Category: Concept

Sayas

• U Ba Toke (GBNF) was a proud Great Grandfather.

• Daw Khin Saw Tint (GBNF) was a proud Great Grandmother.

Alumni

• Bo Lwin Swe (EE61) is a proud Great Grandfather.

• Zau Lai (EP69) is also a Proud Great Grandfather.

Six degrees of separation

In the study, a group of people were given letters (or packages) with the destination address. They were asked to forward them to someone, who they believe might know someone, and so on.

On the average, it took six links for the letter (or package) to reach the destination.

Has the world shrunk?

A similar experiment was repeated in the Internet age with e-mails (or similar).

It took about four links.

Wisdom

There is conventional wisdom stating, “A chain is as strong as the weakest link”. Hackers and Crackers (Criminal Hackers) try to find out the weakest link.

• There is unconventional wisdom stating, “Your weak relation (e.g. those who meet in a church or temple) might often prove to be more helpful that your strongrelation (e.g. families and friends).”
• For example, a weak relation might help you get a job.
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Million Man March (to Washington DC) were made possible by the seemingly “weak” relations.
• Who knows if there are weak relations (lurking in the Internet), who might help me transform my posts into an e-book, a printed book or a series of lectures to help our beloved motherland and alma mater.

Dana may stand for offering, alms, and donation.
Dana may be performed anonymously, or at an event (e.g. birthday, anniversary).
According to a saying, “Dhamma Dana excels all Dana”.

There can be “Double Dana“.
For example, Sayagyi U Ba Than donates the Garwara Money that he received from the SPZPs and alumni back to Charitable Organizations. During one my visits, I witnessed the donation of One Lakh Kyat each to then organizations. They include : Bo Bwa Yeik Tha, Little Sisters for the Poor, School for Deaf and Dumb, School for the Blind, U Hla Tun Foundation, Nar Yay Ah Thin.

Dana transcends religion and culture.

For Buddhists, Dana provides opportunities to gain kusala (wholesome deeds) before, during and after the offering.
One can share merits when performing a Dana.
One can rejoice past Dana and gain merits.

“Pyinnya Dana” may stand for offerings made for the advancement of education [of the people and the society]. Dana for the “YTU Library Modernization” would be a form of Pyinnya Dana. Knowledge Sharing may also be a form of Pyinnya Dana.

Swel Daw Yeik Foundation (SDYF) provides some financial assistance to eligible sayas and sayamas for Hospitalization and Frequent visits to the Clinic.

RITAA and NorCal RITAA provide some financial assistance to eligible YTU students.

RIT Ah Nu Pyinnya Shins donate to the various noble causes (e.g. SPZP, Shwe YaDu, YTU Library) in cash and kind, Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.

Some Major Donors

• Saya U Tin Htut (M60) — K 100 Lakhs to YTU Library Modernization Project, K 10 Lakhs to Swel Daw Yeik Foundation, Some of the Garawa money to the then MES (Mechanical Engineering Chapter)
• Daw Myint Myint (C69) — K 150 Lakhs for YTU Library Modernization; Major donor of 69er HCF
• Ivan Lee (M69) — Major donor of 69er HCF and MASTAA; Golden Sponsor of SPZP-2000 and 2007
• U Thaung Sein (Steeve Kay, EC70) — US$20000+ to RIT related activities; Multiple Golden Sponsor of SPZPs; Health Care for eligible RIT sayas and sayamas
• U Tha Htay (M70) — Major donor for Combined 1st BE Intake of 64 and 65
• Benny Tan (M70) — Multiple Golden Sponsor of SPZPs; Major donor for Combined 1st BE Intake of 64 and 65
• Dr. Myo Khin (C70) and Daw Mya Mya Nwe (C73) — K 100 Lakhs for or YTU Library Modernization
• U Khin Maung Tun (T78) — Major donor of SDYF; Vision Care for eligible RIT sayas and sayamas

Old Photos

• Chit Pe, Kyaw Nyunt, Aung Gyi Shwe … are GBNF (Gone But Not Forgotten)

August 2023

September အလှူရှင် Donors

• ဦးငွေထွန်း၊ U Ngwe Tun
• ဦးတင်ရှိန်၊ U Tin Shein
• ဦးသန်းဝင်း၊ U Than Win
• ဦးချမ်းငြိမ်း၊ U Chan Nyein
• ဒေါ်ခင်သန်းမြင့်တင်၊ Daw Khin Than Myint Tin
• ဦးစောမြင့်နိုင်၊ U Saw Myint Naing
• ဦးဖေဟန်ထွန်း U Pe Han Tun
• U Zaw Win (Thailand)
• Albert Kyaw Min

