စိတ္ေလျခင္း

စိတ္ေလေနသည္မွာ အခ်ိန္အေတာ္ၾကာခဲ့ျပီ။

ငယ္ စဥ္ကေတာ့ ဒူးယားစီးကရက္ ေကာက္ဖြာ လိုက္ ဒါမွမဟုတ္ လက္စြဲေတာ္ ေဟာ္လိုဂစ္တာေလး နဲ႕ ကိုထီးသီခ်င္း ခတ္တိုးတိုး ဆိုရင္း စိတ္ေျဖ ခဲ့ဖူးသည္။

ဂစ္တာ တလုံးေတာ့အခုအထိ ရွိပါသည္ သို႕ေသာ္အခန္းရဲ့ ေဒါင့္တေနရာမွာ ဖုန္ေတြ တက္ လို႕။

စီးကရက္ လက္နဲ႕မတို႕တာ အႏွစ္ႏွစ္ဆယ္ ရွိခဲ့ ျပီ ဂစ္တာ ေတာ့စိတ္လိုလက္ရ ရွိ ရင္ ေကာက္ကိုင္မိ ပါရဲ့။

ဂစ္တာ ဆိုလို႕ မွတ္မွတ္ရရ စ တီးျဖစ္ေတာ့ အသက္ကဆဲ့သုံးႏွစ္.. သင္ေပးတဲ့ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ကအခု မရွိရွာ ေတာ၊့ ဒီအက္ေအ ဆင္းျပီးမၾကာခင္ဘဲ က်ဆုံးသြားရွာ တယ္။ ကံေကာင္း တယ္လို႕ ၾကံဖန္ေျဖ ရတယ္။ ဒီေကာင္ အခုရွိ ရင္ျပဳတ္ရင္ျပဳတ္

မျပဳတ္ရင္လဲ ငရဲၾကီး ရမွာ သူရဲေကာင္းလိုေသရတာ ကံေကာင္းတယ္ ေခၚရမွာေပါ့ေလ။

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ကိုယ္တို႕ဂစ္တာစ ကိုင္ေတာ့ လား႐ိႈး သိန္းေအာင္ ရဲ့ လယ္သူမေလးခ်စ္သူ သီခ်င္းနဲ႕ .. သိတ္မၾကာခင္ပဲ သူနဲ႕မိသားစု ဗ်ဳံး ဒိုင္းဆိုအလည္ေရာက္လာ ၾကတာမွတ္မိတယ္။ သိတ္မၾကာခင္ပဲ သူျမန္မာျပည္ကေန အျပီးအပိုင္ တြက္ ခြါခဲ့တာ ဒီေန႕အထိပါဘဲ။

ဂစ္တာ အ ေၾကာင္းပဲ ဆက္အံုးမယ္။

ကိုယ္တို႕ ေခတ္က ဂစ္တာ ဆို က်င္စု ပဲရွိတယ္။ ကရင္ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ေတြ ထြင္းအိုး ကိုယ္တိုင္ လုပ္တီးတာ ေတြ႕ဖူးတယ္။ က်င္စု ဂစ္တာက ထြင္းအိုးကို မမွီေပမဲ့ ဆီေဆန္ က် သြားျပီဆိုရင္ အေတာ္ေလးနားေထာင္ ေပ်ာ္တယ္။ ကိုယ့္ရဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသားဘဝ ကဂစ္တာေလးဆို ေပါက္ ေနတာေတာင္ အသံကလြင္ ေန တုန္း။တခု ဘဲ က်င္စုဂစ္တာ ေတြရဲ့ ကီးေတြက မေကာင္းေတာ့ အျမဲတန္းလိုလို ေဒါင္ဒင္ ေဒါင္ဒင္ နဲ႕ ကီးျပန္ခ်ိန္ရတယ္။ ဒို ေရ မီ ေလးသိလာ ေတာ့ တမ်ိဳးေပါ့ေလ။

လမ္းေဘးမွာထိုင္ ညေမွာင္တာ နဲ႕ ဒံုခ်မ္းခ်မ္း တီးရင္းလူပ်ိဳေပါက္ေတြရဲ့ ကီးမဝင္တဲ့အသံေၾကာင္ ေတြနဲ႕ ေအာ္ၾကဟစ္က် နဲ႕ ကိုယ့္ ကိုယ္ ေတာ့ တကဲ့အေကာင္ လို႕ထင္ခဲ့တဲ့ အခ်ိန္ေတြပါ။

‘A Leader of Men’ U Razak by Yeni

by Yeni

The Muslim schoolteacher who joined Burma’s martyrs

Being a Muslim in a country where 87 percent of the population is Buddhist, and where the military government regularly practices ultra-nationalism and uses religion as a political tool, means joining the underprivileged at the bottom of the pile.

Muslims in Burma regularly suffer social and religious discrimination. Burmese Buddhists commonly call them, Kala, a derogatory term for South Asians and also used insultingly to describe westerners.

