Category: Concept

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2035

Sayings

• Age is just a number.
• There is a Physical Age and a Mental Age.
• Aging may be accompanied by loss of memory.
• Exercise, Music and Games help one to age gracefully.
• Life begins at forty.
• Ronald Reagan jokingly said: “I am celebrating my 35th birthday after my 40th”.

Thoughts

• I felt uncomfortable to be called “Ah Ba”, “Pho Pho” … and to be offered assistance (e.g. wheelchair).
• Now I feel OK to take wheelchair at airports and to have assistance when I climb up and down hill slopes. I had a couple of bike rides on the dirt roads in Upper Myanmar.
• As a senior, I enjoy discounts on trains, buses.
• I simply hope that my mental faculties will be strong.

Sayagyi U Ba Toke

• Sayagyi is a Phwa Bet Taw of Rangoon University. He celebrated his 99th birthday in December 2019 with his children, grand children and great grand children.
• During my visits to Yangon, I paid homage to Sayagyi. In the early visits, Sayagyi recounted his experiences. He was a football star, a leader of the Burma Olympic Delegation, Commandant of the Luyechun Camp, an outstanding teacher and an excellent speaker. Until his mid 80s, he used to walk to Shwe Dagon Pagado with his younger dhamma friends. Then, Sayagyi gradually lost his mobility, his sight and his teeth. He had to skip some minor PZPs, but still attended SPZPs with a wheel chair.
• Ma Theingi, Sayagyi’s youngest daughter, mentioned that Sayagyi is healthy but because he had lost most teeth, they have to listen carefully to grasp his message. Jara (old age) catches even the sport stars.
• Sadly, he passed away on December 2, 2020 — a few days shy of his Centennial.

At SPHS, we had a “Morals and Manners” class for students who are not Catholics. We learned some poems from the book.

The following is a modernized version of the poem which used “Thou”, “Thee” and “Locks”.

Be kind to your father — for when you were young
Who loved you as fondly as he
He caught the first accent that fell from your tongue
And joined in the heavenly glee.

Be kind to your father — for now he is old
His hair intermingled with grey
His footsteps are feeble, once fearless and bold
Your father is passing away.

• A coach is a vehicle to “carry” someone to a destination.
• The first use of coach described a teacher who “carried” a student over a tough examination.
• Later use of coach was in Athletic Development (e.g. coaching an individual or a team in a sports).
• There are Professional Coaches, Certified Coaches and Club Coaches.

• A therapist focuses on the past.
  A coach focuses on the future.

• A consultant helps to solve a problem (of a company or a client).
  A coach provides suggestions and frameworks (that can be used by the client, who is accountable for solving the problem).

• A mentor may advise, counsel and coach.
  A coach focuses on coaching (and may not advise or counsel).

• A trainer sets objectives for the trainee.
  A coach does not set objectives for the client/individual. The client/individual sets objectives for himself/herself.

• An athletic developer directs behavior of individuals and teams based on the developer’s experience and knowledge.
  A coach focuses on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.

Definitions

• Weighing machine / Scale
  
• Zodiac sign for Libra
  
• Difference between income and expenditure, dues and payment
  e.g. Balance Sheet,
  Balance of a back account
  
• Control
  
• Moderation / Avoiding extremes

Aerial Artists

• Aerial artists usually employ safety nets.
• The Flying Wallendas (seven family members) performing the Human Pyramid were the exception. One fateful night, a member lost balance causing tragedy.

Dhammacakkapavatna Sutta

Buddha’s First Sermon mentioned the avoidance of two extremes :

• Indulgence of pleasures
• Self-mortification.

Moderation

• With mental lapse, middle aged and elderly can lose balance easily.
  e.g. slip beside the bed
• Moderation is the key to health and happiness.

• Blood thinner helped a friend get back his health.
• Overuse of blood thinner sent another to the hospital.

The following may be detrimental to one’s health

• Over-exercise
• Lack of exercise
• Extreme diet
• Over-eating
• Over-sitting
  In some meditation retreats, the practitioners alternate sitting meditation and walking meditation
• Not much sleep
• Over-sleeping

It is important to maintain a balance for most things (especially work and family).

