Category: SPZP

** SPZP and Reunion Dinner

Embassy Suites Hotel

San Francisco, California, USA

October 28, 2000

Also, Pre and Post Gatherings

** Hosts

RIT Alumni International (led by Saya Allen Htay, C58, GBNF)

** Sponsors / Donors

Steeve Kay (EC70), Benny Tan (M70), Ivan Lee (M69), David Ko (M67, GBNF), Maung Maung Than (M79), …

** Memorabilia

SPZP Banner, Kyauk Si Bagyee, Tee Shirt, Calculator/Clock, Mug, Bio of Sayas, RIT Alumni International Newsletter

Ko Maurice Chee (M75) told me of a management workshop that he attended a few months back. The instructor told him to imagine lying in a coffin and thinking what eulogy he would like to hear. Now, he can tell his instructor that he’d like to be remembered as the work horse that staged the RIT-related gala event of the millennium and to have worked closely with Ko Benny Tan, a perfectionist who gave more time and energy to the SPZP than his enterprise for four months or so.

While we honor our golden sponsors, we should not forget all the pieces that fell together at the right place at the right time to make this momentous event successful, fruitful, and memorable.

• Our teachers, often strict and stern, set high moral standards.
• Our parents directly or indirectly helped us get a decent education that can withstand acid tests.  Our motherland gave us a culture that is pure and priceless.
• Our motherland gave us a culture that is pure and priceless.

All of them gelled us into a network of hardworking, flexible, talented professionals for whom the sky’s the limit.

It’s 2:50 a.m. as I’m closing the final chapter of an unparalleled event. We could dwell on this subject for many more weeks and months, but we’d like to end memories of the event on a high note.

True, there are issues to be solved or things that can be improved. We would certainly be writing new chapters of another book. I sincerely hope that there will be fresh talents to complement the old-timers.

From an informal project involving one or two persons, it’s now time to have “RIT Alumni International” as a formal world-wide organization spanning multiple continents. That is an important step to carry out long-term and short-term goals as suggested by Ko Benny and others.

Thanks to all the people who contributed to the “Countdown” and “Post Reunion” in general and this Grand Finale in particular, to our countless faithful readers who have bookmarked http://www.ex-rit.org as a favorite site, and to all those who appreciate that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” and “if one person can dream, others can fulfill”.

Although the SPZP poem has been printed in the special issue of the RIT Alumni International Newsletter, and is present in a page on the Reunion special pages, I’d like to reprint it here. It epitomizes what we have worked for the past one and a half years.

SAYA PUZAW PWE

S eems like it was only yesterday
A t our alma mater in a land far away
Y ou taught us to work, play, laugh, even cry
A nd coaxed us, forced us to aim for the sky

P roblems in real life, lab, computation, survey
U nderstand concepts, design, display, …
Z eal, zest, ardor, grit, passion to make it “our day”
A rchitects, engineers, we’ve come here to say
W e honor your metta, your cetana — we fully can’t repay

P resently we meet, alum from five decades we greet
W ith memories true, fond, sweet
E cstatic yet sad that the GBNF could not join this memorable fete

• Commemorative Swel Daw Yeik Magazine for Shwe YaDu (2014)
  
• Cover Design : U Myo Myint (“Bagyee Myat Myo Myint”)
  
• Chief Editor/Publisher : Saya U Moe Aung (“Tekkatho Moe War”)

• Leader, San Francisco Bay Area RIT Alumni Group
• Founding member of RIT Alumni International and first President
• Wrote a classic article for SPZP-2000
  to raise awareness of the First RIT Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe

• Saya passed away several years back
• In Saya’s memory, Daw Mu Mu Khin
  donated Saya’s books to YTU Library
  provided financial support for eligible YTU students

Brother, can you afford US $500?

And many weekends spent away from your family as well? If you can then you probably are a member of the RIT Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe organizing committee.

