ေနမညိဳခင္ ...

RIT/YIT ေက်ာင္းသား ေဟာင္းမ်ားရဲ႔ ဆရာကန္ေတာ႔ပြဲမွာ ဆရာႀကီး ဆရာမႀကီးေတြ ဆီကေန အမွာစကား ႀကားရတာ ပီတိၿဖစ္ရသလို အေတြးေတြလည္း အမ်ားႀကီး ေ၀ရပါတယ္။ ပထမဆံုး အေတြးကေတာ႔ ဆရာ ဦးခင္ေအာင္ႀကည္၊ ဦးေက်ာ္ထြန္း နဲ႔ ေဒါက္တာသိန္းေအာင္ တုိ႔ရဲ ႔ ႀသ၀ါဒေတြ နာႀကားအၿပီးမွာ ေတြးမိတာပါ။ လူေတြဟာ အသက္ႀကီးလာတဲ႔အခါ သိပ္အစြဲအလန္းႀကီး မဟုတ္ခဲ႔တဲ႔ ဘ၀အေတြ ႔ အႀကံဳေတြက ေမွးမွိန္သြားၿပီး စိတ္ထဲ မွာ နက္နက္ရွိုင္းရွိုင္းရွိတဲ႔ ဘ၀အစိတ္အပိုင္းေတြပဲ မွတ္ဥာဏ္ထဲမွာ က်န္ခဲ႔ပါသတဲ႔။ အသက္ႀကီးလာေလေလ ေမြးရပ္ေၿမကုိ လြမ္းေလေလ လည္းၿဖစ္ပါသတဲ႔။ ပညာ၊ ဥစၥာ၊ ေအာင္ၿမင္မွဳ ဆိုတာေတြနဲ႔ ဘ၀ရဲ ႔ အထြတ္အထိပ္ကုိလည္းေရာက္ခဲ႔ဘူး၊ နုိင္ငံတကာ အဆင္႔အတန္းမီ ကုိယ္စြမ္းရွိသမွ် စိတ္သြားတုိင္း ကုိယ္ပါ လုပ္ခ်င္ၿဖစ္ခ်င္သမွ်ေတြ လုပ္ခဲ႔၊ ၿဖစ္ခဲ႔ရတဲ႔ ဘ၀ကိုလည္း ပိုင္ဆိုင္ခဲ႔ဘူးတဲ႔ ဆရာႀကီးမ်ား ေတာင္ စြမ္ေဆာင္နုိင္တဲ႔ လူလတ္ပုိင္းအရြယ္မွာ က်င္လည္ခဲ႔တဲ႔ ပါတ္၀န္းက်င္ကို စြဲစြဲလမ္းလမ္း မၿဖစ္ဘူးဆုိေတာ႔ ကိုယ္လိုလူမွာေတာ႔ စကားလံုး ႀကီးႀကီး နဲ႔ ေၿပာစရာမရွိတဲ႔ "career life" ကို ေမ႔သြားဖို႔ ရာခုိင္နွုန္း အေတာ္မ်ား ပါလားလို႔ ေတြးမိတယ္။ ဆရာႀကီးတစ္ေယာက္ ကေတာ႔ ၿမန္မာၿပည္ကို လြမ္းလို႔ မယ္ဆုိင္ကို သြားသြားၿပီး အလြမ္းေၿဖရပါ တယ္တဲ႔။ ဒီဆရာႀကီးေတြရဲ ႔ စကားေတြဆီကေနပဲ စိတ္သြားတိုင္း ကုိယ္မပါတဲ႔ ဘ၀ ကိုေရာက္လာမဲ႕ အခ်ိန္အတြက္ ႀကိဳတင္ၿပင္ဆင္မွု ေတြလုိအပ္တယ္လို႔ လည္း ေတြးမိတယ္။ ကုိယ္႔တစ္သက္စာ ပင္ပင္ပန္းပန္း စုေဆာင္းခဲ႔တဲ႔ အသိ၊ အေတြ႔အႀကံဳေတြကို ေရာက္ေလရာ အရပ္ကေန ေ၀မွ်နိုင္ရင္ေကာင္းမယ္လို႔ လည္းေတြးတာပဲ။ ကုိယ္နိင္သေလာက္ ကေလး လူ႔ေလာကကို အႀကိဳးၿပဳေနသေရြ ႔ အထီးက်န္မဆန္ဘူး၊ ကုိယ္႔ကိုကိုယ္ လူ႔ေလာက အတြက္ အဘိုးတန္ အသံုး၀င္ တဲ႔သူရယ္ လို႔ ေတြးၿပီးေက်နပ္နိုင္မယ္။ ဒါနဲ႔ပဲ ေနာက္ ဆယ္စုနွစ္ တစ္ခု နွစ္ခု ဆိုရင္ ... ဆိုၿပီး ေတြးႀကည္႔မိတယ္။

ဆရာမႀကီး ေဒၚေသာင္းခင္က ဆရာကန္ေတာ႔ပြဲကို လာရတာ ၀မ္းသာပီတိ ၿဖစ္ရသလို Brain Drain ၿဖစ္ေနတဲ႔ ပမာဏႀကီးကို ႀကည္႔ၿပီး တိုင္းၿပည္အတြက္ ၀မ္းနည္းရပါတယ္တဲ႔။ ေၿပာေလာက္ပါတယ္ေလ။ RIT/YIT/PIT ဘယ္လိုပဲေခၚေခၚ ေက်ာင္းၿပီးရင္ ေတာ႔ နုိင္ငံၿပင္ပ ကိုထြက္ဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားႀကရတာခ်ည္႔ပဲ။ ဘယ္ေနရာမွာပဲ ေက်ာင္းကိုသြားဖြင္႔ဖြင္႔ အခ်ိန္တန္ေတာ႔ စကၤာပူမွာ လာဆံုႀကဖို႔ ရာခိုင္ႏွုန္း က ၿမန္မာ ၿပည္က ၿမိဳ ႔ တစ္ၿမိဳ ႔ တည္းမွာ အတူတူ ဆံုဖို႔ထက္ေတာင္ မ်ားေသး။ ဆရာမႀကီးကေတာ႔ ေက်ာင္းသားေဟာင္း တစ္ခ်ုိဳ ႔ ေမြးရပ္ေၿမကို ၿပန္ၿပီး တိုင္းၿပည္ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးရာ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေႀကာင္း ၀င္ကူႀကေစခ်င္တယ္။ ဟုတ္တာေပါ႔ ဆရာမႀကီးရယ္ က်ေနာ္တို႔ လည္း ကုိယ္႔ရပ္ ကိုယ္႔ရြာ ၿပန္ခ်င္တာေပါ႔။ ဒါေပမယ္႔ အိမ္ၿပန္ေရာက္ ေတာ႔ ဘာအလုပ္ကို လုပ္ႀကရမွာတုန္း။ ဆရာမႀကီးလည္း ဒီေမးခြန္းကုိ ေၿဖနုိင္မယ္ မထင္ပါေနာ္။

အိမ္ၿပန္ေရာက္ ရင္ Make More or Desire Less ဆိုတဲ႔ အပိုင္းနွစ္ပိုင္း ထဲက Desire Less ဆိုတဲ႔ ဘက္ကို ယိမ္း ရမယ္ထင္ပါ႔။ အသက္အရြယ္ ရလာရင္ ရုပ္၀တၳဳ ကို လုိခ်င္တပ္မက္စိတ္ ကေတာ႔ နည္းပါးသြားေကာင္းပါရဲ႔။ ရုပ္၀တၳဳကို မက္ေမာတာထက္ ပိုၿပီးႀကီးမယ္႔ ဒုကၡေတြကို ႀကိဳၿပီးၿမင္ေယာင္ မိတာ။ ရုပ္အတြက္ အစာမရွိမွာ မပူပါ။ စိတ္အတြက္ အစာမရွိမွာ၊ အတၱအတြက္ အစာ မရွိမွာ ေတာ႔ ေတာ္ေတာ္ ေတြးပူပါတယ္။ Desire less freedom, less efficiency, less convinience, less opportunities, less ... and less ... အၿပင္မွာ နွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ပ်ံသန္းဖူးတဲ႔ ငွက္ကို ေလွာင္ခ်ိဳင္႔ ထဲ ၿပန္၀င္ခုိင္းသလို မ်ားၿဖစ္ ေနမလားပဲေနာ္။ ဒီငွက္မိုက္ ကေတာ႔ သူရဲေကာင္း လုပ္ၿပီး ေလွာင္ခ်ိဳင္႔ထဲ ၿပန္၀င္ဖို႔ ေတြးႀကည္႔ေလရဲ ႔။

အို ... ၿပန္သြားရင္ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြ ေဆြမ်ဳိးမိတ္သဂၤဟ ေတြနဲ႔ သိုက္သုိက္၀န္း၀န္း ေနရမွာေပါ႔လို႔ ေၿပာရေအာင္ကလည္း ကိုယ္႔လမ္း ထဲက ကုိယ္႔တို႔ မ်ိဳးဆက္ေတြရဲ ႔ ရ၀% ေက်ာ္က ၿပည္ပမွာ။ တကယ္ပါ။ ရပ္ကြက္ထဲက လူေတြကိုစုလုိက္ရင္ ဒီမွာ HDB တစ္တိုက္စာ ေလာက္ ရွိတယ္။ ကိုယ္႔ အသိပညာ၊ အလုပ္အေတြ႔ အႀကံဳေတြကိုု ၿပန္ေ၀ငွမွာ ေပါ႔လို႔ ေၿပာဖို႔ကလည္း ဘယ္သူက ကိုယ္႔ဆီကနာယူ ခ်င္မွာလည္း ဆိုတာကို ေတြးမၿမင္နုိင္ဘူး။ Desire less ဆိုတဲ႔ထဲကို အိမ္ၿပန္ၿပီး သူရဲေကာင္း လုပ္လိုစိတ္ကို ထိပ္ဆံုးကတင္မွ ရမယ္။

အဲဒီ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြ ေပါင္းၿပီး ၿမင္မိတာကေတာ႔ အိမ္ၿပန္တယ္ ဆိုတဲ႔ အလုပ္က သိပ္ေနာက္က်သြား လို႔မရဘူး။ ကုိယ္က လည္း ကိုယ္႔ အသိပညာေတြကို ေပးေ၀နုိင္ေသးတဲ႔ အခ်ိန္၊ တစ္ဦး တစ္ေယာက္ကလည္း ကိုယ္႔ဆီက နာယူလိုခ်ိန္ မ်ိဳးမွာ လုပ္မွ ရမွာ။ မိတ္ေဆြ တစ္ေယာက္ ေၿပာတာေတာ႔ သေဘာက်တယ္။ Work with passion, purpose and pay cheque တဲ႔။ P သံုးလံုးနဲ႔ ၿပည္႔စံုတဲ႔ အလုပ္ကုိ လုပ္ဖို႔ ေနမညိဳခင္ ၿပန္ရမွာ။ အလုပ္လည္း လုပ္ေနရဦးမယ္၊ ၀င္ေငြလည္း ရွိေနရဦးမယ္။ အတၦ အတြက္ လံုေလာက္တဲ႔ အစာကုိ လည္း ေကြ်းေနရဦးမယ္။

သင္႔တင္႔ ေလွ်ာက္ပါတ္ေသာ ၀မ္းစာ၊ နွလုံးသား အစာ ေလာက္ပဲ ေမွ်ာ္လင္႔ ၿပီး ကာလံေဒသံ နဲ႔ သင္႔ေလွ်ာ္္ေအာင္ ေနထိုင္ ရင္းနဲ႔ မွ ကုိယ္႔ အနီးအနားက အၿမင္မေတာ္တာေလး ေတြ ကို၀င္ကူရင္း ေအးေအးေဆးေဆး ေနမယ္လို႔ စိတ္ကူးရင္ေတာ႔ အိမ္ဆိုတာ ၿပန္ေပ်ာ္ ေကာင္းပါရဲ ႔ လို႔ ေတြးမိေႀကာင္းပါ။

The two extreme of Shanghai

In the evening, accessorized with the Shanghainese shawl, I walked towards the Bund – the flood barrier cum huge viewing pavilion facing the Oriental Pearl TV tower and the other modern sky scrapers on Pudong side of Huangpu River. I thought of taking a boat ride but later decided to walk as the weather was perfect at 18 degrees C. Thanks to the government, the Bund is kept as public space thus no entry fees. I guess there were thousands of people walking on the bund especially when the sun has set and the concrete-aluminium-glass jungle on the other side was lit up with exaggerated neon lights.

