Day-to-day life in Myanmar

[Caldera]

Thanks a lot for your very interesting updates from Myanmar, Simon! I hope you'll keep them coming.

 

What you've been doing there for education for many years (just looking at your poster and app) has been amazing work. I hope you'll have the energy, good health and motivation to keep it up for many more years, and I wish you all the best.

[simon43]

As usual, I get up at 6am for an exercise walk/jog of about 2km, to help to keep my lungs clear.  For now, this is just up and down the road outside the hotel.

 

The fresh vegetable seller is already doing business, and yes - that woman does have a bunch of bananas on her head.... and why not? 🙂

 

[SAFETY FIRST]

On 11/21/2024 at 4:13 PM, simon43 said:

I'm teaching Science at an 'international' school in the city.  As I'm a scientist,

Not a Rocket Scientist by any chance?

 

You may get some work on the side, a war monger, militarist could do with your skill set. 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by SAFETY FIRST

[chiang mai]

Just now, SAFETY FIRST said:

Not a Rocket Scientist by any chance?

 

You may get some work on the side, a war monger could do with your skill set. 

 

As it happens Simon was a rocket scientist but was not able to renter his old field of training here in Asia.

[simon43]

1 hour ago, SAFETY FIRST said:

Not a Rocket Scientist by any chance?

 

You may get some work on the side, a war monger, militarist could do with your skill set. 

 

Lol, yes a rocket scientist (in a way).  I designed equipment and antennas for military, weather, scientific and TV satellites.

 

As to the military angle, when I was last working in Naypyitaw, I designed and started to build a small, academic'Cubesat' on my kitchen table - small satellites like these are rather easy to build... here is the (defunct) link to my website at the time.

 

https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/C4E22AQFu9_Qyj5vMUA/feedshare-shrink_800/feedshare-shrink_800/0/1576925697917?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=M2fO2DC9I3qWNlTju0sTByelPTE-CSRg17UVh4-boLU

 

This little bird was going to transmit images of famous Myanmar sites (Shwedagon Pagoda etc) down to earth - a purely educational project. My plan was to ask China to take it up to their space station on their next Astronaut visit, 'open the window' and chuck it out into space.

 

All was going wonderfully until I got a visit from 'the military', who were very friendly and asked if I could help them to build a satellite!

 

So I decided to put that Cubesat on the back-burner for a while...

 

 

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by simon43

[recom273]

On 11/23/2024 at 9:44 AM, simon43 said:

 

Hi Card, there are plenty of dogs, but (unlike Thailand), I have never had a problem with those dogs?  They looked rather meek last week. The only 'savage' incident was a Burmese woman who was insistent that I buy her Buddha flowers 🙂  (I didn't!).

 

As to helping with the education in Myanmar, of course this is really difficult to figure out something that actually will benefit the local students.  My view is that donating to the big charities is akin to throwing your money down the drain! Many years I sat down (with myself) to try to figure out a way that my small amounts of $ could actually make a difference.  So I wrote an Android learning app which allows students/teachers to download videos while in a wifi cafe, and then to study/watch those videos 'offline' at home.  I add to these videos most weeks, and they have lesson content that mirrors the Myanmar school curriculum.  (I am also going to add videos in Burmese that help students to learn Korean and Japanese).  Some of these videos are created by myself, and the others are downloaded by me from YouTube.  Does that break the copyright rules? Probably.  But I make no money from these videos and my conscience is clear.  Of course, most poor kids won't have a mobile phone, but their local teachers certainly do, and it;s important to educate the teachers, so they can pass on this knowledge to others.

 

The other way to help is to buy school books etc, but in the current state of the country, it's impossible to physically travel to many areas. You also need to be sure that you are not 'throwing loads of mud at a wall in the hope that some will stick'.  I used to visit each school or orphanage, make a note of how many students and what grades, and then 'customise' the contents of my donation box to ensure that my $ was actually going to help those students.  Now, since I am stuck in Mandalay, I have a list of all the government schools, monastery schools and orphanages in the city that I can try to help.

 

I take the view that since I have managed to survive for 22+ years in south-east Asia on a relatively small income, I will be able to continue doing that on my UK state pension.  I don't need to leave money to my overseas family, so I might as well use it to make a small difference to the lives of others who - by fate of birth - were born into the situation where they find themselves today.

 

I had a colleague who was working at an international school in Myanmar, idk if there was any truth in it, but he said he was teaching kids of the generals and the financial rewards were very attractive.

 

Im currently teaching online in an African school, although the country has been war torn for many years yet these kids wear gold watches and brand name sport shoes. 

 

Do you get the feeling you are teaching the kids of the elite? How do you feel about that?