US is no better

The following quote is from "If you want to study in the United States" published by the Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. http://educationusa.state.gov

Under U.S. law, all applicants for nonimmigrant visas are viewed as intending immigrants until they can convince the consular officer that they are not.

Reading between the lines -- it is saying loud and clear that everybody all over the world wants to live in the US until you can prove that you don't. I am sorry it's discrimination :-)

The Internet connection has been really slow recently. I was thinking to myself my ISP was up to something. I sure was right. Now some proxy services have been blocked :-)

I think they wasted a lot of time and energy to do this --- from both sides (ISP and users). Another Tom and Jerry story to talk about. :-)

http://www.pureprivacy.com blocked

However, http://www.pureprivacy.net still accessible though :-)

http://www.proxyweb.net blocked

http://www.anonymization.net blocked

Denny Hastert, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has just started his own blog on the official speaker.gov site.

http://www.speaker.gov/journal/index.shtml

FBI abusing patriotic law?

FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations.

Is America still a good place to live? Something to think about.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102301352.html

Myanmar Unicode Font from Myanmar Natural Language Processing Committee

http://www.mcf.org.mm/unicode/opentype.html

I created the following picture with GIMP. I used the gradient fill using sky blue as a foreground color and pink as a background. I then applied

Script-Fu > Decor > Coffee Stain

and

Fuzzy Border

Coffee stain

GIMP commands

With the help of Internet and emails, the distance doesn't matter much these days. Even though I haven't met my university-day friends for a very long time, I feel right next to them with emails and other communication technologies. I met David and Doris Horton in Fort Wayne, Indiana while I was studying there.

David and Doris Horton in Alaska

Neil and Diana Sowards (my host parents while I was in Fort Wayne)

A funny page to manipulate George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America.

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Horse-drawn cart in Pyin Oo Lwin (Maymyo)

U Pain bridge and Taung Tha Man Lake in Mandalay

Kids playing

Adding more items to my panel in Fedora Core 3

Right click on the panel. Choose "Add to panel." The following screen will pop up.

Add to panel screen shot

I added the 'keyboard layout indicator', 'battery charge indicator', 'force quit' and 'search for files' items to my panel.

My panel after adding the above-mentioned items

Installing WinMyanmar fonts to my Fedora Core 3 systems

These are the steps I did:

1. Copy 'winttf' folder, where my fonts are stored, to /usr/share/fonts/winttf
2. Edit 'fonts.cache-1', adding "winttf" 0 ".dir"

Here is the fonts.cache-1 file. The last line is what I added for Burmese fonts.

"default" 0 ".dir"
"bitstream-vera" 0 ".dir"
"openoffice" 0 ".dir"
"bitmap-fonts" 0 ".dir"
"winttf" 0 ".dir"

I got the following journal entry through an email from a friend in Arizona. Jeffery and Annie Dieselberg were American Baptist Missionaries in Bangkok, Thailand.

Dieselberg, Jeffery and Annie

A Wretch Like Me - 10/17/2005

As I walked in the door of a local hotel in the red light area, my ears were instantly bombarded by the voices of two men, American and British, sharing their sexual experiences of the women here in Bangkok. As they described in graphic detail each of these sexual encounters and the women's humiliation, I began to feel sick to my stomach. They were too loud to dismiss and most of the men in this particular lobby were there for the same reasons. I sat there and prayed for a while, wanting very much to confront them but very aware how unwise that would be. As I prayed, the song 'Amazing Grace' kept coming to mind. I began to sing aloud quietly. The men seemed oblivious so I got up and decided to wait by the front door where these men were sitting. I kept singing over and over. One of the men got up and left. The other, a man in his late 50's or early 60's, sat there alone and began to notice me. Finally he stood up and came over to me and said, "I just want to hear what it is you are singing." He recognized the tune and joined me, ". . . how sweet the sound." He looked [at] me in the eyes and then walked out the door! As I watched him walk into the darkness I smiled and continued singing, ". . . that saved a wretch like me." "Yes!" I prayed! "Get him God! Let the words of the song sink into his mind as he heads to the bars. Let the tune linger throughout the night and haunt him with the message!" Then it struck me, he wasn't the only one singing, ". . . that saved a wretch like me!" So was I. But for the grace of God where would I be?

