Blog

  • Ngapali

    Poem

    • My poem “The Ngapali Beach” was published in the Forward Magazine.
    • I received Fifteen Kyats for the poem.
    • The Illustrator received Fifty Kyats.
    • Bohmu Ba Thaw (Maung Thaw Kha) was Chief Editor of the Forward Magazine.
      He jokingly asked me if I would be interested to join him.
    • U Sein Hla was Assistant Editor of the Forward Magazine.

    Visits

    • I know some people who have visited Ngapali almost yearly.
    • I visited Ngapali only three times.

    First Visit

    My first visit was during my student days with my cousin Ko Thaung Lwin and friends. We stayed at the Bungalow owned by U Tha Gyaw Wai and managed by my uncle U Thet Toe.

    At a nearby bungalow was a movie crew by Amyotha Yoke Shin with U San Maung (Gerald, RUBC Gold and Coach). They were shooting a film starring Wah Wah Win Shwe and directed by U Min Naing. Ko Gerald asked me if I would be interested to join them on the way back to Rangoon via Taung Goke.

    The ride on the truck over the Taung Goke Pass was rough and tough. At Taung Goke, we were hosted by a cinema owner. He offered the movie audience a free show if they could translate the Burmese titles into English. One submission was “Fly away bitter bird” (Pyan Lay dei Nget Khar).

    The rest of the trip involved a boat ride (after a long delay) and a train ride.

    Second Visit

    My second visit was with my beloved spouse and two young sons. We stayed at the Bungalow owned by Amyotha Yoke Shin and managed by U Mya Maung (GBNF, younger brother of U Sein Tin and elder brother of Saya U Tin Htut).

    Third Visit

    • My third visit was as a Guest Lecturer for the Ngapali Luyechun Camp in the Summer of 1988.
    • I spent some time chatting with other Guest Lecturers including Saya U Kyaw Myint (Director of Higher Education, former Professor of Physics at Mandalay).
  • 1972 Mechanical Engineering

    1972 စက်မှု အင်ဂျင်နီယာ များ

    စုပေါင်း ဓာတ်ပုံ

    ဘွဲ့ရ ဓာတ်ပုံ

    ကျောင်းသား (တချို့)

    ခင်မောင်မြင့် / John Tint (ကွယ်လွန်) — ဘော်လုံး

    ဝင်းထိန်ဦး — Organizer

    ဟန်စိန် — ဆရာ ငြိမ်း၊ ဒု ဝန်ကြီး ငြိမ်း

    မြင့်ဖေ — ကာတွန်း၊ လူရွှင်တော်၊ အဆိုကျော်

    19 ကြိမ်မြောက် အာစရိယ ပူဇော်ပွဲ နဲ့ မိတ်ဆုံစားပပွဲ ဖိတ်စာ

    Covid ကာလ — ဂါရဝ ငွေ

    အထွေထွေ

    * တခြား ဘာသာရပ် က စိတ်ဝင်စားသူများ

    ဂုဏ်ထူးဆောင် M72

  • Senior Writers

    2016 စာဆိုတော်နေ့ — သက်ကြီးပညာရှင်များ

    On Sar So Daw Nay (Writers’ Day) in 2016, senior writers who are 80 or older were honored.

    ** အသက် 80 နဲ့ အထက်

    Credit : မွန်ယု / Harry တင်ထွဋ် (M69)

    U Tin Htut (Harry, M69) wrote articles for various magazines. He is a member of the Writers’ Association.

  • Dana for Saya U Sein (SPHS)

    ဆရာ ဦးစိန် (စိန့်ပေါလ်) အတွက် အလှူ

    Soon Offered in memory of Saya U Sein (Burmese, St. Paul’s High School) by Dr. Soe Win (Retired Rector, YUFL), Daw May Saw Lwin (Retired Chemistry Professor), sons and grandchildren.

