Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Rangoon View by San San Tin
ရန္ကုန္ရွဳခင္း
ကံမကုန္ေတာ့
ရန္ကုန္နဲ႔ျပန္ဆံု
ရန္ကုန္မွာေလ …ဆန္ကုန္ေျမေလးေတြ
အၾကံကုန္ေလေပးေနသူေတြ
ျခံခုန္လို႕ေနသားက်ေနသူေတြ…
ရန္ကုန္မွာ..
ခ်မ္းသာသူေတြထုနဲ႕ေဒး
ဆင္းရဲသူေတြကပိုလို႕ေတာင္ ထုနဲ႕ေဒး
ရန္ကုန္ဟာ…တိုက္က်ဥ္းေလးေတြက ထပ္…က်ပ္…ညပ္
ရန္ကုန္ျမစ္ကလာတဲ့ေလ ၀င္ေပါက္စဥ္းစားမရ အပ္ေပါက္ေတာင္ မေတြ႔တဲ့ပံု
ရန္ကုန္မွာ... ျခံက်ယ္၀င္းက်ယ္ ထည္၀ါအေဆာက္အအံုေတြ.. ဟိုတစဒီတစျပန္႕
တဲပုတ္တဲကုတ္တဲစုတ္ေတြက…ေနရာအႏွံ႕
ရန္ကုန္မွာ…ေတာင္လို အမိုက္ပံုေတြ ဟိုမွာ ဒီမွာ
အမိုက္ေတြေတာ့သိမ္းပါရဲ႕ စုပံုထားတာလည္းေတြ႕ပါရဲ႕
ဘယ္ေနရာပစ္သလဲေမးေတာ့… အေျဖမရ
ေတာ္ေသးရဲ႕ ေနရာတကာေတြ႕တဲ့ ကြမ္းတံေထြးနဲ႕ ထြီကနဲ မေထြးလို႕
ရန္ကုန္ဟာ… ေနရာတကာမွာ လက္လုပ္လက္စားေတြရဲ႕ ဆိုင္တန္း…
အလုပ္မရွိတိုင္း အျပိဳင္အဆိုင္ ဆိုင္ခင္း
အခင္းအက်င္း…တခမ္းတနားနဲ႕ ေၾကးၾကီး စားေသာက္ဆိုင္ေတြ အစီအရီနား
ဒီ သာမန္လူသားေတြ မသီနိုင္
ဗန္ေကာက္လိုမ်ား… ျဖစ္ေနသလား
ရန္ကုန္မွာ ေပါလွတဲ့အလုပ္လက္မဲ့ေတြ
လမ္းျပရဲလုပ္မယ့္အလုပ္ခန္႕လိုက္ခ်င္ရဲ႕
လမ္းကက်ဥ္းတဲ့ထဲ…ကားကမ်ား..ဟြန္းကတီး..ကားၾကီးေတြ အနိုင္က်င့္.. ကားငယ္ေတြေခါင္းထိုး၀င္
လမ္းျပမ၀င္ရင္ ကားလမ္းမရွင္းတဲ့ အဆိုးဆံုးျမိဳ႕
ဒီျမိဳ႕မ်ား… လြမ္းတသသနဲ႕ ျပန္ေရာက္ျပန္ေတာ့…ပူပံုမ်ားေျပာမကုန္စတမ္း
လူကမအားတမ္း…ယပ္တခပ္ခပ္…
အေတြးမရပ္တာက
ဒီျမိဳ႕ၾကီး ရာသီပူ.. ၀မ္းစာပူ… ေသာကေတြပူ… ေဒါသေတြဆူပြက္
…အပူေတြကမ်ားလွပါလား
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Poem in honor of Ann Sexton
I should honor Ann Sexton
after all, all we woman should
after all, I only heard about her
while leafing through
a psychiatry journal in my student health
counselor's office waiting room.