I confessed my own self-righteousness and I prayed for this man. Where is the church, I wondered in seeking to save these lost? This man may have grown up in Sunday School. Today he wears several chains of amulets around his neck as he uses prostitutes. What went wrong? I struggled with the burning challenge for the church to be a place of grace that brings healing and restores men and women in wholesome relationships with God and each other. For many, the church appears too "clean," too "good," and too hard to relate to. Many men sit in church on Sunday, hurting and lonely and on the verge of going elsewhere to fill their loneliness and heal their secret brokenness. They slip out the back door unnoticed with "a wretch like me" mentality, missing out totally on the "amazing grace that saved." Lost, they come here to Bangkok hoping to find some piece of heaven in a sexual encounter with a Thai prostitute. Empty they return home and try to satiate in pornography addictions and fantasies. In their minds, intimacy with a prostitute or a pornographic image may be safer than a relationship with the church family.

As I prayed for the man, I realized it is only grace that makes me any different in God's eyes. God's heart is passionately longing to demonstrate His grace and truth to this man. I felt convicted and I sensed God's challenge to demonstrate His grace, stand up for His truth and to encourage the church to reach out to those who are lost on their journey for intimacy. Many are coming to Thailand but God's grace will continue to pursue them and to sing to them. When they return home who will take up the song and share the testimony until they fully comprehend, "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see?"

The famous bridge on the river Kwai in Thailand

Gas prices in Burma up (became international? :-)

The official gas price from the government gas stations has changed from 180 kyats (18 cents) to 1,500 kyats (a dollar and a half) a gallon today. The unofficial price in the market is 3,500 kyats (3 dollars and a half). Bus fare has risen to 80 kyats (8 cents) to get downtown. It has started with 20 kyats (2 cents). Later it was changed to 50 kyats (5 cents) for the buses that use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).

Meanwhile, the salary remains down in the ocean floor.

I spent all day reinstalling Windows XP on a computer at the Myanmar Christian Fellowship of the Blind. The computer I was working on was quite old. It was Pentium 3 (300 MHz) with 128 MB of RAM. Hard disk had 20 GB of space. I made 2 partitions, 10 GB each. Windows XP ran fine on this. It ran a bit slow with Norton Antivirus 2005. I decided not to have any antivirus program since they don't have Internet access to be exposed to the world of virus and trojans anyways.

Here in Burma, we made old computers work with pirated Windows software. Linux is not a big thing because most people don't have reliable Internet connections. Nobody sells software for Linux. However, we can buy any versions of Windows, Adobe Suite, AutoCAD, Macromedia DreamWeaver and any software you name it. It cost only 500 kyats (50 cents) a piece. I love Burma. All local Christian organizations use pirated software, which cost 50 cents a piece. (Note: The maximum salary of a professor at a seminary is $20 a month.)

Mehm Thaung Tun, the president of Mon Baptist Bible School, using a computer donated by Friends of Burma. (www.friendsofburma.org) The computer has pirated Windows XP installed. Microsoft Office XP, Adobe PageMaker, Photoshop and Macromedia DreamWeaver, Visual Studio and many other software are all pirated copies.

Illusion

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink.

If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating.

It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see.

I have no idea who created this picture. I got this through one of those forwarded junk emails :-)

Kachin Environment Report banned by KIO (Kachin Independent Organization)

KIO banned the environment report saying it tarnished the KIO image. Is it as bad as any repressive ruling class?

http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp%3fa=5092&z=153

Ceasefire Groups Defiant

Ethnic ceasefire groups in Burma will not surrender their arms to the junta, despite the government's stated claim that all such groups must disarm, said officials from three ethnic ceasefire groups.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp%3fa=5091&z=153

Myanmar being slashdotted :-) for its Internet censorship

In the world of computer scientists/geeks, being 'slashdotted' is an honor :-) Today, an article concerning Myanmar's Internet is being slashdotted :-) Isn't it a fun thing to be in Burma? :-)

Myanmar slashdotted

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/13/2222208&tid=153&tid=187&tid=185

