Category: Memory

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

Sayas

• I pay respect to Thin Saya (သင်ဆရာ), Myin Saya (မြင်ဆရရာ) and Kyar Saya (ကြားဆရာ). They taught me all I knew.
• I would like to thank my mentors who directly or indirectly taught me Communication (Oral and Written) and Languages (English, Burmese, …)
• Last but not the least, a million thanks to my “Let Oo Sayas” (လက်ဦးဆရာများ my beloved parents).

Learning English

I had to read / study

• Tom Thumb’s Essays
• A Student’s Companion
• Oxford English Dictionary” (OED — various sizes and editions),
• Chamber’s Dictionary (used in Scrabble tournaments)
• Rhyming Dictionary
• Word Power/Vocabulary in [six weeks, 21 days, …]
• Idioms (book present from my cousin uncle)
• They helped me improve my writing and communication skills.
• Thanks to all the authors, who are my implicit teachers.
• Learning new things daily
• Listen to the daily offering by Blinkist.com
• Listen to selected podcasts

Dr. Chit Swe (GBNF)

• My mentor at UCC
• Invited renowned computer scientists led by Harry D. Huskey, Pioneer in Computer Hardware, Software & Teaching, and Mathematicians (e.g. Frank Harary, Expert in Graph Theory) to Rangoon to hold seminars and to design courses in computer science and applications. Michael Stonebraker (then at UC Berkeley) gave a short course on Ingres (early Relational Data Base Management System). He laterwon the prestigious “ACM Turing Award” (equivalent of Nobel Prize in Computing).
• Taught us to use CPM/PERT (Critical Path Method/Programme Evaluation and Review Technique) for the projects.
• Asked me to assist his projects : translator / reviewer for CTK (Children’s Treasury of Knowledge), editor for “High School Mathematics”, and
  TOSS (Team Of System Specialists).

• Passed away in November 2019, but his Legacy as Pioneer for Computer Systems, Application and Education in Burma will last forever.

U Soe Paing (EE, UCC)

• My mentor at RIT & UCC
• Together with U Myo Min and U Ko Ko Lay (GBNF), they taught degree and diploma courses in computer science, and also conducted courses in computer programming, computer orientation, to name a few.
• Saya U Soe Paing allowed U Aung Zaw (GBNF) and me to co-author texts, guides and manuals used at UCC.

Publications

• Guardian
  Thanks to U Soe Myint (Chief Editor)
• Working People’s Daily (WPD)
  Thanks to U Ko Lay (Chief Editor) and Daw Khin Swe Hla (Editor)
• Forward magazine
  Thanks to Bohmu Ba Thaw (Maung Thaw Ka, Chief Editor) and U Sein Hla (Editor)
• Pan magazine
  Burmese publication
• Veda magazine
  Published by BARB
• Swel Daw Yeik Sar Saung
  Commemorative Issues for SPZP-2002, SPZP-2007 and SPZP-2010 in Singapore
  Thanks to Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War)
• Swel Daw Yeik Magazine
  Commemorative Issues for SPZP-2012 and Shwe YaDu (2014)
  Thanks to Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War)
• RUBC magazine
  Commemorate issue for 90th Anniversary of the founding of RUBC

• BAPS Newsletter
  Contributing Editor
• Dhammananda Newsletter
  Contributing Editor
• Paying Homage to Sayadaw U Silananda
  Contributing Editor

• Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife
  Contributor to the Burmese American section of the 3-volume encyclopedia

• National Foreign Languages Center
  Language Expert for the Burmese Language Project (Reading and Listening Comprehension)
• RIT Alumni International Newsletter
  Contributing Editor for 26 years
• hlamin.com
  2500+ articles
• Facebook
  Owner, Admin or Moderator of selected Facebook Groups
• Video Broadcasts
  Archived in Facebook and my You Tube Channel

Volunteer

I gained experience by volunteering

• Several organizations in Myanmar and USA
• EC, Joint Secretary and Secretary of RIT EE Association

