HlaMin

Blog

  • Jan 2017

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Tommy Shwe (GBNF)

    Alumnus of RIT

    • Matriculated from St. Albert’s High School, Maymyo in 1964
    • Admitted as Roll No 2 (in order of merit among Matriculates) to 1st BE at Rangoon Institute of Technology
    • Represented RIT in Badminton

    Taiwan & USA

    • Completed three Masters
    • Entrepreneur
    • Supporter of Education

    Untimely Demise

    • Victimized by a handyman that he had helped
    • Reported in Los Angeles Times
    LAT 1
    Tommy Shwe
    LAT 2
    LAT 3
    LAT 4
    LAT 5
    LAT 6
    LAT 7

  • November 2021

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Daw San San Swe

    • Showed her culinary skills as a Surprise Thanksgiving Present.
    • Prepared Ah Htutt Ta Ya Palata, Chicken Curry and Bean Soup.
    San San (2nd from Right)

    Losses

    • Within six weeks, Daw Thuza Aung suffered two losses : her beloved spouse U Tun Aung (Jeffery, EC68) and her elder brother U San Aung (New York).
    Jeffrey

    Grand parents

    • U Thein Naing (Patrick) and Daw Khin Myo Aung (Mi Mi) recently became proud Grandparents.
    Patrick (2nd from Left)
    • U Aung Myaing (ChE72) and Daw Gyn Yu (ChE72) is planning to welcome their fourth Grandchild.
    U Aung Myaing

    Donation

    • In memory of David Ko (U Tin Myint, M67), Mavis Ko donated $2000 to NorCal RITAA.

    Garawa

    • The Class of C84 paid respect to sayas (U Min Wun, Dr. San Hla Aung …) online.

    Posts

    • Good News သာရေး
    • News သတင်း
    • Newsletter သတင်းစဉ်
    • Sad News နာရေး

  • Holidays and Events

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Some holidays

    • have fixed date
    • have relative dates
    • are designated as Public holidays
    • are religious

    January

    • Jan 1 : New Year’s Day
    • Jan 4 : Independence Day in Myanmar
    • Martin Luther King’s Day in US
    • Occasionally : Lunar New Year

    February

    • Feb 12 : Union Day
    • Feb 13 : Children’s Day (Bogyoke Aung San’s birthday)
    • Feb 14 : Valentine’s Day
    • US Presidents’ Day
    • Occasionally : Lunar New Year
    • Occasionally : Full Moon Day of Tabodwe — Htamane Pwe & [Buddha’s] Exhortation Day

    March

    • Mar 2 : Peasant’s Day was moved from Jan 1 in order to celebrate the Coup D’eat
    • Phone Maw Day
    • Burma’s Human Rights Day (celebrated by Berkeley)
    • Mar 27 : Resistance Day was renamed as Armed Forces Day
    • First Day of Spring : Persian New Year

    April

    • Thingyan : Three or four days of Water Festival
    • Myanmar New Year

    May

    • May 1 : May Day in some countries
    • May 5 : Cinco de Mayo
    • Mother’s Day in the US

    June

    • Jun 6 : D Day
    • Jun 6 : Ah Loke Thamar Ah Yay Ah Khinn
    • Father’s Day in the US

    July

    • Jul 4 : Independence Day in the US
    • Jul 7 : Students’ protest that was brutally crushed
    • Jul 8 : Demolition of the Rangoon University Student’s Union
    • Jul 19 : Arzani Nay
    • Apollo 11 landed in Tranquility Bay on the Moon in July 1969
    • My poem “Men on the Moon” was sent to NASA via USIS. A copy was published in the Guardian.

    August

    • 8-8-88 : start of a long struggle to restore Democracy in Myanmar
    • Several birthdays in my extended family

    September

    • Crushing the hopes of Multi-party Democracy
    • Occasionally : End of Burmese Buddhist Lent

    October

    • Occasionally : End of Burmese Buddhist Lent (Thadinkyut)
    • “Deepavali” or “Diwali” celebrations are also celebrated around October. It is known as the “Festival of Lights”.
    • “Halloween” occurs every year on October 31 with “Trick or
    • Treat” by the children and [optional] “Halloween Costume Party” by young and old adults.