After spending enough time appreciating the Bund, the sky line opposite and the crowd, I walked through East Nanjin Road – a row of neon lit shopping centers. The malls are grand and the prices are grand too. I was almost depressed (again?) for not being able to think of buying even one item from the street especially the coats decorated with fur. Never mind. The environmentalist mindset in me would not allow me to wear it anyways. (Remember the fox and the grapes?). By visiting the back streets in the morning and walking along East Nanjin road, as well as remembering the Xintiandi I visited yesterday, I think I really saw and felt the two extremes of Shanghai.

The Charming Old Town

I think it is good to start off a day at a temple. Once I went into the City God Temple, I got busy capturing the smoky scenes. People praying while burning jot sticks and gold papers in the space surrounded by the houses of gods. In the early morning, I saw more local than foreign tourists who seemed to be there for a serious reason. In Shanghai, for the reasons I do not know, I love watching the elderly and the children. People prayed kneeling on the short benches, touching their forehead on the surface, open palms facing upwards. A bell with fine crafts was placed at one corner. Some people touched the surfaces of a bell and then touched on their heads and faces. It was as if they captured some smoke from the bell, carried the smoke in between their palms and then allowed their heads and faces exposed to the smoke. The busy City God Temple displayed the Taoists at their time of promising the good deeds and asking for merit from the Gods.

I headed to Yuyuan gardens and bazaar in the early morning to avoid the crowd. The push card owners are still preparing their merchandise. Scattered packets of poker cards on a tray attracted my attention. The pictures on the packets vary from revolutionary heroes through panda to Madonna and Lady Gaga. That is probably what Shanghai is today – some still living in their revolutionary dreams while others have been marching with the western world. I walked through the famous zigzag lane crossing over the lake and passed the mid-lake teahouse which was visited by Queen Elizabeth II and US former president Clinton as per lonely planet.

Coincidently, there was an event which I think is the opening ceremony for the “tea exhibition cum sales”. A group of lads and lasses who have different complexion and facial features from Shanghainese were busy dressing up for their performance. Some young men were at the gate playing their tribal music in order to welcome the officials. Not only their look, tribal costumes and instruments were interesting, I was also amused to see young men and ladies almost all of them in long hair. The performance was done, the speeches were delivered and the exhibition cum sale was opened.

Most of the stalls were manned by one or two ladies in their tribal costumes. I tried green tea, red tea, pu-er tea and some other teas which I couldn’t pronounce and I had enough caffeine for the morning. In addition to teas in various packing, I saw one stall displayed some art pieces hand-crafted with tea leaves and another where two Japanese men making the mold of specially designed tea pots. An outstanding stall was decorated all red, even the girls who served tea for the patrons are red; the sign said “Dee-pure” sounded like demure.

My next stop was a nunnery called Chenxiangge. On the way, I sneaked into the back streets which were noisy with people ordering lunch, stall owners making arrangements to give seats to the patrons and the road side chefs striking the woks with their ladles. This is a different jigsaw piece to complete the portrait of dynamic Shanghai.

Chenxiangge was much modest compared to the City God Temple. There were less people, less smoke and less movements. I felt it was closer to my heart as the god there was Sakyamuni (Buddha). I thought nothing much to see, but later I realized that I missed the temple’s signature sight Guanyin statue carved from the wood.

While walking back to the inn, I passed by a lovely lane connecting between the busy tourist sights and Yuyuan Garden station of Metro line 10. It was a small park where people sit down while waiting for their friends. A modern Shanghainese lady does not seem to step out of the house without a shawl and a pair of long boots. I could see various mix and match of colors and designs of these two items. I bought myself a shawl from Fashion Street near Yuyuan Bazaar. I think I will be a little “Shanghai” with that.

First Night in Shanghai

A single word to describe how I first felt about Shanghai is “depressed”. I was not only scrutinized by the immigration officers for my passport being too new and the blue IC being thinner than usual, conned by the driver on the first taxi ride in Shanghai, but encountered a few ugly incidences. The receptionist at the inn I stayed for three nights and some taxi drivers were some of those who showed annoyance to English-speaking people.

The first evening was saved by my old friend and her friends who became my first Shanghainese friends. A few delicious and delightful typical Shanghainese cuisines were introduced to me. I ignored the fat content, calories and metabolic syndrome when the stewed meat melts inside my mouth. Shanghainese love Bean curd. During my stay in Shanghai I tasted many different dishes of bean curd. They are cooked in different ways but all are equally delicious. My friend taught me to throw one or two sour plums into the yellow wine. The salty, sour and fragrant plum really brings up the flavor. And I chose “fermented glutinous rice” for dessert and found out to my amusement that it is glutinous balls stuffed with peanut in fermented glutinous rice which is similar to the pulp from rice wine (ကေဇာ္). I straight away fell in love with it. After dinner, I took a walk to capture Xintiandi which was cozily crowed with expatriates and the rich locals on the Friday night.

Friends, food and fun – hmmm… I was relieved to know that Shanghai was not that cruel to me.

က်ေနာ္ ေပ်ာ္ပါတယ္ ဆရာ …

စကၤာပူမွာ လုပ္တဲ႔ ဒုတိယ အႀကိမ္ စာေပေဟာေၿပာပြဲမွာ ဆရာေအာ္ပီက်ယ္က “ဒို႔ ဗမာေတြ ေပ်ာ္ပါေစ” ဆိုၿပီး ေတြးစရာေတြ တစ္ေလွႀကီး ေပးသြားခဲ႔ ပါတယ္။ ဆရာေၿပာတဲ႔ “မသိလို႔ ေပ်ာ္တယ္၊ နားမလည္လို႔ ေပ်ာ္တယ္၊ အမွတ္မရိွလို႔ ေပ်ာ္တယ္” ဆိုတဲ႔ ေပ်ာ္နည္းေပါင္းစံုနဲ႔ ေပ်ာ္ေပ်ာ္ႀကီး ႀကီးၿပင္းလာခဲ႔တဲ႔ ကုိယ္႔ကိုယ္ကို အခုေရာ ငါေပ်ာ္ေနသလား၊ ဘယ္လို ေပ်ာ္နည္း ေတြနဲ႔ ေပ်ာ္ေနသလဲလို႔ ေမးမိပါတယ္။

ေသခ်ာတာကေတာ႔ ဘာမွမသိခင္တုန္းကေလာက္ မေပ်ာ္ေတာ႔တာ အမွန္ပါပဲ။ မသိတသိ အေၿခအေနမွာ ရွိရတဲ႔ စိတ္ညိွဳးငယ္ရပံု ကလည္း ဒုကၡမေသးပါဘူး။ ဆရာ လယ္တြင္းသားေၿပာတဲ႔ သူ႔ဘ၀ အေႀကာင္းနဲ႔ ယွဥ္ႀကည္႔ရင္ေတာ႔ ရြာကေန ေက်ာင္းလာတက္တဲ႔ ကေလး လိုပါပဲ။ ရြာမွာေတာ႔ ၿမိဳ ႔ေက်ာင္းကို ကိုယ္ပိုင္စက္ဘီးနဲ႔ သြားတဲ႔ ၿမိဳ ႔ေက်ာင္းသားပါ။ ၿမိဳ ႔ေရာက္ေတာ႔ ကိုယ္က မုန္႔ဖိုး၊ အ၀တ္အစားက အစ ေက်ာင္းပညာအဆံုး အားလံုးမွာ ေနာက္နားက်က်ပါ။ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ၿပန္ေတြး ႀကည္႔ရင္ ေၿခကုတ္ကေလး တစ္ေနရာစာရဖို႔ က်ိတ္မွိတ္ႀကိဳးစား ေနရစဥ္ကထက္ နည္းနည္း အေၿခေလး ခိုင္ကာစေလာက္မွာ ၿဖစ္ရတဲ႔ သိမ္ငယ္မွုက ပိုေတာင္ဆိုးေသးတယ္လို႔ ထင္ပါတယ္။

စိတ္ထဲရွိတာေလးေတြ သူမ်ားကို ဒုကၡမေပးဘဲ ရင္ဖြင္႔ခ်င္ေတာ႔ ဘေလာ႔ဂ္ ေပၚမွာ စာတိုေပစ ေလးေတြ ေရးပါတယ္။ အခုတေလာမွာ ေဒါသသံ ပါေသာ စာေတြကို ေရးမိပါတယ္။ ရွင္းရွင္းေၿပာရရင္ ကိုယ္႔ရဲ ႔ မၿပည္႔၀နုိင္တဲ႔ စိတ္အတြက္ ကေလးဘ၀၊ လူငယ္ဘ၀ကို လႊဲခ်ဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားတာပါ။ ကေလးဘ၀ အေတြ႔အႀကံဳေတြက လူႀကီးဘ၀ကို ပံုသြင္းတယ္ လို႔ဆိုတယ္ မဟုတ္လား။ လူငယ္ဘ၀က လႊမ္းမိုးခဲ႔တဲ႔ အရိပ္ေတြက်န္ေသးတယ္လို႔ ဆိုၿပီး အေႀကာင္းရွာတာပါ။

ေနရာတစ္ခုကေန တစ္ခုကို ကူးေတာ႔ ေမ်ာက္သစ္ကိုင္းလြတ္လည္း ၿဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အထက္မေရာက္ ေအာက္မက် ေဇာ္ကန္႔လန္႔ လည္းၿဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကိုယ္႔ကိုကုိယ္ ဘာမွန္းမသိၿဖစ္ၿပီး္ Identity ေပ်ာက္လို႔လည္း ခဏခဏ စိတ္ဒုကၡေရာက္ရပါတယ္။ အရမ္းႀကီးမားတဲ႔ ဖိအားကေန ေလဟာၿပင္ကို ေရာက္သြားသလို ဟာကနဲေနၿပီး ဖိအားအသစ္မွာ အလိုက္သင္႔ ေနလို႔မရတဲ႔ စိတ္ဒုကၡလို႔ ထင္ပါတယ္။ ဖိအားအသစ္နဲ႔ ေနသားမက်ေလေတာ႔ သူမ်ားေတြက အလိုက္သင္႔ေလး ပ်ံေနတဲ႔ အခ်ိန္မွာ ကိုယ္က ကိုယ္႔ေၿခေထာက္ကို ကိုယ္တိုင္ခ်ည္ထားတဲ႔ ခဲေတြနဲ႔ ေလးၿပီး စိတ္တိုင္းက် ပ်ံလို႔ မရဘူး ဆရာ။ ပီမိုးနင္းရဲ ႔ ေအာင္စိတ္က ဘယ္ေခ်ာင္ သြားကပ္ကပ္ ေနမွန္း မသိဘူး။ အငံု႔စိတ္၊ အသိမ္စိတ္ ေတြကေတာ႔ ခဏခဏ ေခါင္းၿပဴၿပဴလာတာပဲ။ ငယ္ငယ္တုန္းကနဲ႔ မတူတာ ကေတာ႔ သိမ္ငယ္စိတ္ေတြကို မလံု႔တလံုေလး ဖြက္ထားဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားလာတာပါပဲ။