• Contributing Editor of RIT English Newsletter
• Treasurer & Vice Captain of RUBC
• Translator & Interpreter at Meditation Retreats
• Organizer, SPZP-2000

• Coordinator, World wide SPZPs in Singapore & Myanmar
• Docent at the Computer History Museum (at Mountain View, California)
• Contributing Editor of the materials taught at the Summer Dhamma Camp at Dhammananda Vihara (at Half Moon Bay)
• Area Governor, Club Coach, Contest Chair, Test Speaker & Club Ambassador at Toastmasters International
• Editor of publications by Sayadaws (e.g. U Jotalankara) and friends (e.g. U Aung Zaw)
• Language expert at National Foreign Language Center
• Administrator and/or Moderator of selected Facebook Groups
• Owner & content creator of selected web sites (e.g. hlamin.com)

Parents and Ancestors

Last but not the least, my heartfelt thanks to my beloved parents and their philanthropic forebears for instilling me the passion to help humanity in general and to my alma mater. They believed that “Any thing that’s worth doing is worth doing well.”

Pay Back

• My beloved spouse told me that I should pay back to my alma mater, mentors and my beloved land.
• She reminded me that I should take care of my health to enjoy quality time with our Life Savers.
• I had paid back to my alma mater RIT where I studied from 1964 – 1969 by serving as Messenger & Organizer for 26 years. e.g. For SPZP-2000, I wrote 64 “Countdown to the Reunion” & 36 “Post_Reunion”.
• In 2018, I wrote “Memories of UCC”. I wrote a Summary for the magazine to commemorate the 30th anniversary of ICST.
• To commemorate the 19th anniversary (in April 2018) for “RIT Alumni International Newsletter” and the 45th wedding anniversary (in June 2018), I wrote several hundred posts covering a variety of topics.
• Since then, I have completed 2500+ posts. I have revised most of them with feedback provided by my readers.
• In April 2019, I celebrated 20th Anniversary as Founder-Editor of RIT Alumni International Newsletter.
• In November 2019, I was invited as a Panelist to the 5th ILF (Irrawaddy Literary Festival) held in Mandalay.
• In December 2019, I attended the SPZP and Reunion Dinner of RIT 69er’s Golden Jubilee of graduation.
• I was invited to attend the 6th Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe of ICST / UCSY and the Annual mini-gathering of UCC Alumni.
• In January 2020, I was invited as a Special Guest for the 2020 Public Speakers’ Association (PSA) Tour to six cities in Upper Myanmar.
• I am adding / revising posts for hlamin.com and share some of them via Facebook groups (e.g. Life Long Learning, RIT Updates) and my YouTube Channel (@hmin3664)

• I am a Dreamer. I believe, “If one can dream, others will fulfill.”

Posts

• Father’s Day
• Let Oo Saya
• Mother’s Day
• Noble Tradition
• Paying back to my alma mater

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

အထင်မှား / အမှတ်မှား

Short Story by Minthuwun

“ဘကြီးအောင် ညာတယ်” ဝတ္ထု (မြန်မာ နှင့် အင်္ဂလိပ်ဘာသာပြန်) ကို ငယ်စဉ်က ဖတ်ခဲ့ရပါသည်။

ဆရာ မင်းသုဝဏ် ၏ ကဗျာ / ဝတ္ထု တို့ ကို သူငယ်ချင်း စာပေပညာ ရှင်များ က အင်္ဂလိပ် ဘာသာ ဖြင့် ပြန်ဆိုဂုဏ်ပြုကြပါသည်။

Dr. Htin Aung is

NOT Bagyi Aung

ယနေ့ တိုင် ဘကြီးအောင် ကို ပါမောက္ခချုပ်ဒေါက်တာထင် အောင် ဟု အထင်မှား အမှတ်မှားသူများ ရှိနေပါသည်။

