December 2005 Archives

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Wednesday/Columns/20051228090901/Article/indexb_html

This article from a Malaysian journalist made me smile.

We should be very clear that this trip is a mission that must deliver results. It should not degenerate into a courtesy visit for the Myanmar authorities to trot out their usual platitudes about "step-by- step" democratisation efforts when it is patently clear that they have been marching backwards.

I wish there were a bit of freedom of speech to speak out our frustrations. While I was living in Burma the last two years, I self-censored my speech on my diary. I still do now. :-) I want to know the true situations of Burma. Sadly many bloggres inside Burma can't speak to their hearts. I was afraid to say everything while I was blogging inside Burma from December 2002 till December 2004.

I think we have been marching backwards the past ten years. It seemed to have some signs of improvements around the late 1990s. Now in 2005, the situations are not improving. Let's hope the best for 2006. If you are blogging from inside Burma, please let us know the true pictures because I believe that people inside are more important than people outside like me. Let's create brighter future for kids in Burma.

A local kid from Nam San Yang village, Kachin State in Northen Burma

http://www.fdimagazine.com/news/fullstory.html/aid/1030/Thailand.html

1. Gross national income per capita: $2,190
2. PPP Gross national income per capita: $7,450

Note: PPP is purchasing power parity."Because exchange rates do not always reflect international differences in relative prices, Table 2 below converts GNI per capita estimates into international dollars using purchasing power parity (PPP) rates."

I put the above figures because I want to make a point to some of my students that if they can make about $ 150 in Burma, it's worth it to work in Burma instead of coming to Thailand. Many of my students asked me if there are jobs for them in Thailand. I can understand why everybody wants to leave Burma. I would encourage my students to work in Burma if they can earn about $ 150 a month because if you look at the above figure, the per capita income of Thailand is $2,190. That means it's around $ 185 a month in Thailand. Unless, of course, your education is extremely high and you are in demand, you will make around $ 200 to 300 a month.

I called home yesterday and found out that they were many black-outs recently. Electricity has been unstable, which is same old problem for Burma.

Merry X'mas to you all. I know it's a late wish. But I wasn't home since Christmas. :-) So no online access. I managed to go without the Internet for 2 days, I guess. :-) I went window shopping on December 24 with my boss. We did buy a Mac mini as I said in my previous diary entry. We were around the new shopping mall. A lot of Thai people were also doing window shopping.

On Christmas day, I went to Bangkok Christ Church and met some of my BARS students who visited Bangkok from Vientiane, and Yangon. They were here for vacation. After church, I went to visit their dorm. We had lunch together. Good Burmese food. We then went to Calvary Church at Sukhumvit Soi 2 in the late afternoon. After church, we went to watch a movie at the theatre. We watched King Kong. It was an exciting movie. The movie basically compared New York city with the jungle, human beings with animals. The cost was 120 bahts a person. It was only $ 3. Compared to the States, it was very cheap. Don't you love being in Asia? I do :-)

At Calvary church, there were a lot of Burmese. I was wondering how many people from Burma were outside of Burma. One of my BARS students wished me merry Christmas from Chiang Mai. I think she came to Chiang Mai illegally. Everybody wanted to pursue their dreams. I wonder if we could create dreams and opportunities for these young people in Burma so they don't have to leave home and families, and still have a better life. This can't go on for ever. I am sure we can't bring everybody out of Burma. Something has to change and I am hoping for the best for the future of Burma.

I also met Joey Tun, who lived with us while studying in the States. His family was in Bangkok for Christmas vacation. I spent Sunday night with my friends hanging out with them and eating Burmese food with them.

I got back home today in the afternoon. I watched a movie, Original Sin, again at home. Life is not so interesting outside of Burma, I guess :-) When I was in Burma, I had lots of stories to tell. However, I didn't have a regular internet access. Now that I have 24/7 ADSL connection here in Bangkok, I don't have much interesting stories to tell :-)

Kids near Thai-Burma border, those who don't belong to neither Thailand nor Burma

Today, I helped Somboon Chungprampree, my friend, to set up his new laptop. He is an activist working for Spirit in Education Movement organized by Sulak. He has been in and out of Burma many times.

Shwe Dagon Pagoda, the picture taken by Somboon Chungprampree from Summit Parkview Hotel

Burma is a very beautiful country. Because of its closed door policy in the past, many tourists find it mystic. I am finding many academics and tourists attracted by Burma and the people of Burma. Fortunately, my work evolves around languages of Burma. Here are some books to learn Burmese.

http://www.101language.com/burmese.html

I just hope that the suffering people in Burma will find hope and freedom one day.