It all began one day several months ago when we met over lunch at Benny Tan’s home in Hillsborough. Ko Hla Min and Ko Khin Maung Zaw among the lunch party had started the RIT Alumni website and were receiving enthusiastic responses. Hearing that the duo were carrying on the project all by themselves we decided to throw in our moral and financial support to assure its survival, realizing that it was providing a needed service for the RIT alumni to locate and communicate with each other. Every one present, ten of us at that time, took out our checkbooks and wrote out one hundred dollars each, with promises of more as needed. We informally called ourselves the RIT Alumni Bay Area Group. I was asked to be the group leader.

After that fateful event we continue to have regular meetings, hosted in turn at the homes of some among group members: Ko Hla Min, Maurice Chee, Ko Myat Htoo, Ko Thein Aung, and most recently Dr Nyo Win. Did I leave out any one? Ah yes! Ko Myint Swe and San San Swe. All the while the membership continues to grow and our objective keeps on changing from support of the website to some vague dream of a future RIT alumni organization on a global scale and finally settled on a plan for RIT Alumni Grand Reunion at the beginning of the 21st Century. Ko Hla Min broached the idea to include Saya Pu Zaw Pwe as part of the Grand Reunion in keeping with the Myanmar custom of honoring one’s teachers. As our plan jelled we got carried away by our own excitement and started talking about holding the reunion before the end of the Year 2000. After all, ending one millennium successfully augers well for success in the next millennium.

Before we fully realized what we were up to we have found an ideal site, the Embassy Suites Hotel conference hall near the San Francisco International Airport, and found ourselves making a commitment for a definite date, 28 October 2000 and a attendance fee of fifty dollars, a modest amount to encourage maximum number of Alumni to participate. The minimum capacity of the conference hall is 200 seats and we were required to make down payment and sign a rental and service agreement based on 200 seatings. Our most optimistic estimate at the time was 100 attendees. If the attendance is low that means the Bay Area Group, as the Organizing Committee
was not in force at the time, will have to make up the short fall. Which could amount to as much as five thousand dollars, or five hundred dollar from each group member. We hesitated a moment to reflect on what that means to us individually in terms of diminished spending power. But, in the end our attachment to RIT and the engineering profession, our sincere desire to meet the Sayas and class mates from whom we were separated for long over came us. We will accept the risks.

Thus was born the preparations in full swing for the Grand RIT Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe. Others must tell the rest of the story – of struggles, compromises, and elations along the way and from participants themselves what it means to be present at the defining moment in the history of RIT Alumni.

Allen Htay,
RIT Alumni International – Bay Area Group
RIT Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe Organizing Committee

• Leader, San Francisco Bay Area RIT Alumni Group
• Founding member of RIT Alumni International and first President
• Wrote a classic article for SPZP-2000
  to raise awareness of the First RIT Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe

• Saya passed away several years back
• In Saya’s memory, Daw Mu Mu Khin
  donated Saya’s books to YTU Library
  provided financial support for eligible YTU students

Brother, can you afford US $500?

And many weekends spent away from your family as well? If you can then you probably are a member of the RIT Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe organizing committee.

It all began one day several months ago when we met over lunch at Benny Tan’s home in Hillsborough. Ko Hla Min and Ko Khin Maung Zaw among the lunch party had started the RIT Alumni website and were receiving enthusiastic responses. Hearing that the duo were carrying on the project all by themselves we decided to throw in our moral and financial support to assure its survival, realizing that it was providing a needed service for the RIT alumni to locate and communicate with each other. Every one present, ten of us at that time, took out our checkbooks and wrote out one hundred dollars each, with promises of more as needed. We informally called ourselves the RIT Alumni Bay Area Group. I was asked to be the group leader.

After that fateful event we continue to have regular meetings, hosted in turn at the homes of some among group members: Ko Hla Min, Maurice Chee, Ko Myat Htoo, Ko Thein Aung, and most recently Dr Nyo Win. Did I leave out any one? Ah yes! Ko Myint Swe and San San Swe. All the while the membership continues to grow and our objective keeps on changing from support of the website to some vague dream of a future RIT alumni organization on a global scale and finally settled on a plan for RIT Alumni Grand Reunion at the beginning of the 21st Century. Ko Hla Min broached the idea to include Saya Pu Zaw Pwe as part of the Grand Reunion in keeping with the Myanmar custom of honoring one’s teachers. As our plan jelled we got carried away by our own excitement and started talking about holding the reunion before the end of the Year 2000. After all, ending one millennium successfully augers well for success in the next millennium.

