News may stand for the four directions : North, East, West and South
News may be formal or informal.
In the early days, News Agencies served as a source for newspapers and radio. Reuters, AP, UPI are some of the agencies.
In our younger days, there were Morning newspapers, Evening newspapers and Weekly newspapers.
The newspapers were printed in batches. The early batches were dispatched to other cities via car or rail. The later batches were usually given to distributors. Some newspapers reserve space on the front page to print “Breaking News”.
Newspapers employ reporters or correspondents for the Local and Regional News. There may be student reporters, sports reporters and ad-hoc reporters.
Newspapers usually print corrections the following day, but some people might not take time to read such corrections. Unethical journalists may rush to report news (without fact checking).
After the Coup d’etat, there were changes.
NAB (News Agency Burma) was established to control the dissemination of news. The English Section editors compile the news from the news agencies. The Burmese Section editors compile the local news. They selectively translate the foreign news into Burmese.
Four old newspapers were continued as government newspapers. Two new newspapers were established. “Loke Tha Pyithu Nay Zin” was headed by Shwe Oo Daung. “Working People’s Daily” (WPD) was headed by U Khin Maung Latt.
Censorship grew over the years.
CNN (Cable News Network) was one of the early TV stations with emphasis on news. Its sister station HLN (Headline News) ran 30-minute segments of the “current” news.
The Internet and smart devices forced the demise of several newspapers.
I translated some Kabyars by Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War, Laureate Poet)
Shwe YaDu Lann Commemorating RIT Golden Jubilee in 2014
To The Shwe Duo In memory of Saya U Tin Shwe (EP66) and Saya U Hla Shwe (T69)
Computer In My Heart Old Kabyar written in Singapore
Shwe YaDu Lann (Kabyar) by Tekkatho Moe War
Shwe YaDu Lann Let it be rough [but it’s tough]. Flowers are blossoming again. Fear not the summer Care not the rain [drops] or the thick fogs & darkness or if winter’s not true to its form
Shwe YaDu Lann Let it be rough. No gentle stream flowing Fear not high winds Care not dense clouds Topsy turvy [come what may] Can paddle upstream With strong mind & conviction Place where heroes [Thu Ye Kaungs] are produced .
Swel Daw Myaing Dann Shwe YaDu Lann is a start [of a journey] To raise the Banner loftily to the skies, to the Zenith displaying our Thitsa (vow of truth and integrity)
Shwe YaDu Lann
To The Shwe Duo (Kabyar) by Tekkatho Moe War
SHWE duo Blossom in unison Disappear together Free from complaint Even with thin breath Showed mark [of courage and wisdom] Never ever wavered … Pressed by burden At the awaited turn [of journey’s end] Body — inheritance [from previous lives] Succumbs [to failing health] Yet, “Wei-nyin” is fresh, alive and hovering. [ Wei-nyin = ဝိညာဥ္ ]
To the Shwe DuoU Tin Shwe (EP66)U Hla Shwe (T69)
Computer In My Heart By Tekkatho Moe War
Desktops to select at will, computers [galore] encircle [me], obey my command in an AC room, touch keypad where finger tips lie, [work] and rest somewhere in a foreign land
Computers welcome data — texts, messages, numbers with open arms. Fabulous memory store forever, retrieve [compute & display]
Deep within my heart stored & preserved, [notable] events of my life love, hate, loss, gain [joy, pain] assessed & archived — in my heart’s computer. Shaking, pushing, … to close it’s door would be in vain. My dear beloved do you think I can ever forget?
