Welcome 2011

Wow it has been quite some time that I have posted anything on neither this blog nor anywhere else. Not even in my diary.

A lot of things happen in between now and last time I posted. If I can think of at a glance, first Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is free and people still wants her to be their leader. I would say even more people want her to be their leader as ever was before. Second is I tried not to think about my responsibilities upon my family, my guilty conscious upon not trying to do much for my country apart from help children out by supporting money to free school.

I would say 2010 is good year. Met some new friends and reconnect to old friends but not with my best friend of when I was in 20s. I don’t understand why she mad at me. I don’t understand why she didn’t tell me when she got married. Anyway I am happy for her and I wish her all the best. I am sure the guy she is married is a good guy. I should be the one who should be mad for not being there for me when I was in trauma stage before I left for UK.

In 2011, I decided I will try to forgive my father as much as I can. By looking at my friend who mother was passed away and I can see how much he regarded not so good relationship he had with his mother and now she gone and he can’t fix things. I hope one day I can fix it and not regard it when my father dies.

I decided to live healthier. Eat well, exercise well (hopefully).

Finish reading the book I started.

I will make sure all my 2008 New Year’s resolutions are met in 2011. I started to eat beef in 2010 so I need to get rid of that habit as well.

I wonder…

အခုဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ပညာတတ္ေတြးေခၚပညာရွင္ေတြ ထြန္းကားဖို႕ေနေနသာသာ၊ ေသစာရွင္စာေတာင္ မတတ္ေတာ့တဲ့ကေလးေတြ အေတာ္မ်ားေနပါျပီး။ လူစျဖစ္ကတည္းက ဘ၀ေတြက ၾကမ္းတမ္းလွတဲ့အတြက္ သူတို႕ကလည္း ေလာကၾကီးကုိ ၾကမ္းၾကမ္းတမ္းတမ္း ျပန္ရင္ဆိုင္ဖို႕ ၀န္မေလးၾကေတာ့ပါဘူး။ သူတို႕ေလးေတြရဲ႕ဘ၀ေတြက မေတြး၀င့္စရာျဖစ္ေအာင္ကို ဆင္းရဲက်ပ္တည္းလွေတာ့ လူလားေျမာက္လာတဲ့အခါ စိတ္အနာတရအေတာ္ၾကီးကိုရေနမွာပါပဲ။ အရက္သမားရဲ႕ သားေတြဟာ အရက္သမားျပန္ ျဖစ္တတ္သလို၊ အရိုက္ခံရတဲ့ ကေလးဟာလည္း ရိုက္တတ္တဲ့ မိဘျပန္ျဖစ္တတ္တယ္လို႕ လူသေဘာလူသဘာ၀အေၾကာင္းေရးတဲ့ စာအုပ္ေတြထဲမွာ ကၽြန္မဖတ္ဖူးပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုသာဆိုရင္ေတာ့ျဖင့္ ကၽြန္မတို႕အနာဂတ္ႏိုင္ငံၾကီးဟာ တကယ့္ကို ၾကမ္းၾကမ္းရမ္းရမ္း အသိပညာမရွိတဲ့လူေတြၾကီးစိုးသြားဖို႕အလားအလား အမ်ားၾကီးရွိပါတယ္။ ဒီလိုစိတ္အနာတရေတြကို ျမန္ျမန္မကုသႏိုင္ မကယ္တင္ႏိုင္ရင္ေတာ့ျဖင့္…။

Watching “The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006)”

I found this to be a very interesting film but sometime struggle with some of the terms they mentioned on the film as I have very little knowledge of Irish history. This film set during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War from 1919 to 1923. It was about two brothers are caught on differing sides of the battle for Irish freedom.

Here are some memorable quotes from that movie that I like and made me think:

“I studied anatomy for five years, Dan. And now I’m going to shoot this man in the head. I’ve known Chris Reilly since he was a child. I hope this Ireland we’re fighting for is worth it.”

That quote did really hit me. I sometime wonder everything that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners have to give up (their freedom, safety of their families and friends) for freedom of people of Burma are worth it or not for them. I do hope that one day; all their dreams come to fruition. I do hope that we all achieved what we want to achieve.

Also in his farewell letter to Sinéad, Damien wrote: “I tried not to get into this war, and did, now I try to get out, and can’t.”

Like many other diehard republican ideologues, he feels he must die for his political beliefs.

He also wrote, “You once said you wanted your children to taste freedom. I pray for that day too Sinéad. But I fear that it will be longer than either of us have imagine”.