Dear RIT 69++friends

ဖိတ်ကြားအပ်ပါတယ်

September breakfast gathering သို့ မပျက်မကွက် ကြွရောက်ကြပါခင်ဗျား။

တော်ဝင်နှင်းဆီ / ၂၄/၉/၂၀၂၃ (တနင်္ဂနွေ) ၊ ၇:၀၀ မှ ၈:၃၀ နာရီ မှာဆုံကြမယ်။

ကိုငွေထွန်း၊ကိုသန်းဝင်း၊ကိုတင်ရှိန်၊ကိုစောမြင့်နိုင်၊ကိုဖေဟန်ထွန်း၊ကိုချမ်းငြိမ်း၊မာဂရက်၊Albertနှင့် ကိုဇော်ဝင်း(ထိုင်း) ပေါင်း ၉ ဦးတို့က အာဟာရ ဒါန ပြုကြပါမယ်။နီး/ဝေး/ပြည်ပ သူငယ်ချင်းများရဲ့ စေတနာပါ။ကြွလာချီးမြှင့်ဖို့ ထပ်မံတိုက်တွန်းပါရစေ။

စားပြီးရင် ၉၃ နှစ်ပြည့် ဆရာ ဦးဘသန်းအား သွားရောက် ဂါရဝ ပြုပါမယ်။ဆရာနေကောင်းပါတယ် အပြော နဲ့ သတိ အားနည်းလာပြီ။အလှူငွေများကို နောက်ဆုံးအချိန်ထိ လက်ခံပေးသွားပါ့မယ်။လိုက်ပါလိုသူ အကန့်အသတ်မရှိပါ။

News & Opinion

ဦးရဲမြင့်(ChE70) မွေးနေ့အလှူ

• SDYF (Swel Daw Yeik Foundation) — K 10 Lakhs
• Eradication of Hunger — K 20 Lakhs

1961 Matriculation

• 1st — Lina Ong (MEHS, ကွယ်လွန်)
• 2nd — Robin Ban (SPHS)

Medication

• ဆေး တွေမှာ side effect ရှိနိုင်
• အစားတွေ မှာ ဆေး အာနိသင်ရှိနိုင်
• Medical Reports တွေ အပြောင်းအလဲရှိနိုင်

U Kyaw Myint wrote;

အစာလဲဆေး ဆေးလဲအစာ
မသင့်သောအစာသည် အနီးကပ်ဘေး
အနီးကပ်ဘေးသည် မသင့်သောအစာ

Memory Loss မှတ်ဥာဏ် ချို့ယွင်း

လူသိ — အမည်မသိ
အမည်သိ — လူမသိ
လူ ရော အမည် ရော မသိ

စွယ်တော်ရိပ်

မဂ္ဂဇင်း — 2012, 2014, 2016
စာစောင်— 2002, 2007, 2010

Jara, Byadi, Marana

ကဗျာ မှာ ဇရာ၊ ဗျာဓိ၊ မရဏ မရှိ — Tekkatho Moe War
Alumni တွေမှာ တော့ ရှိ

Pu Zaw Pwe

မောင်မာဃ ရဲ့ အစီအစဉ်
ငွေရတု ပူဇော်ပွဲ
စင်ပေါ်တက်ဘို့မလို
Meet, Greet, Fete

Mg Mar Ga wrote :

ဆရာ​တွေကထိုင်မြဲအတိုင်းထိုင်​နေ…
တပည့်​တွေကနတ်တို့ရှိခိုးနည်းအတိုင်းရှိခိုးမယ်
ဆရာဥိးကျင်စိုးကကိုဗစ်ကာလတုန်းကကတိပြုထားတယ်
ဒိတခါကန်​တော့ရင်တက်ပါမယ်တဲ့ ရ​အောင်ဖိတ်မယ်

Alumni helping Alumni

ဦးခင်မောင်မြင့်
ဦးသန်းဝင်း
တို့ကို စုပေါင်း ကူ
သာဓု၊ သာဓု၊ သာဓု

• Heritage may stand for property handed over to an heir.
• Heritage may mean tradition.
• Heritage may mean something that is transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor

UNESCO

UNESCO provides grant for sites that have been accepted as “UNESCO Heritage Site”.

Some ancient Pyu sites (e.g. Hanlin) are designated as UNESCO Heritage Site.

Yangon Heritage Trust

Yangon Heritage Trust has recognized several old schools as Yangon City Heritage. They include :

• SPHS (St. Paul’s High School)
• St. John’s College (originally called St. John’s Diocesan [Boys] School)
• MEHS (Methodist English High School)
• Myoma National School

Historic Sites

In the USA, some sites and buildings are deemed to be “historic” (e.g. 150+ years old).

Restrictions are placed on how to upgrade them.

Types of Lottery

The types of Lottery vary by country and state.