Doug Cooper, my colleage, mentor, boss, and I registered sealang.net today. SEALang stands for South East Asian Languages. Right now, only Thai is up and running. It's not even completely finished yet. You can see Burmese, Karen, Mon and Shan without any links. Please be patient. It will be coming in a few months or years :-) That's what we will be busy with in a couple years from now. We already finished some work on Burmese-English dictionary. We have to polish it a bit before we put it online. I hope one of the Unicode fonts will be stable enough to use online. Every data in the Burmese-English dictionary is in Unicode encoding now. We used Perl to convert the dictionary data from Chitwin font to WinInnwa font. We then used TECkit converter to convert from WinInnwa to Unicode Encoding. Keith Stribley helped us with conversion to Unicode. In our testing environment, we use Padauk font to display. The problem of Padauk is you need a special build of Firefox with Graphite.

I will have to figure out a way to present it to you if none of the Unicode fonts is mature enough. What I will probably do is try to convert the HTML to PNG image on the fly and then present it to the user. I will just have to wait until one of the Unicode fonts is stable and usable. If you have any suggestions, please send me an email. :-)

Here is our SEALang project link: (note: Internet Explorer won't work properly with our site because of its lack of compliance to standard)

http://www.sealang.net

Burmese will be up in the spring of 2007 if you look at the schedule. So stay tuned :-)

The above site is hosted on my Linux machine which I maintain and use daily, which I am using right now to update this blog :-)

I found out about this very Yahoo-ish Myanmar search engine. What are they trying to do? Trying to invite Yahoo to sue them? :-)

http://www.myanma.com

I clicked on "myanmar sex" listed under "keyword 5"

And guess what results I got? :-)

Yep, my page on the very top. :-) I don't remember posting anything about sex :-) Maybe I have pictures of very cute students of mine from Myanmar Institute of Theology. :-) But I am sure they are not naked :-)

http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp?a=5251&z=153

In a letter Tuesday to the council president, Bolton asked for a briefing to address "the deteriorating situation in Burma."

I wonder what the future of Burma will be. It just can't be like this the rest of our lives. The current government has been in power since 1989. It's been around for 17 years. Nothing lasts for ever in this world.

I really want to live in Burma if the Internet access in Burma is just as free as Thailand. :-) Even if I make less money, I don't mind. I have lived in several countries now. Here are the chronological order of where I have lived in the past.

• Myanmar (August, 1976 - May, 1998)
• USA (May, 1998 - December, 2002)
• Myanmar (December, 2002 - December, 2004)
• Laos (December, 2004 - May, 2005)
• Thailand (May, 2005 - July, 2005)
• Myanmar (July, 2005 - November, 2005)
• Thailand (November, 2005 - Present)

I don't really care where I live any more as long as I have a free and open access to the information.

Where is our country leading? If you can help for the developement of Burma in any ways, please do.

New Mon State Party won't attend the convention

http://english.dvb.no/news.html?id=6000

During an interview with DVB today on 3 December, NMSP secretary Nai Hantha said that the party decided not to attend the convention because of the lack of the right to discuss matters freely and openly.

My people have lost the chance to play the game if they decided not to attend the convention.

My collection of pictures while I was in Burma

The followings pictures were taken by my friend, Waw Lay, on his trip to Mogok using my camera back in 2004.

Mogok

Golden Butterfly Hotel in Mogok

Lisu Church in Mogok

My friend, Waw Lay and the pastor in front of Lisu Church in Mogok

My friend, Waw Lay with Lisu hunting equipments

Slippers

Basket

I got this through the forwarded emails from my friend.

UN Security Council delays US move on Myanmar

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1359592

An earlier U.S. attempt to raise the focus on political repression in Myanmar was rebuffed in June when Russia, backed by China and Algeria, argued that the issue was outside the council's mandate to ensure international peace and security.

Our country's future remains bleak as the International community talks and talks. I personally think that people inside the country can do more for the development of our country. I am really sorry I can't be in Burma right now. I enjoyed my two years at the Myanmar Institute of Theology even though I had to go through reverse culture shock terribly after my 4+ years in the States.

Signaling Vulnerabilities in Wiretapping Systems

http://www.crypto.com/papers/wiretapping

If you think that any government secret agents around the world are listening to the conversations between you and your girlfriend, here is how to turn off the wiretapping system. Hopefully, it will still work until a few months from now until they upgrade the system.

Here is the detailed paper in pdf.

Every December the past few years while working at the Myanmar Institute of Theology, I got a chance to go on mission trips to remote villages all over Burma. However, this December I guess I will be stuck here in Bangkok :-)

Aye Min Min Oo and Si Si Htun while on mission trip with me and other students

Our group going to Kayinn Seik Kyi for a mission trip 2 years ago

Pictures from recent fire breakout in Hlaing, Yangon (Rangoon)

Pictures courtesy of my friend