Myat Thura

Happy New Year 2009 to all my friends and readers. I have been writing this blog for more than 3 years now, and received more than 120,000 visitors so far. I would like to say "Thank You" to all my visitors and friends who come and visit my blog. And I hope things will be better for all of you in 2009.

“Vietnamese security firm BKIS proved that all Asians look alike - to a computer; the firm showed it can fool any popular face-recognition “security” system in any brand-name notebook computer quite easily with a photo; the built-in webcams on Toshiba, Lenovo and similar notebooks scan eyes and similar conspicuous features, and BKIS simply enhanced those facial parts on the otherwise normal photos to fool the computers; companies that have been hyping facial-recognition as superior to fingerprints or simple passwords had no immediate comment.” Source: Bangkok Post - Facial Recognition is flawed I am not sure whether this is true or not. If this is really true, it is quite worrying. Why? The first thing is, I am an Asian, and my notebook with built in facial recognition software installed for security is no longer safe. However, I don’t own an advanced notebook, and I don’t have faith in such kind of biometric. So why worry? There is something to be worried about. Facial recognition i...

If you are looking are Myanmar pages only, here is a search site for you. Essentially a Google custom search engine customized to search only Myanmar websites, this search results will show only those posts from Myanmar websites. Apart from searching Myanmar websites, there is no other use for this website. Anyway, you don’t need to know how to customize Google custom search as the site owner has already customized for you. Visit Myanmar Website Search .

Here is another Myanmar online social networking site. Written in Myanmar (Burmese) language, Myanmar Friends is another online social networking site that enters into this recent trend among Myanmar (Burmese) people all over the world. You can become member of this online Myanmar social friends network, make friends, send private messages, comments on other friend’s profiles, upload your own photos. There are also sections on forums, chats, web directories, and links to International Universities and educational institutions all over the world. This site seems to be quite a useful and popular social networking site among online Myanmar friends. Visit Myanmar Friends Social Network site.

If you want to know about the memory of your computer or laptop, such as brand, size, speed, number, etc., then this site is for you. Just for curiosity or for memory upgrade, this site will provide wealth of information on the brand, type, size, speed, number of your memory as well as suggestion for your memory upgrade. You can also search for compatible memory for the upgrade. The most use for this site would be to check before your memory upgrade. To use the automatic memory scanner from Orca, you will need to download and install the exe file from the site. To know more about your memory, visit the Orca Memory Scanner .

There is now a new Myanmar information website for the foreigners who want to know more about Myanmar. Today in Myanmar is a new website on Myanmar culture, custom, travel information, travel advice, Myanmar life, Myanmar food, interesting places in Myanmar, information on hotels, guest houses, restaurants and many other useful information on Myanmar. I was also invited to write articles related to Myanmar on this website on Myanmar. You can visit Today in Myanmar and give me some comments on the articles I write.

If you ever traveled to Mandalay, the second capital of Myanmar, one place you must visit is U Bain bridge (U Pain Bridge). It is possibly one of the longest wooden bridges in the world, connecting the two banks of Taungthaman Lake, in Amarapura (City of Eternity), which used to be the capital of Kone-boun Dinesty. The bridge was built by U Bain (U Pain), who was the lord of the villages on the other side of Taungthaman Lake. Historical accounts said the main reason U Bain built the bridge was that he wanted quick access for his villagers to the Capital Amarapura so that he could stage a coup! Nobody knows if this is true, but he was later procecuted with the same charges and was sentenced to death. Although he died, his name lives on as the builder of the longest wooden bridge in Myanmar, and the name of the bridge officially becomes U Bain Bridge (U Pain Bridge). The bridge still serves as the most important communication link for the people of his villages. Situated just close to Ma...

To try delicious Myanmar cuisine, you don't necessarily need to come to Myanmar. There are a number of Myanmar restaurants worldwide. One of the Myanmar restaurants I would like to mention is Inle Myanmar Restaurant in Singapore. Situated in Peninsula Plaza, in the heart of downtown Singapore, Inle is a nice restaurants famous among the Myanmar people living and working in Singapore. The restaurant serves a variety of Myanmar cuisine at a reasonable price. Some of the dishes on offer include various kinds of Myanmar salads, mohinga, various Myanmar noodles, curry, as well as .... Read more about Inly Myanmar Restaurant in Singapore .