Same counselor, MSW Master of Social Work, not able to write
prescriptions for Prozac
who
advised me to enter
my first poetry competition
so I did
dropping five poems
into the tray in the English Department
under the big portrait poster
of Shakespeare
subsequently won
The William Carlos Williams Award
of the Academy of American Poets
Judge Dannie Abse
and my first $75, from poetry
subsequently
thousands of $$$ worth of poetry trips
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Kalamazoo College
Cornell
Univs of Toronto, Alberta
Helsinki, Berlin, Chiangmai, Bali
Boulder, CO.
two churches one bar
no two?
Lafayette Square near the White House
only very lightly hitched
to that dread dead anchor Burma.
It was Ann who wrote, of Cinderella
Oh, that story?
I said I would divorce my husband, and I did.
Of course, now you get to the point
where you don't really care
if anyone from your former life
is dead or alive
we all die anyway.
Only the children with their lives ahead of them really
matter
only for them would I do an Intervention.
But before that
we can go on stage
or on air
and read
our own poetry dead or alive suicide
with our own rock band
immaculately turned out
in very preppy or bohemian clothes
it does not matter which.
It's called correlation and causality, and the two things
are mighty different.
They didn't commit suicide because they were poets
they did so because life was unbearable and they were
depressed
the mental health of that day was not good, still shock treatments
and no things
like serotonin re-uptake inhibitors
not discovered or invented yet
could be the Burmese monk, healing
madness with fragrant
ripe guavas
and sour plum soup in the summer
could be anything
but it was pain and trauma that caused them to write poetry
in a kind of self-medication and a self-therapy
like thousands of people now looking for themselves
on line. One Like,
one Like
if only you will grant me one Like.
Make us new Faces
oh, that story.
Kyi May Kaung
2-21-2-16
Photo tea cabinet
KMKaung
Photo shadows of fake roses
FB
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Eassays by Alumni of Institute of Economics, Rangoon, Burma--
Please buy this, read it, and review it--
I think it is a very worthy edition, and honors our (economics) mentors whom you may never have heard about.
Highly recommended especially for young Burmese who wish to make a difference.
A joint effort published last year, but good to read always.
You can buy it worldwide on Amazon, except in some countries where Amazon is not available.
You should then get a foreigner to buy it for you by some private arrangement.
These essays show that not everyone in Burma has lost their integrity.
75 % of contributors still live in Burma--
Please note, this is edited by me as Dr Kyi May Kaung, not under my fiction moniker, KM Kaung. Remember this when you try and Google it.
http://www.amazon.com/Let-Fly-Flowers-Institute-Economics/dp/1514616378
KMKaung
2-20-2016
I think it is a very worthy edition, and honors our (economics) mentors whom you may never have heard about.
Highly recommended especially for young Burmese who wish to make a difference.
A joint effort published last year, but good to read always.
You can buy it worldwide on Amazon, except in some countries where Amazon is not available.
You should then get a foreigner to buy it for you by some private arrangement.
These essays show that not everyone in Burma has lost their integrity.
75 % of contributors still live in Burma--
Please note, this is edited by me as Dr Kyi May Kaung, not under my fiction moniker, KM Kaung. Remember this when you try and Google it.
http://www.amazon.com/Let-Fly-Flowers-Institute-Economics/dp/1514616378
KMKaung
2-20-2016
My novella FGM--
Good to read at any time of the year--because abuse is always all around us--maybe not as bad as this, but it is all a matter of degree. I wrote this because my Arab classmate wrote one--and I wanted to see if I could.
KMKaung
2-20-2016
Friday, February 19, 2016
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Daniel Craig in Defiance, a 2008 movie + literary analysis--
I liked this movie which I saw in 2008 while working briefly in Rockville, MD with the Burmese govt in exile on a Plan for Democracy and Development in Burma--
It is my practice when walking past a movie theater to see what they are showing, and in this case it was this movie Defiance,
staring Daniel Craig and based on a real story of Jews hiding in a forest.