• Several astronauts had success with the flights, but had family problems.
• Some entrepreneurs had success with the business, but had family issues.

Classic Vitamins

They include

• Vitamin A
• a range of Vitamin B’s
• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin E
• Vitamin K

Dosage

• Taking unnecessary type and amount of vitamins may cause harm.
• We can take the “recommended” dosage of vitamin supplements.
• Deficiency of some vitamins can be minimized or avoided by balanced diet, exercise and work.

New Vitamins

• It is safe to take Vitamin F and Vitamin M.
• Vitamin F is provided by good Friends. 
• Vitamin M is provided by Myees (grand children) and Myits (great grand children).

• Do not forget to celebrate
  Happy Friendship Day,
  Happy Fathers’ Day, Mothers’ Day and Grandparents’ Day

• Good Health
  Minimum effect of Jara (Aging) and Byadi
• Diet
  Balance diet
• Exercise
  Regular exercise
• Sleep
  Quality sleep
• Rest
  Vacation
• Meditation
  Contemplation
• Mobility
  No need for walking aid
  Not bed-ridden
• Vision
  No need for eye glasses
  Correction via simple treatment / surgery
  No reliance on special eye drops, magnifying glasses
• Hearing
  No need for hearing aids
  Correction via simple treatment /surgery
• Memory
  Good Long term memory
  Good Short term memory
  No Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease
• Critical Thinking
  Reasoning
  Decision Making
• Vitamins
  Reasonable dosage of Classic vitamins
  Vitamin F : Friendship, Fellowship, …
  Vitamin M : Mother, Myee, …
• Contentment
  Avoid being a Perfectionist
  Not setting unrealistic Goals
  Realist (rather than Optimist or Pessimist)
• Alobha
  Non-greed
  Sharing of resources / Philanthropy
• Adosa
  Non-hatred
  Loving Kindness / Unbounded Love
  Compassion / Sympathy / Empathy
  Altruistic Joy
• Amoha
  Non-delusion
  Data processing
  Information processing
  Knowledge processing
  Cultivate Wisdom

U Aung Myaing (ChE72) wrote :

မျက်စိ အရှုံး နားအဆုံး တဲ့။အဓိပ္ပာယ်ကို စူးစမ်းခဲ့တယ်။ အဓိက သံသရာလွတ်ကြောင်းတရားတော်တွေနဲ့ ဒီအဆိုအမိန့် ဆက်စပ်နေပါတယ်။ က်စိမကောင်းလို့ စာမဖတ်နိုင်တော့ရင် စိတ်ရှိတိုင်း မလေ့လာနိုင်တော့တာမို့ ဘဝမှာ “ရှုံး” ပြီလို့ သတ်မှတ်လိုက်တယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် နားကောင်းသေးတော့ လုံးဝ ဆုံးတာမဟုတ်သေးဘူး။ တရားတော်တွေကို ကြားနာလို့ရသေးလို့။ ဒါပေမယ့် နားလည်းမကြားတော့ဘူးဆိုရင်တော့ တရားတော်တွေကို ဖတ်လို့လည်းမရ။ ကြားနာလို့ မရတော့ ဘဝဆုံးပြီပေါ့။ ကျနော့် ညာဘက်မျက်လုံးက ဆယ်နှစ်ကျော်ကြာ ဆေးထိုးဆေးကုတဲ့ကြားက AMD Age-related Macular Degeneration ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။မှုန်ဝါးဝါးဘဲမြင်ရတယ်။ စာဖတ်မရဘူး။ ဘယ်ဘက်ကို သုံးလတစ်ကြိမ် checkup လုပ်ပြီး ထိန်းသိမ်းနေရတယ်။ စာဖတ်တာ လျှော့လိုက်ရတယ်။ နားကတော့ အလွန်ကောင်း။ တရားတော်တွေကို ကောင်းကောင်းနာကြားနိုင်သေးတယ်။ မရှုံးတရှုံး မဆုံးသေးတဲ့ ဘဝ။

Notes by Hla Min :

Most have Cataracts removed from one or both eyes. A few had Full or Partial transplant of the Cornea. Some had Retina Tear repaired. Glaucoma and several other factors can cause impaired Vision.