Before we fully realized what we were up to we have found an ideal site, the Embassy Suites Hotel conference hall near the San Francisco International Airport, and found ourselves making a commitment for a definite date, 28 October 2000 and a attendance fee of fifty dollars, a modest amount to encourage maximum number of Alumni to participate. The minimum capacity of the conference hall is 200 seats and we were required to make down payment and sign a rental and service agreement based on 200 seatings. Our most optimistic estimate at the time was 100 attendees. If the attendance is low that means the Bay Area Group, as the Organizing Committee
was not in force at the time, will have to make up the short fall. Which could amount to as much as five thousand dollars, or five hundred dollar from each group member. We hesitated a moment to reflect on what that means to us individually in terms of diminished spending power. But, in the end our attachment to RIT and the engineering profession, our sincere desire to meet the Sayas and class mates from whom we were separated for long over came us. We will accept the risks.

Thus was born the preparations in full swing for the Grand RIT Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe. Others must tell the rest of the story – of struggles, compromises, and elations along the way and from participants themselves what it means to be present at the defining moment in the history of RIT Alumni.

Allen Htay,
RIT Alumni International – Bay Area Group
RIT Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe Organizing Committee

ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ — နောက်ခံဖြစ်ရပ် (တချို့)

ဒီအ​ကြောင်းကိုကြုံကြိုက်တိုင်းပြန်​ပြောမိတာခွင့်လွှတ်ကြပါ

အတုယူချင်ယူ​စေဖို့ပါ

​ပြောသူ၂​ယောက်စလုံးကွယ်လွန်သွားခဲ့ပါပြီ

တ​ယောက်ကဆရာ

Supportingဘာသာကဆရာတ​ယောက်

Mech72ရဲ့ဆရာပူ​ဇော်ပွဲလုပ်လို့…၃..၄ကြိမ်​လောက်ရှိ​တော့

ဆရာကကျန်​တော့်ကို​ပြောရှာတယ်

ကို၀င်းထိန်ဦးရယ်

မရှက်ပါဘူးဗျာ

ခင်ဗျားကို​တော့​ပြောပြချင်တယ်…တဲ့

ကျန်​တော်​လေ

ဒီလိုလမျိုးကို​မျှော်​နေမိပါတယ်

ဒိလ​ရောက်ရင်ကို၀င်းထိန်ဥိးတို့အတန်းက​သေချာ​ပေါက်ကန်​တော့မယ်

အဲဒါမှ​ငွေ​လေးမြင်ရမယ်

ပင်စင်လစာ၅၀၀ိ​လောက်ရချိန်ခင်ဗျားတို့ကန်​တော့တဲ့၇၀၀၀ိဆိုတာသိပ်ကိုအားကိုးရတဲ့​​ငွေပမာဏပါ