Prof. U E Maung is

NOT Bagyi Aung

blogger တဦးက စိတ်ကူးဖြင့် ဘကြီးအောင် ကို မြန်မာစာပါမောက္ခ ဦးဧမောင် ဟု ရေးသားခဲ့ပါသည်။ ထို blog ကို like/ share လုပ်သော စာ ဖတ်သူများ မနည်းပါ။ Internet တွင် misinformation, disinformation, hoax, unchecked facts များ တွေ့မြင်နေရပါသည်။

U Nay Oke (St. Paul)’s named the Four Main Characters

ဦးနေအုပ် (စိန်ပေါလ်) က TEDx talk တွင် ခေတ်စမ်းစာပေ ကဗျာ ဆရာ နှစ်ဦး ၏ မေတ္တာ အကြောင်း ကို ကဗျာများနှင့်အတူ ရှင်းလင်းပြခဲ့ပါသည်။

အဓိကဇာတ်ဆောင် များမှာ

• ဆရာ မင်းသုဝဏ် Minthuwun
• ဒေါ်ခင်စောမူ (ဦးနေအုပ်၏မိခင်) Daw Khin Saw Mu (U Nay Oke’s Mother)
• ICS ဦးတင်ထွဋ် (ဦးနေအုပ်၏ဘကြီး) ICS U Tin Tut (U Nay Oke’s Bagyi)
• ICSဦးဘတင့် (ဦးနေအုပ်၏ဖခင်) ICS U Ba Tint (U Nay Oke’s Father)

ICS U Tin Tut

is Bagyi Aung

ကာယကံရှင်များ ကွယ်လွန်ကြပြီးဖြစ်သဖြင့် “ဘကြီးအောင်” အဖြစ်မှန်ကို ဦးနေအုပ်က စေတနာဖြင့် တင်ပြခဲ့ပါသည်။

To err is human

To minimize or eliminate misinformation is desirable

Thanks to all those who pointed out inadvertent errors and inconsistencies in my posts / writings

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

မှတ်ဥာဏ် အမျိုးအစား / Memory Types

There are several types of memory.

• Short term memory / Working memory
• Long term memory / Archive memory
• Photographic memory
• Associative memory

ရေတို မှတ်ဥာဏ် Short term / Working Memory

မြန် မေ့လွယ် Dementia ဖြစ်လျှင် ပိုမေ့လွယ်
Most people see the decline in function of the short term memory.

ခန့်မှန်း 4 Channel အရေးကြီးသောအကြောင်းအရာများ ကို chunking (စုဆည်း) ပြီး ရေရှည်မှတ်ဥာဏ်ထဲမှာသိမ်းပါ။
It is believed that there are about four memory channels. It is advisable to group items in the short term memory into chunks and then save in the long term memory.

ရေရှည် မှတ်ဥာဏ် Long term / Archive Memory

သိပ်မမြန် / နှေး လိုအပ်သလို reorganize လုပ်
It may not provide quick access as the short term memory. As needed, the contents in the archive memory may be reorganized.

မေ့ခဲ (လူတယောက်သည် သူထိန်းခဲ့သောမြေးကိုမသိတော့ ။ သူငယ်တန်းက သူငယ်ချင်းများကို အမှတ်တရ တောင့်တ။ အံ့ဩစရာ)
Someone could not recognize his grandkid, but he could recall events from his childhood days. He remembers his KG classmates,. It seems like he still have good long term memory, but a flawed short term memory.

ရေတိုမှတ်ဥာဏ် ကို ကူညီဖေးမ

ကင်မရာ မှတ်ဥာဏ်Photographic Memory

ခဏ ကြည့် / ချက်ခြင်းမှတ်မိ

ဆက်စပ် မှတ်ဥာဏ်Associative Memory

အကျိုး အကြာင်း ဆက်စပ် ၍ မှတ်တတ်

Related Topics

မှတ်ဥာဏ် အကူအချို့Memory Aids

Mnemonics

ဥပမာ VIBGYOR (သက်တန့်ရောင်)
to remember the Colors of a Rainbow — Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red