မသိတုန္း၊ နားမလည္တုန္း၊ အမွတ္မရွိတုန္းက အမွူမဲ႔ အမွတ္မဲ႔ ေနၿပီးေပ်ာ္ခဲ႔ တဲ႔ က်ေနာ္၊ အခုမသိတသိ ၿဖစ္ၿပီး စိတ္သြားတိုင္း ကိုယ္မပါေတာ႔ ဟန္ေဆာင္ ရုပ္ေဖ်ာက္ၿပီး ေပ်ာ္သလားလို႔ ကိုယ္႔ကိုကုိယ္ ၿပန္ေမးရပါတယ္။ အလြယ္ဆံုး နည္းကေတာ႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ရုပ္၀တၳဳပစၥည္း ေတြေနာက္ လိုက္ၿပီး ေပ်ာ္ႀကတယ္ေလ။ “iPhone? IPad? I have! လို႔ ေၿပာနုိင္ဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားရင္း ေပ်ာ္ေအာင္ေနတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ စားရင္း ေသာက္ရင္းလည္း ေပ်ာ္ႀကတယ္၊ အခုဆို ၿမန္မာ ကာရာအိုေက၊ ၿမန္မာ Pub သြားၿပီး ေပ်ာ္လို႔ေတာင္ ရေသး။ တစ္ခါတစ္ေလ စကႍာပူမွာ ေပ်ာ္ရတာ ပ်င္းလာရင္ ခရီးေလး ထြက္ၿပီး ေပ်ာ္လိုက္ေသးတာ။

ဆရာက “ပညာပိုလီယို … စိတ္ဓါတ္၊ အက်င္႔၊ သတၱိ ပိုလီယို ၿဖစ္လာၿပီလား … အဲဒါေတြ ပိုလီယို ၿဖစ္လာရင္ လူမ်ဳိးပိုလီယို ၿဖစ္လာမွာ” တဲ႔။ က်ေနာ္က ပိုလီယို မၿဖစ္ဘူး ဆရာ။ အရုိးကင္ဆာ ၿဖစ္ေနတာ။ ဆရာေၿပာတဲ႔ ကားေဟာင္းႀကီးကို တက္မစီးခ်င္ဘူး။ တြန္းရမွာေႀကာက္လို႔။ ဆရာက ဘ၀င္မနိမ္႔နဲ႔တဲ႔။ မနိမ္႔ပါဘူး။ ေအာက္ကေန ရုပ္၀တၳဳ ပစၥည္းေတြ၊ ဟန္ေဆာင္မွုေတြဆိုတဲ႔ ေဒါက္ေတြနဲ႔ ေထာက္ထားတယ္။

ဆရာက “ဒို႔ ဗမာေတြ ေပ်ာ္ပါေစတဲ႔” က်ေနာ္ကေတာ႔ ေပ်ာ္တယ္ဆရာ။ ငယ္ငယ္တုန္းက ေပ်ာ္ခဲ႔တာေတြကို ေမ႔ဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားရင္းနဲ႔ ေပ်ာ္ပါတယ္။

သံလွ်င္ ဆုေတာင္းၿပည္႔ေက်ာင္း စာဖတ္သင္တန္း ဖြင္႔ပြဲ အမွတ္တရ

ရန္ကုန္က သူငယ္ခ်င္းမ်ားနဲ႔ အတူ သံလွ်င္ဘုရားကုန္းက ဆုေတာင္းၿပည္႔ေက်ာင္းေလးမွာ စာႀကည္႔တိုက္အေသးစားေလးနဲ႔ စာဖတ္သင္တန္းေလးလုပ္ေပးဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားခဲ႔ႀကတာ နွစ္လနီးပါးေလာက္ေတာင္ ရွိပါၿပီ။ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြ ၀ိုင္း၀န္းၿပီး အၿပည္႔အ၀အားထုတ္ႀကလို႔ ႀသဂုတ္လဆန္းမွာ စာဖတ္သင္တန္းေလးကို စတင္နုိင္ခဲ႔ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေက်ာင္းမွာ ေက်ာင္းအိပ္စားကေလးငယ္ ၄၀၀ေက်ာ္ ေက်ာင္းအိပ္ေက်ာင္းစား ေနပါတယ္။ အမ်ားစုက မိဘမဲ႔ တိုင္းရင္းသားေလးေတြပါ။ လက္ရွိ တကၠသိုလ္တက္ေနတဲ႔ ကေလး ၇ႏွစ္ေယာက္နဲ႔ ဒီႏွစ္မွာ စတက္မယ္႔ ကေလး ၄ေယာက္ရွိတယ္။ ဆယ္တန္းတက္ေနတဲ႔ကေလး ၇ေယာက္ရွိတယ္။ က်န္တာေတြကေတာ႔ မူလတန္းနဲ႔ အလယ္တန္းေတြေပါ႔။



စာလုပ္ေတြရွာရ၊ ၀ယ္ရ၊ စာရင္းသြင္းရ၊ ေငြစာရင္းၿပင္ဆင္ရ တာေတြအၿပင္ အလွူရွင္ေတြဆီက စာအုပ္ေတြကို လက္ခံရ၊ လိုအပ္ရင္ သြားယူရ တာေတြ စာႀကည္႔တိုက္ေလးနဲ႔ စာဖတ္သင္တန္းအတြက္ တာ၀န္ခြဲေ၀တာ၊ ၿပင္ဆင္တာေတြကိုပါ အလုပ္ၿပီးတဲ႔ အခ်ိန္ ညေနဖက္ေတြနဲ႔ စေန၊ တနဂၤေႏြ ေတြမွာပဲလုပ္ရတာဆိုေတာ႔ သူငယ္ခ်င္းမ်ားရဲ ႔ လုပ္အားပမာဏကို ခန္႔မွန္းႀကည္႔ နိုင္ပါတယ္။ စာဖတ္သင္တန္းေလး စတင္ခ်ိန္ကစလို႔ တနဂၤေႏြေန႔ေတြမွာ ဒီသူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြကပဲ သန္လွ်င္ကိုသြားၿပီး သင္တန္းေလးကို လည္ပါတ္ႀကတာပါ။



စာအုပ္ဗီရိုေလးတစ္လံုးနဲ႔ လွူထား၊ ၀ယ္ထားတဲ႔ စာအုပ္ေတြကို ဆရာေတာ္ ခြင္႔ၿပဳထားတဲ႔ ေက်ာင္းခန္းမႀကီးထဲမွာ ကေလးေတြကုိ ေပးဖတ္၊ သိပ္မဖတ္တတ္ေသးတဲ႔ ကေလးေတြကို ဖတ္ၿပနဲ႔ ပထမဆံုး စာဖတ္သင္တန္းစတဲ႔ေန႔ မွာ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြ တက္ႀကြႀက သလို ကိုယ္ကုိတိုင္လည္း သူတို႔ ေရးလိုက္တဲ႔ အီးေမးလ္ေတြ ဖတ္ၿပီး အင္မတန္မွ ၀မ္းသာရပါတယ္။ ကိုယ္တိုင္ေၿပးၿပီး ကေလးေတြကို စာဖတ္ၿပ ခ်င္လာေလာက္ေအာင္ပါပဲ။ ကိုယ္႔ဘေလာ႔ဂ္ေလးကုိ လာလည္ႀကတဲ႔သူေတြ ကုိယ္႔လို ေႀကနပ္ႀကည္နူးရေအာင္ သူတို႔ အီးေမးလ္ ေလးေတြကို ေ၀မွ်လိုက္ပါတယ္။



"ဒီေန႔ သီခ်င္း ကဗ်ာေလးတစ္ပုဒ္ရြတ္ျပီး သူတုိ႔နဲ႔အတူတူကတာ ျပန္လာတဲ႔အထိ အဲ ဒီသီခ်င္းေလးကိုဆုိေနတာေတြ႔ရတယ္။ ေနာက္တပတ္ အဲဒီကဗ်ာေလးနဲ႔ အကကို ေကာင္းေကာင္းျပန္ရြတ္ျပႏုိင္တဲ႔ အဖြဲ႔ကို သၾကားလံုးေၾကြးမယ္ဆုိျပီးမွာထားခဲ႔တယ္။"



"ကေလးေတြက ျမန္ မာစကားကိုလံုးဝနာမလည္တဲ႔သူရွိတယ္။ သူတုိ႔ထဲက အတန္းၾကီးထဲက ကရင္ကေလးငယ္ေတြအတြက္ ကရင္မေလးတစ္ ေယာက္၊ ပဝို႔ရ္ထဲက ပဝို႔ဝ္မေလးတစ္ေယာက္ကို ေခၚထုတ္ျပီး ကြ်န္ေတာ္ေျပာတာကို ဘာသာျပန္ခုိင္းတယ္။ အဲဒါလည္း အဆင္မေျပဘူး။ ကေလးေတြက ကြ်န္ေတာ္ေျပာတာကို ဘာသာမျပန္ႏုိင္ဘူး။"



"အဲဒါနဲ႔ ကိုယ္႔ဖာသာစာဖတ္တတ္တဲ႔သူ လက္ညွဳိးေထာင္ဆုိျပီး အဲလုိဖတ္တတ္တဲ႔ ကေလးေတြ( ၅-၆တန္း)ကို သူတုိ႔ဖာသာ ၾကိဳက္တာ သပ္သပ္ဖတ္ခိုင္းျပီး။ သူငယ္တန္းနဲ႔တစ္တန္းကို တစ္စု။ ၂-၄တန္းအထိတစ္စုခြဲထုတ္ျပီး ပုံျပင္ေတြဖတ္ျပ။ ေျပာျပ လုပ္တယ္။ ထူးဆန္းတာလုိ႔ဘဲေျပာရမလားမသိဘူး။ တခ်ိဳ႕ကေလးေတြက သူတုိ႔အခ်င္းခ်င္းစုျပီး ပံုျပင္ကို သူ႔တုိ႔ဘာသာစ ကားနဲ႔ သူတုိ႔ဖာသာ အခ်င္းခ်င္းဖတ္ျပတယ္ဗ်ာ။"