    November

    • Elections in the US (Local races & Resolutions every year, House of Representatives every two years, One third of Senators every two years, President every four years)
    • Nov 22 : JFK assassinated (Conspiracy Theory survives)
    • Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US

    December

    • U Thant Ah Yay Ah Khinn : dark day in the history of Burma
    • Apollo 8 orbited the Moon in December 1968
    • Dec 25 : Christmas
    • Dec 31 : New Year’s Eve

    Grapevine says that some holy days are preceded by some “fun events”.

    • Halloween (October 31) precedes “All Saints Day” (November 1).
    • Similarly, “Mardi Gras” (“Fat Tuesday”) falls on the day before “Ash Wednesday” signifying the start of the Lent.
    Thingyan Su Paung Ya Han Khan

  • GHall Thu

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Photos

    by Daw Tin Aye (C73)

    G Hall Thu 1
    G Hall Thu 2
    G Hall Thu 3
    G Hall Thu 4
    G Hall Thu 5

    Photos by Daw Pwint Than (EP71)

    Daw Pwint Than (EP71) received a dhamma book as a gift prize from a younger alumni.

    She thanks the young energetic “Nyi Ma Nge Myar” for helping organize the memorable get together with the old (former Hall Tutors, classmates) and the new.

    G Hall Thu 6
    G Hall Thu 7
    G Hall Thu 8
    G Hall Thu 9

  • GHall Thu

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Photos

    Photos by Daw Tin Aye (C73)

    G Hall Thu 1
    G Hall Thu 2
    G Hall Thu 3
    G Hall Thu 4
    G Hall Thu 5

    Photos by Daw Pwint Than (EP71)

    Daw Pwint Than (EP71) received a dhamma book as a gift prize from a younger alumni.

    She thanks the young energetic “Nyi Ma Nge Myar” for helping organize the memorable get together with the old (former Hall Tutors, classmates) and the new.

    G Hall Thu 6
    G Hall Thu 7
    G Hall Thu 8
    G Hall Thu 9

  • Photos — Old & New

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Let Oo Sayas

    With my beloved parents

    U Tin Gyi’s Family

    Old photos processed by Myo Kyawswar

    Sisters

    Sisters 1 (original)
    Sisters 2 (processed)

    Daw Khin Swe Hla (Icy)

    Wedding 1 (original)
    Wedding 2 (processed)

    Dr. Khin Kyi Nyunt (Cherry)

    Cherry, Peter, Ye Myint
    Cherry, Peter
    Cherry 1
    Cherry 2
    Cherry 3

    Win Latt (ex-UCC)

    Win Latt

    Myint Swe (EP74) & San San (EC74)

    Myint Swe, San San

    U Sein Mg (EE63) & U Moe Aung (EE63)

    Two EE Sayas

  • Lifelong Learner

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Paying back ကျေးဇူး ဆပ်

    From our younger days, we learned about paying respect to our parents, mentors and benefactors.

    ကျွန်တော် တို့ ငယ်စဉ် ကတည်း က ကျေးဇူးတရား အကြောင်း လေ့လာ မှတ်သား လေ့ကျင့် ခဲ့ ရပါတယ်။

    I am following the noble tradition of honoring pioneers and outstanding people. I am trying my best to present their achievements and contributions. I an privileged to have known many seniors, contemporaries and juniors.

    Who’s Who, Twentieth Century Impressions of Burma, Five Minute Biographies တွေ ကို နည်းယူပြီး ကျွန်တော် က Old Burma တုန်းက ထူးချွန်သူ တွေ ကို မှတ်တမ်းတင် ဂုဏ်ပြု နေတဲ့ ရှေ့မှီ နောက်မှီ (ဘေးမှီ) သူတယောက်ပါ။

    I volunteered as a Docent at the Computer History Museum (CHM) for two years. CHM’s programs include Hardware & Software Artifacts, Exhibits, Oral History, Lectures, Panels and Award Ceremonies.

