I read two articles from Computer Journal and I wanted to share some excerpts here.

Professor Dr. Kochiro Ochimizu from Hankuk Aviation University, who took part in the First International Conference on Compuer Applications in Yangon, said, in an interview by Myanmar Computer Journal, that Burmese students are hardworking and motivated to learn. For Computer PhD students, only one thing is lacking in Burma -- a condusive environment. ..... A PhD candidate (Computer Science University here in Burma now has Ph.D. candidates) will need to have full access to the Internet for his professional research so he can see and interact with the real world out there. (sic.)

-- International Conference on Computer Applications (2003, February). Computer Journal, No. 108, pp. 50-56.

The following is another one.

Computer Journal also contains news on BaganNet. According to the report, BaganNet currently has 8000 subscribers and 300 broadband users. The reporter said that the BaganNet service is still slow and difficult to dial up if many users are on-line. There is also a problem of receiving no response from the server. In addition it is difficult to dial up on Saturday and Sunday nights especially when there are football (soccer) matches around Europe.

-- Slow Internet (2003, February). Computer Journal, No. 108, p 56.

It's been difficult to get connected to BaganNet dial-up server lately. It took me 15 tries (redials) to get connected.

ALOHA 2

ALOHA 2 (February, 2003) Word Format

I met with Eric Hornberger today. Anna May (president of Myanmar Institute of Theology) and some other key people from MIT are at the meeting. He had a lot of questions about BARS. We told him about our faculty problems. And also curriculum problem. We showed him the computer lab in which we have 5 PCs for BARS and 4 PCs for M. Div. students. He went to Dr. Chit Maung library, too. Overall, the meeting went well.

I stopped by to see Auntie June who is visiting from Los Angeles. It was very exciting to see her because I met her in Fort Wayne, IN late November. I met her again in L.A in December and now in Burma in February. It's so wonderful to see somebody three times in three months in three different places that are thousand miles apart.

This is an interesting article from CNN about low-tech solutions for the Internet access in villages in Laos.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/02/18/laos.onlinebybicycle.ap/index.html

I went downtown today to get some Burmese fonts. It was about 2:00 PM when I got downtown. There were a lot of cars in the traffic jam. Cars honking and people walking, it was like a busy section of town. It even seemed like a mess. There were so many sellers on the platform that people had to walk on the street. All the sellers have to live on the income they got from their shops along side the platform. The policemen were there to ask them not to sell when there are VIPs passing by.

There were a lot of people at banks today. They were all trying to withdraw money from their accounts because of rumors that have been passing around town recently. Some financial institutions have been insolvent and have been planning to give back what people have invested in. The president of the Central Bank has declared in the press conference guaranteeing that nothing is going to happen to banks and asked people to have trust in the banks. But nobody seems to be listening to him. Honestly, people do care about rumors than what is written in the newspapers. People think that most of the stuffs in the newspaper are just craps and full of government propaganda. If you went to a bank today to withdraw Kyats 10,000,000, the maximum you could withdraw today was Kyats 500,000. I don't know what's going on. No economists can predict where our economic system is heading.

Compared to four years ago, we now have many new roads in Rangoon (Yangon). That's one area of improvement the past four years. The air pollution is also much higher than it was four years ago. If we don't do anything about it, the air pollution is going to be terrible five years down the road.

I decided to update my diary once a week on the Internet. It's too much of work for Daniel, who has been hosting my site and helping me with uploading this. Thank you, Daniel.

I surfed the Internet with 16.8 Kbps today.

Well, today is Valentine's day. Burma is now keeping up with international events. People seem to have interest in Valentine's day. I just hope that in the day of globalization, people will adopt what is good from another country instead of imitating bad things and behavior. I am seeing many tourists wearing our traditional dress, longyi, etc. But we, the Burmese, are giving up our dress in favor of pants, shorts and miniskirts.

Note: ( I am going to use Burma from now on because this is the name most people know and nobody seems to know the official name, Myanmar)

It's just an ordinary day for me. I had to teach a class today.

I went to the Yoma Bank today because my Aunt wanted me to withdraw some money for her. I found out that the bank had run out of money so I couldn't withdraw any money and had to get back home :-) It's funny that a bank would run out of money and had to ask its customers to go back :-) This is Burma :-)

I surfed the Internet with 12.0 Kbps and I felt like I was surfing the Information superhighway with Model T-Ford. :-)

I went to the Karen Baptist Clinic (KBC) to take pictures for their brochure. Since the digital camera has run out of battery, the mission was aborted. We then headed to have lunch at a neary by fastfood restaurant. I heard them (doctors who are my friends from my days back in Medical School) talking about their problems in running the clinic. KBC clinic charges less to patients than private hospitals do. The mission of the clinic is to serve the poor and needy. They rely on donations for equipments and medicines. Nurses do not make much money. They make about Kyats 5,000 ( $ 5) a month. The challenge now is in maintaining a good pool of excellent human resource with that amount of salary. The management team is between a rock and a hard place. It's a work of art to balance adjustments of fees and answering the question of whether to raise the salary or not.

There was a fund fair for Dr. Chit Maung Library in the evening. It was very nice. I hope and pray that the library will be a lamp for the people in the dark. Dr. Lin Bu from Phoenix, AZ also visited our fund fair.

I can access only a few web sites today. It's so depressing. I am going to tell a friend not to sign up for BaganNet unless he desperately needs it for e-mails. I sent an e-mail to BaganNet administrator.

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Dear Sir/Madam:

It would be really nice of BaganNet if users like me could use ftp, telnet, ssh for the service we have to pay Kyats 60,000 annually and Kyats 8000 a month for 10 hours.

Thanks,

Lwin Moe
http://www.student.ipfw.edu/~moel01

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My web surfing experiences include pages like this.

I was able to borrow PCMCIA modem to use with my laptop. Therefore, I surfed the web for the very first time from Burma. It seems very nice. Many useful sites are open. I was surprised, to be honest. I didn't expect them to open this much. Anyway, they use Squid proxy server and DansGuardian content filtering software to control our access. http://dansguardian.org/?page=dgflow

I went to a seminar this morning. The seminar was about teaching English. Louis Young from Cetana Foundation led the workshop. Louis then led the discussion on teaching English. After that, I went to Maung Win's parents's house for beakfast. Computer science department had a meeting . I had to go see Dr. Shar Kler Law for the brochure on the Karen Baptist Clinic.

I found out that there is a problem with my laptop. I have to decide what to do to fix it. I either need to send it to the U.S or try to toy with it here.