Blog

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 11, 2020

Computer names

ENIAC
EDSAC
EDVAC

Company names

IBM
ICL
Cisco
Apple
Google

Product names

iPod
iPad
IPhone

Miscellaneous

April,
May,
June

Aryu,
Wunna,
Thukha,
Bala

Kan,
Nyan,
Viriya

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 10, 2020

Naming conventions

Disciplines
Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry

Towns / Cities
Roads / Streets
Examinations / Awards

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 4, 2020

Early times

Christian Name

Surname

Later

First and Last Names

First, Middle and Last Names
Middle Initial
Some systems use “X” for no Middle Name

Hyphenated Names
Spanish / Mexicans combine their parents’ name

Clan Name

Family Name

Religious Name

Name for Priest / Monk

A name may have a meaning

AnandaThuriya : Man of infinite valor

Thant : Clean / Pure / Pristine

Fitz, Mac, Mc : Son of

Naming conventions

vary with culture, place …

My name has been mis-spelled and mis-pronounced as

HAL
LA
LAH
HALA
MINH
MING

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 17, 2020

Htun Aung wrote :

၁၉၇၈ခုနှစ်ဝန်းကျင်​လောက်ကYMCA,Rangoonမှာထိုစဥ်ကမြန်မာပြည်Chess championများဖြစ်ကြတဲ့Saya Dawson နဲ့ ဆရာဦး​ကျော်သန်း(ကုန်သွယ်​ရေး)တို့အကြိတ်အနယ်ယှဥ်ပြိုင်ကြတာကိုရင်ခုံစွာကြည့်ခဲ့ဘူးပါတယ်။ထိုစဥ်ကမြန်မာနိုင်ငံစစ်တုရင်အဖွဲ့ချုပ်ဥက္ကဌကဦးခွန်ဖြူ(ဗိုလ်ကြီး-ငြိမ်း)မှဦး​ကျော်သန်း(ကုန်သွယ်​ရေး)သို့လွှဲ​ပြောင်းခါစဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

မှတ်မှတ်ရရအဖြစ်ကိုတင်စွမ်း(Mec64-70)မြန်မာ့စစ်တုရင်ချန်ပီယံ၊​မှော်ဘီမင်​သော်စီမံကိန်းတာဝန်ခံအင်/ယာအဖြစ်တာဝန်ထမ်း​ဆောင်စဥ်ရန်ကုန်မှ​မှော်ဘီသို့ကိုတင်စွမ်းအိမ်မှာတစ်ညအိပ်သွား၍စစ်တုရင်ကစားရင်းopening,middle game,end game​တွေနည်းနာသင်ကြားမှုခံယူဘူးပါတယ်။ထိုစဥ်မိမိမှမြန်မာပြည်စစ်တုရင်အကြိုလူ​ရွေးပွဲဝင်​ရောက်ယှဥ်ပြိုင်မှာမို့သူငယ်ချင်းဆီguidelineသွားယူတာပါ။လူရွေးပွဲမှာအ​ရွေးမခံရပါ။ရှုံးပါတယ်။သူငယ်ချင်းချံပီယံကိုတင်စွမ်းကိုအားနာရပါတယ်။

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Video Broadcast

In December 1920, there were three significant events.

• On December 1, 1920, Rangoon University ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် was established with Rangoon College ရန်ကုန်ကာလိပ် and Judson College ဂျပ်ဆင်ကောလိပ် as the constituent colleges.
  The colleges are also known by other names (e.g. Government College, Baptist College)
• On December 5, 1920, the First RU Students’ Strike ပထမ ရန်ကုန် တက္ပသိုလ် ကျောင်းသား သပိတ် took place.
  They protested the 1920 Rangoon University Act ဥပဒေ as too narrow and restrictive.
• In December 1920, Saya U Ba Toke ဆရာ ဦးဘတုတ် was born as a Phwa Bet Taw ဖွားဘက်တော် of the above two.
  For some reason, there is a discrepancy between Saya’s official DOB (Date of Birth) and true DOB.

Rangoon University (RU)