Study Says Software Makers Supply Tools to Censor Web

Fortinet, a company in Sunnyvale, California, is supplying filtering software to censor the Internet in Burma

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/12/technology/12filter.html

Bus trip home

I came home from Myay Ni Gone at about 6:00 in the evening. There were a lot of people at the bus-stop. When I got on a bus, it was crowded and I decided to go to the back of the bus. The conductor of the bus shouting at everybody to go to the back. He wants to have more passengers. A poor mother was sitting on the floor, breast-feeding her baby. A father was holding his baby in his arms. The scenes I would miss if I take a taxi or if I am out of the country. The general public of Burma and their daily lives are very interesting. It would be both disappointing and rewarding at the same time if you take a bus during rush hours.

The following picture was taken from Times magazine. I don't remember who took the picture.

The dream is Honda, but the reality is the bus

Neil and Diana Sowards, my host-parents, took the following picture in Burma

Two British men helping the Internet filtering in Burma according to Mizzama News

http://www.mizzima.com/mizzima/archives/news-in-2005/News-in-Oct/13-Oct-05-43.htm

Two British men living in Rangoon and working for Bagan Cybertech are allegedly providing the company with the technical know-how for more effective internet filtering and censorship.

Sources told Mizzima the men, Paul Crilley and Karl Sumptor are also consulting with Bagan Cybertech on the best methods to monitor emails.

Crilley and Sumptor refused to tell Mizzima the nature of their work for Bagan Cybertech over the telephone today, with both men hanging up mid-conversation.

"I do not want to talk to you today," Crilley said.

A report claiming internet censorship in Burma was getting worse was released by the OpenNet Institute yesterday. The report said Bagan Cybertech had purchased Fortiguard, an internet filtering program produced by US company Fortinet.

While Fortinet denied the claim, an article published in the New Light of Myanmar in May last year, clearly shows members of the Myanmar Millennium Group Co. Ltd. (MMG) accepting the Fortinet product at a ceremony in Rangoon.

Mizzima has received reports that a technician from MMG said the company, headed by Min Zeyar Hlaing, the son in law of Lt Gen Khin Maung Than, was an official Fortinet reseller in Sunnyvale, California.

The future of Myanmar Times?

I found the following news interesting. It was about the Myanmar Times and its future.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp%3fa=5083&z=104

Internet Censorship in Burma Worsening

http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp%3fa=5074&z=153

However, we still figure out a way to go to banned sites. It is fun playing Tom and Jerry. Some of the proxies I have been using recently are:

• http://www.pureprivacy.com
• http://www.proxyweb.net
• http://www.anonymization.net
• http://www.unipeak.com
• http://www.kproxy.com
• http://www.bypass.ds4a.com.

Hkawn Let

Naing Thit Sar

BARS religion students at MIT fun fair last December.

Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery 2007

I helped some friends to apply for Diversity Visa Lottery from US state department. (Diversity Visa (DV) program is a lottery program which allows immigrant visas for people from all over the world to the States.) The followings are some of them.

http://visalottery.state.gov

Russ Kadoe (Sweetie)

Van Biak Hmung

Sui Dawt Men

Iang Hlei Par

Look at my picture :-)

Si Baw Mi

I read the Irrawaddy articles today using www.pureprivacy.com. They are at least a bit more interesting than the New Light of Myanmar articles. That's the truth, and I know many people read the New Light of Myanmar only for obituaries.

Burmese tycoons

http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp%3fa=5010&z=102

The article talked about Burmese businessmen and how they do business in Burma.

Lights, Camera -- But Where's the Action?

http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp%3fa=5002&z=107

The article talked about the standard of Burmese films.

Even though we can't compete in the international market, I still admire people in the film industry. They try their best, given a lot of limitations both in terms of finance and freedom.

I have my Aloha from Burma (Myanmar) written today. OpenOffice format

ALOHA 24

BARS second commencement was today at Po Tha Byu Hall at the seminary hill.

Bob, Hkawn Let and OJ

Sui Dawt Men and Si Baw Mi

Si Baw Mi

Si Baw Mi, Lwin Moe and Ruth Khin Aung

Si Baw Mi walking down the hill

BARS students