ေ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.