Saya U Ba Toke played soccer and was active in the RU Sports Council. In his 70s and early 80s, Saya took weekly walks from his house to the Shwe Dagon pagoda. Aging gradually restricted Saya’s mobility, hearing and eye sight. Saya passed away on December 2, 2020 (the day following the RU Centennial), but a few days short of his Centennial Birthday.

When Saya U Moe Aung encountered problem with his knee during a trip to Upper Burma to attend Ah Hlu of a Khamee Khamet, he composed a poem on “Stationary & Movement” with philosophical musings about Life, Illness and Death. A surgery relieved Saya from the use of wheel chair, but as a high school goalkeeper he values Mobility, Agility & Strength.

Sayagadaw appreciated Saya U Moe Aung’s “Poem Gift” on her birthday.

Bagyee Myat Myo Myint gave “Pon Tu” of the then Marla Hall Thu as a birthday present for his beloved spouse.

Ko Aung Min (M69) used the term Vitamin F in an invitation to the 69er Annual Dinner and Entertainment.

Saya U Moe Aung wrote :

Actually, before suffering from knee pain, I had cataract removed from my left eye some 30 or so years back (couldn’t recall which year) and then from my right eye after a lapse of about 10 years. But, I was lucky, so to speak, that up till the present, haven’t yet encountered any problem whatsoever except the need to change the power lens for a better viewing focus.

U Aung Min (M69) wrote :

I had right eye cornea transplantation 19 years ago, but unsuccessful .
Again cataract removal on left eye
It’s OK up to now.

Electrical Systems

• Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War) has given several refresher courses on the various aspects of Electrical Power & Distribution.
  He also wrote articles on electrical hazards (e.g. electrocution, downed power lines).
• 110-120V systems pose less risk to users than 220-240V systems.
• Main and auxiliary circuit breakers, proper earth connections, and using electrical devices that are certified to conform to safety regulations … can help minimize tragedies.

• Saya U Htin Paw (EE58) joined UBARI upon his return from his further studies in the USA.
  He then transferred to Electrical Inspectorate.
  
• The Chief Electrical Inspectors (e.g. U Aung Than) and Chief Engineers of ESB/EPC taught part-time at the engineering colleges.
  
• Sad to hear the voice of Saya U Aye Win Kyaw recounting the “bad experience” that led to his son’s untimely death. He pleaded to the clinics and the hospitals to prioritize safety for the patients and their caretakers.
  Saya U Myat Htoo (C68) sent me the voice message.

Road Safety

• Traffic accidents happen and often result in injury and death.
• They include the following
  (a) fender bender
  (b) multi-car crash
  (c) car hitting pedestrians
  (d) head-on collision
  (e) tumble & roll-over
  …

• They can be caused by
  (a) roads (which are designed or maintained properly)
  (b) drivers (not obeying traffic rules)
  (c) inclement weather
  (d) road rage
  (e) engine and mechanical failure
  (f) not land-worthy vehicles
  (g) unsafe tires
  (h) medical emergency (to the driver)
  …

• An alumni gave a seminar on “Traffic control (e.g. how to design monitor and synchronize traffic lights).”

• Many countries employ the “STOP” sign and the letters “STOP” printed on the road.
  Most drivers obey them.
  The violators are cautioned with citations.

• Automobile associations and the volunteers for Public Safety give refresher courses for “Safe Driving”.

Safety of Food and Drug

FDA

• Most countries have a Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
• They perform tests before certifying if a food or drug is safe to take.

Water

• Some departments monitor if tap water is safe to drink.
• Some check if the claims for the “bottled water” are true.

Recall of products

• Over the years, I have read “recall” notices
• Beef and chicken products that are contaminated
• Pickled tea leaves that have been prepared using “unsafe” dyes and chemicals
• Toys that are unsafe for children

Concern

• During a visit to Yangon, a friend took me to his favorite restaurant.
  He handed to the Chef the oil bottle that he had brought from home to be used in preparing the dishes.
  He felt that some cooking oils and cooking styles might be harmful.
• Our immune systems may degrade over time.
• Commercialism may overtake the health concerns.
• I hope that there are no malpractices in the preparation of food (e.g. ah thoke, ah kyaw, …).