The other movie I saw in the same theater was Nixon and Frost, based on a play of the same name.
I know there was a controversy about the languages spoken in the movie, much like Michelle Yeoh speaking a terrible Chinese-accented "Burmese" phonetically in The Lady, as Aung San Suu Kyi and being hailed as a linguist! :(
but movies seldom get it right or change everything for dramatic effect.
However, I don't agree with the august NYTs reviewer--
I found it very moving.
Somewhat like Kurasawa's Ran, in the bloody scene where the parents are assassinated by being shot point blank at the dinner table, and blood spattering on the walls.
But then I like masculine or muscular movies, violence and blood and a gritty kind of realism.
I don't know why the Wiki synopsis does not describe the most affecting scene of all, in which the character played by Craig is very sick in the forest hideout and expected to die, and has to handle a coup in the group.
These sorts of things are very common among rebel groups.
see--Burma--the Pajau murders of the 1990s
among the ABSDF.
--well, the Craig character is able to kill the coup leader in a surprise move during a showdown. Daniel Craig's acting, honed on James Bond movies, makes this scene credible.
The author Nachama Tec who based her non-fiction book on the
real life story of the Bielski brothers, says the group was focused on survival, not on attack, but anyway, a movie is a movie. No one is saying it is non-fiction also.
Kazuo Ishiguru said at that book reading in Philadelphia, that he thought in the end, "If the title still remains Remains of the Day, that's enough."
Really powerful authors like J.K. Rawling can put in clauses for artistic control and final say, but I don't think it happens often. It may not even be a good thing, as most writers are too close to their baby.
And usually the plot changes, e.g. in Revenant, which includes new characters such as the half breed son and the rescue of an Indian woman from rape, not to mention a completely different ending than the book by Michael Punke, also based on a real story, are for the better (as a movie).
One of my writing mentors B.E. used to say, "Each novel is a different animal," and it is.
Movies and books are different animals too.
A book you can read over 8 hours if it's the thriller type, over 3 to 7 days if otherwise, and Howard Zinn's A Workers' History of the United States, I have been reading for about 19 years. Not because it is not good, but because it is so good each "episode" based on real letters, of slaves, servants etc. is so intense, it takes a lot of digesting.
A movie has to be told in 2 hours, and you go for a different kind of intensified
visual experience, with sounds and lights.
They cost a lot to make, and you as the audience have to feel your effort to go there is justified, with your 10-17? $$
That's about the price of an average medium level Chinese dinner.
A French dinner will cost more.
I don't know how much prostitutes cost, though I did see, on my way to work at terrible radio station, a prostitute giving her business card to 4 business men in suits.
And how did I know she was a prostitute?
Well, obviously she did not know them, and it was a business relationship, and she was dressed as if for the beach.
I also saw a prostitute making a cash deposit at a money machine. She shrugged when she saw me staring at her, A girl has to make money somehow.
Stories are everywhere, they just need to be written down.
KMKaung
A Time to Write.
2-18-2016
Facebook post
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Why replacement for Chief Justice Scalia could set off a major battle in USA--
Why replacement for Justice Scalia will set off a major political battle.
1. Because by design, there are 9 Chief Justices in Supreme Court.
2. Because if he is not replaced, it could be stalled at 4 vs 4 forever theoretically.
3. Because there are cases coming to Supreme Court daily.
4. Because the Court and Justice Dept is separate from Executive branch.
5. Because Justice Scalia was a conservative.
6. Because it's election year.
I guess in a dictatorship or a pseudo democracy, it would not much matter.
KMKaung
A Time to Write
2-13-2016
Excerpt from autobiographical novel Once by Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.)
She
took swimming lessons in the morning, hanging onto the rail at the side and
paddling her feet, with all the other children on board.
Soon
she could float, and then swim quite well.
As he
talked about Burma with his friends, wondering how it would all be, now that Bogyoke Aung
San
was gone, and there was a major rebellion going on, Kaung kept a watchful eye
on his daughter, swimming and diving in the pool.
