by Hla Min

Updated : 10th October 2026

Messenger

Since April 1999, I have served as a messenger, a story teller and a record keeper of the RIT Community.

It would not be possible without the support from my beloved spouse. She attended SPZPs and selected gatherings.

In the beginning

Full of Excitement

Many sayas and alumni contributed news, articles, photos, jokes, cartoons, suggestions and comments.

They were excited to get reconnected electronically and physically.

Down Memory Lane

Several enjoyed walking down memory lane. Kogyi Koung (Dr. Koung Nyunt, A67, GBNF) wrote about several topics. They include

• Lost songs from RIT : one by Sayagyi U Tha Tun ဦးသာထွန်း, another for Ma Ma Q မမကြူ
• Letter to Thagyarmin သိကြားမင်း about Naw Louisa Benson
• Kyaik Hti Yo Development Project ကျိုက်ထီးရိုး

University Days

Saya U Aung Khin, U Aw Taik Moh, Saya Dr. Aung Gyi, Saya U Min Wun (GBNF), Saya Dr. San Hla Aung, Saya U Soe Paing, U Tin Htoon, U Myint Khine (Norman), Ko Htay Aung (Victor) and several others wrote about their University Days (Yankin College, Main Campus, BOC College, Leik Khone, Gyogone Campus).

Photo Contributors

The following provided Class Photos, Group Photos and other interesting photos.

• Saya Dr. Freddie Ba Hli (GBNF)
• Saya Allen Htay (C58, GBNF) & classmates
• Saya U Htin Paw (EE58, GBNF)
• Saya U San Tun (M59, GBNF)
• Saya L. Tin Tun (Chris, M59)
• Saya Krishna (M59)
• U Soe Thein (EE60)
• U Tin Htoon (A60) & classmates
• Saya U Htun Aung Kyaw (ChE67)
• U Thein Swe (EE69, GBNF) & classmates
• U Aung Min (M69) & classmates
• Benny Tan (M70) & classmates
• U Kyi Aung (Roland, ChE73)
• Dr. L Sein Myint (M73) & classmates
• U Myint Swe (EP74), Daw San San (EC74) & classmates

We have acknowledged the Contributions in my Newsletter Updates, my Facebook groups and my website.

Fast forward

• I am the Last Guy Standing from the Organizers of SPZP-2000.
• Several are spending quality time with their families (especially Myees).
• The RIT webmasters (Ko Khin Maung Zaw & Ko Wunna Ko Ko) became extremely busy after getting lucrative jobs. The websites became inactive.

SPZPs

• There were seven Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2016.
• SPZP-2020 was canceled due to the pandemic.
• There will probably be no more RIT Gathering that can equal SPZP-2016 (using any Metric).

Jara, Byadi & Marana ဇရာ၊ ဗျာဓိ၊ မရဏ

• Many sayas, organizers, sponsors & donors, alumni are GBNF.
• 45% of 69ers are GBNF. About 20 passed away in 2020. 18 succumbed to Covid.
• Not so senior sayas and alumni are having medical problems in the sunset of their lives.
• Loss of memory & balance are becoming common.

Pleaded for Help, but …

• One said he wished he were 30 years younger to help me.
• Another suggested providing some incentives to interested “New Blood” to keep my project alive and eventually take over.
• I am hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst.
• I have categorized and tagged my posts for easier access.
• I have laid down the foundation for “Memories of our alma mater, mentors and alumni” Project.
• I am confident that some passionate sayas & alumni will fulfill my Dreams.

Thanks

• Kudos to all who have kept the RIT Spirit alive and well.

Related Posts

• Memories of 69er, CHM, PBRS, RIT, RUBC, SPHS, SPZPs, Toastmasters, UCC
• My Beliefs
• My Passion
• My Writings

by Hla Min

Update : 8th October 2026

ကွန်ပျူတာ မိသားစု မှတ်တမ်း (တချို့)

UCC Founders

Dr. ချစ်ဆွေ (ကွယ်လွန်) — Dr. Chit Swe (GBNF)

• Founder & Director
• Professor of Mathematics, RASU
• Retired as Rector of RASU
• Supervised students in Burma, Thailand and Australia
• Alumnus of Mandalay University, Imperial College (London University), Glasgow University, Liverpool University

ဦးစိုးပိုင် — U Soe Paing

• Co-founder, UCC
• Retired as UN Expert
• Alumnus of Stanford University, Southampton University
• Hosted UCC-RIT gatherings