• The term Senior varies with countries.

Senior in the US

• Most Senior Centers require members to be 50 years or older.
  They want young, active seniors. Some volunteers are in their 80s and 90s.
• AARP (Association for American Retired Professionals) admits “retirees” who are 50+ years old.
  This leaves room for marketing to people who are still active.
• Some restaurants and shops provide discount to 60+ years and older.
• The “official” age recognized by Federal and State Agencies is 65+.

Senior in Myanmar

• According to U Tin Htut (Harry, Mon Yu), a Sar Yay Saya has to be 80 years or older to be a recipient of the “Thet Kyee Pu Zaw Pwe“.

• MES sets 75 years as a threshold for the “Paying Homage Ceremonies” for Engineers and Architects. They may or may not be sayas.
  
• At the All Mechanical Gathering in 2019, engineers who are 80 or more years old were invited on the stage.
  The attendees paid respect standing.

Seniors and SPZPs

• Some seniors are reluctant to attend Saya Pu Zaw Pwes (SPZP).
  They could not easily find their classmates among the huge crowd.
  Some are uncomfortable to pay respect to the younger sayas on the stage.

• A partial solution was provided at some SPZPs.
• The sayas and sayamas were divided into three (or more batches).
• The advantage is that Seniors can choose to pay respect to their mentors, and relax when the younger sayas are on stage.
• A drawback is that it takes long to get the sayas and sayamas get on and off the stage.

Joke about Seniors

“Uncle, you call you wife Honey. What is her name?”
“I forgot her name 30 years ago.”

Nobel Prize

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish scientist.

Per Alfred Nobel’s will, the prizes are awarded for

• Physics
• Chemistry
• Physiology or Medicine
• Literature
• Peace

In 1968, a Prize for Economics was added by the Swedish Central Bank. It is informally known as “Nobel Prize in Economics”.

There are web sites and books about the Prizes and their recipients in general, and some controversies about the Nobel Prize selection.

The ACM Turing Award is considered as “Nobel Prize in Computing”.

The Field Medal is considered as “Nobel Prize in Mathematics.”

ACM Turing Award

• The ACM Turing Award is considered as “Nobel Prize in Computing”.
• The award is given in honor of Alan M Turing, a Computer Pioneer.
• The award is presented by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).
• The prize money is currently US $ 1 Million.

Field’s Medal

The Field Medals is considered as the Nobel Prize in Mathematics.

Awards in UK

• Victoria Cross
• George Cross
• MBE (Member of the British Empire)
• OBE (Officer of the British Empire)

Rangoon University Medals

• Top student in Intermediate of Science
• Highest marks in Mathematics in Intermediate of Science
• Top student in Intermediate of Arts
• Top student in Intermediate of Commerce
• Top student in in Bachelor of Science
• Top student in Bachelor of Arts
• Top student in Bachelor of Commerce
  various options : Accounting, Management
• Top student in in B.Sc. (Engg)
  various disciplines: Civil, Mechanical, Electrical …
• Top student in MBBS
• Top student in Law
• Top student in Honors
  various disciplines : Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry …
• Top student in Masters
  various disciplines : Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry …

• Pound may refer to a weight or to a currency.

Currency

There are several currencies named “Pound“.

The most notable is known as the “Sterling Pound“. The British manufactured the “Silver Penny” made out of pure silver. 240 Silver Pennies presumably weighed one pound. Hence, the name “Sterling Pound”.
1 Pound = 20 shillings = 240 pennies

At one time, the Pound was tied to the “Gold Reserve“.
In our younger days, 1 Pound was equivalent to about 13 Kyats.

Denominations

• Pound
• Shilling
• Penny
• Farthing
• Half-crown
• Crown
• Guinea

Metric

Later, the British went metric.

1 Pound = 100 Pence