ဥဩအော်မည် ကုန်းဘောင်တည်
Konbaung Dynasty started in the Burmese Era 1115

ဆန်း – မြ – ချို – ခိုင် – ကြီး – ဝင်: – ဇာတ် – အုန်း – ထွေး (အာဇာနည်)
The Martyrs : Aung San, Tahkin Mya, Deedok U Ba Cho, Mongpawn Sawbwagyi, U Ba Win, U Razak, U Ohn Maung, Yebaw Maung Htwe

Flash cards, Games, Music, Dancing, Visualization

ဆက်နွယ်ချက်။

Neurons / Neural networks

Plasticity of Memory

Memory Structure

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

Uncle & Aunt

Uncle

• My youngest maternal uncle
• Matriculated from St. John’s Dio
• Graduated from Rangoon University
• Worked for IBM Burma as System Engineer before moving to USA.
• Still has a good memory
• Has shared some stories.

Aunt

• Younger sister of Dr. Pe Nyun (Pediatric Surgeon)
• Taught Psychology at Rangoon University
• Studied Library Science in USA
• Headed Burmese Section of the Library of Congress

Selected Stories

From March 1, 1929

It’s been a long journey. I’ve passed the aged barrier of 90. From now on everyday is a bonus for me. My health is the same, no problem. Blood tests results are good. Memory is still sharp. I can drive my car for grocery shopping. I think I will be with you all this year.

I’m living proof that Exercise and Healthy food will keep you in good health and prolong your life. I’ve been doing exercise since I retired in 1994 after I joined HP Senior Center using the Physical Equipment and having lunch at the center. I use light weights (30, 40 lbs) for arm, leg, thigh exercise and walk fast for 1/2 mile (10 minutes) on a Treadmill.

At night before I go to bed, I do Balance exercise 3 times a week given to me by my Physical Therapist.

So Folks, “It’s your life, Exercise, Eat Healthy Food, No Smoking and Drinking, Travel and Enjoy your good life”.

A True Story

When I was working at Montgomery County, Division Of Parking, during my lunch break I took a cab to go to a Chinese Restaurant in Silver Spring [Maryland, USA]. The driver was an African-American from Jamaica. On the way I had a conversation with him and came to know he had a daughter studying at Howard University (African-American University) to be a Lawyer. It happened that my wife was working as a Librarian at Howard University at Washington D.C. so I had a good chat with him. When we arrived at the restaurant I asked him if he had his lunch. He said, “No”. I invited him to have lunch with me. He accepted. I had a long talk with him about Jamaica. After lunch he dropped me at my work.

A few days later while I was walking back from lunch in Silver Spring, it rained heavily. I did not have an umbrella. All of a sudden a car stopped beside me. It was James the Taxi driver that I gave lunch. He told me to hop in and took me to my office. When I asked him, “What is the fare?”, he said, “It’s on the house. No problem”.

When you do a good deed to a person, you will be rewarded back one day with a good deed. This is my true story.

I believe in luck

It was in 1948 during my Rangoon University days I did Nation Newspaper Crossword Puzzle and won 2000 Kyats. At that time the value of Kyat was very good. With the money I won I bought a Jeep costing 3000 Kyats.

My next luck was also during my University days when I went to a movie with my friend Ko Sein Lwin. On the return while I was driving my Jeep with my friend beside me, at the corner of Prome Road and Medical College I, we picked up 800 Kyats which was lying on the Road.

When I arrived in Maryland (USA), I went to Safeway Grocery to buy bread. When I took the bread from the shelf I found $20 on the shelf. It was a great help to me when I was penniless.

Another time was when I was walking on Wheaton Avenue with my son, we found $40 on the street.

During our Burmese Christmas Party I won the door prize which was a Television.

At the Thai King’s Birthday party given by our Thai friend, I won Thai Airways luggage for the door prize.

At our Senior Center I won a Cup as a door prize.