ဦးမျိးမင်း — U Myo Min

• Co-founder, UCC
• Worked for IBM (UK), Nangyang Institute (Singapore), Seagate, Connors
• Gold medalist, I. Com
• Gold medalist, B.Com (Accounting)
• Chartered Accountant (UK)
• Alumnus of Rangoon University, Lancaster University

ဦးကိုကိုလေး (ကွယ်လွန်) — U Ko Ko Lay (GBNF)

• Co-founder, UCC
• Professor, Department of Computer Science
• Professor of Information Technology, ICST (Institute of Computer Science and Technology)
• Alumnus of Stanford University, Lancaster University

အထွေထွေ General

Dr. တင်မောင် (ကွယ်လွန်) — Dr. Tin Maung (GBNF)

• Succeeded Dr. Chit Swe as Director of UCC
• Retired as Rector of ICST
• Alumnus of Rangoon University, Queen Mary College

Dr. ထွန်းအောင်ကျော် — Dr. Tun Aung Gyaw

• Member of Generation Zero, UCC
• Former Associate Professor of Hardware Technology, ICST
• Alumnus of RIT, RU and UIUC
• Give seminars and tutorials on Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing

ဦးလှမင်း — U Hla Min

• Member of Generation Zero, UCC
• Former Associate Professor of Software Technology, ICST
• Alumnus of RIT, RU and Rice University
• Lifelong Learner

Dr. ကျော်သိန်း (ကွယ်လွန်) — Dr. Kyaw Thein (GBNF)

• Succeeded Dr. Tin Maung as Rector of ICST
• Alumnus of Rangoon University, Southampton University

Dr. ပိုက်တင် — Dr. Pyke Tin

• Succeeded Dr. Kyaw Thein as Rector of ICST
• Alumnus of Rangoon University, Monash University

UCC Activities

UCC မိသားစု — UCC Reunions

• Gatherings hosted by U Soe Paing and alumni in Burma, Singapore, Australia and USA
• 40th Anniversary of UCC
• 30th Anniversary of ICST

UCC သကြင်္န — UCC Thingyan

• UCC Dana for Thingyan
• Dobat
• UCC Donlaba

UCC သင်တန်း — UCC Courses

• Degree and Diploma courses
• Certification
• Training

by Hla Min

Update : September 2026

Alphabetical Order

• Cecil Teoh (C63) and Edward Teoh (M64) are the 3rd and 5th of the 15 Teoh Siblings named alphabetically — from A (Albert) to O (Oscar).
• Kenny Teoh was the web master of MEHS (Methodist English High School) web site.

Named after Vowels, but

• Ko Aung Win (Owen, M71) is the 4th of 6 Khoo Siblings.
• The first 5 were named after vowels — A (Alan), E (Eddie), I (Iris), O (Owen), U (Unice).
• The youngest is named after the first consonant : B (Beepo).

Saluja Brothers

• Dave Singh Saluja (SPHS63) left RIT to found Rama Enterprise in Bangkok with his elder brother (MIT Alumnus, GBNF).
• His eldest brother was a Playboy.
• Their father Teja Singh was an Entrepreneur, who passed on his expertise to his seven sons.
• Dave and his siblings live and work in USA, UK, India and Thailand.
• Dave collected comics, cartoons and jokes; he was Humor Editor of the Newsletter published by RIT English Association.
• Singh is a common middle name for male Sikhs.
  It was established partly to counter discrimination (in the caste dominant days).
• Saluja is a family name.

Thirteen Siblings

• Ko Kyaw Myint (T72) is the youngest of 13 siblings.
• Four brothers — U Saw Maung (85 years), Dr. Kan Nyunt (83 years), U Sein Tun (81 years) and Ko Kyaw Myint (71 years) are alive and well.
• His great great grandfather had 40 spouses concurrently — unbroken record in the family.
  The closest challenger had only 4 (not concurrent).