When you visit Myanmar, you might want to try some Myanmar dishes. For most foreign visitors, this can be easily done at a local Myanmar restaurant. There are a number of restaurants in Yangon and all over the country, which offer delicious Myanmar cuisine. The only problem for a foreign visitor would be to find a nice and decent Myanmar restaurant, and what dish to order. Most restaurants in Myanmar that sell Myanmar dishes are not intended for foreigners. Their main customers are local Myanmar people. Thus, they are usually unprepared for an occasional foreign customer who appears without prior warning. Most Myanmar restaurants don’t have menu. Even if they have one, one cannot expect to have a menu written in English. And even an English menu won’t have any meaning for a foreigner if it is not accompanied with a picture of dishes. However, there is one very simple way to overcome this potential problem. Unlike European or Chinese cuisine, most Myanmar dishes are ..... Read more ab...

All channel Music is a new Myanmar MP3 music site. There are a number of albums from various singers, both current and past. The number and scope of songs available on this site seemed to be quite extensive. You can also search the site in English as well as Myanmar (Burmese). You can search artists or singers, albums and songs. There will be sections on music video and ring tone, but ..... Read more in Another New Myanmar MP3 Download Site on Myanmar Man's Diary .

Breakfast for many people in Myanmar is fried rice. Usually it is a mixture of cooked rice and other leftovers from the evening before. One or two egg is often stirred into the fried rice. Sometimes, some slices of fried Chinese pork sausage is added to it. Most usually, a kind of steamed beans sold by vendors in the early morning is added. This makes a cheap but tasty and nutritious breakfast for most families. Another popular breakfast for Myanmar people is mohinga (monhinga). This is a peppery fish broth eaten with rice vermicelli. This is eaten steaming hot. Vegetable fritters, slices of fish cake or hardboiled egg are usually added to give extra nutrition. This is further enhanced with the addition of chopped coriander leaves, morsels of crispy fried garlic, fish sauce, a squeeze of lime and chili. This is the most popular dish ...... Read more about Myanmar Breakfast .

According to some internet news, prepaid GSM SIM cards will be available in Myanmar soon. According to unofficial reports, these GSM SIM cards are to be sold in US dollars initially, aiming at tourists coming to Myanmar. Although the price is yet to be confirmed, it is rumoured that the SIM cards will be sold at around 50 US dollars each. Each SIM card will comes with US$ 10 worth of credit. The prepaid top up cards will be sold in cards of US$ 10, US$ 30 and US$ 50. US$ 10 card will have validity of one week, US$ 30 with ...... Read in Prepaid GSM mobile phone cards to be available soon in Myanmar .

Getting a one year marriage visa extension in Thailand is not difficult if you meet the requirements and know the procedure. According to Thai immigration law, if you are married to a Thai (man or woman), you are entitled to apply for one year marriage visa. However, there are a few legal requirements for this. 1. You must have a valid marriage certificate. Your certificate can be a Thai one or from another country. This marriage certificate must be in Thai or in English. If it is in other language, you must first translate it into English, which must be certified by your embassy in Thailand. 2. If your marriage is a customary marriage, this is not considered legal in Thailand. You must be able to show the original certificate issued by the legal authority in your country. 3. Both you and your partner must earn at least 40,000 baht a month. This is an average calculated on the income during the whole year. And this income is the total income of both the couple. For example, if you earn...

I have written about how to test your broadband speed using free internet utility in the article “ Check your Internet Broadband Connection Speed “. Someone who is quite experienced with testing broadband speed suggested another site for testing the internet connection speed. The test meter at Check Speed shows ...... Read in Another broadband speed test .

“Look to the southwest after sunset on Dec. 1 for a close conjunction between three bright solar system objects: the moon, Venus and Jupiter. If you have binoculars, you might even be able to fit all three of them in the field of view. Between now and then, you can see Jupiter and Venus getting closer together each evening.” I just read these lines from MSNBC website. Although it is not yet December 1 ....... Read in Venus, Jupiter shine on Monday Night .

Here is a new Myanmar music mp3 site. This site has a collection of Myanmar music mp3 files from various artists. The Myanmar Music Online mp3 site is the latest in a series of Myanmar mp3 sites currently setting up on the internet. The Myanmar Music Online site has ..... Read in New Myanmar mp3 download .