• Initially had three Faculties မဟာဌာန and eight departments ဌာန (including Law)
• Initially had six professors ပါမောက္ခ
• RU gradually extended its offerings (beyond Science သိပ္ပံ and Arts ဝိဇ္ဇာ).
• In particular, the opening of engineering အင်ဂျင်နီယာ classes was planned around 1923 and executed in 1924.
• In 1927, the first batch of engineering students (who had Bachelors degree) graduated with the “accelerated courses” option.
• In 1928, the second batch of engineering students (who joined after finishing the I.Sc.) graduated.
• RU was closed from 1942 to 45.
  RU Silver Jubilee was not celebrated as a high-key event.
• RU celebrated the Golden Jubilee (GJ) ရွှေရတု in 1970.
  Dr. Aung Gyi (ဒေါက်တာ အောင် ကြီး Professor of Civil Engineering မြို့ပြအင်ဂျင်နီယာပါမောက္ခ) and U Thet Lwin (ဦးသက်လွင် Burmese saya at the Institute of Economics စီးပွါးရေူတက္ကသိုလ်) were some of the GJ organizers.
  The RIT Ah Nu Pyinnya Shins ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတတက္ကသိုလ် အနုပညာရှင်များ took part in the GJ Entertainment Program as “Swel Daw Yeik Troupe စွယ်တော်ရိပ် အငြိမ့်” .
  The term “Swel Daw Yeik” became synonymous with RIT [its predecessors and its successors].
  Swel Daw Yeik Ah Nyeint (with Minthamees မင်းသမီး and Lu Shwin Daws လူရွှင်တော်) and Htee Yein (ထီး ယိမ်း RIT Belles with colorful Parasols) were hits at the GJ celebration.
  I was a volunteer member of the “Zay Nay Yar Cha Hta Yay စျေး နေရာချ ထားရေး subcommittee headed by Saya U Hla Tun Aung (ဦးလှထွန်းအောင် Geography ပထဝီ).
  Those who applied for stalls and/or stage included Actor Maung Maung Tar (မောင်မောင်တာ promoting his make up) and the then amateur band “Playboys” တီးဝိုင်း requesting a “high” stage (for security concerns).
  
• RU celebrated the Diamond Jubilee စိန်ရတု in 1995.
  
• RU celebrated the “Yar Pyie Ah Kyo” ရာပြည့် အကြို in December 2019.
  The opening song was “Mya Kyun Nyo” မြကျွန်းညိုညို composed by Tekkatho Maung Ngwe Hlinne (တက္ကသိုလ် မောင်ငွေလှိုုင်း Saya U Thet Lwin).
  
• RU Centennial Celebrations were planned for November and December of 2020.
  Due to the pandemic, many events were held virtually.
  Kyemon ကြေးမုံ and Myanar Ah Lin မြန်မာ့အလင်း newspapers သတင်းစာ featured articles about RU.
  The TV stations featured interviews, songs …

First RU Students’ Strike

• Eleven “senior” students led the Boycott of the Rangoon University Act of 1920.
  
• They were unhappy with the restrictions of the RU Act and decided to hold a boycott (strike) on December 7, 1920.
  
• Due to a news leak, the protests were moved to December 5, 1920.
  
• The strike resulted in the establishment of Amyotha Kyaung (အမျိုးသားကျောင်း National Schools) and Amyotha Kaw Leik (အမျိြးသားကောလိပ် National College).
  The event is celebrated as Ah Myo Tha Aung Pwe Nay (အမျိုးသားျအာင်ပွဲနေ့ National Day).
  The Burmese date (မြန်မာသက္ကရာဇ် 10th Waning day of Tazaungmon တန်ဆောင်မုန်းလပြည့် ကျော် / လဆုတ် ဆယ် ရက် is used for the Celebration.
  
• Arzani U Razak was an early graduate of the National College. He served as Principal of a National School in Mandalay.
  He became Minister of Education in Bogyoke Aung San’s cabinet.
  
• Prime Minister U Nu (ဦးနု), United Nations Secretary General U Thant (ဦးသန့်) and Ahmyotha Pyinnya Wun / Educator / Writer U Po Kyar (အမျိုးသား ပညာဝန် ဦးဖိုးကျား) are notable sayas from the National Schools.
  
• The boycott was responsible for the amendments ပြင်ဆင်ချက် to the RU Act.
  e.g. opening of schools for engineering and medicine,
  
• A pillar ကျောက်တိုင် was set up on Shwe Dagon Pagoda in memory of the Boycott.

Sayagyi U Ba Toke (Dec 26, 1920 – Dec 2, 2020)

• He is one of the oldest and senior sayas.
  Some senior sayas (e.g. Anne Sine) passed away in early 2020.
  
• Received A.M (Master of Arts in Mathematics) မဟာဝိဇ္ဇာ ဘွဲ့ from Harvard University ဟားဗတ်တက္ကသိုလ်
• Served as Assistant Lecturer လက်ထောက်ကထိက, Lecturer ကထိက and Professor ပါမောက္ခ of Mathematics သင်္ချာ at RU ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် and RASU ရန်ကုန် ဝိဇ္ဇာ / သိပ္ပံ တက္ကသိုလ်
• Promoted to Rector ပါမောက္ခချုပ်, MASU မန္တလေး ဝိဇ္ဇာ / သိပ္ပံ တက္ကသိုလ်
• With his own volition, he transferred to RIT ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် as Professor of (Engineering) Mathematics.
  