by Hla Min

Updated : September 2026

by Hla Min

Updated : September 2026

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

ရဟန်းခံ၊ ရှင်ပြု၊ သီလရှင် အလှူ

ကြီးတော်ကြီး နဲ့ သား၊ သမီး၊ မြေးများ

Aunt, her children & grandchildren

• ဦးတင်ဦး၊ Dr. ခင်ကြည်ညွန့် မိသားစု
  U Tin U, Dr. Khin Kyi Nyunt and Family
• ဦးဘသန်း၊ ဒေါ်မြမြ မိသားစု
  U Ba Than, Daw Mya Mya and Family
• ဒေါ်မြင့်သွယ်၊ Dr. F ဘလှီ မိသားစု
  Daw Myint Thwe, Dr. Freddie Ba Hli and Family
• ဦးသောင်းလွင်
  U Thaung Lwin
• ဒေါ်ချိုချိုလှိုင်
  Daw Cho Cho Hlaing

ဦးဘလှီ နဲ့ ဇနီး
U and Mrs. Ba Hli

• Son
• Grandchildren

လူငယ် (တချို့)
Youths

• မြင့်တိုး
  Myint Toe
• စိန်မြင့်မောင်
  Sein Myint Maung
• စိန်စိန်အေး
  Sein Sein Aye

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

Pu Zaw Pwe ပူဇော်ပွဲ

• It is a Noble Tradition that is practiced in Burma.
• Thet Kyee Pu Zaw Pwe သက်ကြီးပူဇော်ပွဲ is for paying respect to the Elders. The age requirements vary.

• Saya Pu Zaw Pwe ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ is for paying respect to the sayas and sayamas. Some use the term Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe အာစရိယပူဇော်ပွဲ

Thet Kyee Pu Zaw Pwe

Seniors

• The definition of a Senior may vary with place and time.

• In some places, a Senior Day is held. Transportation, Food, Entertainment and Photo-shoot are provided for seniors of all races and creeds.

At a Festival

• Thet Kyee PZP may be held in conjunction with a Festival, e.g Thingyan or Thadinkyut. Buddhists may also pay respect physically to the Elders.

Myanmar Engineering Society

• MES organized Thet Kyee PZP for Senior Engineers and Architects.

All-Mechanical Gathering

• The All-Mechanical Gatherings have a program to pay respect to Thet Kyee Mechanical Engineers.

Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe

Examples :

• Combined 1st BE Intake of 64 and 65
• M72 and selected Disciplines
• ICST/UCSY

Saya Pu Zaw Pwe

SPZP-2000

• RIT Alumni International hosted the First RIT Grand Reunion and SPZP in San Francisco, California in October 2000.

• The term Saya Pu Zaw Pwe was chosen over Saya Ga Dawt Pwe so that Alumni of different Faith can pay back the Metta and Cetana of their mentors.

• I am honored to be a Core Organizer of SPZP-2000. I wrote the poem “SAYA PU ZAW PWE”. It was published in the RIT website and the Commemorative Issue of the RIT Alumni Newsletter for SPZP-2000.

Singapore SPZPs

• Singapore hosted SPZP-2002, SPZP-2007 and SPZP-2010. Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War) and team published Commemorative Issue of Swel Daw Yeik Sar Saung for the SPZPs.
• My poem (SAYA PU ZAW PWE) was reprinted on the Back Cover of SDYSS-2002.
• I wrote a poem “SWE DAW YEIK” for SDYSS-2007.
• I wrote an article “EE Sayas : A Sad and Short Clip” for SDYSS-2010.

Yangon SPZPs

• Yangon hosted SPZP-2004, SPZP-2012 and SPZP-2016.
• Commemorative Issue of Swel Daw Yeik Magazine was published for SPZP-2012 and SPZP-2016. U Saw Lin (GBNF) was Chief Editor of SDYM-2012. Saya U Moe Aung was Chief Editor of SPZP-2016. Several Distinguished Authors (e.g Ma Sandar, Maung Sein Win — Padeegone, N Jar Thaing, Aw Pi Kye) also served as Editors.
• Due to the pandemic, SPZP-2020 was canceled.

Gone But Not Forgotten

• Some of the Organizers and Volunteers of the SPZPs are GBNF. They include Saya Allen Htay, Ko Saw Lin, Ko Aung Moung, Ko Than Sin Myint and Ko Robin.

• Several Sayas are GBNF. They include U Ba Toke, H Num Kok, U Soe Khaw, U Ba Than, U Min Wun, U Khin Aung Kyi, U Thit, Dr. Mg Mg Win, S Arya, S Kyaw Aye, U Soe Lwin.

• Sayas U Aung Khin, Dr. Aung Gyi and U Myo Myint Sein are 90+ years young. Many of our sayas are 80+ years young.
• We hope to see SPZPs in the not so distant future (after the Calamities have ended).