Myo San

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

• Aka as Freddie Ba San
• Classmates in Standards VIII A, IX A and X A at St. Paul’s HS

• Stood third in Burma in the Matric of 1963 and won Collegiate Scholarship.

• Mastered phonetics and read lots of English books.
• One would not be surprised that he scored distinctions in English, Maths, Physics and Chemistry.

• A little bit older than me and that might have given him an advantage.

• Gave me a quiz. “How do you pronounce GHOTI?” I gave an answer which he corrected as “FISH”. He had read George Bernard Shaw, who posed the quiz as a lesson on the eccentricity of English.

GH is phonetically equivalent to F as in ROUGH.
O is phonetically equivalent to I as in WOMAN.
TI is phonetically equivalent to SH as in ATTENTION.
Thus, GHOTI is phonetically equivalent to FISH.

• Became a surgeon
• Stress caused him to take early retirement.
• He had mini-reunion with SPHS63 classmates. In the photo, the three (seated) — Freddie, Alan and Tin Tun — are now GBNF.

• He has two younger sisters : Elsie and Ivy.

Posts

• GBNF
• Old Paulians
• Scholarship
• St. Paul’s High School