• As a Saya of engineering sayas (e.g. Dr. Aung Gyi, U Min Wun and U Khin Aung Kyi), he was invited to attend SPZP-2000 ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ and give a speech.
• Saya attended all SPZPs except SPZP-2002 (which he had to forgo due to Sayagadaw’s health).
  
• Played Chinlon ခြင်းလုံး and Soccer ဘော်လုံး
• Co-chair of RU Sports Council
  အားကစား ကောင်စီ Managed the Soccer program.
• Headed the Burmese delegation မြန်မာအားကစားအဖွဲ့ to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo တိုကျို အိုလံပစ်
• Until his 80s, Saya was active သွက်လက် လှုပ်ရှား
  (e.g. walk to Shwe Dagon Pagoda ရွှေတိဂုံ ဘုရား with his dhamma friends).
• In his 90s, Saya had physical limitations, but his mental faculty was strong as ever.
  
• Saya Dr. Khin Maung Swe (ဒေါက်တာ ခင်မောင်ဆွေ Tekkatho Maung Thin Char, တက္ကသိုလ် မောင်သင်္ချာ GBNF ကွယ်လွန်) interviewed Saya.
  Sayama Daw Myint Myint Khaing (ဆရာမ ဒေါ်မြင့်မြင့်ခိုင် daughter of Arzani Mahn Ba Khaing အာဇာနည် မန်းဘခိုင်) transcribed the tapes.
  The book covering Sayagyi’s Life Journey was published by the RU Thin Char Mi Thar Su ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် သင်္ချာ မိသညးစု for Sayagyi’s 80th birthday.
  
• Sayagyi gave me an autographed copy.

Two Sayagyis

• Pu Zaw Pwe (PZP) — paying homage to mentors — is a noble tradition.
  They are also known as Saya Pu Zaw Pwe and Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe.
  
• There have been micro-PZPs, mini-PZPs and grand PZPs.
  
• Saya U Ba Than (born on October 2, 1930) usually visits and pay homage to his saya Sayagyi U Ba Toke at least once every year.
  

Paying homage to Sayagyi U Ba Toke

• During my visits to Yangon, I paid homage to Sayagyi U Ba Toke.
  
• On one visit, Sayagyi gave me an autographed copy of “Life Journey of Mathematics Professor Sayagyi U Ba Toke”.
  The book was written by Saya Dr. Khin Maung Swe (Tekkatho Maung Thin Char, GBNF) based on his interviews with Sayagyi U Ba Toke.
  It also covers the early Thin Char Sayagyis.
  The book was published by Rangoon University Thin Char Mi Thar Su for Sayagyi’s 80th birthday.

• In January 2017, Pansy Ba Toke (Thynn Thynn, ChE 74) asked her son-in-law and daughter to pick up Sayagyi U Ba Than, Saya U Tin Htut and me at Winner Inn to see her father Sayagyi U Ba Toke.
  Sayagyi had some problems with mobility and vision, but his mind remains crisp and clear.
  
• Pansy was a member of the Swel Daw Yeik “Htee Yein” at the Rangoon University Golden Jubilee in 1970. She has offered transportation to the Sayas who want to visit her father.
  
• Sayagyi sometimes defer celebrating his birthday so that his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren — far and near — could join the celebration.
  
• Sayagyi is pre-deceased by
  his beloved spouse, his second son (Soe Win, 6th out of his 8 children) and his second daughter (Kitty, 3rd out of his 8 children)

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Video Broadcast on January 27, 2021

• Myanmar မြန်မာ
  Ah May (အမေ), Mi Gin (မိခင်), Mway Mi Gin (မွေးသမိခင်), Ah Mi (အမိ), Mae Daw (မယ်တော်)
  Usage : အသုံးအနှုန်း
  Mae Daw Maya (မယ်တော်မာယာ)
  Ah Mi Myay (အမိမြေ)
  Ah Mi Tekkatho (အမိတက္ကသိုလ်)
• English
  Mother, Mom, Mum, Mummy, Mama
  Usage :
  Mother Tongue
  Mother Earth
  Motherland
• Pali ပါဠိ
  Mata မာတာ
  Usage :
  Mata Pitu Gu Naaw Anandaaw မာတာပီတုဂုဏောအနန္တော
• Latin
  Mater
  Usage :
  Alma mater

Mother

• Biological Mother
  Gives birth
• Caring Mother
  Takes care
• Adoptive Mother
  Adopt a child from a relative or others (e.g. via an Adoption Agency)
• Surrogate Mother
  Conceives a child for someone who cannot give birth naturally (e.g. due to medical conditions)
• Classification schemes vary with place, culture and time …