He
wanted so much for her to grow up in a country at peace, which was part of the
family of newly independent nations.
He
was very proud of all the young students he had gotten to know in England.
He
wanted them to return to Burma as he was doing.
He
heard everyday of so and so leaving Burma "for good."
It
seemed to him that those who left were mainly people of mixed parentage, who
feared a too strident nationalism.
"The
rats are leaving the sinking ship," he had commented to his wife, one
night on the Leicestershire. "Perhaps
one day Burma will become Communist. There
are so many poor people in Burma. Communism
appeals to the poor ."
Glamis
was silent for a long time.
The
lawyer and the army officer wanted to discuss the rebellion.
As
they sat in the sun near the swimming pool, on the white metal lacework chairs
that got so hot, they discussed their future
and their country's endlessly with "Uncle Kaung," as they
called him.
"The
drums from the Independence Day celebrations had hardly faded, when the damned
Karen rebelled," the army officer, an ethnic Burman, said.
"So
would I, if I were Karen," the lawyer agreed. "Why, under the English they were respected fighters, they had
their own division in the Army, they had officers like Saw Kya Doe trained at
Sandhurst. Most of them are
Christians. Mostly well-educated, at
least in the cities. Perhaps they don't
want to be second-class citizens under us Burmans."
Copyright Kyi May Kaung
Image--Collage, Swimming pool, copyright KM Kaung
2-13-2016
Copyright Kyi May Kaung
Image--Collage, Swimming pool, copyright KM Kaung
2-13-2016
Friday, February 12, 2016
My novella Black Rice
My novella Black Rice.
Poet ko ko thett (he prefers his name spelled in lower case like e.e. cummings) has called it "all you ever need to read to understand Burma."
2-12-2016
Amazon review of Dominic Dunne's In Another City not my Own--by K M Kaung
My Amazon review of Dominic Dunne's In Another City not My Own, about the OJ Simpson trial--
KMKaung
2-12-2016
From 2012 Carey S. Biron of IPS quoted me--
Quote of yesterday/today.
Carey S. Biron of IPS, see link below, quoted me--in 2012--
'The United States needs to be very stingy about removing sanctions, as once sanctions are removed the Burmese military government (now in civilian clothes) is likely to dump Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD and the pro-democracy forces,” Kyi May Kaung, an analyst based in Washington, told IPS.'
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/05/over-investment-fears-loom-in-myanmar/
Carey S. Biron of IPS, see link below, quoted me--in 2012--
'The United States needs to be very stingy about removing sanctions, as once sanctions are removed the Burmese military government (now in civilian clothes) is likely to dump Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD and the pro-democracy forces,” Kyi May Kaung, an analyst based in Washington, told IPS.'