If you want to know how linux feels like or if you just want to test linux on your computer, you can download one of these linux installers freely available on the internet. However, installing linux on the computer also is risky. The worst is your computer refuses to reboot, and you end up reformatting the whole hard disk to reinstall windows, thus losing all your important data. Believe me, it already occured to me once. In other instances, your linux will not recognize some peripheries such as mouce and key board. And many times, linux is difficult to uninstall. However, there is a risk free solution. The solution is a portable linux. I found a truly portable linux ........ Read in Really Portable Linux - No installation Needed.

(BangkokPost.com) - Army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd on Thursday afternoon denied that the army was preparing to stage a coup d'état after the widespread coup rumours triggered panic among the public throughout the day. According to the spokesman, the military tanks moved to the First Infantry Division (King's Guards) for the cadets to see, and the vehicles had already returned to the Fourth Cavalry Squadron (King's Guards). The national army chief, Gen Anupong Paojinda, and the army chief of staff, Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha, were reportedly travelled to meet the Statesman and Privy Council president, Gen Prem Tinsulanonda, at Si Sao Thewes residence Thursday. Source: Bangkok Post

Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat will declare state of emergency specifically for the Don Mueang and Suvarnabhumi International airports to empower police to break the demonstrations, a source said. The prime minister would not use military forces to deal with the protesters but would use police. The source said forces from the Metropolitan Police Bureau would be deployed to crack down on protesters at the Don Mueang airport and police from the Provincial Bureau 1 would be used to deal with protesters at the Suvarnabhumi. Source: The Nation

Suvarnabhumi Airport will remain closed until 6pm of November 29, according to Airports of Thailand Acting President Serirat Prasutanond. Serirat also added that Don Mueang Airport would be shut down until 6pm of Friday, November 28. He said on Thursday that he has sought an injuction for the court's protection of Don Mueang Airport. Source: The Nation

Here is a brief update on the current situation in Thailand. Suvarnabhumi Airport, the country's main airport and one of the major hubs of Asia is closed, because of PAD protesters taking control of the airport. Don Mueang Airport, the old airport is also closed today, after some PAD protesters seized control of the domestic passenger terminal. The prime minister is currently in Chang Mai. Army commander in chief has suggested the parliament should dissolve and call for a new election. PM refused to accept the suggestion. A group of 30 PPP (the government party) MPs asked the PM to fire the Army commander in chief. PAD refuses to back down. Now, everybody is expecting another military coup. And I cancel my trip to Bangkok.

The head of Thailand's powerful army has asked the government to dissolve parliament and call new elections. Gen Anupong Paochinda denied the move amounted to a coup, and also called on anti-government protesters to withdraw from Bangkok's international airport. Members of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) took over the airport on Tuesday, after months of protests. It was the PAD's most dramatic move so far after months of calling for the government to resign. It is unclear where Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, who was due to return to Thailand on Wednesday from an Asia-Pacific summit in Peru, now is. However, Gen Anupong said the government was still in control. "This is not a coup," he told a news conference. "The government still has full authority. These points are the way to solve the problem which has plunged the country into a deep crisis," Gen Anupong said. The protesters, who have also been occupying a government compound in t...

Myanmar Space is a new social networking site for Myanmar speaking people all over the world. There is a char room, private messages, photos, video upload, forum, polls as well as ........ Read in Myanmar Social Networking Site - Myanmar Space .

There are very little blog directories that list the Myanmar blogs. However, there are still few Myanmar blog directories with an extensive list of Myanmar blogs. Here are some of them I discovered. The first one is the Myanmar Blog Directory . It is a blogger based blog with alphabetical listing of Myanmar blogs. There are also some useful articles on ....... Read in Myanmar Blog Directory .

The most famous song about Chin Hills and Chin Land, by the same song writer Salai Thaw Na. This song was sung very frequently in Chin Land as well as aired on Myanmar TV quite frequently. This song is also in Burmese. Enjoy.

Here are high resolution Myanmar Maps created my Myanmar blogger Nyi Lynn Seck. He requested some body to make all of them into a .rar file so that people can easily download these maps. These are .................... Read at High Resolution Myanmar Maps .

The above is a music video by Kyo Kyar and Cindy , two Chin singers about Chin Land. The title is " The Home Land of Chin People " and composed by a Chin song writer Salai Thaw Na . The lyric is in Burmese, not in Chin. Please enjoy.

