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

Who are you ? by Burma Sit Mone

By the way, today is an uneventful first anniversary of  this blog . Time has passed like an express train, some claimed that time is not a real dimension but only a perception of the brain.

Anyway, Burmese people  those who have been staying away from Burma might encounter the following questions at least once in their life time . For me ..my answers to these questions are…

ေဟ့ …နင္ဘယ္သူလဲ  ?

ေဟ့.. နင္ဘယ္ကလဲ ?

ေဟ့… နင္ဘာလူမ်ိဳးလဲ ?

ေဟ့… နင္ဟာဘာလဲ ?

တခြန္းထဲ ေျဖမယ္

ငါဟာေလ… လူ

နင္တို႕အားလုံးလို ပါဘဲ

လက္ ႏွစ္ဘက္

ေျခ ႏွစ္ေခ်ာင္း

ဦးေႏွာက္ နဲ႕ႏွလုံးသား

အဂၤါစုံ ပါတဲ့

ကမၻာ.. ေပၚက

ဘီလ်ံမ်ားစြာထဲက သာမန္

လူတေယာက္ပါ

ကံေကာင္းစြာနဲ႕့ဦးေႏွာက္ပါတဲ့

သာမန္ လူတေယာတ္ျဖစ္ ရတာကို

ဘုရားသခင္ကို

ေက်းဇူးတင္ေနတဲ့

….

စစ္ကို မုန္းျပီး ထာဝရျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကို

ျမတ္ႏိုးတဲ့

အညတရ ပါမႊား တေယာတ္ပါ။

စစ္မုန္း

Myanmar frees longest-serving political prisoner U Win Tin

U Win Tin with blue shirt at a friend’s house (  Photo Mizzima)

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s longest-serving political prisoner, journalist Win Tin, was freed on Tuesday after 19 years in prison, a Reuters reporter who saw him after his release said.

The ailing 79-year old was arrested in 1989 and sentenced to 20 years in jail for giving shelter to a girl thought to have received an illegal abortion, and for distributing anti-government propaganda.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Alan Raybould)

Update

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s longest-serving political prisoner, journalist Win Tin, vowed Tuesday to continue his struggle against 46 years of military rule only moments after his release from a 19-year sentence.

“I will keep fighting until the emergence of democracy in this country,” he told reporters outside a friend’s house. He was still wearing his light-blue prison clothes.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Darren Schuettler)

“Loving” Myanmar junta frees 9,002 prisoners

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar’s junta is releasing 9,002 prisoners as a gesture of “loving kindness and goodwill,” official media said on Tuesday, although political detainees are unlikely to be on the list.

“We haven’t heard of any political prisoners being freed,” said Nyan Win, a spokesman for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), whose leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for the last five years.

“I do hope they will be released, but I don’t think it will happen.”

Myanmar, or Burma as it used to be called, has more than 2,000 people behind bars on account of their political or religious beliefs, human rights groups say.

The junta, which has ruled unchecked since 1962, denies the existence of any political prisoners, saying all detainees have committed crimes.

Official newspapers said the prisoners were being released for the “social consideration of their families” and to take part in elections scheduled for 2010, part of a seven-step “roadmap to democracy.” Western governments dismiss the roadmap as a charade.

Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Alan Raybould)

Milk, Melamine, Malicious Chinese products and Burma

Blogger’s thought

Greedy!

That is the nature of Chinese Policy makers. They were able to host the world’s biggest Olympic, however do not bother to check their export, which is Milk, to feed the million of infants  from China  as well as those who are from several countries that imported milk and diary product from China. Most of the diary products tainted with Melamine are mostly consumed by the infants and the children of third world countries as Chinese products are always cheaper than its rivals.

A few months ago, Chinese manufacturers withdrew the toys painted with excessive level of Lead. Lead poisoning may cause fatal side effect to kids due to blood dyscrasia, or lethal disorders of blood. These people have no concern upon their customers who are innocent infants and children.