ရန်ကုန်ကောလိပ် ကျောင်းအုပ်ကြီး Principal, Rangoon College
1918 ပညာရေးအဖွဲ့ ရဲ့ Vice Chairman
အားကစား / ဘော်လုံး — အားပေး Sports / Soccer
ကျောင်းသား များ က ချစ်ခင်လေးစား Appreciated by students 1920 သပိတ်မှောက် ကျောင်းသားများ က ကန်တော့ တောင်းပန် RU Strike Students sincerely told him that there was nothing personal about the boycott 1923 အင်္ဂလန် ပြန် — နှုတ်ဆက် မျက်ရည် ကျ He shed tears during the farewell to move back to England in 1923
1917 – 1922 ဥက္ကဌ၊ Burma Research Society — President
Matthew Hunter Gold Medal ရွှေတံဆိပ်
စည်းကမ်းကြီး Disciplinarian
ကိုဘသန်း (နောင် Dr. ဘသန်း) နဲ့ ကိုကျော်မြင့် (First in Burma; နောင် ဝတ်လုံတော်ရ ဦးကျော်မြင့်) တို့ကို Calcutta တက္ကသိုလ် က စစ် တဲ့ ဆေးပညာ သင်ခွင့် စာမေးပွဲကို ဖြေခိုင်း။ He chose Ko Ba Than and Ko Kyaw Myint to take the examination by Calcutta University to study medicine.
ကိုကျော်မြင့် က မိခင်စျာပန တက်ရောက်ခွင့်တောင်း။ ဆရာ က ခွင့်မပြု။ ကိုကျော်မြင့် က စျာပန တက် လို့ ကျောင်းထုတ်ခံရ။ Ko Kyaw Myint asked permission to attend his mother’s funeral. Saya refused. Ko Kyaw Myint attended the funeral. He was expelled.
—-
မာ့က် ဟန်တာ Mark Hunter
Sir John Mark Somers Hunter (1865 – 1932)
အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ / စာပေ ဆရာ & စာအုပ်ပြုစု သူ Author of Texts on English Literature
Director of Coimbatore College, Professor of Presidency College, Madras, India
1918 ပညာရေးအဖွဲ့ ရဲ့ Chairman
1918 -1920 Professor, Government College, Rangoon, Burma
ပညာမင်းကြီး Director of Public Instruction
1920 RU Act ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် အက် ဥပဒေ ကိုအဆိုပြု
ကျောင်းသား များ နဲ့ ထိတ်တိုက်တွေ့ RU students staged a Strike to protest the 1920 RU Act
Related Posts (e.g. long article by Dr. Thane Oke Kyaw Myint)
Barrister, Judge of Supreme Court, Head of Tribunal that tried Galon U Saw, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Politician, Head of private Law firm that defended several people accused by the MaSaLa government).
Stood first in Burma from Central with distinctions in all subjects. Sadly, he was expelled from the University of Rangoon for attending his mother’s funeral and earned the ire of the Principal and his father. His saga is recounted in a series of posts by his son Dr. Thane Oke Kyaw Myint.
Dhamma friend of my beloved parents. They built Dat Paung Zon Aung Min Gaung pagoda and supported “Mon” Sayadaw U Thilawanta.
Brief Bio of U Kyaw Myint
U Myint Thein
Related Posts (e.g. Garawa to his elder brother)
Uncle Monty was Chief Justice of the Union of Burma.
On March 2, 1962, a Coup D’etat took place. Arrested along the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, several Sawbwas and high ranking officials. During his detainment, he was allowed only one day off to attend the funeral of his spouse (an early Burmese female to be called to the Bar in the UK).
Ambassador (e.g. to China).
Outstanding author and translator.
Pen name : “MMT” (for Maung Myint Thein). His works were heavily censored.
Dr. Htin Aung
Related Posts (e.g. article by Win Aung Gyi / Aung Mon)
Served as Principal of Rangoon College and as the first native Rector of the University of Rangoon.
Prolific writer (covering history, folklore and several topics).
“Burmese Drama” and “Thirty Burmese Tales” were prescribed texts.
Daw Khin MyaMu
Related Posts (e.g. article by Daw Khin Saw Tint, Lost Manuscripts)
Served as Lecturer in Burmese, Thamadu Myo Win (and family court judge)
Expert in Kyauk Sar (stone inscriptions)
Spouse : Burmese Professor U E Maung
Her handwritten manuscripts were not published due to lack of fonts, and were ultimately lost
Daw Khin Saw Mu
Related Posts (TEDx Talk by Nay Oke, article by Daw Khin Saw Tint)
Early student of Sayagyi U Pe Maung Tin (Pali scholar, who successfully proposed the establishment of a separate Burmese Department).
