Category: Concept

  • Gatherings, News & Opinion

    Old Photos

    • Chit Pe, Kyaw Nyunt, Aung Gyi Shwe … are GBNF (Gone But Not Forgotten)
    Gather 1
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    Gather 3
    Gather 4

    August 2023

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    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

    • 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
    SPHS
    St. John’s Dio

    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.

  • Lottery

    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.
  • Rules

    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

  • Horse Racing

    • 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.
  • Harmony

    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.
    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ritm-tn.jpg

    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”.

  • Opinion

    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).
  • Errors

    • “To err is human. To forgive divine.”
      I like another version. “To err is human. To really goof, use a computer.”
    • I am imperfectly perfect.
      I write most of the type straight on the keyboard relying on my reasonably good memory.
      I have made intentional and unintentional errors.
      Thanks to my colleagues, friends and readers for catching and correcting them.
    • Word processors also introduce some errors by correcting legal Burmese words and names. e.g. “Nwe” becomes “New” when auto-corrected.
      A work around is to add such words to a private dictionary for use by the word processor.
    • Without analysis of context, a program cannot decide whether you meant “goal” (objective) or “gaol” (alternative spelling for jail).
      Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) might help with such problems.
    • Inconsistencies are not easy to detect.
      If I write about Saya U Shwe Hlaing for two posts : “Names — Shwe” and “Names — Hlaing” [at different times], the contents may not be exactly the same.
      A solution is to open multiple pages and edit them at the same time.
    • I use FaceBook for convenience (e.g. getting rapid feedback), but it is not designed for cross-referencing posts.
    • When I am not sure about an alumnus’s year of graduation or discipline, I use X for “unknown or unsure”.
      Most of the time, I get corrected by the readers.
    • There is no “hard and fast” rule for including or excluding names in my posts. The coverage may not be uniform for the names mentioned. My posts are not complete for “Who’s who in Burma and Myanmar?”
    • Have minimized the use of tags.
      Earlier, I tag Subject Matter Experts for their review and feedback.
      Dr. Thane Oke Kyaw Myint, Dr. Khin Maung U and Dr. Nyunt Wai for topics that mention Medical doctors and pioneers.
      U Khin Maung Zaw (KMZ) and Dr. Kyaw Tint for their expertise in computers, and electronics.
      Saya U Moe Aung (Tekaktho Moe War), Saya U Aung Myaing (Okpo Maung Yin Maung) and Saya U Nyunt Htay (Maung Nyunt Htay — Ah Htet Min Hla) for their expertise in Kabyar.
    • Do not know of a good way to cover variants of names.

    U Khin Maung Zaw wrote :

    One of the issues with Burmese names, is that there are more than one way to spell it in English, like Tun vs Htun. We used to have two ထြန္းေအာင္ေက်ာ္ (I left U/Ko on purpose of clarity not for the lack of respect), one of them spell his name Tun Aung Gyaw, the other Htun Aung Kyaw. Hence they are been distinguished as TAG and HAK.

    I used to have a god-grandmother here in US in the early days – she passed some years back, may her soul RIP. We, myself and U Min Maung (EP68), jokingly told her to make sure she spelled our name MAUNG in her will. Khin Mg Zaw may not be the same as Khin Maung Zaw in legalese.

  • Concepts

    ** Education = ပညာ ရေး

    Formal Education

    Information Education

    Theory & Practice

    —-

    ** Teaching = သင်ကြား

    Teacher = ဆရာ

    သင်စရာ၊ မြင်စရာ၊ ကြားစရာ

    ဝါသနာ၊ စေတနာ၊ အနစ်နာ

    (ရှေး)

    Chalk & Talk

    (နောင်)

    Development of Skills

    —-

    *** Learning = လေ့လာ

    Effective Learning / Learning how to learn

    No rote learning

    Spaced review

    Critical Thinking

    Life Long Learning

    —-

    *** Terms

    Evaluation = အကဲဖြတ်

    Discussion = ဆွေးနွေး

    Collaboration = စုပေါင်း လုပ်ဆောင်

    SME / Subject Matter Expert = ဘာသာရပ်ကျွမ်းကျင်သူ

    Target Audience = ရည်မှန်း တဲ့ ပရိသတ်

    (ဒီ Group မှာ အသက် 80ကျော် တွေ၊ ကျောင်းဆရာ တွေ၊ လူလတ်၊ လူငယ် စုံ။)

    Span of Attention = စူးစိုက် ချိန်

    (For many, Less than a minute;

    For some, less than 10 seconds)

    TL;DR = Too Long; Don’t Read

    သိပ်ရှည် လို့ မဖတ်ချင်

    Overview = မိတ်ဆက်

    Summary / Digest = အကျဉ်းချုပ်၊ အနှစ်

    —-

    *** For detailed information,

    ဆက်နွယ် Posts

    ဆက်နွယ် စာအုပ်၊ စာတန်း၊ ကျမ်းကြီး / ငယ်

    ဆက်နွယ် Websites

    Encyclopedia = စွယ်စုံကျမ်း

    (e.g Burmese and English Wikipedia,

    မြန်မာ့ စွယ်စုံကျမ်း)

    တွေ ရှိပါတယ်။

    ***

  • League

    Measure

    • The league is a measure.
    • Jules Verne’s book “20000 Leagues under the sea” was made into a movie.

    Sports leagues

    • Soccer : English Premier League
    • NFL : National Football League
    • NHL : National Hockey League
    • MLB : Major League Baseball
    • MLS : Major League Soccer

    Organizations

    After the First World War, the League of Nations was formed.
    After the Second World War, the United Nations Organization was formed. U Thant served as the Third UNSG (United Nations Secretary General).

    Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) had a major role in the struggle for Burma’s Independence.
    National League for Democracy (NLD) has a major role in the restoration of Democracy in Myanmar.