    ကျွန်တော် Computer History Museum ကွန်ပျူတာသမိုင်းပြတိုက် မှာ Docent အဖြစ် နှစ်နှစ် volunteer လုပ်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။ Computer Pioneer တွေ ကို မှတ်တမ်းတင်ဂုဏ်ပြု တဲ့ အဖွဲ့အစည်းပါ။ Artifacts, Exhibits, Oral History, Lectures & Panels တွေ စုံလင်ပါတယ်။

    The Old Burma Group has posts about History, Notable (Famous as well as Notorious) people. I appreciate the invaluable posts as a reader and contributor.

    Old Burma Group ဟာလည်း သမိုင်း နဲ့ ထူးချွန် / ဆိုးသွမ်း (Famous as well as Notorious) ကို မှတ်တမ်း တင် နေ တဲ့ အဖွဲ့ မို့ Contributor တယောက် အနေ နဲ့ ဝမ်းသာ ကြည်နူး မိပါတယ်။

    I request the Group Administrator and Moderators to approve my posts.

    ကျွန်တော် ရဲ့ posts တွေကို တင်ပြခွင့်ပြုပါ Admin နဲ့ Moderator များ ခင်ဗျာ။

    ကျွန်တော် က
    I am

    • Founder & Chief Editor စာတည်းချုပ် of RIT Alumni Newsletter
    • Owner & Admin of RIT Updates FB Group
    • Member of HMEE (History of Myanmar Engineering Education) မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အင်ဂျင်နီယာ ပညာရေ: သမိုင်း အဖွဲ့ဝင်၊
    • ကံ့ကော်မြေ (တက္ကသိုလ်ရာပြည့်) Former Moderator of RU Centennial Group : Moderator ငြိမ်း၊
    • Contributing Editor of RUBC 90th Anniversary Souvenir Magazine / ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်လှေလှော် အသင်း မဂ္ဂဇင်း : စာတည်း
    • Former employee of UCC, DCS, ICST : ကွန်ပျူတာဌာန၊ ကွန်ပျူတာသိပ္ပံဌာန၊ ကွန်ပျူတာသိပ္ပံ နှင့် နည်းပညာတက္ကသိုလ် ဝန်ထမ်း ငြိမ်း၊
    • စာပေ၊ သမိုင်း၊ ပညာရေး နဲ့ အားကစား ဝါသနာရှင်၊
      Interests : Literature, History, Education, Sports
    • Contributor of Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife စွယ်စုံကျမ်း
    • စာအုပ်တချို့ ရဲ့ စာတည်း
      Editor of selected books — e.g by Sayadaw U Jotalankara, Saya U Aung Zaw (UCC, GBNF)
    • Own / ကိုယ်ပိုင် website : Author / Editor
      hlamin.com

    I have posted articles of historical interest.

    အဖြစ်နဲ့ သမိုင်းဝင် အကြောင်းအရာ တချို့ကို ပြန်လည်မျှဝေ နေဆဲပါ။

    ကြည်နူး Delighted

    I am glad to receive feedback, information and suggestions from my former teachers, family members of senior alumni, colleagues and friends.

    Posts တွေမှာ ပါတဲ့ ဆရာ၊ ဆရာမ၊ Senior Alumni တွေရဲ့ မိသားစုများ၊ အပေါင်းအသင်းများ ရဲ့ Feedback & Information တွေ ဖတ်ရလို့ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ်။

    I also learned a lot from the posts by Subject Matter Experts and Group Experts.

    SME (Subject Matter Experts), Group Experts … တွေ ရဲ့ posts တွေ ကို ဖတ် ရလို့ ဗဟုသုတ ရပါတယ်။

    Credits

    I have provided Credit for the Photos and References.

