Rice is the staple food of Burma. What about Mohinga မုန့်ဟင်းခါး ?
Most people eat Mohinga for breakfast. A few can eat Mohinga any time of the day — breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Breakfast in Windsor
In 2015, Ivan Lee (M69, New Jersey), Fred Thetgyi (M69, Philadelphia), my spouse and I (from California) visited Windsor, Canada to pay respect to Sayagyi U Aung Khin (Former Professor and Head of Mechanical Engineering at the Rangoon Institute of Technology.
Sayagyi’s Mohinga
Sayagyi allowed my spouse and I to sleep at his guest room. He got up early to prepare Mohinga and Ah Kyaw အကျော် (Fries) for breakfast for the four of us. He also gave us mementos from Windsor.
Cost of Mohinga
During our younger days, plain Mohinga used to cost 15 pyas. With Ah Kyaw, we would pay 25 pyas.
Special recipe
Most vendors cannot match the taste of the Buthee Kyaw ဗူးသီးကျော် using a formula by a cousin aunt to accompany the Mohinga cooked by my beloved father and his assistants.
The best part is that we do not have to pay for the sumptuous “all you can eat” meal.
Variety
There are a variety of ways to prepare and cook Mohinga.
Some variables are
choice of fish ငါး အမျိုးအစား : Hinthada ဟင်္သာတ uses up to three kinds of fish. Some places use minimal fish. A few — notably Dr. Htay Lwin Nyo (EP74, GBNF) — tried to have a layman’s Mohinga using canned fish.
choice of “San Hmont” ဆန်မှုန့် or “Pei Hmont” ပဲမှုန့်
use of “Ngan Pya Yay” ငံပြာရည် and condiments
some add ကြက်သွန်ဥ & ငှက်ပျောဖတ်နုနု
mode of cooking for a small group or a large group of people
how to keep it fresh (without getting spoiled due to inclement weather).
Mohinga Story
There’s a story that is near and dear to me.
My spouse’s maternal grandma အဖွား was oblivious to the political, social & economic changes. Every morning, she would call a grand child. She would open her little purse inside a big purse, and then unwrap two or three layers of paper to get her money. She would dole out ten pyas ဆယ်ပြား to buy Mohinga for her.
One day she could not finish a spoonful of Mohinga. Her breath slowly faded with her head resting on my lap. There was no sigh. She passed away gently.
My spouse belongs to the elite company of Mohinga lovers. She enjoys Mohinga for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mohinga Lover
I have a fear စိုးရိမ်ပူပန်စိတ် for the day when she might refuse to have Mohinga & follow her grandma.
Daw Khin Khin Kyu ခင်ခင်ကြူ (Ann, A67) related the sad story of her younger brother.
He had two invitations.
One was to attend his niece’s wedding in Australia. His older brother U Thein Han ဦးသိန်းဟန် played Basketball for Burma မြန်မာ့လက်ရွေးစင် and taught Mathematics at RIT ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ်သင်္ချာဆရာ
Another one was to join a group to visit Burma.
Since he had not been back to Burma for a very long time, he decided to join the group.
They stayed at a hotel on Pyay / Prome Road ပြည်လမ်း
In the late evening, he had an urge to look for a Mohinga မုန့်ဟင်းခါး shop. The group leader told him that they would have Mohinga the next morning.
He left the hotel. After a couple of hours, someone informed that there had been an accident on Pyay Road, and that Ann’s brother had passed away unexpectedly.
I am following the noble tradition of honoring pioneers and outstanding people. I am trying my best to present their achievements and contributions. I an privileged to have known many seniors, contemporaries and juniors.
Who’s Who, Twentieth Century Impressions of Burma, Five Minute Biographies တွေ ကို နည်းယူပြီး ကျွန်တော် က Old Burma တုန်းက ထူးချွန်သူ တွေ ကို မှတ်တမ်းတင် ဂုဏ်ပြု နေတဲ့ ရှေ့မှီ နောက်မှီ (ဘေးမှီ) သူတယောက်ပါ။
I volunteered as a Docent at the Computer History Museum (CHM) for two years. CHM’s programs include Hardware & Software Artifacts, Exhibits, Oral History, Lectures, Panels and Award Ceremonies.