​နောက်ပြီးဆရာကတော်ကလဲပါဆယ်​ပေးလိုက်တဲ့ကြက်ကင်ကို​မျှော်သလိုစားရင်​ပျော်သဗျ

ဆရာ့စကားကြားရ​တော့

ကျန်​တော်မျက်ရညိ၀ိုင်းရပါသည်

မ​မေ့နိုင်တဲ့ဒိစကားစုဟာအခု၂၅ကြိမ်အထိဇွဲနဲ့ဆရာပူ​ဇော်ဖြစ်တဲ့တွန်းအားပါ

​နောက်တခု

ဆရာ မပူ​ဇော်ခင်အကြိုသူငယ်ချင်း​တွေgatheringလုပ်ဖို့ဖိတ်တယ်

တ​ယောက်က​ပြောတယ်

ငါတို့လာချင်တယ်ကွာဒါ​ပေမဲ့ကျသင့်မဲ့​ငွေငါတို့မတတ်နိုင်လို့​ပြောရှာတယ်

စိတ်ထိခိုက်မိတယ်

သူ့ကို

​ပြောလိုက်တယ်

​ဟေ့​ကောင်

လာသာလာခဲ့

ငါတာ၀န်ယူတယ်

​ပျော်​ပျောိပါးပါးစား​သောက်ပြီးတဲ့အခါ

ဆိုင်က​ဘောက်ချာ​တောင်းလိုက်တယ်

တ​ယောကိပျမ်းမျှ၂၀၀၀ိလားကျတယ်

စာတ​စောင်​ရေးတယ်

“ကျတာ​တော့တ​ယောက်၂၀၀၀ိကျတယ်

မတတ်နိုင်သူ​တွေရှိလို့တတ်နိုင်သူပိုထည့်”

​ရေးပြီး​ငွေဖလားနဲ့စာလိုက်ပြတယ်

မတတ်နိုင်တဲ့​ကောင်ကိုရူးသလိုလုပ်​ကျော်လိုက်တယ်

အပို​ငွေ၅​သောင်းလားမသိရတယ်

ဆရာကန်​တော့ဖို့seed money ရသွားတယ်

အဲလိုသိသွားလို့ဆရာကန်​တော့ပွဲမှာလဲ

ငွေထည့်မှဆရာပူ​ဇော်ပွဲလာရဲတာမျိုးမဖြစ်ရ​အောင်​မောင်မာဃအ​သေအချာစဥ်းစားပြီးမူတခုချတယ်

လာသမျှအလကား​ကျွေးမယ်

​ထမင်းစားလက်မှတ်ဆိုတာဘယ်​တော့မှမ​​ရောင်း

ဒါ​ကြောင့်အလှု​ငွေထည့်ရင်

တတ်နိုင်တဲ့​ကောင်ပိုထည့်

မတတ်နိုင်တဲ့​ကောင်တတ်နိုင်သ​လောက်သာထည့်

လုံး၀မတတ်နိုင်ရင်လုံး၀မထည့်နဲ့လူက​တော့လာဖြစ်​အောင်လာ

အဲဒီမူအတိုင်း 2016Wwspzpမှာထပ်တူအ​ကောင်အထည်​ဖော်တယ်

အဲဒိ၂​ယောက်ဟာဆရာကန်​တော့ပွဲ​တွေဆက်တိုက်လုပ်ဖြစ်​စေတဲ့တွန်းအား​တွေ​ပေါ့

For Saya U San Tint (Electrical)

• Ko Myint Swe (EP 74) & Ma San San Swe (EC 74) Cupertino, CA, USA
• Ko Min Maung (EP 68) Bellevue, WA, USA
• Ko Hla Min (EC 69) Sunnyvale, CA, USA
• Ko Philip Mya Thwin (EP 75) Daly City, CA, USA
• Ko Aung Khin (EP 68) Woodland Hills, CA, USA
• Ko Khin Maung Zaw (EC 76) Seattle, WA, USA
• Ko Myo Thant (EP 74) Houston, TX, USA
• Daw Yee Yee Win (EP 74) San Francisco, CA, USA

For Saya U Khin Aung Kyi (Chemical)