စာႀကည္႔တိုက္ေလးအတြက္ သူတို႔ တာ၀န္ခြဲေ၀ႀကပံုေတြကလည္း ေရွ ႔ ဆက္အလုပ္ေတြ ဆက္လုပ္ဖို႔အတြက္ အားရစရာေကာင္း လွပါတယ္။ "အခုကြ်န္ေတာ္တုိ႔ အဖြဲ႔ကို အပတ္စဥ္ အလွည္႔က်ဦးေဆာင္စနစ္နဲ႔သြားတယ္။ အဖြဲ႔ကို ဦးေဆာင္သူရယ္။ ပံုေျပာ၊ ပံုဖတ္ သူရယ္ ကို အလွည္႔က်ေရြးတယ္။ က်န္တဲ႔သူက စာၾကည္႔တုိက္မွာ စာအုပ္ငွား၊ စာအုပ္စာရင္းမွတ္လုပ္တယ္။ ေနာက္ ၂ ေယာက္ကို ေတာ႔ ဦးေဆာင္သူေတြ ပရိုဂရမ္တစ္ခ်ိန္စာအတြင္းလုပ္သြား၊ ေျပာသြား၊ ဦးေဆာင္သြားသမွ်နဲ႔၊ ကေလးေလးေတြ ဘယ္အစီ စဥ္ကို တက္ၾကြသလဲ၊ ဘာေတြမွာ အားနည္းသလဲဆိုတာကို လုိက္မွတ္ခုိင္းထားျပီး ေနာက္တပတ္မွာ သူတုိ႔ ၂ ေယာက္ရဲ႕ အ ၾကံျပဳစာတင္ခုိင္းျပီး အဲဒီတပတ္မွာဦးေဆာင္မယ္႔အဖဲြဲ႔က အဲဒီအၾကံျပဳခ်က္ေတြအတုိင္း လုပ္ေဆာင္မယ္လုိ႔ စီစဥ္ထားတယ္။"

ဒီလို ကေလးသူငယ္မ်ား အတြက္ အႀကိဳးရွိတဲ႔ အလုပ္ေတြလုပ္ေပးနုိင္ဖို႔ အလွူေငြ၀ိုင္း ၀န္း ေထာက္ပံ႔ႀကတဲ႔ သူငယ္ခ်င္းမ်ားကို အထူးေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္။ ဒီပို႔စ္ေလးဖတ္ၿပီး လွူတန္းဖို႔ ေစတနာ ေပၚလာရင္ masaint@gmail.com ကိုဆက္သြယ္စံုစမ္းနုိင္ပါတယ္။

သို႔ တျပီးသား၊ သင္ေသသြားေသာ္
သင္ ဖြားေသာေျမ၊ သင္တို႔ေျမသည္
အေျခတိုးျမင္႔၊ က်န္ေကာင္းသင္႔၏။ ~ ဆရာေဇာ္ဂ်ီ

ကိုယ္တို႔ေၿမ အေၿခတိုးၿမင္႔ေစဖို႔ တတ္နုိင္သမွ် ႀကိဳးစားရင္း

Is life all about perceptions?

(1) Hate the sin, not the sinner. ~ by Gandhi
(2) Hate the sin, and love the sinner ~ by Gandhi
(3) Hate the sin, but love the sinner ~ a traditional Christian proverb

It all started with the first quote posted by a friend on FB. When I explored more about the quote, I saw the second one also as Gandhi's quote. Finally, I found that it was a misattribution to Gandhi from 1990s. And the same source says that "Hate the sin, but love the sinner" is a traditional Christian Proverb. Gandhi's sayings about forgiveness such as "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." and description of seven social sins "Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice." could have led people to misattribution (if that is true).

In this note my intention is NOT to do more research on the source of this quote or rather these quotes. I just would like to record the fact that "how I perceive a statement varies". I will refer to them with the numbers as my interest is to categorize them as neither quote nor proverbs. I perceived (1) as importance of People & Issue separation; (2) as importance of forgiveness and (3) - Oh, no wonder, it is a proverb. I wished to validate (1) and (2) because I perceived them as the words by a human being. Somehow I do not want to validate (3).

(1) P & I separation is important to me because the separation help me move on with the cause of the problem. It made me easy to implement the changes if I know issues or person is the cause of resistance. The judiciary punishes a person for theft, not for being a thief as it is one's right to be considered as innocent until proven guilty. Even if he/she has been categorized as a "thief" for that case, he/she would be considered as innocent (until proven guilty again) if he/she had a second case. Evidence is needed to punish this person for the second case too. It is more difficult to suppress thievery than the thieves. Theft rate will not be declined unless thieves are punished. However, thieves will still reappear if the root cause of theft is unrectified. The line between P&I is so thin yet important to get them separated. Unfortunately, I grew up not clearly understanding between the two. That is why it is very difficult to receive criticism. A politically correct term for criticism could be FEEDBACK ;) I wasn't sure if it means I am the problem or my action is. I had to try hard and still trying to separate between the two.

(2) Forgiveness didn't sound so familiar to me. It is because I used to lead a simplified life. A simplified life is different from a simple life. Things are just so complicated that I needed to simplify to make my life easier. Teachings and happenings around me gave me opposite signals. Ethical values did not seem to be practical. Thus I unknowingly chose to be simpleminded. Since I didn't blame anyone, I didn't have to learn forgiveness. When I understand neither blaming nor forgiving, I suspect the existence of forgiveness.

Now I think I reached to a little less complicated state of mind. I started to attempt seeing things clearly. I began to learn the difference between blame and responsibility. I tried to see the causes and effects. Maybe forgiveness helps the blame faded in time. What could I use to erase being lack of responsibility? I don't think forgiveness works in this case.

(3) was just a passer by to me. Thus I don't really think through it.

See the difference? The similar statements can give me different perceptions just by a different word in it or by giving different sources. Is life all about perceptions?

Essay: Living with oxymorons

I saw the new words crucible and epiphany in "Conversaional Leadership" by Lan Liu. It was a conversation between Lan Liu and Bill George. Bill George explained "Crucible is an experience and epiphany is realization". The conversation was how realization of their life experiences led people to find themself, their purpose of life and added values to their lives. The conversation made me think back the crucibles of my life.

Born in a place of oxymoron, I think we lived blesesed and disguised lives. Family values are highly appreciated, yet there is not much of societal values. There are many proverbs and sayings which emphasize importance of education but all you can easily find is certificate not education. We belive in Mahayana Buddhism which strongly encouraged people to ask "Why" for every act, yet we are discouraged from asking questions. We were taught selflessness since young but the situation favoured us only to struggle for our own survival hence we thought life is all about scarcity. Those who couldn't understand "law of abundance" would have thin chance to be selfless. With this background of life, I think crucible of my life is finding truth. I find it difficult to differentiate between the truth and the relative truth. It is really painfully hard to dream and live the dream.

Life seemed more meaningful while I was struggling for survival. Now I think I have overcome that phase of life. What is the next step when we gained security for our own life? By now, I am quite sure that living a financially secured life is highly possible. Most of us are working hard to fulfill the "wants" rather than the "needs". When peer pressure plays a very important role in life, wants become needs and luxiries become necessities.

At this moment, my past and present are so differnt that I do not know what to look for in the future. Like a person who just walked out from a dark room to the bright day light, I can't see clearly. May be I am poisoned by the partial information, incomplete understanding of pholosophies and paradigms; I couldn't see my own purpose of life.

Maybe I need to go back to the childhood or teens before I was influenced by any logics. Maybe I try to see the moments I enjoyed and try to uncover what I really like. Or, I recall the moments I didn't enjoy and collectively I might realize what I really appreciate in life. Anyway, what I am feeling now is "Life sucks whenever I try to find its purpose".

Confession

I do not know why other people confess. I am here to confess my disorganized behavior hoping that this blog post will remind me of the stressful moment, root cause of the problem and help me to minimize such unnecessary stress.

I almost got heart attack today due to my disorganized tasks management. If I may refer to Steven Covey’s Quadrants, I allowed an item under Quadrant II to move to Quadrant I. This means that I allowed an important/not urgent task to become important/ urgent one (also means that I created a crisis) because I did not put first things first. I failed to prioritize the important tasks.

I failed to work on an issue until I received an email for the deadline. I had 36 hours to react on it. It could have been closed if everything went smooth. But I didn’t have allowance for errors. I can guarantee my performance as I knew the importance of completing this particular task but it was just another piece of paper for people who also need to work on it. As I worried, things went wrong. Anxiety has consumed one afternoon and huge amount of energy from me. With shame for bad time management, stress and worries for completing the task in time, I ran around for remedy. Fortunately, I managed to fix the problem.

In the past, I could have been happy for pushing myself to get the job done. But in total truth, I was the one who allowed the hassle happened in the first place. There are far too many distractions in life. Things can be managed only if we put full concentration on it. Now with this reflective learning, I pledge to practice the followings on a weekly basis.
1. Prioritize the tasks (both for home, work and after-work activities)
2. Allocate time to complete the important tasks
3. Handle one issue at a time
4. Take note possible causes of not completing important tasks – not noticing there is something important to do, forgetting to prioritize the tasks, lose track while doing the job, stuck at one step because do not know how to overcome that
5. Remember to allocate time for correcting errors if any

I really hope this blog post reminds me of my stressful evening and help me to minimize such unnecessary anxiety.

Awesome Rinjani - Day 4

If not for waterfall and World Cup, day 4 would have been a low light of the trip. The last day's walk was easier as the trail was comparatively simple up to the Pintu Senaru (The National Park, Senaru Gate). A short distance from Pintu Senaru to the pick up point was beautiful with banana, coffee and cocoa trees and colorful flowers. In summary, we have completed the journey of about 25 Km from Rijani Information Center (RIC) at Sembalun to Rinjani Trek Center (RTC) at Senaru.



A good shower at Pondok Senaru refreshed me for the rest of the day. We walked to the two waterfalls near by. It was worthwhile stretching ourselves a little more. We walked on a funny bridge which actually is a drain with very fast water flow and built high up from the valley. I wonder why the drain cover couldn't be solid. To reduce the weight of the bridge? Or to keep accessable to the drain below? Whatever reason it was, it made us dizzy while walking on it.



We walked through the stream where the water was flowing very strongly. It was crystal clear and icy cold. Both waterfalls started flowing at a very high edge. The water flow was very powerful. Water droplets generated from the water stream hitting the rocks and the ground were so dense that I felt like standing in the rain. I love the cold sensation.



I started exploring the village after coming back from the waterfalls. I went to Bayan with a motorcycle taxi to find the old couple who made local rice wine. By communicating with Machi (aunty), I learnt something. Some people are really good in explaining the job they do every day. The small house of her fermenting, settling and filling process was neat, tidy and clean. She couldn't speak a single word in English but was able to convince me that her rice wine is one of the best (if not THE best) in the region via the interpretation of the motorcycle taxi rider.

Bayan was a very small town with a crowded junction and a big field next to it. We had some satay and nasi goren at the junction. Then, we went into a compound where the locals gathered and watched World Cup. It was Portugal Vs Brazil match on that day. In fact, it didn't matter whatever match it was. All I wanted was the experience and thrill sitting in a free show where the people enjoyed the game.

Once we sat in the middle of the space in front of a big TV screen, all men and boys looked at us as if they were watching an animal show. It was really intimidating yet fun. As the people got involved in the match or rather concerned for their bet, they started to shout against the opponent of the team they supported. I didn't think they would make any harm to us but wouldn't be surprised if they broke out into fights. Yes, I admit it was a bit too much taking such a risk but I love the fun, thrill and anxiety during that 95 minutes.



We left Senaru on 26th June 2010. The awesome Rinjani was looking at us exactly the same as the day we arrived. Goodbye for now. I may meet you again.