While some consider the term abusive and degrading, there’s general acceptance that it takes on a sense of honor, respect and lovingkindness when it’s used in the form Kalagyi (Big Kala), to describe independence hero Abdul Razak.

U Razak rose from the position of headmaster of Mandalay Central National High School to become minister of education and national planning in Burma’s pre-independence government. His career was brought to a brutal end at the age of 49, when he was gunned down by assassins on July 19, 1947, together with independence leader Gen Aung San and seven other cabinet members and colleagues. The nine murdered leaders are commemorated annually on the country’s Martyr’s Day.

Read full text at Irrawaddy online

Read more about U Razak at Wikipedia

The Outsiders

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By Harry Priestley/Rangoon

JANUARY, 2006 – VOLUME 14 NO.1

In a country where discrimination against minority groups is a fact of life, Muslims are bottom of the heap.

There is a saying that if you lose control of your bicycle in Burma’s western Arakan State, you shouldn’t worry as it will stop when it hits a kala.

Kala is Burmese slang for outsider, or alien, and although Caucasians are sometimes referred to as white kala, the term is more commonly used for anyone dark skinned, usually of Indian origin. While some shrug the term off, others consider it abusive and degrading: an insult to people whose ancestors may have fought for the country and who consider themselves wholly Burmese.

read more…at Irrawaddy online

ဂ်မားတို႔အဖိုး Grandpa of Jamal by Zaw Min

Following  post was copied from Ywet Mon Fine leaves weblog.

Grandpa of Jamal by Zaw Min is a short story about a Burmese Muslim Grandpa who fought for Independence, hand in hand with other Burmese freedom fighters. Later he was honored for his heroic act by the Government. The old man settled down in a village in upper Burma which was home for his parents for last three hundred years.

The problem started when he took a train to visit Rangoon recently. Police checked his documents and when they found out that he is a Muslim, he was scolded and shouted with abusive words. Moreover they have checked whether he could speak Burmese or not. He was told that there are no such a race and religion as Burmese Muslims. Then, only he  realized that he is only a  Kalar ( derogatory name for Burmese Muslims-all are assumed as  Indians)and not a Burmese citizen. Finally the problem was settled after paying bribe to the police.

However the freedom fighter, Burmese Muslim Grandpa, who ancestors were royal servant of the Burmese Kings was deeply hurt by the incidence. He has decided not to travel to any part of Burma until his death.

Simple translation for the non Burmese readers

by Sit Mone

သူ႔ မွာ ဗမာနာမည္ ရိွေပမဲ့ သူငယ္ခ်င္း အားလံုးက ငယ္ငယ္တည္းက “ဂ်မား” ဆိုေသာ အိမ္နာမည္ကိုသာ ေခၚၾကေသာ ေၾကာင့္ ဗမာနာမည္ကို ဘယ္သူမွ မမွတ္မိေတာ့။ ဂ်မား၊ နီတြတ္ႏွင့္ ကံသိန္းတို႔သည္ ႏွစ္တန္းေလာက္ ကတည္းက လည္ပင္းဖက္၍ ေက်ာင္းေနခဲ့သူမ်ားလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။ ဂ်မားမိဘေတြရဲ့ အသက္ေမြးဝမ္းေက်ာင္း လုပ္ငန္းက ဘဲေမြးျမဴျခင္း။ သူတို႔မိသားစုက အစၥလမ္ဘာသာ ကိုးကြယ္၍ အိႏိၵယႏြယ္ဖြား ေသြးေႏွာထားေသာ ရုပ္ေရ သြင္ျပင္ကို ပုိင္ဆုိင္ၾကသည္။ သူတို႔ရြာက လူအမ်ားစု သည္ မြတ္စလင္မ်ား ျဖစ္သည္။ ထိုရြာသားတို႔သည္ ေရွးဗမာ ဘုရင္မ်ား အဆက္ဆက္ လက္ေအာက္တြင္ အမႈထမ္းခဲ့ၾကေသာ ျမန္မာမြတ္စလင္ စစ္သည္ေတာ္ အႏြယ္မ်ားမွ ဆင္းဆက္လာ သူမ်ားလည္း ျဖစ္သည္။

ရြာသားအမ်ားစုသည္ ငါးဖမ္းျခင္း၊ ကုိင္းကၽြန္းလုပ္ျခင္းျဖင့္ အသက္ေမြးၾကသည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဂ်မား၏ မိဘမ်ားႏွင့္ ရြာသား အနည္းစုကေတာ့ ေတာင္သမန္အင္းႀကီးကို အေျချပဳ၍ ဘဲေမြးၾကသည္။ အဲသည့္ အခ်ိန္တံုးက နီတြတ္ မွတ္မိသေလာက္ ဂ်မား မိဘေတြမွာ ေမြးထားေသာ ဘဲမ်ားက အေကာင္ရွစ္ရာ တေထာင္ေလာက္ ရိွမည္။

Islam is most misunderstood religion in Burma

by Kyaw Kyaw Oo

I misunderstood Islam even as a born Muslim.

