
    • One can also exercise one’s mind (e.g. recalling the events associated with a picture).
    • Ivan Lee’s mother lived up to be 102 by being mentally active.
      She played Mah Jong two hours daily.

    Socially Active

    • One can stay socially active by attending events (e.g. Toastmasters International, Meetups, celebrations).
    • One can also be active on the Social Media.
    • I have 2600+ posts in my web site hlamin.com
      I am Admin or Moderator in selected Facebook groups such as
      RIT Updates
      Fun with Learning
      RU Centennial

  • Collegiate Scholarship

    Rules for Collegiate Scholarship

    The rules change over the years.
    In 1960, the Top Hundred students were awarded Collegiate Scholarship. Dr. Than Toe placed 99th and won the Collegiate Scholarship.
    In 1963, those for the non-government schools have to place in the Top Forty to be awarded Collegiate Scholarship.

    SPHS 63

    In the Matriculation of 1963, five Paulians won the Top Honors.

    • Khin Maung U — First
    • Min Oo — Second
    • Myo San (GBNF) — Third
    • Nyunt Wai — Fourth
    • Thein Wai — Fifth

    Kenny Wong (MEHS) placed 6th.

    SPHS had seven students in the Top Ten.

    • Hla Min — 7th
    • Aung Kyaw Zaw (Johnny) — 9th

    Winnie Aung (Branch Convent) placed 8th.

    SPHS had ten students in the Top Twenty.

    • Maung Maung Kyi — 11th
    • Aung Thu Yein (Brownie, GBNF) — 13th
    • Khin Maung Zaw (Frank) — 17th

    Group Photo

    SPHS63 Scholarship Winners

    Seated
    Min Oo (Kenneth, 2nd), Khin Maung U (George, 1st),Myo San (Freddie, 3rd)

    Standing
    Hla Min (7th),Khin Maung Zaw (Frank, 17th), Nyunt Wai (Victor, 4th), Thein Wai (5th), Maung Maung Kyi (11th), Aung Thu Yein (Brownie, 13th), Aung Kyaw Zaw (Johnny, 9th)

    OPA Dinner

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is sphs-award-1.jpg
    OPA Dinner

    Results

    • SPHS stood First in 1951, 1952, 1954, 1958, 1959, 1963, 1965
    • 1951 — SPHS had the Top student.
    • 1952 — SPHS had Top Two students.
    • 1954 — SPHS had the Top student.
    • 1958 — SPHS had Top Two students.
    • 1959 — SPHS had Top Four students.
    • 1963 –SPHS has Top Five students.
    • 1965 — SPHS had the Top Three students.

    Notes

    • U Ba Than (M) won Collegiate Scholarship in 1947
    • U Tin Htut (M) won Collegiate Scholarship in 1953
    • U Soe Paing (EE) won Collegiate Scholarship in 1956

    Daw Aye Aye Kyu wrote :

    Aye Aye Kyu (Ch 6, 1969) was awarded Collegiate Scholarship (Roll No. MN 867, 1963 matriculate) for placing among the top 40 students from non governmental schools.
    (Morton Lane Judson High School, Moulmein)
    Was placed 36th in the list announced in ‘The Guardian’ Newspaper dated 6th August 1963.

  • M (Symbol)

    • 13th letter of the English Alphabet.
    • Roman Numeral with the value of 1000.
    • Million — e.g. 1 Million = 1,000,000
    • Mega — e.g. 1 MB (Megabyte) = 1024 x 1024 bytes (more than a million). This has roots in using the Binary Number System in computers.
    • Master — e.g. M.Sc. or M.A.
    • Medical — e.g. MS (Medical Superintendent)
    • Medicine — e.g. MD (Doctor of Medicince)
    • Management — e.g. MIS (Management Information Systems).
    • MI — Machine Intelligence; Military Intelligence
    • MIT — Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the USA. Professor Horwood (MIT) came to the University of Rangoon as a Visiting Professor. Sayagyi U Ba Hli proposed the Twinning Program, and Professor Horwood helped implement on the MIT side by accepting Burmese students for undergraduate and graduate study.
    • MIT — Mandalay Institute of Technology in Myanmar. BIT (Burma Institute of Technology) was renamed as RIT (Rangoon Institute of Technology) to allow engineering institutes to be opened in Mandalay and other cities.
    • M&A — Mergers and Acquisitions
    • M&M — a specific brand of chocolate/sweet.