Awesome Rinjani - Day 3

In the morning of Day 3, we are quite relaxed. The surrounding of the lake was active with porters playing their favorite past-time game and the travelers watching them. Porters carried tents, sleeping bags, food and cooking utensils and also prepared every meal for us. They were quiet but approachable and helpful.



While preparing for the day, we all heard "bommm" from Gunung Baru. I rushed out to get a photo but the mushroom of smoke coming out from the left of the cone was not well captured. The smoke is emitted every few hours but quickly disappeared. It didn't make a disturbance to us as there was no ashes spread around. After a while, my camera dived into the lake ;) so I wouldn't have beautiful photos for this post. I tried to find my last resource, my phone, but like I wrote before iPhone does not replace a camera.



Day 3 trail was exciting and challenging for most of us. First part of the trail is composed of tricky rocky climbs. Some parts of the climb are really dangerous as the support rails are damaged and the ropes are torn. I hope organizations like national park make some improvement on this. The local family (some with children) travel without guide thus they bare more risk than the foreign hikers.



The view of Crater Lake and Gunung Baru was the best while climbing the crater rim. The bank we were climbing up had full of edelweiss. We took a rest at the crater rim, take some group photos and started the down slope with loosen soil. A different skill set was required for this path. Having my hiking shoes wet as they also dived into the lake together with the camera ;) I slide downhill with my sandals.



As we approached Pos III (different from Pos III of day 1, this is on Senaru side) and entered the rain forest, it started to drizzle. Fortunately, it was just for a while. The path from Pos III to the Day 3 camp at Pos II was the heavy rain forest. We camped in the middle of heavy forest. Just like the mountains, forest also has their stories which we came to know only on the following day.

The highlight for the day was chitchat at fire made by the porters. Someone said sitting next to fire is therapeutic and I kind of agree to that statement. After a long day walk, heat from the fire helped relax the muscles. Sitting next to the fire also reminded me of the winter days during my childhood. With raisins, peanuts and friendship, the night was perfect.

Awesome Rinjani - Day 2

Nine of the group members had started their day earlier to climb up the summit but the heavy clouds, the forceful wind and the chill factor did not favor us. Only one in the group reached to the summit. Hikers from the other groups also came back without reaching the summit. Those who stayed at camp 1 were a little more favored to see the very brief sunrise.



It was so misty that we could see the seven colors of rainbow in the circles at many spots. Many monkeys appear together with the sun light. They came to grab food which was left by the people. We left Camp 1 about 9am. Since then, I stopped paying attention on "what time is it" or "how long more to reach to the next rest point". After all, we are on holiday.



The decent was so rocky and steep that we need to maintain in a group and help each other to climb down safely. Rinjani trek was so much more interesting than Mount Kinabalu because it has light walking, steep ascent on the soil, and now serious decent. I think it took us about 4 hours to reach the camp site at Lake Segara Anak.



The lake view was astonishing. Now we are in the middle of the mountain range. I am standing near the lake which was 180 degrees surrounded by the mountains except for the valley with a creek into which the water would overflow when there are heavy rains. Nature had built a dam and an overflow stream by itself.



There is a hot spring at at the tip of the creek thus we went down for bathing. We were told that water could be hot as 70 degrees Celsius at the source (before getting mixed with cold water). I guessed it may vary depending on the volcanic activities of Gunang Baru (the active volcano formed in the middle of Crater Lake).



At the small water fall and the pool, water is yellowish due to high sulphur content and nicely warm to soak in. Since that was the only water source for the whole journey, I chose to get down to the water. A warm water bath could also help to relieve muscle tension.



While crater rims were filled with energy and enthusiasm of the hikers, the lake was active with the local travelers. As it was one or two days before full-moon day, we saw groups of pilgrims who travelled far to perform rituals at the lake and shower themselves with the hot spring water.



We were briefed not to leave non-biodegradable items along the journey before it was even started. Materials like plastics are collected by the guide along the way, and burnt at each camp site. There were friendly warnings for the environmental consciousness posted (as far as I know) around the lake area.



Every mountain has its own story. Rinjani is believed to be home for the soul of Dewi Anjani, the queen of the kingdom. While browsing for the legends of Rinjani, I saw a piece of news on The Jakarta Post. I wish I could watch the film. Be it a tourist promotion film or environmental awareness promoter, I am sure the beauty of incredible Rinjani will be captured.

The night fell dark fast as it was surrounded by the mountains. I had nothing to do after the dinner. I thought of reading but couldn't resist the beauty of the lake. So, I just sat down at the lake side and did nothing. The moon was shining on me, the water in the lake reflecting the moon light and the Gunung Baru breathing heavily - I just get myself possessed by the nature.

Awsome Rinjani - Day 1

Sunset from the plane


Alang-Alang and the view of Rinjani


Cows from the village


Beautiful Butterfly


Vegetable Farm with the green houses


Our porters preparing lunch


While waiting for lunch


Day 1 Lunch


Edelweiss: A symbol of love


The sandy narrow lane to Ultimate Summit


The path behind and the sea beyond


Day 1 Camp in the setting sun


Tent for us


Other hikers around


The landmark of Capm site (Plawangan II crater rim)


Indonesia is blessed with awesome natural resources and Mount Rinjani is one of them. Starting on 22nd June, 14 of us went for a 4-Day/3-Night hiking trip with the help of our guide Full and 9 porters. The trip turned out to be a memorable one with picturesque views and beautiful people.

We were already excited before leaving Singapore's Changi airport. We wanted to have window seats hoping to see Mt Rinjani from the plane. As the seats were not fully occupied, 4 of us seated in a row had chance to see the views both on left and right of the plane by exchanging the seats. A few minutes before landing we saw a huge mountain in the clouds. Although we were not sure if that was Mt Rinjani, we happily took photos of the mountain, the clouds and the sunset. It was dusk when the plane landed at Mataram, Lombok, Indonesia. We were transferred to Senaru, the village where Rinjani trek begins.

The next morning, we have to take an arranged transport to Rinjani Information Center where we registered for the climb. The interesting ideology and operations of Rinjani trek are found on the Rinjani Trek Management Board (RTMB) web page. . Conceptually, the Rinjani trek operations are managed by partnership of National Park, tourism industry and the local community. This is a way for creating jobs and generating income by making use of natural resources, community's geographical knowledge and skills which will ultimately lead to the development of the region.

A source says "All porters are taught the importance of maintaining the environment and rest station facilities, sticking to established paths, customer service and emergency procedures". I hope the RTMB's training programs also educate the guides and the porters for safety and health concerns for themselves too. I met a porter who heavily coughed after every few steps while climbing up. Locally-made cigarettes are very cheap and easily available thus they become a temporary energy bosster for the porters.

We started the journey from Sembalun Lawang village around 9am on 22nd June 2010. The sky was so clear that we can see the summit from far. We walked through the savannah in which alang-alang grasses are about my height. I didn't see much animal lives in the savannah except the cows pasturing in the plains and butterflies hopping around the small flowers in the field.

When we looked back to Sembalun Lawang village, a large farm with green houses was seen. I wonder which kind of farm would it be and later found out the web site of the Tanzanian company Tendaji Agro which has invested in it. As the web page says, the vegetables grown in these green houses are exported to Singapore too. Who knows, some vege we consume might come from Lombok.

We walked until Pos II where we had lunch for the first day. The benefit of trekking with a big group is that the porters reach the rest point earlier and prepare food for us. The plain tea and piping hot noodle soup were perfect for lunch.

It was an easy walk until Pos III where we took a short rest. From Pos III to Day 1 camp (Plawangan II crater rim) was a tough hike in the heavy mist. The vegetaion has changed. As we approached the crater rim, we started to see more trees, mostly pine, and more flowers including edelweiss (Anaphalis viscida). Locals say these white little flowers are symbol of love. As they only grow at the altitudes of about 2000 meters and above, a man could climb up the mountain and pick these beautiful flowers to prove his love to his girl.

Around 4:30pm, we stepped on part of the crater rim with lots of penting and exhaustion. From that part of the crater rim, we could see the summit near and clear. But as our Myanmar saying "အၿမင္နီး ခရီးေ၀းတဲ႔ ေတာင္" goes, mountains are near in the sight, yet far to be reached. As we could see the summit trail closer, the sandy narrow lane became clearer. I decided not to go for it unless I woke up and felt "I am dying to go" in the next morning. The panoramic view from the rim was fascinating - the challenging summit of gigantic Rinjani right in front of me, the plain we passed through and the sea beyond partly covered by the clouds on my left and the crater lake completely hidden by the heavy clouds on the right. It was worth climbing so hard.

Soon after, we reached to the camp site for Day 1. Again, being a big group with 9 porters, the tents were already made for us. There were a few small groups of hikers staying around the single tree which serves as the marker for the camp site. It can be seen from the other side of the crater rim on the following days.

The sun had set, dinner was taken, what else to be done except a good night sleep? All the tents around were quiet. All I could hear was the sound generated by the strong wind rushing into the trees from far and slapping the small tents near me. Despite exhaustion, I just couldn't sleep. It would be probably a waste if I stayed inside the tent tossing around and forcing myself to sleep. So, I walked out of the tent.

It says "A picture tells a thousand words". But the truth is not every sight can be captured as a picture. The almost-full moon, the twinkling stars, the range of mountains, the Crater Lake and the shade of the summit - any form of art could fail to describe the beauty of the night. Standing still, I felt I was refilled with the mental energy for the next day.

24 hr away from Rinjani

Tomorrow is one of the big days for me. It is big as it a physical and mental challenge for me. I am leaving for the second hiking trip to Mt Rinjani, Lombok, Indonesia. I was possessed by Mt Rinjani after seeing the picturesque crater, the crater lake known as Segara Anak ('Child of the Sea') and the small volcano inside the lake named Mount Barujari (or 'New Finger Mountain').



However, having returned from Mt Kinabalu only a moth ago, I still remember the pain in the thigh muscles. I vividly remember that I couldn't make swift movements for a few days after the trip. That part of the memory has been trying to overwhelm the moments I have enjoyed along the trail. I was on dilemma for a few days. Guest what, finally I decided to keep the promise that I have made to myself. Among all the breath-taking photos, I have chosen a modest one as my fear is still making me less ambitious. I will be satisfy if I can be there to see the view regardless the sun has just come up from the horizon or already above my head. My body is whispering me "please come back with bearable pain" so I can't push it too much.

While browsing through, I came know learn about the active volcanos. Mt Barujari is an active volcano which last erupted on 22-23 May 2010, which means just last month. As per the trust-worthy volcano site Global Volcano Program, the ashes were ejected as high as 2km, and the ash plumes drifted for 12km and caused ash falls in many areas. It also says that lava flows into the crater lake and the water gets hot upto 35 degrees Celcius. I can't deny that I have some concern for the ashes in the air. Hope it wouldn't be too much and wouldn't disturb the quality of air. The altitude sickness and chill factors cannot be underestimated too. Wiki travel says "Climbing Mount Rinjani is not to be taken lightly" probably for all these reasons.