Mother’s Day

• Myanmar
  Full Moon Day of Pyatho ပြာသိုလပြည့်နေ့
• USA and several countries
  Second Sunday of May
• Others
  Dates vary with countries

Media

• Songs
  e.g. M-O-T-H-E-R
• Books
• Movies
  

Thanks to three Mothers

• My Mother မိခင်
  who raised seven children

• My beloved wife ဇနီး
  who raised two sons
• My daughter-in-law ချွေးမ
  who takes care of my two Myees မြေး နှစ်ယောက်

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Video Broadcast on January 19, 2021

• I am indebted to Thin Saya သင်ဆရာ, Myin Saya မြင်ဆရာ 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 zillion thanks to my “Let Oo Sayas” (လက်ဦးဆရာ my beloved parents).

Studying Languages

Studying 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 U “Eric” Than Lwin)
• They helped me improve my writing and communication skills.
• Thanks to all the authors, who are my implicit teachers.
• Still learning (especially during the “Shelter at Home” due to the COVID-19 Pandemic)
• Listen to the daily offering by Blinkist.com
• Listen and/or read Merriam Webster’s wotd (word of the day) pod cast

Miscellaneous

• See posts on “Myanmar Sar“
• See posts on “Pali“
• See posts on “Languages“

Studying Computers

Dr. Chit Swe (GBNF)

• Sayagyi was my mentor at UCC.
• He invited over renowned computer scientists [led by Professor Harry D. Huskey, Pioneer in Computer Hardware, Software and Teaching] and mathematicians [e.g. Professor 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 (an early Relational Data Base Management System) at UCC. A few years back, he won the prestigious “ACM Turing Award” (which is considered as the equivalent of Nobel Prize in Computing).
• He taught us to use CPM/PERT (Critical Path Method/Programme Evaluation and Review Technique) for the various projects.
• Saya asked me to assist in several of his projects.
  To name a few,
  I was a translator/ reviewer for CTK (Children’s Treasury of Knowledge)
  I served as an editor for “High School Mathematics”
  I was a member of TOSS (Team Of System Specialists)

• Saya 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)

• Saya was my mentor at RIT and UCC.
• Together with Saya U Myo Min and Saya 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.
• The sayas asked me to be their assistant.
• Saya U Soe Paing also allowed Saya U Aung Zaw 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
• National Foreign Languages Center
  Language Expert for the Burmese Language Project (Reading and Listening Comprehension)
• RIT Alumni International Newsletter
  Contributing Editor for 21 years
• hlamin.com
  3000+ articles
• Facebook
  Owner, Admin or Moderator of selected Facebook Groups
• Video Broadcasts
  Archived in Facebook and my You Tube Channel

Volunteering

I gained experience by volunteering as

• Several organizations in Myanmar and USA
• EC, Joint Secretary and Secretary of RIT EE Association
• Contributing Editor of RIT English Newsletter
• Treasurer and Vice Captain of RUBC
• Translator / Interpreter at Meditation Retreats
• Organizer, SPZP-2000
• Coordinator, World wide SPZPs in Singapore and 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 several publications by Sayadaws (e.g. U Jotalankara) and friends (e.g. U Aung Zaw)
• Language expert at National Language Center
• Administrator and/or Moderator of selected Facebook Pages
• Owner and 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 : Chit Sa Noe ချစ်စနိုး and Po Lone ဖိုးလုံး
• I had paid back to my alma mater RIT where I studied from 1964 – 1969 by volunteering as Messenger and Organizer for 21 years. e.g. For SPZP-2000, I wrote 64 “Countdown to the Reunion” and 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 3000+ posts. I have revised most of them with the feedback provided by my readers (including Dr. Khin Maung U, Dr. Nyunt Wai (Victor), Dr. Thane Oke Kyaw Myint, U Khin Maung Zaw).
• In April/May 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 PSA (Public Speakers’ Association) Tour to six cities in Upper Myanmar.
• I am adding / revising posts for hlamin.com and share some of them via Facebook pages (e.g. Life Long Learning, RIT Updates, RU Centennial) and my You Tube Channel.
• I am a Dreamer.
  I believe, “If one can dream, others will fulfill.”

Posts

• Garawa
• Parents
• Publications
• RIT
• SPZP
• UCC

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Video Broadcast on January 7, 2021

Commonly Asked Questions

မေးခွန်း ခြောက် ခု

• Who
• To whom
• When
• Where
• Why
• How

Sixth Buddhist Council

ဆဌသံဂါယနာ

• Questions by Mahasi Sayadaw
• Reply by Mingun Tipitaka Sayadaw

Miscellaneous အထွေထွေ

• How and Why I created the Site hlamin.com
• Rudyard Kipling
• Guideline for reporters
• Feasibility studies
• Plan of operation : Implementation