I can see the face of Ma Nilar Thein and her hopes for her children. I pray with my whole heart that the freedom she long for her children is not too far away.

Here is a brief description about the movie. I copied from following link:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=316320&rel_no=1

The story of two brothers Teddy and Damien O’Donovan, who spend their young adulthood in their native small village of what is at the time a British occupied territory: Ireland. Like all foreign occupations, this one is brutal: constant repression of the Irish people the British believe will be the best deterrent against any hopes of Irish self-determination.

But the yearning for independence only grows stronger, enhanced by people who choose to put their lives at risk for the sake of a cause they regard as greater than their personal well being. Teddy O’Donovan, the local Irish Republican Army leader, is one of them. His younger brother Damien seems to be of a different kind. He first chooses to pursue his personal career and decides to move to London to become a doctor. But before even getting on board the train to London, he realizes that no personal happiness is possible while others are paying a high tribute — often, their lives — to his nation’s fight for independence. Damien finally chooses to join the resistance and fight side by side with his brother and other friends from his village.

Throughout the whole movie, the O’Donovan brothers will be faced with choices to make; tough choices that will have tremendous consequences for themselves and the ones they care about.

The first choice is about setting limits to violence: a certain amount of violence is necessary in the fight against brutal occupying forces, but where should it stop? A young country boy is forced to betray his fellow Irish fighters and long-time friends to save the life of his mother. His betrayal will lead to the capture and deaths of members of the resistance. Should the country boy be executed, as would be the case in any conventional army of that period? Or should he be pardoned because he was left with no choices, and because he and his mother are a close acquaintance to everyone?

The second choice is between political realism and political idealism. It is illusory to think that a political agenda can be thoroughly fulfilled in the mind of Teddy. Hence, when Irish representatives and the British government reach an agreement that will grant autonomy to Ireland, without thorough independence, Teddy thinks it is time to put weapons down. For Damien, the fight must go on, until Ireland is a place completely free of British domination, as the ultimate goal is not the retreat of British forces, but the replacement of the British system that produced poverty and social disparity, by an Irish Socialist Republic.

Watching “Dispatches – Orphans of Burma’s Cyclone”

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-18/episode-1

The last night, thanks to DVB (http://www.dvb.no/) and Channel 4 (http://www.channel4.com/), the world has chanced to see what is actually happening in Burma. I am not the softly who broke down tear whenever I seen sad movies or documentaries. Last night, I broke down my tears and I don’t feel good since then. Junta would have says this is a lie after watching this documentary. But I have seen it with my own eyes before.

In the interviews with three orphans who lost both of their parents, the camera man asked them what they want to be when they get older. It is shocking that older brother said he wants to catch the crabs when he gets older so that he could feed his younger sister and brother proper meals. The sister said she wants cook the rice and curry for her brothers. How heart breaking is that?

They don’t want to be doctor or engineer for single moment. They understand that becoming the doctor or engineer is out of their reach because they are facing with horrific realities. They have to deal with day to day survival, no time for day dreaming. The oldest of them is only 12 years old and they have no choice but to take care of each other.

Another interview with two teenager sisters who lost their mother and their father who mentally collapsed after cyclone has moved me a lot. Before cyclone Nargis, they said they used to go to school. And now they have lost their mother and their father who is incapable to take care of them, they have no choice but to work in salt fields. They have to walk one and half hours to get to work, then work in the salt field without their shoes under over 100 degree Fahrenheit burning sun to earn less then £1 a day for two of them. After that they have to walk one and half hours to get back to the place where they now have to call a home.

In the interview, the younger sister said she doesn’t want to die alone because she can’t imaging how her elder sister would survive without her in this life. If they have to die, they want to die together, if they have to live, they want to live together. Her sister is all she got and she is all her sister got. I broke down into tear and I cried like a baby. I felt really sad for them.

When I was at their age, I was having a great time. My parent had a good regularly income at that time so that I can concentrate on my study as the same time did whatever I want to do. For them, they are having such a hard life. It is not just them two third of the population in our country have such a hard life, that mean 2 in 3 people are in debt and they work for the food nothing more than that. They don’t have future and they don’t have hopes. They don’t think of tomorrow as today survival is more important than tomorrow so no wonder they don’t think of what will happen to them tomorrow.

Sometime, I wish I have a lot of money so that I could help some people life.  So that I could educate them, why their life are harder not because of their past life or fate but, because of their fear. So that, I could educate them, their freedom is depending upon them, not UN or Western Country whom will never come to rescue people of Burma…

Burma’s Gaza? Are you out of your mind!!