Well known ones include

• Power Ball
• Mega Millions
• Super Lotto

The winners have an option to take the grand prize in installments over a specified period of years, or to take lump sum. They have to pay applicable taxes.

The shop gets a commission for selling winning tickets.

Aung Bar Lay

• During our younger days, Aung Bar Lay Lottery announced the winners every two months (or so).
• Resellers bought a set of 11 tickets for 20 kyats.
• A lottery ticket sold for two kyats.
• The top prize at one time was One Lakh Kyats.
• One advertisement ran, “Do not reject the suitor outright. He has an ‘Aung Bar Lay’ ticket in his pocket.”

Aung Su Pan and Imitators

• Some (e.g. Aung Su Pan, Kandawgalay) became big distributors.
• They promised to inform the winners (who do not need to find out from the newspapers or from the radio broadcasts.

[Per Dr. Nyunt Wai] :

To avoid law suit, Aung Kha Yu Pan was created. Near the main Aung Su Pan lottery shop in Thein-gyi-zay, we could see smaller shops on the platform in front. One of these was Aung Kha-Yu Pan. Hanging Sabai pan-gones (jasmine garlands) between Kha and Yu, the sign board looked just like Aung Su Pan. Because the main shop was crowded, some people bought tickets from Aung Kha Yu Pan, thinking it was a road-side stand of Aung Su Pan.

Branding Campaigns

• Cigarette manufacturers such as London Gold Flake (by U Win Shein & company) and Ludu Cigarette (by U Cho & company) started selling lottery tickets.
• They require the buyer to provide a specified number of empty/used cigarette packets to get a lottery ticket from them.
• The winners of the tickets received bonuses.
  Examples:
  One Lakh on top of the One Lakh prize.
  Vacation and/or round-trip air tickets

Luck

• According to statistics, there is a very low probability of winning the Grand Prize (often known as the Jack Pot).
• There are many who have never won a lottery prize.
• Yet, there are some lucky people who won the Grand Prize several times.
• A few won lottery games several times in a single day.
• Some rely on their luck and their guts to choose the time and place to buy lottery tickets.

Rule သည် Law ဥပဒေ မဟုတ်။

လမ်းညွှန် ချက်၊ အကြံပေး ချက် … ပါနိုင်။

—-

** 80/20 Rule

အရေးကြီးတဲ့ 20 ရာခိုင်နှုန်း ကို ရှာပြီး လုပ်

လုပ်ငန်း ရဲ့ 80 ရာခိုင်နှုန်း ပြီးစီး / အောင်မြင်နိုင်။

ကုန်ထုတ်ပစ္စည်း product 20 % ဟာ

ရောင်းရငွေ sales 80 % ဖြစ်နိုင်။

Computer code 20 % ဟာ

Execution time 80 % ကြာနိုင်။

80/20 တိတိကျကျ ဖြစ်စရာ မလို

75/25, 70/30 … ဖြစ်နိုင်။

အရာရာ ကို equal priority မထား ဘို့ သတိထား။

—-

** 90/90 Rule

Project ရဲ့ 90 % ပြီး တယ် ဆိုပါစို့။

ကျန်တဲ့ 10 % ကို ပြီးဘို့ အချိန် ကြာတတ်။

အရင် 90 % ကြာသလောက်ကြာနိုင်။

အရာတိုင်း ဟာ အခက်အခဲ မတူ တတ်။

—-

** 5-4-3-2-1 Rule

စိတ်ညစ်စရာ၊ ဒေါသထွက်စရာ၊ … ကြုံရင်

ငါး၊ လေး၊ သုံး၊ နှစ်၊ တစ် လို့ ရေတွက် ကြည့်။

အသက် မှန်မှန် ရှူ။

—-

** SMART Goal

Version အမျိုးမျိုး ရှိနိုင်

Specific — သေချာ၊ ရေရာ

Measurable — တိုင်းထွာ နိုင်

Achievable — ရနိုင်၊ ပြီးမြောက်နိုင်

Relevant — သက်ဆိုင်

Time-bound — အချိန်ကန့်သတ်

—

** ဆက်နွယ်

Conventional Wisdom

Unconventional Wisdom

• In our younger days, Rangoon Turf Club held horse races probably every week end.
• U Chit Khine, father of U Myint Khine (Norman, SPHS57, C63), served as Secretary of the Turf Club.
• Per U Thein Han, four members of Rangoon Turf Club were invited in 1958 as Guests of Hong Kong Turf Club. They were entertained with a special cruise.
• Several medical doctors and business men were Patrons.
• Newspapers ran columns about the forthcoming horse races and their tips on which horses they think will win (take first place) or place (take second place).
• The races are based on the class (e.g. age, height) of the horses.
  To give a fair chance to the competing horses, the past winners have to carry additional weight as handicap.