The Old Burma Group has posts about History, Notable (Famous as well as Notorious) people. I appreciate the invaluable posts as a reader and contributor.
Old Burma Group ဟာလည်း သမိုင်း နဲ့ ထူးချွန် / ဆိုးသွမ်း (Famous as well as Notorious) ကို မှတ်တမ်း တင် နေ တဲ့ အဖွဲ့ မို့ Contributor တယောက် အနေ နဲ့ ဝမ်းသာ ကြည်နူး မိပါတယ်။
I request the Group Administrator and Moderators to approve my posts.
ကျွန်တော် ရဲ့ posts တွေကို တင်ပြခွင့်ပြုပါ Admin နဲ့ Moderator များ ခင်ဗျာ။
ကျွန်တော် က I am
Founder & Chief Editor စာတည်းချုပ် of RIT Alumni Newsletter
Owner & Admin of RIT Updates FB Group
Member of HMEE (History of Myanmar Engineering Education) မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အင်ဂျင်နီယာ ပညာရေ: သမိုင်း အဖွဲ့ဝင်၊
ကံ့ကော်မြေ (တက္ကသိုလ်ရာပြည့်) Former Moderator of RU Centennial Group : Moderator ငြိမ်း၊
U Myo Myint (Retired Deputy General Manager of Burma Railways) is an accomplished Painter, Cover Designer and Cartoonist. He drew Pon Tu’s of selected RIT Sayas, Sayamas, and colleagues. I am honored to receive his present.
ပန်းချီ မြတ်မျိုးမြင့် ရဲ့ လက်ဆောင် မွန် Pon Tu gift from Bagyee Myat Myo Myint / U Myo Myint (M)
Pon Tu
1964 – 65 Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT)
I was admitted to 2nd BE (Bachelor of Engineering) in November 1964.
The photo was taken at the Gyogone campus.
2nd BE student
1964 – 65 ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ဒုတိယနှစ် သင်တန်းသား 2nd BE Student at Rangoon Institute of Technology
1965 Summer Inlay Luyechun Camp
I was selected as Luyechun (Outstanding Student).
The photo was taken at the Welcome Ceremony by the Head of Shan States.
LYC
1965 နွေရာသီ အင်းလေး ခေါင်တိုင် လူရည်ချွန် စခန်း တက္ကသိုလ် နဲ့ အထက်တန်း လူရည်ချွန်များ Inlay Khaung Daing Luyechun Camp in the Summer of 1965
1969 December Poem for 5th SEAP Games
Burma hosted the 2nd SEAP Games in 1961, and the 5th SEAP Games in 1969.
The photo shows a page from the Forward Magazine. Maung Thaw Ka (Bohmu Ba Thaw, GBNF) was Chief Editor of the magazine.
Forward
Forward မဂ္ဂဇင်း — ဒီဇင်ဘာ 1969 ပဥ္စမ အကြိမ် အရှေ့တောင်အာရှ ကျွန်းဆွယ်ပွဲ အတွက် ကဗျာ စပ်ဆို ခဲ့ Poem about the 5th SEAP Games
Mid 1970s Universities’ Computer Center (UCC), Rangoon
The photo was taken with the Teachers and Students of CPC (Computer Programming Course).
Dr. Tin Maung (GBNF) succeeded Dr. Chit Swe (UCC Founder, GBNF) as Director of UCC.