This is the thought coming up after reading article from Irrawaddy (http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15397)

The author of “Burma’s Gaza” picked such an interesting name for his article. But sadly, the article can point neither to the right directions nor good comparisons.  I strongly disagree with the author titled his article “Burma’s Gaza”.

Rohingya issue is no way near Arakan state becoming Burma’s Gaza. I know the issues of citizenship and land rights for Rohingya are the same as what is happening in Gaza. But Gaza Strip has been the land of Palestinian for more 7 centuries. Have we every heard of Arakan state is the land of Rakhine and Rohingya in any history book? Everyone knows Arakan rightful land of Rakhine people, not Burma, not Chin or Kachin.

I have no doubt that Rakhine and Rohingya are living a long side in harmony for many years, but be careful for the fact that not for many centuries. I have no doubt that that harmony has been poisoned by the military junta. The military junta are now acting the same way what British Empire had done to Burma. “Discrimination against all ethnic groups of Burma”, so that the unity between the ethnic groups has been broke down and they can take over all controls of power. The less unity between us, the longer they can hold on the powers.

I have no position of judging what should be and what shouldn’t be in this Rohingya issue. But I can understand the Rakhines’ point of views because they are facing day to day life with Rohingy. If you put your nationalism way of thinking in your head, you would definitely denial to give rights to Rohingya. We have been living on this land for only god knows how long and they came and live here for a century and why should we give them the same rights. They are not the same race like us, their religion is different from what we believe in, even their skin colour, hair colour aren’t the same. Plus their population grew bigger and bigger every day, then what will happen to our own people in next 10, 20 years.

But then, if you look at the Human Rights point of views, this is not the right way to treat one human being to another. If you look at with clear mind by taking off who you are, where you come from and then take off your nationalism, if Rohingya have been long enough to live in the country, they should entitle to some rights. Most of the Burmese who live aboard, after they have been long enough living in the foreign country; they always hope to get at least permanent residency status from that country. Then is it fair to denial the rights to Rohingya? If you are expecting the rights for yourself, then why denial other’s? I am not saying they should have the same rights like citizen of Burma, but if everyone who has been living in the country for long time and done no harm to the country, they should be entitled to most of the basic rights. If they want more they have to fight for it, they have to convince the citizen of Burma that they deserve what they want.

I am in denial stage

The other day, my husband started the conversation about how he concern Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s health and security after he read the news about her health and the news about one American swan to her house etc. I just told him not to discuss about it with me because I am in stage of denial and I really don’t want to hear about it.

Don’t get me wrong. Of cause I do worry about her health, of cause I do worry about her security. I can’t imagine what might have happen to Burma without her, without her guidance. My heart hurt whenever I think about her sacrifice. Even she did all these sacrifices not for the people of Burma, but for her own good and for what she believed in, I couldn’t care less. I really appreciate what she had done in the past, what she is doing at present and what she will do in the future. I am proud the fact that she is Burmese, I am proud the fact that she came back, I am proud the fact that she is the figure of Burma. I feel like she is part of my body, she is like one of my closed relatives. I can’t loose her. I am not ready yet.

Sometime, I feel really angry and I feel like we, Burmese, don’t deserve her. She has been giving in all her freedom for the people and how many times did we ever return it back to her. Did we all fight for her freedom? We all are hoping and expecting her to fight for us while we didn’t back her all the way. Where are we when her health was in poor state? Did ever we ask Junta to give her access to her doctor? Where are we when someone broke into her house? Where are we when she feels all alone?

My heart aches whenever I heard bad news about her. Right now, there are many problems and things in my life which I can’t deal all of them at the same time, otherwise I won’t survive. I am dealing with the problems one by one. While I am dealing with one problem, I have to denial the rest doesn’t exist. That’s why I am in denial state about our Daw Suu.

No title

Lately I have been ignoring all news related to Burma. I didn’t listen or join in the conversation when people talking about situation in Burma at all. I am really sick and tired about the fact that I can’t do anything about it at the moment. This year I won’t be able to help my own people financially or mentally like last year and I am very upset about it.

Last month, Burma VJ documentary was showing in London and I decided not to go. If that documentary was shown in last year, I would have definitely go and see it but now I am shutting down all my feeling toward the situation Burma. I have no choice but to shut down about it as so many down turn going on with my life and I can’t take any more bad news coming to my life.