[Per U Khin Maung Zaw (KMZ, EC76)] :
In the 70s and early 80s, there was a running joke about Hong Kong, where the three most powerful people there were the viceroy, chairman or head of the Chamber of Commerce and the President of the Turf club.

Treble Tote

• Three specified races constitute the “Treble Tote”.
• One has to bet all three winners to claim the Grand Prize.

Lost time and money

• Many lost time trying to guess the winners.
• Lost money betting on the wrong horses.
• U Ne Win declared that “Horse Racing would be banned [for the good of the people].”
  Grapevine says that U Ne Win did not attend the Martyrs’ Day celebrations, since he wanted to be in the UK for the Derby.

Visit

• We had never been to the racing ground.
• Thein Wai (SPHS63) asked several classmates if they would like to visit the Rangoon Turf Club before it would be closed forever.
  His father (Dr. Ko Gyi) was a Patron of the Club.
• We saw some “Nwa Pwe” (bullock cart races) that supplement the regular horse races.

In our younger days

Our grand parents and parents had workers who were non-Buddhists. They gave us sweets (for Diwali), dan bauk (for Id) and presents (for Christmas).

During our younger days, we had classmates who professed different religions and lived in perfect harmony.

Christians

Saya U Pe Maung Tin was a Christian, but he helped with the translation of Buddhist texts (e.g. Vissuddhi Magga). Saya also translated the two sermons (Dhammacakka and Anatta Lekkhana Sutta) into English at the request of U Tha Win (who published the two sermons in Pali, Burmese and English).

Teacher Kywe (PPBRS) was a Karen Christian teacher who transformed me into a “life long learner”. My mother would ask me to visit her several years before she retired.

Rev. Bernard Taylor (SPHS) retired as a Missionary in the Philippines.

Rev. Edwin David (SPHS, GBNF) served as Priest of St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Several RIT alumni (including a few Golden Sponsors) are Christians. They embrace SPZPs.

The term Saya Pu Zaw Pwe was chosen over Saya Ga Daw Pwe (which had religious connotation) so that all students can pay back the metta and cetana of their mentors.

Sikhs

D. S. Saluja (SPHS, RIT) and A. S. Sonu (SPHS) are Sikhs.

Several Singhs are RIT alumni. They include Meenu, Jagjit, Surinder, and Uttam.

Muslims

• Arzani U Razak
  Early Graduate of National College
  Principal of National School in Mandalay
  Was nominated by several Sayadaws to be Education Minister in Bogyoke Aung San’s Cabinet
• U Raschid
  Student Leader for RUSU and Ba Ka Tha
  Minister
• U Khin Maung Latt
  Minister
• U Pe Khin
  Negotiator at Pin Lon Conference
• Bohmu Ba Shin
  Burma Historical Commission
• U Hla Kyi (Geologist, younger son of U Razak)
  Helped solve the “Foundation” problem at Shwe Dagon Pagoda

• Edward Hla Shwe I and II (SPHS) were Muslims.
• Several RIT alumni (including the organizers at RIT Alumni International and 69er gatherings) are Muslims.
• U Thein Ngwe (Ko Thein Tokyo) sent a photo of RIT Muslim students in 1971.

Men on the Moon

For the last stanza of my poem “Men on the Moon”, I wrote

“Are we not brothers here on earth?
So let us all unite.
There will be heaven here on earth
If we all cease to fight”.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. e.g. Social media is good for getting contact with lost friends, but not good for use in research papers.

Some newspapers have Op-Ed (Opinion and Editorial). e.g. There may be two competing opinions of DST (Daylight Savings Time) : one for and one against.

An opinion may not be true. It may have biases and unintentional errors.

One should not react to an unfavorable opinion. e.g. Names may not be a hobby for everyone.

One should take whatever is relevant in the opinion. Then, optionally, one should respond (e.g. which parts are relevant, and which parts are not).

The following are examples of incorrect assessments by experts.

• “Joe Montana cannot be an efficient Quarterback, because he does not have the structure, strength and finesse.” JHe went on to win four Superbowl, and entered the Football Hall of Fame.
  
• “Apple Music and Apple Computers are two different fields. There need not be confusion with Apple in their names and products.” The judge for the Trade Mark suit could not see deep into the future. The Beatles songs (owned by Apple Music) are played in iPod (owned by Apple Computers).
  
• “The Long Jump record at Mexico City Olympics will not be broken at other places (with lower altitudes).”
  Bob Beamon’s leap beat the existing Olympic and World Records by a wide margin, and was considered a “fluke” (partly aided by the rarefied atmosphere). The record was broken by Carl Lewis (who won the Long Jump at four Olympics).