While working at Montgomery County, in 1977, I won 2nd prize of the Maryland Lottery which was $2000, because I hit five numbers out of six numbers. At that time $2000 was a lot of money. The 2nd prize is now one million Dollars.

The 1st prize then was one million Dollars. On 25 August 2018 the 1st prize went up to 522 Million and it was won by 11 employees of a bank because they were lucky.

The 13 Thai Cave Footballers survived because of their luck.

My University friend Billy Wu From Maymyo went back home during a holiday, the UBA Dakota plane crashed due to bad weather, but he was lucky and he survived.

Everyone has luck, but we don’t know when we will be lucky.

My Barber

Ko Aye Pe has been my barber since my University days in 1947 till 1971. He also cut the hair of my two sons. He worked at Varsity Hair Dressing Salon in Bogyoke Aung San Market. We were friends till I left for USA in 1971. He was a kind and obliging person and whenever I travel abroad I brought a shirt for him.

On my first visit back to Myanmar in 2005. I wanted to see him and asked my friend U Hla Soe if he knew Ko Aye Pe’s whereabouts. U Hla Soe told me that he has retired and cuts people hair at his home and gave me his address.

Ko San Aung (Sydney Tin, Ko Pyu) and I took a taxi and went to search for him. We found him living in an apartment near the Old Central Jail behind Medical College 1. He was very happy to see me. He told me he’s retired and he’s working at home and the barber chair that I’m sitting on was given by U Hla Soe. I had a long chat with him and returned back to Winner Inn Hotel.

On my next visit to Myanmar two years later, we went to his apartment but was told by his neighbor that he had moved to Ahlone and gave us the address. We went there and found him living with his niece’s family. When we met him he was BLIND. His niece told him there’s someone to see him but did not tell who we were. I sat down next to him and asked him if he knew who I was. He touched my face with his hand to find out who I was. I then told him that I was Ko Charlie and came back to Myanmar for a visit. When he touched my face with his hand my eyes became wet and I was very sad to see him blind, he must be about 75 years then.

It must have been Cataract which could have been treated and cured, maybe no one told him to see an Eye Doctor or that he may not have the cash for the surgery.

Before we left I gave him Kyats 100,000 for being a good friend who was always willing to cut hair for my kids at home. We then said goodbye to him and returned back to Winner Inn Hotel.

Ko Aye Pe was kind to me when I needed his services and his METTA to me. In return I was able to share what I can with him when he needed it.

Related Posts

• Demonetization
• Stories

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2035

Visits

• Visited Inlay Lake in the Shan States four times.
• My first visit was as RIT Luyechun (Outstanding Student) to the Inlay Khaung Daing Camp in the summer of 1965.

• My second visit was as a guest of Peter Pe (SPHS63), whose cousins (including a medical doctor) live in Inn Paw Khone in Inlay Lake. Ko Maung Maung Aye (SPHS63, GBNF) also joined the trip.We also saw the Phaungdaw-u Festival.
  I later wrote a poem “Phaungdaw-u Festival”.

• My third trip was via a Tour Company which arranged a Tour Guide, a private boat and a night stay at a hotel in the Lake. The photo shows a rainbow in the background.
  Sad to note that there were water & drainage issues in the Inlay Lake area.

• My fourth trip was with PSA (Professional Speakers Association). One hotel in the area provided accommodation for the group. A PSA Lecturer conducted a training session for the Hotel manager and selected employees.

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2025

• Some famous people are asked to sign autographs. Athletes sign on sneakers, balls, bats, T-shirts. Keynote speakers sign on the program sheet.
• Attended lectures at the Computer History Museum and asked for autographs.

• During our younger days, we carry small books known as autograph. Some friends just signed their names.
• Others wrote or quote verses.

Example (1)
I wish to be a China cup
in which you drink your tea
And every time you take a sip
It’ll be a kiss for me

Example (2)
Seasons may come. Seasons may go.
Flowers will wither in due course, you know.
But there is something as fresh as dew.
That is the love and affection I’ll always have for you.