    တတ်နိုင်သရွေ့ Source, Photos တွေကို Credit ပေးခဲ့ ပါတယ်။

    Fond Memories

    Pon Tu (Portrait) Present from

    Bagyee Myat Myo Myint (U Myo Myint)

    U Myo Myint (Retired Deputy General Manager of Burma Railways) is an accomplished Painter, Cover Designer and Cartoonist. He drew Pon Tu’s of selected RIT Sayas, Sayamas, and colleagues. I am honored to receive his present.

    ပန်းချီ မြတ်မျိုးမြင့် ရဲ့ လက်ဆောင် မွန်
    Pon Tu gift from Bagyee Myat Myo Myint / U Myo Myint (M)

    Pon Tu

    1964 – 65
    Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT)

    I was admitted to 2nd BE (Bachelor of Engineering) in November 1964.

    The photo was taken at the Gyogone campus.

    2nd BE student

    1964 – 65 ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ဒုတိယနှစ် သင်တန်းသား
    2nd BE Student at Rangoon Institute of Technology

    1965 Summer
    Inlay Luyechun Camp

    I was selected as Luyechun (Outstanding Student).

    The photo was taken at the Welcome Ceremony by the Head of Shan States.

    LYC

    1965 နွေရာသီ အင်းလေး ခေါင်တိုင် လူရည်ချွန် စခန်း
    တက္ကသိုလ် နဲ့ အထက်တန်း လူရည်ချွန်များ
    Inlay Khaung Daing Luyechun Camp in the Summer of 1965

    1969 December
    Poem for 5th SEAP Games

    Burma hosted the 2nd SEAP Games in 1961, and the 5th SEAP Games in 1969.

    The photo shows a page from the Forward Magazine. Maung Thaw Ka (Bohmu Ba Thaw, GBNF) was Chief Editor of the magazine.

    Forward

    Forward မဂ္ဂဇင်း — ဒီဇင်ဘာ 1969
    ပဥ္စမ အကြိမ် အရှေ့တောင်အာရှ ကျွန်းဆွယ်ပွဲ အတွက် ကဗျာ စပ်ဆို ခဲ့
    Poem about the 5th SEAP Games

    Mid 1970s
    Universities’ Computer Center (UCC), Rangoon

    The photo was taken with the Teachers and Students of CPC (Computer Programming Course).

    Dr. Tin Maung (GBNF) succeeded Dr. Chit Swe (UCC Founder, GBNF) as Director of UCC.

    UCC

    တက္ကသိုလ်များ ကွန်ပျူတာ ဌာန က ပို့ချတဲ့ သင်တန်း တခု
    Computer Course at Universities’ Computer Center (UCC), Thamaing College Campus

    1999 April to 2025
    Chief Editor of RIT Alumni International Newsletter

    https://hlamin.com/2024/03/09/rit-alumni-newsletter-for-spzp-2000-2/

    2000 October
    Saya Pu Zaw Pwe in California

    SPZP-2000

    SPZP-2000 Organizers

    2005++
    Paying Homage to Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa

    U Silananda

    ဆရာတော် ဦးသီလာနန္ဒာဘိဝံသ (ပါချုပ်ဆရာတော်)
    အထိမ်းအမှတ် မော်ကွန်းစာစောင်အတွက် အဖွဲ့ဝင် & စာတည်း
    Contributing Editor for the Book published in memory of Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa

    2010 December
    Saya Pu Zaw Pwe in Singapore

    SDY Sar Saung

    2010 စင်ကာပူ မှာ ကျင်းပတဲ့ စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ အထိမ်း အမှတ် စွယ်တော်ရိပ်စာစောင်
    Wrote an article “A Sad and Short Clip: EE Sayas” for the Commemorative Issue
    of Swel Daw Yeik Sar Saung for SPZP-2010 in Singapore

    2012 December
    Saya Pu Zaw Pwe at Gyogone Campus

    SPZP-2012

    ပွင့်လင်းခေတ်
    2012 မှာ ကျင်းပခဲ့ တဲ့ ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ
    SPZP-2012: True Home Coming