• Mr. Ken Wong (ChE 59) California
• Dr. Min Kwan Tham (a) U Kyaw Than (ChE 62) Oklahoma
• Mr. Willy Chow (a) U Way Lin (ChE 62) California
• Mr. Pan Lam Moy (ChE 62) California
• Dr. K. C. Chiu (a) U Tin Aung (ChE 63) California
• Mr. Anthony Kyam (a) U Kyaw Win (ChE 63) Illinois
• Mr. David Tay (ChE 63) California
• Daw Khin Thein Yee (ChE 65) Texas
• Mr. Tan Chor Kheng (ChE 65) California
• Mr. Kuen San Lin (a) U Myat Thwin (ChE 66) Texas
• Mr. Swenam Lee (ChE 66) Pennsylvania
• Mr. George Chan (a) U Maung Maung (ChE 66) California
• Ms. Yap May Hoe (ChE 67) California
• Mr. Abdul Ganni (ChE 67) Pennsylvania
• Mr. Thomas Tham (ChE 67) Georgia
• Mr. Swee Sein Tan (ChE 67) California
• Mr. Kenneth Law (ChE 67) California
• Mr. Kyaw Win (ChE 67) California
• Mr. George Leong (a) Ko Aung Kyaw Zaw (ChE 67 Illinois
• Dr. Ariff Mehter (ChE 67) Kentucky
• Mr. Han Win Chow (ChE 68) California
• Mr. Meenu Singh (ChE 68) Kentucky
• Ms. Diana Tseng (ChE 71) California
• Mr. Haneef Bharoocha (ChE 71) New Jersey
• Mr. Oscar Tun Shwe (a) Ko Maung Maung (ChE 72) Utah
• Ms. Trixie Tan (ChE 72) California
• Mr. Aung Myaing ++ (ChE 72) Thailand
• Daw Gyn Yu ++ (ChE 72) Thailand
• Ms. Jeanne Saldanha (ChE 74) Kentucky
• Mr. Richard Khoo (a) Ko Kyaw Lin (ChE 75) California

For Saya U Ba Toke (Math)

• Ko Maung Maung Than (Mech 79) Rancho Viejo, TX, USA
• Ko Zaw Min Nawady (EP 70) Fremont, CA, USA
• Saya Allen Htay (Civil) Mountain View, CA, USA
• Saya U Tin Htut (Mech) Torrance, CA, USA
• Ko Philip Mya Thwin (EP 75) Daly City, CA, USA
• Ko Johnny Than Myint (Mech 71) Sylmar, CA, USA

Editor’s notes:

• Several young alums from the 80’s hosted Saya Dr. San Tint.
• Upon his return to Myanmar, Saya Dr. San Tint handed over the books (donated by the overseas alums) to RIT. Saya donated to “Zi Wi Ta Da Na” hospital as dana offering for the overseas alums. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.
• ChEs sponsored Sayagyi U Khin Aung Kyi and spouse to attend SPZP-2000. The list of donors is impressive.
• Saya Mao Toon Siong (M62) showed Sayagyi U Ba Toke around. Many other alumNI paid homage to Sayagyi at the then new house of Ko Zaw Min Nawaday (EP70) in Hayward, California.

by U Tin Htoon (A60)

My hearty congratulation to members of the Northern California RIT Alumni International, the Steering Committee, and the Working Committee, for successfully organizing the Grand Reunion and ‘Saya Pu Zaw Pwe’ in San Francisco on October 28, 2000. I was extremely happy to be part of a huge gathering of more than 300 people at the Embassy Suite Hotel, where former Rectors, Head of Departments, Professors, Lecturers, Assistant Lecturers, were there together with alumni members, associates, families and guests.

Although I graduated as an Architect (40) years ago, it seems only like yesterday to be back with them again. I thank the organizers and the participants for having this wonderful and memorable opportunity of a life time and I will never forget this historical event. It won’t be wrong for me to say that the vision and foresight of the pioneers, knowing the values and importance of organizational works, established ‘BASES’ and ‘BAPS’ in California, did the ground work for many years and thus also assisted in having this historical gathering. However, the turning point was the wise and timely suggestion made by Saya U Soe Paing and the decision taken the “Bay area Advisory Group” led by Saya Allen Htay, in taking advantage and making good use of the information technology. This resulted in getting connected internationally with RIT alumni around the world within a short period of time, and eventually culminated into this premier Myanmar Architects and Engineers reunion of the millennium. For this, I wish to congratulate Johnny Hla Min and Khin Maung Zaw for their “cetena”, dedication and concerted effort in starting with a seemingly causal e-mail service, that led to the birth of website. Without this, I really don’t know how all of us can get connected within such a short span of time, and be able to communicate and pass on crucial information like we have been doing. Thus, I sincerely wish to express my special thanks to both of you for the valuable services rendered in spite of the busy work schedule and personal sacrifices. I do hope that you all will continue to nurture this valuable tool for the benefit and convenience of our group in particular and that of the Myanmar community in general. My list won’t be complete without mentioning Benny Tan and Maurice Chee for their valuable services and contributions made. Lastly, a big thank you to all those who were actively involved in this great event and hope that you will understand for being unable to thank individually by name. Because of your sincere efforts and hard work, the good seeds that have been sown has started to bear some good fruits. As the seed is, so the fruit will be. As the action is, so the result will be.