I set up a new wordpress blog at my own server at Bamarlay's Diary . I imported all the posts and the comments from this blog to my Bamarlay's Diary . However, this blog will still be running and I will still be posting new articles here. The new blog, Bamarlay's Diary is still a beta and will be running parallel to the current one. Please check it to see any errors and help me by let me know. You can drop a comment anywhere about my new blog. Thank you very much.

If you are looking for high resolution maps of Myanmar (and the states and divisions of Myanmar), blogger Nyi Lynn Seck has posted the links to the maps on his blog. The first maps released include Kachin State, Kaya State, Kayin (Karen) State, Chin State and Mandalay division. These are high resolution maps of 2048 x 2880 jpeg files downloadable free and usable for non commercial and academic use. EPS version also availabe if request from him personally. You can download these maps here at High Resolution Maps of Myanmar Release (1) .

Many people reached my website by searching Myanmar (Burmese) astrological sites. So I think it would be a valuable to my visitors if I could compile a list of all the websites about Myanmar astrology. Here is a few sites that I have found on the internet. http://mmastrology.myanmarbloggers.org/ http://myanmarastrology.blogspot.com/ http://7spherehere.blogspot.com/ I hope these links will be of interest to my readers.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon another new Myanmar blog with useful and interesting articles. The blog, Myanmar Technology , has a collection of articles on computer and related articles as well as other useful tits and bits, all written in Myanmar. This site is intended for Myanmar people only as it is written entirely in Myanmar. The most useful article here would be the link to downloads of Myanmar Computer Journal, which is a popular computer and IT journal in Myanmar. The downloads of Myanmar Computer Journal is here . There are also links to other e-books written in Myanmar on this site too. If you want to download e-books on Technology written in Myanmar, this site is worth a look.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across another new interesting Myanmar blog on the internet. Diary of IT Men is a blog of a group of IT professionals from Myanmar. It started just a few months ago but I found a lot of interesting and useful articles on computer, internet and IT technology. The blog is hosted as a sub domain on myanmarbloggers.org . No, don't go and try to find the website for www.myanmarbloggers.org. The website does not exist. But I found a number of subdomains on myanmarbloggers.org. The purpose of the domain name is to overcome the firewall set up by the Myanmar ISPs. If you want to find out more about those blogs hosted on Myanmarbloggers.org, you can make a google search here for myanmarbloggers.org . Alternatively, you can find the list of all the blogs hosted on this domain here at directory.myanmarbloggers.org .

A few months ago, I posted an article on a simple and easy way to insert an image into gmail message. Everybody knows that it is difficult to insert an image into a gmail message directly. Many people found it very useful and I am pleased to be able to help you all. Many people give me some neat, useful and easy ways to insert images and pictures into gmail messages. I will sum up some of them here. 1. The one I mentioned is to compose your message, either simple one or html message, in google doc, then copy and paste the whole message into gmail. 2. If the pciture is on the internet, just right click , select view image, click ctrl-A (to select all, not just the image) and ctrl-C (to copy the html codes). Then go and paste it in gmail. Remember one thing, don't click the image and copy. It won't work. You need all those html codes, not just the image. If your image is not on the internet, then upload it to either flickr or picasa , and do the same thing. 3. You can download a ...

I recently stumbled upon an interesting Myanmar personal blog on the web. The blogger is Myo Kyaw Htun, a Myanmar computer and IT professional from Mandalay. He is currently working as a PHP programmer in Bangkok, Thailand. He set up his personal blog mainly as an IT related blog. I found many interesting and useful articles on his blog and here, I share his blog to all my readers. Mya Kyaw Htun

For those of you who want to read the proposed Myanmar Constitution 2008 by the current Myanmar government, here is the document on scribd. You can see it online or you can download it. It is the official translation and publication. Myanmar Constitution 2008 English version Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Politics Asian 2008 constitution Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008) Printing September, 2008 (10000) Copies Printed by Printing & Publishing Enterprise, Ministry of Information CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Preamble Basic Principles of the Union State Structure Head of State Legislature Executive Judiciary Defence Services Citizen, Fundamental Rights and Duties of the Citizens Election Political Parties Provisions on State of Emergency Amendment of the Constitution State Flag, State Seal, National Anthem and the Capital Transitory Provisions General Provisions ... ... ... ... ... ... P...