    HMEE (History of Myanmar Engineering Project)
    HMEE Book published in 2012

    HMEE

    မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အင်ဂျင်နီယာ ပညာရေး သမိုင်း ပြုစု တဲ့ အဖွဲ့
    Member of HMEE (History of Myanmar Engineering Education)
    U Ohn Khine (M70) and I compiled the CD Supplement for the HMEE Book published in 2012
    Copies of the Book were donated to Libraries

    CD

    2012 နှစ် မှာ ထုတ်ဝေခဲ့တဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အင်ဂျင်နီယာပညာရေး သမိုင်း စာအုပ် ရဲ့ နောက်ဆက်တွဲ စီဒီ
    CD Supplement for the HMEE Book
    Photos and articles (in English) to supplement the articles (in Burmese) in the HMEE Book

    2013
    RUBC 90th Anniversary Souvenir Magazine

    RUBC

    2013 — ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် လှေလှော်အသင်း ရဲ့ နှစ် 90 ပြည့် အထိမ်း အမှတ်စာစောင်
    RUBC 90th Anniversary Souvenir Magazine

    2014 December
    RIT Shwe YaDu (Golden Jubilee)

    SDY Magazine

    ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် ရွှေရတု အထိမ်းအမှတ်စွယ်တော်ရိပ် မဂ္ဂဇင်း (2014)
    Wrote an article “Memories of a 69er” for the Commemorative Issue
    of Swel Daw Yeik Magazine for Shwe YaDu 2014

    2016 September
    Alumni Appreciation Award

    Award

    2019 December
    RUBC 96th Anniversary Regatta

    Regatta

    RUBC 96th Anniversary & Regatta (2019)
    U Tin Myint (GBNF), U Sein Htoon, U Khin Maung Latt, U Hla Min

    2019 December
    Golden Jubilee of Graduation of RIT 69ers

    GJ

    2019 — 1969 နှစ် ဘွဲ့ရ အင်ဂျင်နီယာများ ရဲ့ ရွှေရတု
    မနက်ပိုင်း — ကြို့ကုန်း မှာ ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ
    2019 — Golden Jubilee of Graduation for RIT 69ers
    Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe at Gyogone Campus

  • Mohinga

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Staple Food

    Rice is the staple food of Burma. What about Mohinga မုန့်ဟင်းခါး ?

    Most people eat Mohinga for breakfast. A few can eat Mohinga any time of the day — breakfast, lunch and dinner.

    Breakfast in Windsor

    In 2015, Ivan Lee (M69, New Jersey), Fred Thetgyi (M69, Philadelphia), my spouse and I (from California) visited Windsor, Canada to pay respect to Sayagyi U Aung Khin (Former Professor and Head of Mechanical Engineering at the Rangoon Institute of Technology.

    Sayagyi’s Mohinga

    Sayagyi allowed my spouse and I to sleep at his guest room. He got up early to prepare Mohinga and Ah Kyaw အကျော် (Fries) for breakfast for the four of us. He also gave us mementos from Windsor.

    Cost of Mohinga

    During our younger days, plain Mohinga used to cost 15 pyas. With Ah Kyaw, we would pay 25 pyas.

    Special recipe

    Most vendors cannot match the taste of the Buthee Kyaw ဗူးသီးကျော် using a formula by a cousin aunt to accompany the Mohinga cooked by my beloved father and his assistants.

    The best part is that we do not have to pay for the sumptuous “all you can eat” meal.

    Variety

    There are a variety of ways to prepare and cook Mohinga.

    Some variables are

    • choice of fish ငါး အမျိုးအစား : Hinthada ဟင်္သာတ uses up to three kinds of fish. Some places use minimal fish. A few — notably Dr. Htay Lwin Nyo (EP74, GBNF) — tried to have a layman’s Mohinga using canned fish.
    • choice of “San Hmont” ဆန်မှုန့် or “Pei Hmont” ပဲမှုန့်
    • use of “Ngan Pya Yay” ငံပြာရည် and condiments
    • some add ကြက်သွန်ဥ & ငှက်ပျောဖတ်နုနု
    • mode of cooking for a small group or a large group of people
    • how to keep it fresh (without getting spoiled due to inclement weather).