We are taking the route
Day 1) Senaru village --> Sembalun Lawang --> Plawangan II crater rim
Day 2) Plawangan II creater rim --> Rinjani Summit --> Lake Segara Anak
Day 3) Lake Segara Anak --> Plawangan I Senaru crater rim
Day 4) Plawangan I Senaru crater rim --> Senaru village



In the picture, it started from the left hand side of the red thread, then to Post I, Post II, Post III but Plawangan II crater rim is not mentioned. I am eager to find out more about the route. Although the guide books say a lot about the rich flora and fauna, I do not expect to see much. Most likely, wewill be busy balancing between reaching to the next rest point and saving energy as much as we can.

Now, I am less than 24 hr away from Saneru. Rinjani, here I come!

FEAR - ေႀကာက္စိတ္

I have just finished reading Oh Siew May's "Scaling Walls - My Story". My heart sinked as she was going through tought times. I felt relieved when she accomplished climbing a mountain in her life. I entrapped with her in the fall walls; I escaped from it as she did. I could estimate the huge effort she put in to fight against her own fear.

At the same time, I remember a routine from So You Think You Can Dance, Season 6. The comtemporary routine with the song 2 steps away was choreographed by Stacey Tookey and performed by Kathryn and Legacy. I enjoyed every move in the routine. Sometimes, we let fear stay within us because we do not know its existance. Sometimes we just hide it under any convenient excuse. I am afraid of facing fear more than losing my own life.

When we think we are free, it just grabbed your legs to keep you right there. The moment we thought we escaped from fear, it appeared just behind and held you down. It would just jump on you. You would see the amount of energy you need to turn it away and keep yourself away from fear. My favourite was the ending of the routine. Surpress it strategically and pin it down right there, under your feet.

Enjoy the dance 2 Steps Away from SYTYCD

Siew May and all friends who are actively fighting against fear, I am sure you will always be the stars.

မလံုတဲ႔ လိပ္ၿပာ

အဲဒီခဏခဏ ပိတ္တဲ႔ ေက်ာင္းမွာေပါ႔ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ေတြရခဲ႔တာ
နယ္သူၿမိဳ ႔ေရာက္ကေလးကို ပ်ံသန္းဖို႔ အေတာင္ေတြတတ္ေပးခဲ႔တာလဲသူပဲ။

အတင္းစကား အၿငင္းပြား အခ်င္းမ်ားတဲ႔အခါ လည္းမ်ားေသး
Thermodynamic ထဲက moleculeေတြ တိုက္သေလာက္ ကေတာ႔ ပ်င္းေသးတယ္။

ေႏြးေအးမွာ မထိုင္ခ်င္ပါဘူး ဟန္ပန္ေတြႀကီးလြန္းတယ္
ကန္သာယာက စိုးၿမင္႔ေႀကာ္ စားၿပီး (ဆရာဦးစိုးလြင္ရဲ ႔) Stress Strain ေတြေၿပာႀကမယ္။

ခုေတာ႔ လူငယ္ေလးေတြကုိ အိမ္မက္ႀကီးႀကီး မက္ေစခဲ႔တာ သူမဟုတ္သလုိဘဲ
အႀကာႀကီး ေလာင္ကြ်မ္းၿပီး ကိုယ္တုိ႔ကို အလင္းေရာင္ေပးရင္း အားၿပတ္ခဲ႔ေလသလား။

သူ႔ေရွ ႔ကၿဖတ္သြားတုိင္း မလံုတဲ႔လိပ္ၿပာက ထိုးနွက္
ကိုယ္တို႔ drained brain ေလးေတြ မြန္းမြန္းႀကပ္ႀကပ္ ကူးခပ္ေနႀကတ႔ဲခ်ိန္ သူကုိယ္တို္င္ေတာ႔ drain မ်ား ၿဖစ္သြားၿပီလားလို႔ ေတြးေနရင္းေပါ႔။

ဒြိဟ

Pieces တဲ႔
ငါးနွစ္ေကာင္ အၿမီး ေခါင္းဆိုင္လို႔
ေမြးကတည္းက ဒြိဟနဲ႔ လွလွႀကီး ေတြ႔ခဲ႔တာ။

ဘ၀က တစ္ခါခါ Buffet စားသလိုပဲ
ေကာင္းတာေတြ အားလံုးကိုတစ္ထိုင္တည္း စားဖို႔ခက္တယ္။

အခုလည္း ဒြိဟက စိန္ေခၚေနၿပန္ၿပီ
ေနာက္ထပ္ေတာင္တစ္လံုးတက္ဦးမလားတဲ႔။

ဆင္ေၿခေတြ ဆင္လက္ေတြေပးႀကည္႔
ခြင္႔သိပ္မရွိေတာ႔ဘူး - အိုၿပန္လာေတာ႔ MC ေပါ႔
အလုပ္ေတြမ်ားတယ္ - ကုမၸဏီဆိုတာ အသက္စေတးစရာေနရာ မဟုတ္ဘူး
သိပ္ပင္ပန္းမွာ - ဘယ္႔နွယ္ ဒီထက္ၿမင္႔တဲ႔ ေတာင္ကို ေတာင္တက္လာၿပီးမွ။

အင္း - ဆြဲေဆာင္ခ်က္ ေတြကလည္းၿပင္း
ကိုယ္႔သက္လံုကို စမ္းသပ္ဖို႔ အေကာင္းဆံုး အခြင္႔အေရး
စိတ္ဓါတ္ခြန္အား ကုိလည္း စမ္းေသးတာ
အဆံုးထိေရာက္ေအာင္ ေမာင္းႀကည္႔လိုက္စမ္း။

ဟင္း - ဒုကၡ နဲ႔ လွလွ ေတြ႔ရၿပန္ေပါ႔
ဒီတစ္ခါ အတြင္းစိတ္နဲ႔ အၿပင္စိတ္ရဲ ႔တိုက္ပြဲ။

ေၿပာေတာ႔ၿဖင္႔ လြယ္လုိက္တာ
နွလံုးသားကုိ နားေထာင္တဲ႔
သူေၿပာတာ သိပ္တုိးေနေတာ႔ ဘယ္လုိလုပ္ရမွာတုန္း။

Yes ဘက္ကို ယိမ္းလိုက္တို္င္း No ဘက္ကိုကပ္သြား
ေခါင္းခါၿပန္ေတာ႔ (နွလံုးသားက) ဒါမဟုတ္ၿပန္ဘူး ဆိုလား။

ရွားရွားပါးပါး အခြင္႔အေရး ဆိုတိုင္း
ေတြ႔ဦးမွာပါ ငါမေသေသးပါဘူးလို႔ ေအာ္ေၿပာ။

အသံဗလံေတြ ရွုပ္ရွက္ ဗရုတ္ဗရက္နဲ႔
ခက္ေတာ႔ ခက္ေနၿပန္ ပါၿပီေကာ။

ကိုယ္႔စိတ္ကို ေအာင္နုိင္ဖို႔ အသာထား
သူေၿပာတာေတာင္ ႀကားေအာင္ နားမေထာင္နုိင္တဲ႔ ဘ၀
ကိုင္းဘယ္႔ နဲ႔လုပ္ႀကမတုန္း။

Story Telling I - Story about love and loyalty

(Disclaimer: more than 50% of the story is from Wikipedia)

It was 4 in the evening. Different from the hot and humid city, it was cool and breezy at the bottom of Mt Kinabalu. I tried to look at the summit of the gigantic mountain but no avail. All I could see were the waves of mists caressing and embracing the dark green forest. I was there standing still and feeling amazed by the touch of nature. “Why is this mountain called Kinabalu?” I asked. To answer my question, the guide told me this story.

Many years ago, there was a girl who lived at the foot of the mysterious Mt Kinabalu. She was a happy girl just like any other girls in Borneo. She lived her carefree life with her family and friends until one day she met the prince of her life. She heard that the villagers rescued a man whose ship sank in the middle of South China Sea. The villagers not only saved his life but also took care of him until he was fully recovered. Later, the whole village learned that he was a Prince of the Chinese Emperor. Getting away from the grand but certainly limited life of a prince, he enjoyed living like an ordinary person. He doesn’t have to listen to the lecture about governance or war. He doesn’t have to think about taxes and trade. He thought he would live the rest of his life in the Borneo thus he proposed the girl for marriage. They got married, had children and lived their life just like every family in the village.

Years went by, and he started to feel homesick. He started to remember his responsibility as a prince. By now his father should be old, and need to live a less tiresome life. He is a prince with duties for the country and the people. So he asked permission from his newly-found family to go back to China to visit his parents (the Emperor and Empress of China). To his wife, he promised that as soon as he was done with his family duties in China, he would come back to Borneo to take her and their children back to China.

When he made his return to China, he was given a grand welcome by his family. However, to his dismay, his parents disagreed with him about taking his Bornean wife back to China. Worse, they told him that they had already arranged his marriage to a princess of a neighboring kingdom. The prince had high respect towards his parents. Thus he obeyed the parents’ words with a heavy heart.

Meanwhile, back in Borneo, his wife grew more and more anxious. Eventually, she decided that she will wait for her husband's ship. However, since the village was situated far away from the coast, she couldn't afford to come to the shore and wait for him daily. Instead she decided to climb to the top of the highest mountain near her village, so that she could have a better view of the ships sailing in the South China Sea. Thus, she was then seen climbing up the mountain at every sunrise, returning only at night to attend to her growing children.

Eventually she fell ill, and died at the top of the cold mountain while waiting for her husband. The spirit of the mountain, having observed her for years, was extremely touched by her loyalty towards her husband. Out of admiration for this woman, the spirit of the mountain turned her into a stone. Her face was made to face the South China Sea, so that she could wait forever for her dear husband's return.
The people in her hometown who heard about this were also gravely touched by this. Thus, they decided to name the mountain "Cina Balu" in remembrance of her. Cina means Chinese and Balu means widow in the local Kadazan-Dusun language. Due to the lingual influence among the Kadazan Dusun of Sabah, the pronunciation for the word "cina" (chee-na) was changed to "Kina" (kee-na). That was the story of a wife, her royalty and the name of Mt Kinabalu.

ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ ေကာက္ရသူမ်ားနွင္႔ က်မ

အင္မတန္ နေမာ္နမဲ႔ နုိင္တဲ႔ က်မ အလုပ္တစ္ဖက္ ေက်ာင္းတက္ဖက္နဲ႔ ဗ်ာမ်ားရတဲ႔ ၂၀၀၁ ကေန ၂၀၀၃ အတြင္း ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ သံုးခါ ေပ်ာက္ပါတယ္။ ပထမဆံုးတစ္ခါက အလုပ္ ၿပီးလို႔ ေက်ာင္းသြားဖို႔ အထြက္မွာ အလုပ္လုပ္တဲ႔ ကုမၸဏီ ရွိရာ အေဆာက္အဦး က အိမ္သာမွာ ေမ႔က်န္ေနခဲ႔ တာပါ။ ေက်ာင္းတက္စဥ္ ကာလက ေက်ာင္းသားကဒ္နဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ သံုးရာပါတဲ႔ ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ဟာ အသက္တမွ် အေရးႀကီးပါတယ္။ ကားဂိတ္မွာ ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ေပ်ာက္ၿပီလို႔ သိသိခ်င္း ေခါင္းေတြထူပူၿပီး အေဆာက္အဦး ဆီကုိၿပန္ေၿပး ရပါတယ္။ ကုိယ္႔ရံုးေရာ အနီးအနားက ကုမၸဏီေတြပါ ေသာ႔ခတ္ကုန္ႀကပါၿပီ။ နွစ္ခန္းေက်ာ္ေလာက္က ဆံပင္ဆုိးေဆးေတြနဲ႔ ဆံပင္ ညွပ္ဆိုင္ေတြမွာ သံုးတဲ႔ ပရိေဘာဂေတြ ေရာင္းတဲ႔ ကုမၸဏီတစ္ခုပဲ လူရွိေတာ႔တယ္။ ဘာလုပ္ရမွန္း မသိ၊ ဘယ္သူ႔ေမးရမွန္း မသိ ၿဖစ္ေနတုန္း အမ်ိဳးသမီးတစ္ေယာက္ ရံုးခန္းထဲက ထြက္လာၿပီး "ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ေပ်ာက္လို႔လား" လုိ႔ေမးပါတယ္။ ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ ဆိုေတာ႔ အိတ္ကုိထုတ္ေပးၿပီး သန္႔ရွင္းေရး လုပ္တဲ႔ သူက လာေပးထားတာလို႔ လည္းေၿပာပါတယ္။

ကိုယ္႔ ရံုးရွိရာ အေဆာက္အဦးက အပ်ံစား အေဆာက္အဦး မဟုတ္ေလေတာ႔ သန္႔ရွင္းေရးကိုလည္း အိမ္သာေတြ အားလံုးအတြက္ ဘဂၤလားေဒ႔ (ရွ္) နိုင္ငံသား ေယာက္်ားေလး တစ္ေယာက္ပဲ ထားပါတယ္။ မ်က္မွန္းတန္းေန ေပမယ္႔ စကားေတာ႔ မေၿပာမိဘူးပါ။ ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ ၿပန္ရရခ်င္း အရင္ဆံုးသိခ်င္တာက ပိုက္ဆံေတြ အိပ္ထဲမွာ ရွိေသးရဲ႔ လားဆိုတာကိုပါ။ အဲဒီ အေတြး ေပၚလာတာနဲ႔ တစ္ၿပိဳင္နက္ ကုိယ္႔ကိုကိုယ္ လည္း နည္းနည္းေတာ႔ အၿပစ္တင္မိပါေသးတယ္။ သူယူခ်င္မွေတာ႔ အိတ္ေတာင္ ၿပန္ေပးေနစရာ မရွိဘူး မဟုတ္လား။ အိတ္ထဲက ပစၥည္းေတြ ဘာမွ လက္ရာ မယြင္းပါ။

ေနာက္ေန႔က်ေတာ႔ အဲဒီေကာင္ေလးကို ေက်းဇူးတင္စကား ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ေၿပာပါတယ္။ ေနာက္လည္းလမ္းမွာေတြ႔ရင္ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ နုတ္ဆက္ပါတယ္။ စိတ္ထဲမွာ တစ္ခုခုေလး ၀ယ္ၿပီး လက္ေဆာင္ေပးခ်င္စိတ္ လည္းခဏခဏ ေပါက္ပါတယ္။ သူ႔ကို တစ္ခုခု လက္ေဆာင္ေပးဖုိ႔ စဥ္းစားတုိင္း သူ႔ေစတနာကို တန္ဖိုးၿဖတ္ရာမ်ား က်မလားလုိ႔ ေတြးမိၿပီး သူတိတ္တဆိတ္ ေပ်ာက္ကြယ္သြား တဲ႔ အထိ ဘာမွ မေပးၿဖစ္ခဲ႔ပါ။ အလုပ္က တစ္ၿခားေနရာကို ေၿပာင္းသြားတာလား၊ သူ႔တုိင္းၿပည္ၿပန္သြားတာလား ဆိုတာေတာင္ မသိေတာ႔ေပမယ္႔ သူ႔အလုပ္ကို ဆက္လုပ္တဲ႔ အလုပ္သမား အသစ္ကေလးကို ၿမင္တုိင္း ငါ႔ဟာ ေတာ္ေတာ္ အေတြးေႀကာင္တယ္။ ေတြးလြန္းလို႔ ဘာမွကို မေပးၿဖစ္လုိက္တာလို႔ ေနာင္တရသလုိလုိ ၿဖစ္ေနတတ္တယ္။

ဒုတိယတစ္ခါကေတာ႔ ဘတ္(စ္)ကား ေပၚမွာပါ။ ေကာက္ရတဲ႔ အမ်ဴိးသမီးက ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ထဲမွာ ရွိေနတဲ႔ မိတ္ေဆြတစ္ေယာက္ရဲ႔ ဖုန္းကို ဆက္ၿပီး ေၿပာလို႔ ၿပန္ရၿပန္ပါတယ္။ ေတာ္ေတာ္ အသက္ရွည္တဲ႔ အိတ္ကေလးပါ။ ဒီတစ္ခါေတာ႔ ေနာင္တ ထပ္မရခ်င္တာနဲ႔ ေကာက္ရတဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသမီးကိုေရာ တစ္ဆင္႔ ဆက္သြယ္ေပးတဲ႔ မိတ္ေဆြကိုပါ ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္လုိ႔ လွလွပပေရးထားတဲ႔ ကဒ္ေလးေတြ ေပးၿဖစ္ ပါတယ္။ ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ဆိုတာ ေပ်ာက္သြားရင္ ၿပန္ရတတ္တယ္လို႔ ေတာ္ေတာ္ ခုိင္ခုိင္မာမာ ယံုႀကည္မိခါမွဘဲ အိတ္ကတစ္ကယ္ အၿပီး ေပ်ာက္သြားပါေတာ႔တယ္။ ေက်ာင္းစာႀကည္႔တုိက္ မွာ စာအုပ္ရွာရင္း ေကာင္တာေပၚမွာ ေမ႔က်န္ခဲ႔တာ၊ ငါးမိနစ္ေလာက္ အခ်ိန္အတြင္း သတိရတာ ဆိုေတာ႔ ေသခ်ာေပါက္ ၿပန္ရလိမ္႔ မယ္လို႔ ထင္မိတာလည္း က်မ မလြန္ပါဘူးေနာ္။ တစ္ကယ္ပဲ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားသာ ၀င္ခြင္႔ ရတဲ႔ အေရွ႔ေတာင္ အာရွမွာ စာအုပ္ အစံုဆံုးပါဆုိတဲ႔ အထင္ကရ စာႀကည္႔တုိက္ႀကီးမွာ က်န္ခဲ႔ ေတာ႔မွဘဲ ၿပန္မရေတာ႔ပါ။ အိတ္ တကယ္ ေပ်ာက္သြားတဲ႔ အခ်ိန္မွာေတာ႔ အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ မေၿပာနဲ႔ စကၤာပူ ေဒၚလာေတာင္ ဆယ္ဂဏန္းပဲ ပါတာပါ။ ယူသြားသူက ေက်ာင္းသား ကဒ္ေလးေတာင္ ၿပန္မေပးလုိ႔ အသစ္ၿပန္လုပ္ယူရပါတယ္။

၅ နွစ္ေလာက္ ပိတ္ဆံအိတ္နဲ႔ လူနဲ႔ ၿမဲေနတဲ႔ ေဒၚစိမ္႔ တစ္ေယာက္ ဒီေန႔ ေတာ႔ အာရံုေတြ မ်ားလြန္းၿပီး ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ကို အိမ္သာထဲမွာ ေမ႔က်န္ခဲ႔ ၿပန္ပါတယ္။ ဒီတစ္ခါေတာ႔ ၿမိဳ႔လည္ေခါင္က ခမ္းခမ္းနားနား Shopping Mall ႀကီးမွာပါ။ သူငယ္ခ်င္းနဲ႔ စကားေကာင္းေနလုိ႔ နာရီ၀က္ေလာက္ ေနမွ သိပါတယ္။ SPG (သူငယ္ခ်င္း တစ္ေယာက္က ကိုယ္တုိ႔ ေမြးရာ ေရႊၿပည္ႀကီးကို ေခၚသလို လုိက္ေခၚ ႀကည္႔တာ) ကေန ေ၀းတာႀကာၿပီး SGP ဆိုတဲ႔ စကၤာပူမွာ ေနတာႀကာ ေတာ႔ ပုိက္ဆံအိတ္ က်န္ခဲ႔တဲ႔ အိမ္သာကို သြားမႀကည္႔ဘဲ Information Counter ကုိအရင္သြားပါတယ္။ လမ္းေတာ္ေတာ္ ေလွ်ာက္၊ ေကာင္တာ နွစ္ခုကုိေရာက္ စာရြက္ ေသးေသးတစ္ခု ႀကီးႀကီး တစ္ခုကို ၿဖည္႔၊ တစ္ေယာက္ေယာက္ လာေပးရင္ ဆက္သြယ္လုိက္ ပါ႔မယ္ဆုိတာေတြကုိ နာခံၿပီးေတာ႔မွ ေနာက္ဆံုးေမွ်ာ္လင္႔ ခ်က္အေနနဲ႔ အိမ္သာကို သြားႀကည္႔ပါတယ္။ Information Counter ကလူေတြရဲ ႔ စိတ္ထဲမွာေတာ႔ အိတ္ထဲက ကဒ္ေတြကို ၿပန္လုပ္ရဖုိ႔ ကုန္ရမယ္႔ အခ်ိန္ေတြကို တြက္ၿပီး စိတ္ေတြ ရွုပ္လုိ႔ေပါ႔။

သန္႔ရွင္းေရးလုပ္တဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသမီးကို ေတြ႔ေတာ႔ မရဲတရဲနဲ႔ (Shopping Mall ႀကီးႀကီးေတြက သန္႔ရွင္းေရး အမ်ိဳးသမီး မ်ားက မထင္ရင္ ေဟာက္တတ္ပါတယ္) ေမးႀကည္႔ေတာ႔ သူက "နာမည္ဘယ္သူလဲ" လုိ႔ေမးပါတယ္။ သူ႔အမူအယာကို ၿမင္လုိက္ေတာ႔ သူအိတ္ကို ေတြ႔ထားၿပီ ထင္တယ္လု႔ိ ရုတ္တရက္ အေတြး၀င္မိပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ေတာ႔ သူက သူတို႔ပစၥည္း သိုေလွာင္ရာ အခန္းေလးထဲ မွာသိမ္းထား တဲ႔ ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ကုိ ထုတ္ေပးပါတယ္။ "နင္ဟိုနားမွာ ထားခဲ႔တာ" လို႔ ေၿပာၿပီး သူ႔အလုပ္ သူဆက္လုပ္ေနပါတယ္။ ဒီတစ္ခါ ပိုက္ဆံအိတ္ ကုိ ၿမင္လုိက္ ရတဲ႔ အခ်ိန္မွာေတာ႔ ကုိယ႔္ အိတ္အေႀကာင္း သိပ္မေတြးမိဘဲ သူ႔ကို တစ္ခုခု၀ယ္ေပးၿပီး သူ႔ေက်းဇူးကို အသိအမွတ္ ၿပဳခ်င္တဲ႔ စိတ္က သိသိသာသာ လႊမ္းမိုးပါတယ္။ အခ်ိန္က ညကုိးနာရီ ခြဲခါနီးဆိုေတာ႔ သူ႔ကုိ ဘယ္အခ်ိန္ အလုပ္ၿပီးသလဲလုိ႔ အရင္ေမးရတာေပါ႔။ အနီးအနားက စားစရာေလး နည္းနည္း ေၿပး၀ယ္ၿပီး သြားၿပန္ေပးေတာ႔ သူက ေက်းဇူးတင္စကားေတြ ေၿပာၿပီး အိတ္ထဲမွာ ဘာဖုန္းနံပါတ္ မွမပါလုိ႔ သူမဆက္ၿဖစ္တဲ႔ အေႀကာင္းရွင္းၿပေနပါေသးတယ္။