  • U Kyaw Phone Myint

    Sad News

    Received news from U Ohn Khine (M70) about the demise of U Kyaw Phone Myint (Victor Kyaw Phyo).

    He was my classmate in Middle School at SPHS.

    I met him at the gatherings of the Combined 1st BE Intake of 64 and 65.

    One gathering was hosted by U Thaung Sein (Steeve Kay).

    Another gathering was at the Reunion and Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe of the Combined 1st BE Intake of 64 and 65. He was among the those seated on chairs (mostly having medical problems).

  • Shwe YaDu Lann

    Poem by Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War)

    Translation by Hla Min

    Shwe YaDu Lann

    Let it be rough [but it’s tough]. Flowers are blossoming again.

    Fear not the summer

    Care not the rain [drops]

    or the thick fogs & darkness

    or if winter’s not true to its form

    Shwe YaDu Lann

    Let it be rough. No gentle stream flowing

    Fear not high winds

    Care not dense clouds

    Topsy turvy [come what may]

    Can paddle upstream

    With strong mind & conviction

    Place where heroes [Thu Ye Kaungs] are produced .

    Swel Daw Myaing Dann

    Shwe YaDu Lann

    is a start [of a journey]

    To raise the Banner loftily

    to the skies, to the Zenith

    displaying our thitsa (vow of truth and integrity)

    HLA MIN (Editor, Newsletter Updates, USA)

  • လှေပေါ်မှာ & ကဗျာ လက်ဆောင်

    Tekkatho Moe War

    ဘဝ​ဖြစ်တည်မှု စက္ကန့်ပေါင်းကုဋေကုဋာတစ်လျှောက်လုံး ခက်ခဲစွာရပ်တည်လာရသည်။စီးပွားရေး ရော လူနေမှုအဆင့်အတန်းပါနိမ့်ကျ ပြီးအိမ်ထောင်မှု တည်ဆောက်ရန်ပင် အခက်အခဲတွေ့၊ အိမ်ထောင်မှုတည်ပြီးသူတွေလည်း ရုန်းကန်ခဲ့ရသော၊ ဖြတ်သန်းရ ဖြတ်သန်းဆဲ ခေတ်ကာလတစ်လျှောက် ဒုက္ခ နှင့် ကြုံဆုံခဲ့ရပုံကို –မောင်စိန်ဝင်း ရေးခဲ့သော “လှေပေါ်မှာ” ကဗျာ နှင့်စာရေးသူ ၁၉၈၈ က ရေးခဲ့သော “ကဗျာလက်ဆောင်” ကဗျာ တို့ကို…. စာဖတ်သူ ကဗျာမြတ်နိုးသူ အများ ခံစားနိုင်ရန် အောက်တွင် ယှဉ်တွဲဖော်ပြပေးလိုက်ပါသည်။

    ” လှေပေါ်မှာ ”

    တစ်သက်မဝေးအောင်လို့
    ငှက်ကလေးတွေ အစာကျွေး
    ယတြာပေးသမျှကိုလည်း ချေဖူးတယ်။

    မွေးနေ့ဆို ဘုရားတက်…
    ရေသက်စေ့ ဘုရားလှူ
    မီးပူဇော် ပန်းတွေကပ်….
    လွမ်းမနေတတ်ရအောင်ပေါ့ အချစ်ရယ်…။

    တကယ်ပေါင်းဖို့ကျတော့
    တပေါင်းမှာလည်း မထူး
    တန်ခူးမှာလည်း မဖြစ်
    တစ်နှစ်က တစ်နှစ်ကမ်း
    ချစ်သက်တမ်း ရှည်သမျှ
    တစ်ဦးက တစ်ဦးကိုစိုးရိမ်မယ်
    တစ်အိုးတစ်အိမ်ရယ်လို့တော့ မထူထောင်ဖြစ်။