    Mohinga Story

    There’s a story that is near and dear to me.

    My spouse’s maternal grandma အဖွား was oblivious to the political, social & economic changes. Every morning, she would call a grand child. She would open her little purse inside a big purse, and then unwrap two or three layers of paper to get her money. She would dole out ten pyas ဆယ်ပြား to buy Mohinga for her.

    One day she could not finish a spoonful of Mohinga. Her breath slowly faded with her head resting on my lap. There was no sigh. She passed away gently.

    My spouse belongs to the elite company of Mohinga lovers. She enjoys Mohinga for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

    Mohinga Lover

    I have a fear စိုးရိမ်ပူပန်စိတ် for the day when she might refuse to have Mohinga & follow her grandma.

  • GHall Thu

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    Photos

    Photos by Daw Tin Aye (C73)

    G Hall Thu 1
    G Hall Thu 2
    G Hall Thu 3
    G Hall Thu 4
    G Hall Thu 5

    Photos by Daw Pwint Than (EP71)

    Daw Pwint Than (EP71) received a dhamma book as a gift prize from a younger alumni.

    She thanks the young energetic “Nyi Ma Nge Myar” for helping organize the memorable get together with the old (former Hall Tutors, classmates) and the new.

    G Hall Thu 6
    G Hall Thu 7
    G Hall Thu 8
    G Hall Thu 9

  • St. Paul’s High School

    by Hla Min

    Updated : Apr 2026

    စိန့်ပေါလ် အထက်တန်းကျောင်း

    1860

    • De La Salle Brothers ရန်ကုန် မှာ ကျောင်းဖွင့် Opened St. Paul’s English High School in Rangoon.

    1885

    • ကျောင်း ကို နေရာသစ် ပြောင်းရွှေ့ Moved the school to a new location

    1960

    * ရာပြည့် Centennial

    1965

    • ပြည်သူပိုင်သိမ်း Nationalized on April 1st; Non-native Brothers left Burma
    • အမည် ပြောင်း — SHS(6) ဗိုလ်တထောင် Renamed as No. 6 Botathaung State High School

    2010

    • နှစ် 150 ပြည့် Sesquicentennial

    မှတ်တမ်း များ

    SPHS Badge နဲ့ Motto

    Badge

    SPHS ရှေ့ ကျောင်းကြို ဖို့ စောင့်နေကြ

    Cars waiting to pick up students

    Yangon Heritage Society — Blue Plaque

    Blue Plaque

    1959 Matriculates / Scholarship Winners

    SPHS59

    1960 Matriculates / Scholarship Winners

    SPHS60

    1951 – 1963 Top Matriculates
    Roll of Honor

    Top Matriculates

    1963 Scholarship Winners

    SPHS63

    SPHS Blazer Coat & Badge

    SPHS Blazer Coat & Badge

    De La Salle Brothers

    De La Salle Brothers in Burma (1955)

    OPA (Old Paulians’ Association) Pu Zaw Pwe Organizers

    OPA

    Gallery

    Mao Toon Siong (SPHS55, Table Tennis)
    Ko Ko Lay (SPHS56, UCC cofounder)
    Charlie Hla Myint (SPHS59, Swimming & Water Polo)
    Dr. Thane Oke Kyaw Myint (SPHS60, Medical Institute Historian)
    SPHS60 Gathering
    Than Htut (SPHS60, Rowing)
    Htun Aung Kyaw & Aung Khin (SPHS61)
    SPHS63

    Updates

    • Old Paulians’ Association opened SPHS Museum on St. Paul’s Day (June 30) in 2025
    • Three of the 1963 Scholarship Winners — Myo San (Freddie), Aung Thu Yein (Brownie) and Maung Maung Kyi — have passed away.