UCC
တက္ကသိုလ်များ ကွန်ပျူတာ ဌာန က ပို့ချတဲ့ သင်တန်း တခု Computer Course at Universities’ Computer Center (UCC), Thamaing College Campus
1999 Aprilto 2025 Chief Editor of RIT Alumni International Newsletter
2005++ Paying Homage to Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa
U Silananda
ဆရာတော် ဦးသီလာနန္ဒာဘိဝံသ (ပါချုပ်ဆရာတော်) အထိမ်းအမှတ် မော်ကွန်းစာစောင်အတွက် အဖွဲ့ဝင် & စာတည်း Contributing Editor for the Book published in memory of Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa
2010 December Saya Pu Zaw Pwe in Singapore
SDY Sar Saung
2010 စင်ကာပူ မှာ ကျင်းပတဲ့ စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ အထိမ်း အမှတ် စွယ်တော်ရိပ်စာစောင် Wrote an article “A Sad and Short Clip: EE Sayas” for the Commemorative Issue of Swel Daw Yeik Sar Saung for SPZP-2010 in Singapore
HMEE (History of Myanmar Engineering Project) HMEE Book published in 2012
HMEE
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အင်ဂျင်နီယာ ပညာရေး သမိုင်း ပြုစု တဲ့ အဖွဲ့ Member of HMEE (History of Myanmar Engineering Education) U Ohn Khine (M70) and I compiled the CD Supplement for the HMEE Book published in 2012 Copies of the Book were donated to Libraries
CD
2012 နှစ် မှာ ထုတ်ဝေခဲ့တဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အင်ဂျင်နီယာပညာရေး သမိုင်း စာအုပ် ရဲ့ နောက်ဆက်တွဲ စီဒီ CD Supplement for the HMEE Book Photos and articles (in English) to supplement the articles (in Burmese) in the HMEE Book
ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ရွှေရတု အထိမ်းအမှတ်စွယ်တော်ရိပ် မဂ္ဂဇင်း (2014) Wrote an article “Memories of a 69er” for the Commemorative Issue of Swel Daw Yeik Magazine for Shwe YaDu 2014
2016 September Alumni Appreciation Award
Award
2019 December RUBC 96th Anniversary Regatta
Regatta
RUBC 96th Anniversary & Regatta (2019) U Tin Myint (GBNF), U Sein Htoon, U Khin Maung Latt, U Hla Min
2019 December Golden Jubilee of Graduation of RIT 69ers
GJ
2019 — 1969 နှစ် ဘွဲ့ရ အင်ဂျင်နီယာများ ရဲ့ ရွှေရတု မနက်ပိုင်း — ကြို့ကုန်း မှာ ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ 2019 — Golden Jubilee of Graduation for RIT 69ers Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe at Gyogone Campus
Modern Olympics was a revival of the ancient games held every four years at Olympia.
The four year interval is called an Olympiad. The ancient Greeks use Olympiad instead of years when describing dates.
Pierre de Coubertin created the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894.
IOC selects a city or cities to hold the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. The two Olympics are interlaced.
Drama in the Olympics
Summer Olympics has its share of drama.
The 1936 Summer Olympics was held in Berlin and was attended by Adolf Hitler (who promoted the supremacy of the Aryan race). Jesse Owens, a black athlete from the USA, won four Gold medals : 100m, 200m, 4 x 100m relay, and Long Jump.
The drama supposedly occurred in the Long Jump event. Jesse Owens was having some problems in the Long Jump when the German competitor Lang advised him to leave about six inches gap behind the broad to prevent overstepping and getting disqualified. Jesse took the advice, regained his poise and went on to win the Long Jump Gold. (One article stated that Jessie Owens later retracted his story.)
1972 Olympics in Munich saw both good and bad.
Mark Spitz (USA) won seven Gold medals in swimming : 100m & 200m Freestyle, 100m & 200m Butterfly, 4 x 100m Freestyle relay, 4 x 200m Freestyle relay, and 4 x 100 Medley relay. He saved energy by not competing in the trials for selected relay events.
Olga Kolburt (USSR) was awarded a couple of Perfect Ten in Gymnastics.
Eleven Israeli athletes were kidnapped (shown live on TV) and murdered by Black September. Mossad took several years to track down and decimate Black September.
USA boycotted the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow.
USSR retaliated with a boycott of the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles.