    တစ်ယောက်လုပ်ခ…
    နှစ်ယောက်လုပ်ခ…
    ဘယ်လောက်ဒုက္ခတွေကို ငြိမ်းအေး
    စားဝတ်နေရေးကို ဘယ်လောက်ကူ
    လူနေမှုအပူကို ဘယ်လောက်ဖျောက်နိုင်မတုံး
    ကုန်စျေးနှုန်း အဲဒီပင်လယ်မှာ
    ခင်ရယ်ကိုယ်ရယ် ဘယ်လိုဖြတ်
    သတ္တိကြောင် သောကအတွေးတွေနဲ့
    ဝေးကြတဲ့နှစ်။ ။

    မောင်စိန်ဝင်း (ပုတီးကုန်း)

    (ချစ်သူရဲ့ နှင်းဆီပြာ ကဗျာများ)

    ” ကဗျာ လက်ဆောင် ”

    သံယောဇဉ် ကြိုး၊ လွန့်စ ပျိုးသော
    လှုပ်နှိုးထိယှက်၊ သူ့ မွေးရက်တွင်
    ‘လျှို့ဝှက်သဲဖို’ မဂ္ဂဇင်း
    ရင်တွင်း သိမ့်အေး၊ ပိုးကြေး ပန်းကြေး
    လက်ဆောင်ပေးဆက် ဖူးပါသည်။

    မေတ္တာမျှပြီး
    သမီိးရည်းစား ဘဝ၊ ယုယကြည်မွေ့
    ခင့် မွေးနေ့တွက်၊ ရွှေလက်စွပ် တစ်ကွင်း
    လက်ဆောင်နှင်းဆက် ဖူးပါသည်။

    တွဲညှာ ရွှေလက်
    မင်္ဂလာဦး ရက်လွန်၊
    ရွေ့ ကျွံ လျင်မြန်
    ရောက်ပြန် အောက်မေ့၊ ခင့်မွေးနေ့မှာ
    ဂိုယာ ရေမွှေး
    လက်ဆောင်ပေးဆက် ဖူးပါသည်။

    တို့ ခရီးသည်
    သိပ်သည်း ထူထပ်၊ ရင်လှပ် မောလျ
    အမှောင်ည တည့်
    ဝေးစွ ပန်းတိုင်၊ ယိုင်သည်လည်း ရှိ
    ကြည့်လည်း မမြင်၊ ဆင်ခြင် ထောက်ရှု
    ကျွေးမှု ဆင်မှု၊ အဖု အထုံး
    လွန့်ရုန်း မရ၊ ပစ္စက္ခ အလယ်
    မျက်နှာငယ်ကြား၊ မမေ့အား သင့်
    ခင့် ရည်စူးချက်၊ မွေးနေ့ရက်မှာ
    ရတနာ ပစ္စည်း၊ ကျပ်တည်း လဲယိုင်
    မပေးနိုင်ပါသည်
    ကဗျာနုပ်၊ လက်ဆောင်ထုပ်ကြောင့်
    ဂုဏ်ပုဒ် ညှိုးနွမ်း သွားမည်လား။ ။

    (ချစ်ဇနီး….သို့ )

    တက္က သို လ် မိုး ဝါ
    ( ကလျာ – ၁၉၈၈ခု )

    (ငါ့ရင်ထဲက ပုလဲ နှင့်အခြား ရတနာကဗျာများ စာအုပ်မှ ….)

    Comment

    Myint Thaung wrote :

    RIT’s two beautiful flowers meet.

