69ers paid Garawa to Saya U Ba Than, who will turn 93 on October 2, 2023
U Aung Min often disappears when Group Photos are taken.
** Due to the pandemic, there were no Dinner or Picnic for several years
* This is an opportunity to Meet, Greet and Fete
Stan Liou (Past Chair, BOD)
Maurice Chee (Co-chair of SPZP-2000, Past VP)
U Tin Maung Win (President)
U Nyunt Than (BOD, SF Bay Area Organizer)
U Moe Zaw (Secretary)
Several young EC members
Past Presidents
Saya George Chan (U Maung Maung)
Gordon Kaung (U Kaung Kaung Oo)
U Aung Myint Oo
BOD Chair
Saya U Myat Htoo
* U Tin Myint (David Ko, M67, GBNF) sponsored a table at a past Reunion Dinner to invite sayas and alumni from Southern California
* iNapa Winery (Gordon and Lillian Kaung) provided Premium Wine at NorCal RITAA Gatherings
An old joke : “Which one keeps time better : a stopped clock or one that runs fast or slow?”
RIT-YIT-YTU has both types of clocks. One type shows the correct time twice a day. The other type shows the correct time (in different parts of the world) every instant.
Grapevine says that many machinery and laboratory equipment were magically transported during the Adhamma Era.
With the Swel Daw Bins razed, the old Clocks were the last standing symbols of the Thabon Kyaung.
New clocks could be installed, but the rebellious spirit of alumni preferred to restore and/or repair the old clocks.
Thanks to Beik (Mergui) Soe Myint (M72) and his team, most clocks are running and keeping correct time.
U Khin Maung Zaw (EC76) wrote :
The joke is true, an old fashioned dead clock shows the correct time twice a day. It may not be true if a modern-day dead clock using military time.
Just a coincidence that I have been looking for a small atomic wall clock for my bed room. As the reviews go, many of them on Amazon, the most common failure of these clocks is that it failed to sync up with the Atomic Clock at the DST (Daylight Savings Time) switch. I still have a big atomic wall clock in my living room, which took couple of weeks to show the correct time at the DST switch. [The Atomic Clock is located in Boulder, Colorado, US, under NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government department under Department of Commerce. It emits radio signals and the atomic clocks supposed to synchronize the time using this signals.]
Just a little anecdote with regards to Computer Time synchronization. The early Windows OSes had a hard time synchronizing the time between them due to lack of coordination between themselves. One very early authentication/authorization package used time-based schematic where it challenged a person, under the wraps, to specify a token – a feature known as handshake which sets an expiration time. This scheme occasionally failed because the return handshake went on to different server with slightly different system time. The tolerance was a fraction of a second. One Engineer came up with a small script running on each and every servers in the cluster, several thousands in those days, calling this Atomic Clock’s website, and have the time synchronized on every servers. I personally gone through this scenario, it’s a nightmare to locate, diagnose and correct this recurring problem. Thank God! Due to this problem. Windows team – and other OS vendors came up with a Time Server/Service, where only handful of servers in a big organization sync up with the Atomic Clock and all servers/desktops etc in the organization in turn sync up its own Time Server.
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.
I was first introduced to U Sein Win by my friend and colleague Dr Win Thein when I got back to Yangon after my graduate studies in the U.S. and resumed my teaching job. U Sein Win got his M.S. in E.E. from the University of Michigan and had joined R.I.T. while I was away, after first working at UBARI (Union of Burma Applied Research Institute) upon his return to Myanmar. He was a brilliant student also specializing in Nuclear Power Engineering and worked for sometime at the internationally known ORNL (Oak Ridge National Lab.)
There was good chemistry among the three of us and we became very close friends in no time. U Sein Win and I also came to be famously known among our crowd to be always pulling each other’s legs and arguing about any given topic whenever we get together socially. As he always said, “we agree to disagree on everything.” Everyone enjoyed watching and hearing us gently rib each other about our chosen fields of engineering. I used to tell him A.I.E.E.E. (American Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) of which he was a member, should be renamed A.I.E.E.E.E. (American Institute of Electrical, Electronic, and Eccentric Engineers) and he retorted by saying how how dull and backward Civil (especially Structural) Engineering is. He even once brought an electrical engineering book along where he had underlined a remark in the foreword that said how retarded structural engineers are and showed it around. The author certainly must have had a very disagreeable civil engineer friend!!
One of U Sein Win’s hobbies was to tinker with and repair electrical and mechanical equipment and I served as his ‘assistant’ very often. For one thing, I was pretty good at taking things apart and he was very impressed by it. Putting things back together is quite another matter though, and that was the subject of some of his jokes about civil engineers!!