အၿပန္လမ္းမွာ ေတာ႔ ေတြးမဆံုးေပါင္ေပါ႔။ သန္႔ရွင္းေရး လုပ္တဲ႔သူေတြ ဘာေႀကာင္႔ ပိတ္ဆံအိတ္ကို ၿပန္ေပးႀကတာလဲ။ ဘာပဲၿဖစ္ၿဖစ္ စိတ္ရင္းမွန္ကန္ တယ္ဆိုတာေတာ႔ ေသခ်ာပါတယ္။ ေနာက္တစ္ခုက "အူမေတာင္႔ မွ သီလေစာင္႔နုိင္တယ္" ဆိုတဲ႔ စကားပါ။ အူမေတာင္႔တယ္ မေတာင္႔ဘူး ဆိုတာကုိ က ပညတ္ခ်က္ တစ္ခုလား။ လူတစ္ဦး ခ်င္းေပၚတည္ၿပီး ဘယ္၀င္ေငြရရင္ အူမေတာင္႔ နုိင္မွာလည္း ဆိုတာကလည္း ကြာမယ္ထင္ပါရဲ႔။ ေကာက္ရတဲ႔ ပစၥည္းကို ၿပန္ေပး မေပး ဆံုးၿဖတ္တဲ႔ ေနရာမွာ အတန္းပညာ ဟာ အဓိက မက်ဘူးဆ ိုတာ ေတြလည္း ေတြးမိပါရဲ႔။ ယူခ်င္တဲ႔ စိတ္ရွိရင္ တကၠသိုလ္ ေက်ာင္းသားလည္း ယူပါတယ္။ ကိုယ္႔ကုိကိုယ္ ေမးမိတဲ႔ ေမးခြန္း ေတြက ေတာ႔ ဘာဆိုရင္ မယူဘူးလဲ။ ဘာဆိုရင္ ယူမွာလဲ။ သူမ်ားပစၥည္း ၿပန္ေပးဖို႔ အတြက္ ဘယ္ေလာက္ အင္အား စိုက္ထုတ္မွာလဲ။ အားလံုးကုိ ၿခံဳေရးလုိက္ ရင္ေတာ႔ "ငါ႔ အူမ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ေတာင္႔သလဲ" အေၿဖေတြကို ေတာ႔ လက္ေတြ႔ႀကံဳရမွဘဲ သိမယ္ထင္ပါရဲ႔ေနာ္။

Setting up a library and reading program

Hello friends

I am interested in book donation and building up a library for a Monastery at Thanlyin (I have been supporting this Monastery for about 2 years now). It is a Monastery Education Center (ဘုန္းႀကီး ေက်ာင္းသင္ပညာေရး ေက်ာင္း) housing about 300 orphans from the borders and poor children from surrounding villages. I do believe that power of knowledge and education can help them escape vicious circle of poverty. I have some friends who are interested to provide used English books and I also can collect some donations to buy Myanmar books. What I am needing is to start up the library and to have a (weekly or so) reading program to nurture interests of reading in the students.

I would like to find out whether I can have some support for this. Maybe this person needs to go to Thanlyin on weekends, start up a library, and run a reading program. I would like to support for the transport and small daily expenses.

I can do the collection and transporting the books to Yangon for the following categories
- Pre-school learning books (Colors, Sizes & Shapes, ABC, 123, etc)
- Kindergarten Story books in English
- Primary level general knowledge
- Teen story books
- Teen general knowledge

I also want to have some Myanmar books. Please drop me a line if anyone of you or your friends is interested to work with me?

Photo Essay: The climb

Mount Kinabalu is mystery even in its height. It is known as a growing mountain and mostly its height is shown as 4905 meter, and 4101 meter in some books. There are many unverified and unofficial stories about Mount Kinabalu starting with how the name "Kinabalu" derived from. Both legandary and scientific explanations about Mt Kinabalu are interesting.

As Miley Cyrus sings
"Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what is waiting on the other side
It's the climb ... "

Yes, it IS the climb.


Twelve of us started the Mt K climb from Mesilau Nature Resort on 19 May around 8am. The top of the Mount Kinabalu can be seen clearly in the early mornings. We have to pray hard for the weather as it is a major decision factor for reaching the summit.




Between the two starting points, I prefer Mesilau as there are more scenic views along the route and the longer and gradual climb is also helpful to reduce risk of getting altitude sickness. This is the entrance of the Summit trail at Mesilau.




Various flora and fauna surviving at different climate conditions and fertility of the soil were found as we climb up. I referred to "A Color Guide to Kinabalu Park by Susan K. Jacobson" to familiarize myself with the paradise of flowers, plants, trees and animals. Here are some beautiful flowers at the bottom of the mountain.




After walking about one hour, most of us are still together. We chit chat, take photos, and have fun near a small water fall. The water supply along the climb route is from the natural sources and thus the guide warned us of the risk of allergens. Since my body sometimes overly response to all sort of allergens I decided to drink the bottled water I am carrying until getting closer to the rest house.




We still enjoy taking more photos and having fun along the way, but after this point we started to form sub-groups depending on the pace of climbing. The first rule I follow is "Listen to your body; follow your own pace" to minimize getting altitude sickness




The guy in white-brown stripe shirt is our guide; we call him Jay Chou ;) He is Dusun from the largest ethnic group Kadazan-Dusun in Sabah and he guides average 8 trips per month. I think Mt K guides earn handsomely as they also have some side-line businesses such as carrying our bags. The one in the blue shirt is his assistant and still learning to be a guide.




We started to walk in the cloud forests which were most of the time enveloped in the thick and saturated mist. The weather is so humid that this part of the mountain is hardly seen from the bottom. The pale green lichen are hanging on the brunches, mosses cover the tree trunks.




When we walked out of the thick forest, we reach 5 Kilometer point (starting from Mesilau) and the view was breath taking. This section of the route has some of my favorite scenes. This is where we started to see the shorter trees and various shades of green.




The weather favors us for the climb. It started to rain in the late afternoon but it was not so heavy. We manage to continue walking under the cover of poncho (rain coat). The tongkat (hiking stick) is very useful along the accent. It helps to reduce the knee injuries. Now only 4 of us are in the same group. The younger ones have already gone up fast.




This section also makes a difference Mesilau trail from Timpohon. It is the ridge connecting between two mountains. By now, I started to feel the exhaustion and the impact of thin air. I also notice the walking speed is getting slower. This could be the tipping point for tomorrow summit climb if I am not careful.




The flora around this place at about 3000meter is colorful. The small reddish flowers closer to me are Rhododendron ericoides which is found nowhere else in the world (Ref: Jacobson). The guide books say we can varieties of pitcher plants (Nepenthes) along the trails. Probably I am anxious about the climb and thus not looking around; I only saw a few small pitcher plants. After this point, it rains and no more chance to take any photos until we reached Laban Rata Resthouse.




20 May, my official birthday, at 2am: we are ready for the summit climb. I feel I am overly protecting myself as I do not feel the intense cold weather inside the building. However, when we are walking up, I understand why my friends who ever climbed before suggested me for the protections. It is 8 degrees C at Laban Rata.




I follow "go slow and steady", and successfully checked in at Sayat Sayat hut at 4:07am (I was told that I won't be allowed to continue the climb if I reach Sayat Sayat after 4:30am) and continued the climb alone. It was dark and cold but I take time to walk up. I met our guide and two other friends at the 8 KM point.




The strong wind attacks the climbers from various directions. The 3-4 degrees C cold air is cutting through the skin. That is where I appreciate all the protections. We take some photos and continue the climb.




Getting closer to 6am, started to see the rays of sunlight. I still have about 200 meter to go. When I started to see the light, the view around was magnificent and thus I walk even slower to give myself some more time to enjoy the moment. After all, it is the climb what really matters.




I climbed up and reached the last few meter of Low's peak. I see many people at the top taking photos and I decided not to go up there after confirming with the guide that I reached the summit. (Later when my friends talk about how crowded and congested up there, and how they have to hold on to the signs to get their photos, I am kind of regret for not going up a few more steps and getting a photo of myself with the signs.)




The following photo is St John's peak. The local legend says "a woman who waited for her husband till her last breath was turned into a stone. Her face was made to face the South China Sea, so that she could wait forever for her dear husband's return"




This is South Peak which appears on 1 RM (Malaysian Ringgit) note. And it is my motivation. My goal is to take a photo of myself with South Peak on the way back from the Low's peak. I take a 10-minute break up there, refueled myself with overly sweet chocolates and some bananas and climb down.




Now, we are back to the South Peak. I brought prints of my artwork - flags of Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar and the South Peak in the background. The sizes of the flags roughly represent the importance of Malaysia, Singapore and my home country for this trip. Too bad, I do not have a chance to take photo with all my team as I was the last one coming down from the summit.




Time for decent. This is the time I realize the return journey. Decent sometimes can even be more difficult than the accent. Here, I have a benefit of being the last one in the group. The guides usually walk with the last one to ensure no one in the group is missing and also to assist if there is a need. Walking with the guide makes my decent much easier.




Soon after, I catch up with the group on a smoother plane. We exchange our experiences of reaching the summit, take some photos and walk down together. We are favored by the weather thus we can see the surrounding very clearly - the near by towns and even Kota Kinabalu.




We didn't really see anything on the way up as it was too dark. Now we can see the steep cliff and the path we walked through. Sometimes, I sit and slide down to save energy. We still have a long way to go from Laban Rata Resthouse back to the bottom of the hill.




The check out at Sayat Sayat Hut ensures the certificate of submit climb. I take some time to fill up my water bag and continue descending. I am the first Myanmar climber our guide has ever accompanies and thus he wants me to reach the summit. Now our guide's wish has fulfilled ;)




Between Sayat Sayat Hut and Laban Rata Resthouse is the most dangerous part of the climb. People are walking down right on the cliff with the only help of the rope. A slip or an angle spring can happen any time. No safety harness, nothing. I think it could be improved for more safety precautions.




We ask our guide if there is any accidents and injuries among the climbers. The answer was "yes" as expected. But to my surprise, most of the accidents happened along the climb between the resthouse and the starting points rather than the tough climbing points. It seems like people are more vulnerable to accidents when they are off-guard.




I take the last shot of the summit climb before reaching Laban Rata Resthouse and appreciate human’s capability. A piece of natural resource can be turned into a tourist attraction. A tough climb can be made accessible. The flowers in the photos are seen at very high elevation only.




This is the magnificent view of Mt Kinabalu from about 2800-3000 meter. Only the short trees with white trunks can survive at harsh weather and poor soil. The sun is so intense that I barely see the peaks. The weather still favors us.




We are back to the misty region again. Although it is sunny, there is heavy mist in the forest at that altitude. Descending takes less time but it makes the muscles tense and later painful. This last portion of the climb gives me the pain in the muscles.




After walking for three and a half hours, we finally reached to the end of our climb, Timpohon gate. With the arrangement of our group lead Haravin, the vans are waiting to bring us to the restaurant. It doesn’t really matter how long it took me to reach the summit. It IS a good climb I will always remember.