  • Collection of RIT Poems

    Collection of poems
    • Five RIT poets headed by Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War) contributed their selections.
    Tekkatho Moe War
    • Maung Nyunt Htay (Ah Htet Min Hla)
      Saya U Nyunt Htay (Met73) gave me a copy.
    Maung Nyunt Htay
    • Okpo Maung Yin Maung
      Saya U Aung Myaing (ChE72)
    Okpo Maung Yin Maung
    • Ko Toee (Myit Che)
      U Toee Maung (C73)
    Ko Toee (Myit Che)
    • Win Myint (M72)
      Nickname : Ka Byaung
    Win Myint (M72)
    • Illustrations
      U Myo Myint (M73)
      Bagyee Myat Myo Myint
    Bagyee Myat Myo Myint
  • U Hla Shwe (T69, GBNF)

    • He graduated with Textile Engineering in 1969.
    Hla Shwe
    • He joined the Faculty at RIT (Rangoon Institute of Technology).
    • He retired as Associate Professor.
    • When a bootlicker asked him to end his class to pay respect to a visiting Taing Hmu, he continued teaching. A post about the event caused some alumni (who did not know him) to donate to his medical expenses fund.
    • He and Saya U Tin Shwe (EP66) passed away about the same time.
      They are GBNF (Gone But Not Forgotten).
    • They are remembered by Saya U Moe Aung (Tekkatho Moe War) in his Kabyar (poem) “To the Shwe Duo”.
    To the Shwe Duo
    • I translated the poem.

    ရွှေ နှစ် ရွှေ သို့

    ရွှေနှစ်ရွှေ…..

    ဝေတော့လည်း တူ

    ကြွေတော့လည်း အတူတူ

    ငြူစူခြင်း ကင်း

    မျှဉ်းမျှဉ်း အသက်ရှူ

    စိုက်ထူမှတ်တိုင်

    မယိမ်းယိုင်ခဲ့…..

    မနိုင်ဝန် ပိ

    အလှည့်သင့်လာ

    သောအခါ မှာ

    ခန္ဓာအမွေ

    ကြွေသာ ကြွေလည်း

    မသေ ဝိညာဉ် ဝဲပျံနေသေးတကား ….။ ။

    ( ကိုတင်ရွှေ- လျှပ်စစ်စွမ်းအား နှင့် ကိုလှရွှေ- ချည်မျှင် သို့)

    တက္ကသိုလ် မိုးဝါ

    (၂၆ ဇန္နဝါရီ ၂ဝ၁၅ – ည ၉:၅၅ နာရီ)

    To the SHWE Duo

    Poem by Tekkatho Moe War
    Translated by Hla Min

    SHWE duo
    Blossom in unison
    Disappear together
    Free from complaint
    Even with thin breath
    Showed mark [of courage and wisdom]
    Never ever wavered …
    Pressed by burden
    At the awaited turn [of journey’s end]
    Body — inheritance [from previous lives]
    Succumbs [to failing health]
    Yet, “Wei-nyin” is fresh, alive and hovering.

    ** Notes

    * K K Wong / Sein Myint wrote :

    He is a Straight forward guy, also jolly guy.

    A lot of our Batch guys are Straight Forward Guys. I saw Some Guys still wanting to Lift Balls.

    When you are A Straight Forward Guy, better prepare your loopholes or at least One Good Loop Hole.

    Then you can say, don’t worry be happy!!!

    * Sai Kyaw Myint wrote :

    He was much similar like me in the manner 😸

    of against proud group. No one is above the law.

    * Saya U Moe Aung gave me some of his works.

    One was a collection of his poems.

    Another was a collection of his articles.

    I translated selected poems and articles.

    * Saya and four other RIT poets — Okpo Maung Yin Maung, Maung Nyunt Htay (Ah Htet Min Hla), Ko Toee (Myit Che) and Win Myint (M72, Kabyaung) published poems related to Swel Daw Yeik.

    Bagyee Myat Myo Myint illustrated the poems.

    I received copies of the book from two authors.