Highlights from Summer Olympics
1896 Athens (Inaugural Olympics)
1900 Paris (first time)
1904 St. Louis
1908 London (first time)
1912 Stockholm
1916 (Cancelled due to WWI)
1924 Paris (second time)
1928 Amsterdam
1932 Los Angeles (first time)
1936 Berlin (attended by Adolph Hitler)
1940 (Cancelled due to WWII)
1944 (Cancelled due to WWII)
1948 London (second time)
1952 Helsinki (e.g. Flying Finn in Track and Field)
1968 Mexico City (e.g. Long Jump Leap by Bob Beamon)
1972 Munich (e.g. Mark Sptiz, swimmer; Black September)
1976 Montreal (e.g. Nadia Comancie, gymnast)
1980 Moscow (Boycott by USA)
1984 Los Angeles (second time; Boycott by USSR)
1988 Seoul (e.g. Carl Lewis, sprinter and long jumper)
1992 Barcelona (e.g. USA Dream Team for Basketball)
1996 Atlanta (e.g. USA, most medals)
2000 Sydney (e.g. held in September rather than June or July)
2004 Athens (second time)
2008 Beijing (e.g. Michael Phelps, swimmer)
2012 London (third time)
2016 Rio De Janerio (first Olympics held in South America)
2020 Tokyo (Postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic)
Olympians
Jesse Owens : Four Golds in 1936 Berlin Olympics (for Track and Field) Later equaled by Carl Lewis
Mark Spitz : Seven Gold Medals in 1972 Munich Olympics (for Swimming) Michael Phelps later won Eight Gold Medals
Some Olympians went on to have illustrious careers.
Johnny Weissmuller, swimming champion, gained fame as Tarzan in the movies.
Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion, went on to become Mohammad Ali, three time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion.
Media Coverage
During my SPHS days, there was no television in Burma. I received a ticket from Brother Austin as a prize to see the “1960 Rome Olympics” documentary at Thamada (President) cinema.
I was in the UK and was fortunate to see the 1972 Munich Olympics on a Color television.
Feb 13 : Children’s Day (Bogyoke Aung San’s birthday)
Feb 14 : Valentine’s Day
US Presidents’ Day
Occasionally : Lunar New Year
Occasionally : Full Moon Day of Tabodwe — Htamane Pwe & [Buddha’s] Exhortation Day
March
Mar 2 : Peasant’s Day was moved from Jan 1 in order to celebrate the Coup D’eat
Phone Maw Day
Burma’s Human Rights Day (celebrated by Berkeley)
Mar 27 : Resistance Day was renamed as Armed Forces Day
First Day of Spring : Persian New Year
April
Thingyan : Three or four days of Water Festival
Myanmar New Year
May
May 1 : May Day in some countries
May 5 : Cinco de Mayo
Mother’s Day in the US
June
Jun 6 : D Day
Jun 6 : Ah Loke Thamar Ah Yay Ah Khinn
Father’s Day in the US
July
Jul 4 : Independence Day in the US
Jul 7 : Students’ protest that was brutally crushed
Jul 8 : Demolition of the Rangoon University Student’s Union
Jul 19 : Arzani Nay
Apollo 11 landed in Tranquility Bay on the Moon in July 1969
My poem “Men on the Moon” was sent to NASA via USIS. A copy was published in the Guardian.
August
8-8-88 : start of a long struggle to restore Democracy in Myanmar
Several birthdays in my extended family
September
Crushing the hopes of Multi-party Democracy
Occasionally : End of Burmese Buddhist Lent
October
Occasionally : End of Burmese Buddhist Lent (Thadinkyut)
“Deepavali” or “Diwali” celebrations are also celebrated around October. It is known as the “Festival of Lights”.
“Halloween” occurs every year on October 31 with “Trick or
Treat” by the children and [optional] “Halloween Costume Party” by young and old adults.
November
Elections in the US (Local races & Resolutions every year, House of Representatives every two years, One third of Senators every two years, President every four years)
Nov 22 : JFK assassinated (Conspiracy Theory survives)
Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US
December
U Thant Ah Yay Ah Khinn : dark day in the history of Burma
Apollo 8 orbited the Moon in December 1968
Dec 25 : Christmas
Dec 31 : New Year’s Eve
Grapevine says that some holy days are preceded by some “fun events”.
HlaMin 