When we all left our motherland looking for a greener pasture, you all will concur that we do share a common goal, i.e. to have a better way of life. Because of this event and through the e-mails and the website, I am glad to know that majority of us have (had) good jobs, good education for the children and a comfortable life, thus fulfilling our goals. Some of us have even retired. Some are preparing to retire. The good seeds sown decades ago have bear fruits which we all have been enjoying. Thus, it is obvious that we need to keep on sowing good seeds in order to continue enjoying the fruits of our labor. However, every one of us might not be fully aware of how this process works. Especially when we have a Myanmar saying “Pyinnar – shi – ta – di – phyit – khe’ ” (learned persons tend to lack awareness).

May all beings be happy.

Tin Htoon (A60) California, USA

Editor’s note:

U Tin Htoon’s pastime is reading Buddhist literature and help publish some of them via Triple Gems Publication, and practicing vipassana meditation in the tradition of Ledi Sayadaw, Saya Thet, Saya U Ba Khin and Saya Mr. Goenka.

Thank you very much to all of you (Organizing members and the participants) for the unforgettable grand event “SPZP and RIT Reunion 2000” at San Francisco.

Let me express the most exciting moment for me at the event. Earlier, I have learned from your “Countdown to the Reunion” articles that there were some questions about the agenda, especially about the Saya Ga Daw Pwe which is a tradition/practice for the Buddhists. Later the organizing committee members arranged it as an optional for the attendees.

On that great evening of October 28, I arrived just in time from the other hall into the main hall to participate in my most anticipated moment. I jumped into the event from behind the other participants. For a few seconds, all of us struggled willingly with joy for a tiny spot to pay homage to our Sayagyis. Each of us did it successfully in a thrilling moment. To pay homage all my Sayagyis together in this place and time was an extraordinary opportunity for all of us. It does not matter for me – their religion – whether they directly taught me, indirectly, or did not – whether I have seen them before or not. Sayas are Sayas. Whoever they were/are. There is no problem. Our Sayas and Sayamas have done a grand – unparalleled accomplishments to our Mother “Rangoon Institute of Technology”, to our Mother Country , and to our lives.

One more special excitement for me was, I noticed that there were non-Buddhists not only on the stage among the Sayas but also on the floor among the engineers who were proudly paying homage with strong eagerness to our Sayagyis. Immediately after we paid homage, I saw many of us ‘Great Engineers’, some with tears of joy, bowing their heads, rushed to the Sayagyis sitting on the stage, touched, and held their Saya’s hands with excitement. I guessed that some of these fore-rushers were in their 60’s and trembling with exultation. I learned that SPZP is not only for young engineers.

The event was very enthusiastic and swift. [Let me say,] it was also a little chaotic and informal. However, this kind of chaotic atmosphere was the real unforgettable “Unique Essence” of our once-in-a-life-time SPZP and Reunion, 2000.

With Respect,
Ba Thein, Atlanta

• “Ba Thein, Atlanta” is the pen name of Dr. Myint Thein (M73), who studied at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
• On the eve, we had an informal gathering at an “all you can Japanese, Korean and Chinese buffet”. We saw some of our Sayas (e.g. Dr. San Hla Aung) revering their Sayas (e.g. Dr. Aung Gyi).

• At the Reunion dinner (Main Event) and the Family Picnic the following day, we saw more instances. Saya U Khin Aung Kyi paying respect to his Sayas — U Ba Toke (Maths) and U Num Kok (Civil) — is awesome and inspiring.

• Earlier I received e-mails telling me the difference of Asian and Western cultures, e.g. how one calls one’s professors by their first name, and hinting that “it would be awkward for non-Asian spouses to witness/understand the SPZP”.
  Fortunately, we did not hear any complaints at the event.