Khit San Poet
Spouse : ICS U Ba Tint
Children : Sayama Daw Khin Saw Tint (RIT English, bilingual writer) and U Nay Oke Tint (St. Paul’s, TED-x Yangon speaker, successful tuition saya, Chair of the Myanmar Board for organizing the 5th ILF (Irrawaddy Literary Festival).
Cula Thingyan (Small Change) occurs monthly (move to a new Zodiac sign)
Maha Thingyan (Big Change) occurs yearly (Sun, in the geocentric model, enters Meiktha around April 13.
New Year
The early Romans and Persians celebrate the New Year around March 21 – 23 (Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere).
The Precession of the Equinoxes cause the difference of about 23 days (for Western Zodiac System versus Eastern Zodiac System).
Some Indian races like Tamil and Hindu Bengalis celebrate the New Year on or around April 14 when the Sun entered Meiktha.
Burmese New Year
The Burmese celebrate Thingyan Period : Ah Kyo, Ah Kya, one (or two) Ah Kyat, Ah Tet, followed by Hnit San Ta Yet (Burmese/Myanmar New Year).
Children start throwing water on Ah Kyo. Most people throw water for three (or four) days of “Thingyan Proper”.
In the early days, Rangoon allowed manduts (pandals), floats (ah hla pya cars), competitions (than gyat, songs, dances), and limited use of fire hydrants.
Mandalay was noted for the musical evening extravaganza. Myoma Troupe and others made their name. “Mann Taung Yeik Kho” (aka “Mya Nandar”) became a de facto dance song for Thingyan celebrations world wide. The movie “Thingyan Moe” and its songs are still being played around Thingyan.
In one Thingyan, three leaders U Nu, Nasser (Egypt) and Nehru (India) who co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement / Bloc participated.
The Rakhine (Arakan) Thingyan allows young men and women to line up on the sides of a “hlay” (boat filled with water) and gently throw water.
Some young Burmese help elderly women to wash their hair.
Some monasteries host “Su Paung Thingyan Donlaba Pwe” around Thingyan.
On New Year’s day, some will “free fish” back to the lakes.
UCC Thingyan
Thingyan (Burmese New Year) was celebrated by UCC staff and students with “Su Paung Yahan Khan”.
Yahan Khan
The Yahan Khan was performed at a selected monastery such as
Kaba Aye Sunlun Gu Kyaung
Mo Hnyin Taw Ya
Chan Myay Yeiktha
UCC Yahan Khan
One photo shows
Sayagyi Dr. Chit Swe
U Win Maung
U Hla Min
U Tun Aung Gyaw
U Soe Myint (GBNF)
U Khin Maung Aye
Daw Khin Khin Latt
U Tun Aung Gyaw (USA), U Khin Maung Aye (Singapore) and U Win Maung (Australia) are now Ph.Ds.
Another photo shows the UCC Donlabas with a resident monk from Kaba Aye Sunlun Gu Kyaung.
There were two U Soe Myint at UCC.
U Soe Myint (M72) retired as Pro-Rector of ICST and is GBNF.
U Soe Myint (KSM) retired from UN.
Saya U Ko Ko Lay (GBNF) served as Operations Manager and Scientific Applications Manager at UCC. He later served as Professor and Head of Department at the Department of Computer Science (DCS) and the Institute of Computer Science and Technology (ICST).
Some UCC Belles worked or taught at UCC, DCS and ICST. Some worked for Computer Departments at other organizations (including UN and overseas).
Daw Nge Ma Ma Than (GBNF) was a Prisoner of Conscience.
UCC Dobat
UCC also had a Dobat Waing organized by U Win Hlaing.
UCC Dobat
Not so good things can occur in Thingyan
rowdy and/or drunk revelers
drunken drivers
use of unclean water and high pressure pumps
throwing water on pregnant women and yogis
having to go to a cemetery (not to enter “New Year” for those who pass away in Thingyan).
2018 Thingyan in the Bay Area
Sein Myint’s daughter and grand child
Ko Yu Ket (Edward Saw, EC85) gave us a ride to the Thingyan Festival at Dhammananda Vihara (Half Moon Bay Monastery).
The compound was jam packed. Many cars had to park along Highway 1 (outside the compound).
Thanks to the EC and BOD of TBSA (Theravada Buddhist Society of America), volunteers, food donors.
HlaMin 