Last month, Friends of Burma had a board meeting. Here is the picture of their meeting in Arizona. Neil and Diana Sowards, David and Doris Horton, Tansy Kadoe and Adam Maung were there.

Friends of Burma hosts my web site and they helped me to study in the States. They helped Burmese people in small things that they can. Here is their web site: http://www.friendsofburma.org

The plight of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand

http://khitpyaing.org/modules.html?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=887

There is a new law for registration of migrant workers in Thailand. Workers have to pay 10,000 bahts (US$ 250) if they have registered before. If they are new, they have to pay 50,000 bahts (US$ 1,250). One worker said, "If I have $ 1,250, I would not come to work in Thailand in the first place." Burmese government's failed economic policy can't create jobs for our people and there have been serious problems of migrant workers around Thailand and China borders.

Yesterday I went to see Mr. Bunrak Saraggananda. He is vice president of the Association of Thai ICT Industry (ATCI) and vice president of the Asia-Oceania Computing Industry Organisation (ASOCIO).

Last month, in Bangkok post, the reporter quoted him in an outsourcing related article. There were some misunderstandings concerning Myanmar IT industry. I quoted the Bangkok Post article in my January 5, 2006 blog entry.

He showed us around his office and talked to us what he has been involved with the IT industry in Burma. It seems nice projects for Burma. I hope he will have a long-lasting relationship with his partners in Burma.

Panglong Agreement

I made a PDF version for easy reading.

Sources

http://jarmtoon.myweb.hinet.net/mainfile/panglong.htm

http://dathana.blogsopt.com

Um...... When I went to do some grocery shopping at the nearby shopping mall, I heard some guys speaking Burmese. I was in a hurry and didn't have a chance to say hi to them.

My nieces in Burma

Last Sunday, I went to Koh Kret island in the middle of Chao Phraya River. Koh Kret was founded a long time ago by ethnic Mons whose ancestors left Mon Kingdom after their capital was attaked by Along Pa Ya (the King of Burma). The island is famous for Mon-style pottery called "Hai" which is still made on the island today.

I met an old Mon man who can still speak Mon. However, his Mon sounds a bit different to me. Thai influence, I guess.

Too bad I don't have a camera any more. So I can't take any pictures.

By the way, today is Valentine day. I want to wish all of you a happy Valentine day and may you feel God's love today :-)

I finished upgrading to Fedora Core 4 on my laptop. Here is what I had to do for those of you who are interested. You can skip it if you are not crazy about computer.

First, update yum.

yum -y update yum

Download and install fedora-release-4.2.noarch RPM.

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm

Import GPG key.

rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY

Disable third-party yum repositories, if applicable.

/etc/yum.repos.d/

Upgrade mkinitrd.

yum -y upgrade mkinitrd

Update Kernel.

yum -y update kernel

Reboot. Disable SELinux, if applicable, first. vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux SELINUX=disabled

yum remove kernel-2.6.\*FC3\*

yum remove kernel-smp\*FC3\*

Upgrade your FC 4 system with yum.

yum -y upgrade

Ref:

http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Upgrading_Red_Hat_Linux_with_yum.html

I read the article, "The Rise and Fall of Burma's Casino Capital By Clive Parker/Mong La, Shan State" from the Irrawaddy today.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=5452

The article talked about the fall of casinos in Shan State because of restrictions by Chinese government.

My web site wasn't availabe for a few days. Friends of Burma, the organization hosting my web site, forgot to renew the domain. I was crazy the last few days not being able to access my site :-) Now I feel much better. I suffered in Google ranking for being offline for a few days. The search for "lwin moe" doesn't give my site on the top results any more. Maybe it will get back up in a few days :-) The moral of the story is don't forget to renew your domain.

I went to Ban Laem in Chantaburi province for my visa run yesterday. It was a four-hour bus trip to the Cambodia border. We crossed the border and had lunch at a casino in Cambodia. After lunch at about 12:30, we crossed the border back into Thailand. Voila, I had a 90-day stay in Thailand again. It took me a day and 2000 Bahts for that. On the bus, I met a Japanese guy who spoke highly of Burmese programmers.

I had to speak at the youth group at Bangkok Christ Church. I spoke about accidents, about which I spoke at MIT a few years ago.