PROFESSIONAL
P - Productive
R - Reliable
O - Organized
F - Functional
E - Efficient
S - Smart
S - Simple
I - Initiative
O - Open
N - Neutral
A - Ambitious
L - Leadership
Tao Te Ching
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and Low Depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other...
By Lao Tzu (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
တခ်ိဳ႕ကို လွတယ္ ဆိုရင္
က်န္တာေတြက မလွဘူးေပါ့။
တခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေကာင္းတယ္ ဆိုရင္
က်န္တာေတြက မေကာင္းဘူးေပါ့။
ျဖစ္တည္ျခင္း နဲ႕ မတည္ရွိျခင္း
အလြယ္ နဲ႕ အခက္
ရွည္ျခင္း နဲ႕ တိုျခင္း
အျမင့္ နဲ႕ အနိမ့္
အရင္ နဲ႕ ေနာက္
တစ္ခု မရွိဘဲ တစ္ခု ျဖစ္ႏိုင္မလား။
(Translated by TLA)
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and Low Depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other...
By Lao Tzu (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
တခ်ိဳ႕ကို လွတယ္ ဆိုရင္
က်န္တာေတြက မလွဘူးေပါ့။
တခ်ိဳ႕ကို ေကာင္းတယ္ ဆိုရင္
က်န္တာေတြက မေကာင္းဘူးေပါ့။
ျဖစ္တည္ျခင္း နဲ႕ မတည္ရွိျခင္း
အလြယ္ နဲ႕ အခက္
ရွည္ျခင္း နဲ႕ တိုျခင္း
အျမင့္ နဲ႕ အနိမ့္
အရင္ နဲ႕ ေနာက္
တစ္ခု မရွိဘဲ တစ္ခု ျဖစ္ႏိုင္မလား။
(Translated by TLA)
Shwe Paul
The following poem was composed for my beloved friend. I would like to apologize to you for my broken words, broken rhythm and broken meaning… but I believe you will surely forgive me if you know my real intention… to cheer up broken hearts…
Shwe Paul
There is a friend with five names
And, these are gained without pain
My aim is just friendly love
Altogether five is fairly enough
The first comes with mother’s gift
God may bless you, ‘long-lived’
I hope, this name can live forever
Yet, I wonder if it’s true or never
I wonder why you get another name
While you are not being insane
Because of fried beans, I thought
Your second name has been got
The third one is the worst, you say
But it means you can’t be gay
All I know is that my friend
You gaze all the girls in front!
Don’t shame because of color and height
One day, you can be tall and white
It’s just kidding, yet, my friend
Forget, and move to the end.
It’s the final name you get
Yes, every one will never forget
I beg you not forget me all
Now, the whole world will call
‘Shwe Paul’, ‘Shwe Paul’!
Scientific Development
"The science have developed in an order the reverse of what might have been expected. What was the most remote from ourselves was first brought under the domain of law, and then gradually, what was nearer: first the heavens, next the earth, then animal and vegetable life, the human body, and last of all (as yet very imperfectly) the human mind."
- Bertrand Russel, 1935
I believe I can fly
A gust of wind swiped away the pile of reddish yellow maple leaves. I was sitting on a bench near the lake ‘Placida’, looking through the ripples on the surface of water. The surrounding was so peaceful and serene. Well, a little too peaceful for me, I thought to myself. Suddenly, the blurry shadow of my face on the water surface became totally different from what I looked like. It appeared as a small, smiling, young and innocent face. It, actually, was the face I used to be familiar with. It was me when I was 8.
A thought came to my mind. Man! I am too old to be like that. I have been through many things in my life; ups and downs. I came to know many important things in life at the expense of many precious things. In all these years, my grandfather passed away, my family moved to the Netherlands and I am now studying in America, alone. I, again, looked at the image on the surface of water. I smiled at the boy smiling at me through the water.
I was told that when I was born it had been raining the whole day. Quite the opposite to the weather outside, I was delivered peacefully. I was so quiet that I even surprised and worried my parents. I didn’t cry for most of the time. My parents thought that I was too passive at first. But I was never hesitant to surprise anyone. When I turned five and started my primary school, I turned out to be a monkey. (It has been assumed that humans are decedents of monkey, so I thought it was not very wrong for me to show off my primitive human nature.) I climbed almost all trees around my house. I played all sorts of play ever known to us at that time. There was no internet; there was no play-station; there was no computer game. But I was pretty sure it was so much fun. I still remember playing with tops and flying kites. I still think flying kites is the most fascinating and interesting of all games.
I still remember the set of rules to play with tops. Children used to drew a circle, with a radius of about 2 feet, on the ground. Then, children tried to rotate the tops as quickly as they could. The last one had to put his/her top in the middle of the circle. The others tried to push it away from the circle without getting their tops stuck in the circle. Once the tops are in the circle, no one is allowed to touch his/her top. This is the most important rule, I guess. Anyone who can get the top out of the circle, without getting it stuck in the circle is the winner of the game. He is the hero! I still remember I wanted to be a hero so much that I practiced day and night rotating the top.
Later, my interest changed from the ground to the sky. It was because of my grandfather. One day, he brought me a book about air-planes. Although I couldn’t read well, I was fascinated by the photos and pictures inside the books. Yes, the sky captured my imagination, and I really wanted to fly. But how? I was looking at the birds, and thought to myself. If I had wings, I would be able to fly. So I made wings with plastic bags and glued them to my arms. I was very happy for getting such a marvelous pair of wings on my arms. Then I tried to flip the wings like birds. Well, I couldn’t lift myself a single inch, however hard I flipped. However hard I visualized myself flying, I was still on the ground. So, finally I changed my strategy. Instead of flipping the wings, I tried to glide from the table. I tried to climb up the high table and jump. Finally, I was able to be in the air. I still remember the joy I felt for my accomplishments. But my gliding was not long-lived. The table was pretty high for my age, and my legs started to hurt after a several glides. So, I stopped jumping, and looked for new solutions. I went outside of the house and looking at the sky, and thinking how I could fly. Suddenly, I saw colorful flying things in the sky. The kites! Yes, that’s it, I told to myself. Finally, even though I could not fly myself, I could fly something with my hand.
In fact, flying a kite has never been so easy; there were times that I could fly it without much difficulty, but there were times that I couldn’t even lift it. In fact, flying a kite follows the laws of aerodynamics. Well, at that time, I was too young to know all this stuff. However, flying a kite taught me an important lesson; one has to go against the wind to go up. Without wind, one cannot fly a kite. In face of obstacles, this important lesson always reminds me not to give up, and to go against the wind.
Suddenly, a gentle touch of a maple leaf on my back woke me up and sent me back to the present. I looked around the college campus, and sighed. I was going to leave this place soon too. I was graduating. I was not still sure what lies ahead of me. But one thing is for sure, I thought. There will be the wind, and I have to go against the wind to go up. Looking up the sky, I stood up slowly, saying to myself, ‘I believe I can fly.’