I am sick of being responsible one in the family. I am sick of everyone in my family counting on me. I just want to leave behind everything and not feeling guilty about it. I have been very angry at my father for almost six years now. I still talk to him every now and then and he didn’t know the fact that I am very angry at him. Although I am angry, I don’t have the heart to tell him why am I so angry at him because I don’t want to hurt his feeling. It is just too complicated. Whenever I see my father in my dream, I am always shouting and yelling at him. I am sick of playing being the good one. Why can’t I do something bad and not feeling guilty about it?

I will be feeling better if I talk to someone all about it. I need someone to talk to and who will say that it is all right and no need to feel guilty if I can’t do thing what people expect me to do but I my problems is I don’t feel like trusting anyone.

I know I have been using this blog to express my problem. I am supposed to write about good things in my life as well. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lots of things I really appreciate and happy about my life. I have reasonable good and comfortable life compare to average Burmese. I don’t have to work really hard for money and I really like my job and my profession. I sometime say to myself what more could I ask for and I don’t understand myself sometime why am I not being happy?

I wonder when…

Such a bad morning today, I read the news about Junta sentenced to 14 prominent 88 generation student activists for 65 years, blogger Nay Phone Latt for 20 years, poet Saw Wei for two years, Thin July Kyaw for 2 years. There is news spreading that Su Su Nway has been sentenced to 18 years but has yet to confirm.

All 14 student activists had already spend half of their life in false imprisonment and now Junta want them to spend rest of their life in prison. Regarding Nay Phone Latt, he is on 28 years old. He has lots of prospect for the future and now Junta are trying to destroy it by false imprisonment. 65 years, 20 years!! Can you believe it!! Even rapists and murders in our country won’t get that kind of sentences. By writing this right now, my body is shaking with anger and wants to cry for them. I am at work so I better control myself.

I wonder when will be the pay back time for Junta.

I wonder when will be these entire suffering ends.

I wonder when will be all of our own people united, starting about think enough is enough, stop expecting that “one day UN troop would come and safe us” (which they never will) and start fight for their freedom.

I wonder when all of us can go home without fear.

I, the attention seeker who doesn’t like to have too much of attention

Hmm…  The title sounds like I just tell you everything you need to know about the hidden part of me.

I just learn myself that I am somewhat always seeking the attention from the people I care. All my life, I thought I hate being in the centre of attention but didn’t realise that I was trying hard to get the attention from people who l care about at the same time. If I don’t get the attention, I felt insecure, vulnerable and disappointed at myself. This is my weak point.

The good thing is this weakness of mine becomes my strong point. Because I wanted attention from my parent (not that they didn’t gave me any attention, I think I just wanted more from them), I was trying hard for good grade at school, listen to what they asked me to do and tried hard to be a good daughter that every parent want. All together I did all sort of good things that I thought my parent would like even though I didn’t enjoy it. That’s why I always get the attention from my parent (I still do) but then I always feel like I need more. Because of that I have been trying hard for what my parent wants for me. Now I have great career (I like what I am doing) which I could ever asked for. I am not saying I am having a perfect life but you could say I have a good life now.

But then, I don’t want to be centre of attention from the people I don’t really know and people who really don’t know me. I don’t feel comfortable about it. I don’t want to get compliment or praise words from the people who really don’t know about me. It is not that I feel I don’t deserve that, I just rather want to hear these words from the someone who really know me for what I am, not from that people who don’t know me for who I am and what I have done. Because of that I feel their compliment or praise words are nothing to do with me. Hmmm…. does it sound all right to you? May be I am just some kind of weirdo but I don’t care.

Now that I learn about me being attention seeker, I know how to solve that problem and how to handle that. I told myself that “You don’t even give much attention to the people you care about, why do you expect other people to give their attention to you for 24/7. You need to learn how to live your life without other people attention”. I have to learn how to balance between the attention that I want and the attention I don’t want.

I guess in some way you need to know yourself to be able to become a better person or happier person. Everyday, we all are learning new about ourselves.

Busy November

By looking at the schedule, I have pretty busy November like last year. This time of last year, I was actively involved in planning and helping out for fund raising events for Burma. Having said that I think this year November will be busier than last year.

Starting from 1st of November, so many things going on. There was fund raising event for Nargis cyclone victims, then the following week there will be birthday celebration, then having meeting with my manager for my performance review, company social quiz night, having dinner with ex-boss (ex-boss of my husband as well) which hasn’t confirmed yet. There will be wedding to attend as well and helping my brother to get a professional job.

Phweeee…. Pretty hectic, huh?
I am a bit nervous about my performance review meeting, not because I didn’t performed well but because it will reflect my salary increase. I am nervous because I want more money