I used to be a person who felt ashamed of being a Muslim. It was long time ago in my childhood, and during my teen age. The reason was in Burma Muslims are seen as lower class, uneducated, poor people.

Some of the Burmese Muslims are of Indian Decent. They have dark skin and most of them are uneducated. However they are good in business. To be honest I did not want to be called as Kalar, which is a derogatory name for Muslim in Burma.

Nostalgia, Union of Burma Airways, UBA

The plane has landed. Mingaladon Airport was brightly illuminated with neon lights. For me, that was the first time I have been to Rangoon.The moment was unforgettable, one of the most exciting periods of my life.

I came out of the Dakota plane holding my Mom’s hand and really amazed by the sight of newly built Mingaladon airport.

Next thing  I remember  was traveling in a big  Hino Bus of UBA that ferries all the passengers to the transit  office located in Strand Road of down town Rangoon. Rangoon International Airport was designed by a Danish company in 1952, and construction ended in 1957. At that time, it was the largest airport in Southeast Asia.

Then, Burma was the richest country in South East Asia. Mingaladon Airport was also the hub for so many international air lines such as Pan Am and BOAC.

UBA has used this type of Viscount aircraft, modern for that period. Now we are far far away from Mingaladon. Dakota and Viscounts will be probably in the museums. But the childhood memory that was together with the pride of being a citizen of a country with the great potential to develop only turn into nostalgic memory.

Sit Mone

Gambling Addiction Questions and Answers

I am fully aware that most of the poor Burmese people do gambling as the only way out from poverty. I do not expect them to read this post to solve their problems. However gambling has been deeply rooted in Burma ever since Military took over several decades ago. Gambling habit destroys millions of families in Burma silently and quietly, and also tragically.

Only wish is, this post to be read by those who are able to spread the news that gambling is bad for all and not the healthy way of making money.A society infested with the habit of gambling will never prosper.

Again this is my sincere intention of highlighting the one of the major problems seems to be forgotten by most of us. Gambling habit  is even worse than Alcoholism, HIV/AIDs , as it may be accepted as a social norm in a society and even encouraged by some as easy way to get money.

Sit Mone

Excerpt

“Similarities between pathological gambling and chemical dependency include an inability to stop/control the addiction, denial, severe depression, and mood swings. Pathological gambling and chemical dependency are both progressive diseases with similar phases. These include “chasing” the first win/high, experiencing blackouts and using the object of addiction to escape pain. Both pathological gamblers and persons addicted to alcohol or drugs are preoccupied with their addiction, experience low self-esteem, use rituals, and seek immediate gratification.”

Is pathological gambling similar to chemical dependency?

How are children affected by pathological gambling?

Are gamblers addicted to money?

Is there a biological basis for pathological gambling?

Want to know the answers? Read..

Mandalay Mosaic

Dawn! Birdseye view of  Mandalay…

Those who were born in Mandalay are now staying in satellite towns, using human energy to start their daily works

Mandalay is alive with bustling traffic..

Zay Cho wakes up for her daily routines

Zay Cho Thu ??

Under Grad Scholarships in New Zealand for Burmese Students

This blogger found the following link from Dr Kyi May Kaung’s blog.

Hope, it will be useful for those who are residing in Burma and age below 45 years old.

Undergraduate Scholarships in NewZealand for Myanmar (Burma) Students

Good luck!

Sit Mone

Dr Kyaw Thet, A pioneer academician of Burma

This blogger has posted the following you tube video, on August 20^th 2008. The Title was “Once it was a world class University, Rangoon University of Burma.”

Today he has received a comment from Dr Kyaw Thet’s son, U Lin Aung Thet explaining more about the origin and theme of the you tube video and, more about Dr Kyaw Thet.

Thank you, U Lin Aung Thet for your wonderful feedback. Please accept my sincere apology for unable to get permission from the original owner of the video. However I am happy to note that you have indicated satisfaction as a good son, for the deed of your late father, who left his legacy to all of us. This blogger would like the blog readers to read “Continuity in Burma”, a comprehensive analysis of Burmese history and  his prediction on the future of newly indepandant Burma.

Yours truly,

Sit Mone

I am Dr Kyaw Thet’s son and I uploaded the above video excerpt to You Tube a few days after he passed away this past spring. It was sent to only a few family members and close friends but was discovered by expatriate Burmese students and has now been viewed over 10,000 times. The 3.5 minute excerpt is from a special lecture at Rangoon University in 1957 and was part of a 1957 one hour CBS “See It Now” program by Edward Murrow entitled “Burma, Buddhism, and Neutrality”. To me, the amazing aspect of the lecture was that a Rangoon University professor could so openly discuss his government’s foreign policy and express his opinion on what it should do. Viewers may also be interested in a 1958 article in Atlantic magazine by my father on the continuity of historical forces in Burma. The article seems still relevant to Burmese society today. Please see http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/195802/burma-continuity if interested. The supplement also conatins other articles by leading Burmese intellectuals, professors and civil servants of that day.

Comment by Lyn Aung Thet — October 10, 2008 @ 4:32 am