Please let me add a few things about his love of rowing and swimming. He and I used to go to RUBC (Rangoon University Boat Club) and row coxless pairs frequently. He was taking German classes at that time offered by the Goethe Institute through the German Embassy and got friendly with the language Professor and embassy first secretary, so we sometimes went out with them to row shell fours, coxed by club caretaker U Par Oo.
Now about swimming. We also used to swim regularly at the the university swimming pool and U Sein Win was a great fan of Jacques Cousteau, the famous French undersea explorer and scientist, and one day talked to me about going to Ngapali and do snorkel diving. I agreed and we planned to do the trip.
We managed to buy snorkel, mask, and flippers from Chopra Brothers Sports Store and practiced diving at the swimming pool and finally flew to Ngapali together with Dr Win Thein and a friend of his U Myint U, I think in 1964 during the summer holidays. The beach was not crowded at the time and The Strand was the only hotel there. We rented a bungalow not very far from the airport for about a week and went out everyday snorkeling at low tide. U Myint U joined U Sein Win and me, but Dr Win Thein stayed in a row boat towing 3 inflated tires for us to hang on to when we surfaced to rest. We did not have to go out far, the water was crystal clear with plenty of colorful fish around us down there. We were so happy with the experience, but U Sein Win was the most thrilled (he somehow got hold of a spear gun before we left Yangon, but it was a rather unwieldy piece of equipment for us even to practice on the ground and I managed to persuade him against bringing it along.)
U Sein Win also loved reading and western classical music, and we used to share recordings and books, some things we seemed to agree to agree on!!
U Sein Win and I remained close friends even after we got married and had our own families. The last time I met with him after I migrated to the U.S. was when I visited Yangon with my son and daughter in 2002. Not very long after that, Dr Win Thein gave me the sad news of his passing away. He was a very fine human being, always friendly, unassuming, and never talking ill about anybody. I will always remember him with a very warm heart and am sure that he reached a very happy and noble abode in his next existence.
A generalist is a person who knows less and less about more and more until he/she practically knows nothing about everything.
A specialist is a person who knows more and more about less and less until he/she practically knows everything about nothing.
An optimist sees a glass as “Half full”.
A pessimist sees the same glass as “Half empty”.
A realist tries to figure the direction (of the water) before commenting as either “Half Full” or “Half Empty”.
Set Hmu [Maung] Thein Aung
U Thein Aung (M72) presents the differentiation with U Thein Aung (Met72).
I am Set Hmu — Maung Thein Aung.
I am Maung Thein Aung studying Set Hmu (Mechanical Engineering).
He is Set Hmu Maung — Thein Aung.
He is Thein Aung, who won Set Hmu Maung (Mr. RIT with Sa Lwei Thaing) in 1968.
Ba La Gyi vs. Ba Lar Gyi
During his RIT days, U Thein Aung (Met72) was “Ba La Gyi” (full of strength and prowess).
Lately, he has become “Ba Lar Gyi” (nothing notable left).
Kar Ku La Thin Char
Saya U Aung Myint (Pet69, Kyant Ba Hone) drew a cartoon:
“Ah Ba, Kar Ku La Thin Char (Calculus) is fascinating.
If you differentiate a La Da, you get a Sargalay.
If you integrate a Sargalay, you get back a La Da“.
At a 69er gathering, Daw Saw Yu Tint (T69) greeted U Khin Maung Win (EP69) as Sargalay.
He replied, “I am no longer Sargalay. I have became a La Da.”
He is an alumnus of the University of Michigan, USA. He retired as Professor of Electrical Power Department at YTU. He was Technical Advisor for the UCC Project.
Saya left his brand new spouse at Hledan Zay and had a hair cut. He went back to RIT, and had a long discussion with his students. The students asked, “How is Sayagadaw?” Saya’s reply : “Let’s end the discussion. It’s past time I should have picked her up at the Zay”.
It was raining.
Einstein took off his hat and hid it in his coat.
A student asked “Why?”
Einstein’s reply : “My hat is new and can be damaged. But my head cannot be damaged by the rain.”
A ticket inspector boarded a train.
Einstein searched for his pockets.
The inspector said, “You need not show me the ticket. You are Einstein.”
Einstein’s reply : “I do not know which stop I should get down.”
Einstein was carrying a stack of books.
He collided with a beautiful student.
The books fell down.
The student collected the books and returned them to Einstein.
Einstein asked, “Which way was I going?”
The student replied, “You were going towards the school.”
Einstein felt relieved. “Then, I must had my lunch at home.”
HlaMin 