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/05/over-investment-fears-loom-in-myanmar/
Take some heat for bitterly cold days--Read The Lovers by K M Kaung
Take some heat for the bitterly cold days--
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
37 nats of Burma from nat wkipedia--
King Anawrahta
of Bagan (1044–1077) designated an official pantheon of 37 nats after
he had failed to enforce a ban on nat worship. His stratagem of
incorporation eventually succeeded by bringing nats to Shwezigon Pagoda portrayed worshipping Gautama Buddha and by enlisting Śakra , a Buddhist protective deity, to head the pantheon above the Mahagiri nats as Thagyamin.[5][8] Seven out of the 37 Nats appear to be directly associated with the life and times of Anawrahta.[8]
The official pantheon is made up predominantly of those from the royal houses of Burmese history, but also contains nats of Thai (Yun Bayin) and Shan (Maung Po Tu) descent; illustrations of them show them in Burmese royal dress. Listed in proper order, they are:
The official pantheon is made up predominantly of those from the royal houses of Burmese history, but also contains nats of Thai (Yun Bayin) and Shan (Maung Po Tu) descent; illustrations of them show them in Burmese royal dress. Listed in proper order, they are:
- Thagyamin (သိကြားမင်း)
- Min Mahagiri (မင်းမဟာဂီရိ)
- Hnamadawgyi (နှမတော်ကြီး)
- Shwe Nabay (ရွှေနံဘေး)
- Thonbanhla (သုံးပန်လှ)
- Taungoo Mingaung (တောင်ငူမင်းခေါင်)
- Mintara (မင်းတရား)
- Thandawgan (သံတော်ခံ)
- Shwe Nawrahta (ရွှေနော်ရထာ)
- Aungzwamagyi (အောင်စွာမကြီး)
- Ngazi Shin (ငါးစီးရှင်)
- Aung Pinle Hsinbyushin (အောင်ပင်လယ်ဆင်ဖြူရှင်)
- Taungmagyi (တောင်မကြီး)
- Maungminshin (မောင်မင်းရှင်)
- Shindaw (ရှင်တော်)
- Nyaunggyin (ညောင်ချင်း)
- Tabinshwehti (တပင်ရွှေထီး)
- Minye Aungdin (မင်းရဲအောင်တင်)
- Shwe Sitthin (ရွှေစစ်သင်)
- Medaw Shwezaga (မယ်တော်ရွှေစကား)
- Maung Po Tu (မောင်ဘိုးတူ)
- Yun Bayin (ယွန်းဘုရင်)
- Maung Minbyu (မောင်မင်းဖြူ)
- Mandalay Bodaw (မန္တလေးဘိုးတော်)
- Shwe Hpyin Naungdaw (ရွှေဖျင်း နောင်တော်)
- Shwe Hpyin Nyidaw (ရွှေဖျင်း ညီတော်)
- Mintha Maungshin (မင်းသား မောင်ရှင်)
- Htibyuhsaung (ထီးဖြူဆောင်း)
- Htibyuhsaung Medaw (ထီးဖြူဆောင်း မယ်တော်)
- Pareinma Shin Mingaung (ပရိမ္မရှင် မင်းခေါင်)
- Min Sithu (မင်းစည်သူ)
- Min Kyawzwa (မင်းကျော်စွာ)
- Myaukhpet Shinma (မြောက်ဘက်ရှင်မ)
- Anauk Mibaya (အနောက် မိဘုရား)
- Shingon (ရှင်ကုန်း)
- Shingwa (ရှင်ကွ)
- Shin Nemi
Monday, February 08, 2016
Most people who visit this blog are from France--
Ten times more people from France than from the USA visit my blog http://kyimaykaung.blogspot.com per week.
Others are from (new) Chile, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Burma, etc., but not in order.
KMKaung
2-8-2016
Sunday, February 07, 2016
Be careful on Internet--
You should not dress and make up your child like an adult, nor display photos of your children on public blogs.
Here is the reason why--Jon Benet Ramsey aged six, was murdered in her home in Colorado, in a rich community, and the murder has not been solved to this day.
Pl take heed.
The world is full of pedophiles and other wierdos who prey and find their victims on the Internet. One worked at UNICEF.
People are fishy if
1. you have say one--only one mutual friend with them on FB.
2. they put up an attractive photo, maybe of a stranger, maybe of them 20-30 years ago.
3. they have no posts and no interests.
4. they try to strike up a conversation with you, it is always, "Hello dear how are you."
5. they have things on their blogs, but they are racist or obscene.
Mute the conversation and unfriend or block them at once.
Here is Jon Benet wiki--
pl read it.
KMKaung
2-7-2016
Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Unemployed elephants
This NYTs piece says Burma has banned export of raw timber--anyone know if this is so--
2-2-2016
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Note: If you know nothing about economics, pl do not depend on hearsay. Pl take ecos. 101 or read or educate yourself. There are lots of ... -
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Famous+Chinese+tenors#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:12005ab7,vid:_d4ap5I_tmk,st:0