  • Class of 72

    Class of 72

    by Hla Min

    Updated : May 2025

    Win Myint 1

    Kabyaung (U Win Myint, M72)

    • He appears to have long, healthy Black hair. If so, he would be ineligible to be a Senior Pilot of BOAC (British Overseas Airways Company) for not having Grey Hair (symbolizing Wisdom).
    • He wrote poems (some satirical or funny). Some are featured in “Poetic Art Series” by Saya U Aung Myaing (ChE72, Okpo Maung Yin Maung, Organizer), U Myo Myint (M73, Bagyee Myat Myo Myint, Illustrator) and me (Translator).
    Win Myint 2
    • He played soccer for Mechanical Engineering and scored the winning goal against U Tun Htun (Mago Gwaythamar – Magwe Goalkeeper, Min72). He bought books published recently by U Tun Htun and is promoting sales at a 72 gathering.

    Mg Mar Ga wrote : I must whisper to you that Kabyaung’s hair colour is man made. Hee hee..

    Myint Pe

    Note: Most classmates are proud to display their natural bu thee (Beauty). Some have thin grey hair.

    Cartoon Nyin Pe (U Myint Pe, M72)

    He is a founder of RIT U70 (Under 70 – a few years back & the clock has stopped registering their age) for posting “enhanced version” of Classic Songs. The group has 10K+ members. Some Legends have supported the group with special Guest Appearances and Interviews.

    Class of 72 (mostly Mech)

    Mg Mar Ga (U Wynn Htain Oo, M72)

    He is young in the group along with U Han Sein (M72, Top grad who joined the faculty but was lured to become a naval officer). He is a boss of his Hna Pyie. He is a Ma Ya Kha (not Ma Ya Ka) and so cannot have multiple spouses like U Mar Ga. He has four bosses in his family and has to use his culinary expertise to please them. He had medical problems and learnt about Western medicine, indigenous medicine, Say Mee Doe and First Aid. His alertness and CPR saved U Tha Tun (a senior in the group).

    WHO

    Mostly Regular Attendees of 72 Gatherings

    • Some are not present in the photos, but used to attend the Class gatherings.
    • U Kyaw Myint (EP72, Good Morning Bread & Bakery) donated food to several RIT-related gatherings.
    • U Kyaw Myint (T72) is the youngest in the Class of 72. He is President of MARB and an expert in Indigenous medicine. He wrote a letter to his prospective parents-in-law to win the love of his life Daw Sandi Hlaing (T72).
    Veda Kyaw Myint
    • Teddy Mya Bu (Bu Bu, M72) followed his father (a member of the Chamber of Commerce) to be an entrepreneur.
    • U Khin Maung Myint (John Tint, M72, GBNF) played soccer for SPHS, RIT, RU and Burma.
    John Tint
    • U Tha Tun (M72, GBNF) is a senior member of the group. When he was bedridden after an operation. Mg Mar Ga and friends provided him a wheelchair for mobility.
    • U Maung Maung Oo (GBNF) was a Nge Naing of Mg Mar Ga. He supported the activities of Mg Mar Ga.
    • Set Hmu Maung – Thein Aung (Met72, USA, Saya)
    Mr. RIT68
    • Set Hmu – Maung Thein Aung (M72, Singapore)
    • MK Hla Win (A72, Thailand) donated food (Khauk Swe) for SPZPs.
    • Ta Pa Lin Kyone Sein is a core member of the group and/or trips.
    • Maung Sein Win (Padeegone) is a distinguished author and poet. He also was honored by PEN.
    • U Khin Maung Toe (GBNF) is an outstanding musician, composer, guitarist and vocalist. He also practiced meditation. He passed away before he could perform “Thamudaya Kyaung” at the group’s Reunion and Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe. DVDs were handed out to the attendees. Maung Sein Win (Padeegone) was scheduled to recite the poem (basis of the song), but he felt so sad and left without reciting it.

    Guest

    I met several from the Class of 72 at

    • Reunion & Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe at M3 (and earlier at Assembly Hall of Gyogone Campus)
    • Lunch gathering at an Indian restaurant
    • Dinner gathering at a Chinese restaurant.
    Reunion & PZP
    M72
    M72 Grads