Last time I wrote about my beloved Naruto. I’ve done watching all Naruto episodes from the first serie and am up to #18 of Naruto Shippuden sequel. The characters are getting face lifts in this new serie; their cloths have been changed, characters gone ugly and even their voice changed (kind of). Since it’s airing once a week, we have to wait for at least 1 or 2 weeks to download. So I’m in the process of waiting the next episode #19.

While I’m waiting for Naruto, we’ve watched a couple of other animes as well. The followings are some of the animes we watched recently.

Bleach : [ Wiki ]

I’ve heard some good reviews about Bleach so I decided to check it out. I must say it does live up to my expectations. Bleach is interesting, fun, full of actions and rapidly dwelling your interest. Although the characters are not that cute compare to Naruto, the actions scenes are very well drawn. Before downloading Bleach, my bro and I have a hard time deciding whether to choose Bleach or Death Note for both of them were top rated animes at that time. Then my bro decided that he doesn’t like the Death Note story and wanted to watch longer episodes, we started downloading Bleach.

After watching a few episodes of Bleach, I wasn’t sure which one I like more – Naruto or Bleach cos’ they both are great in their own ways. Bleach got more actions with little story development. Naruto got a good story build up and is funnier. I guess Naruto is for younger audience since the characters themselves are younger compare to those in Bleach. Still, both of them are superb and hard to decide which is better.

Saiunkoku Monogatari : [ Wiki ] [ Characters ] [ Characters Graphical ]

Ok to make it short, I love everything about this anime. The story is lovely and characters are just soooo cute! Currently it’s their second season but they licensed the show so previous sub-titler group dropped the project and was halted. But I heard another group has started picking again so hopefully we get to see/catch up the second season episodes soon.

Now, about the theme songs; every anime has opening and closing theme songs. In Naruto and Bleach, they changed lots of songs already since they’ve been on air for many seasons. For Saiunkoku, I love both opening and closing songs especially the closing song, “Saikou no Kataomoi“. The vocal is very sweet and can go too high note. Notice the very beginning of the song, there is one long – pitch note. I thought it was some sort of flute or instrumental sound but actually it really is the singer’s vocal. Man, she can sing or what? I try to scream like that but my throat gone kapoot as soon as I open my mouth. (Khway A’ Hlal Ninn pi htwet tal a tan lo pal) LOL Definitely it’s not my key. Oh and the vocalist, Tainaka Sachi, looks like Chaw Su Khin…the mouth I mean. I searched for the mp3 files but couldn’t find it before; lucky enough someone uploaded them on idols-unlimited a few weeks back and I quickly grabbed them from there. The 2nd song being my favorite, I’ve been listening repeatedly almost everyday and I don’t seem to get tired of it yet. I’m a sucker for this kind of slow, tiny, sweet melodious songs, some what good to sleep with. ahehehe.

The ending song has been changed in the second season and the opening graphic looks terrible. I love the opening graphic from the first season; they should have kept it. Graphic from part two of the first season is also good but for some reason second season opening graphic sucks. Anyways, if you like cute characters and lovely story, you should watch this anime. Make sure to listen to the following two songs too. I bet you’ll like it.

Saikou no Kataomoi – Tainaka Sachi (Closing Song)
[ MP3 ] [ YouTube ] [ Lyrics and Translation ] [ Song Review ]

Hajimari no Kaze – Ayaka Hirahara (Opening Song)
[ MP3 ] [ YouTube ] [ Lyrics and Translation ] [ Song Review ]

That’s all folks. Ta Tar!

Other day Ma N3 posted this poem “Ngar” and I’ve been thinking ever since. First I thought of writing a comment on her page and ask about it. But then what the hell, I haven’t post on my site for a while and wanna share the poem with my friends also so I decided to post the poem and my thoughts here.

ငါ

ငါ့ မွာလည္း ငါ ၊ သူ ့မွာ ငါႏွင့္
ငါ့ ငါ သူ ့ငါ ၊ ေတြ ့ၾကခါ၀ယ္
ငါ ႏွင့္ ငါ ခ်င္း ၊ ငါ စစ္ခင္းလ်က္
ပူျပင္းလွ်ံရဲ ငါ ေပါက္ကြဲ၏ ။

ငါ ဒုကၡေပး ၊ ငါ မေအး၍
ငါ ေအးရေၾကာင္း ၊ ခြင့္ခါ ေခ်ာင္းလ်က္
ငါေကာင္းကို ရွာ ၊ ငါဆိုး ခြာေသာ္
ကြာေလသည္ သို ့၊ ျဖစ္သၿမိဳ ့လည္း
ေခါင္းလွ်ိဳ ့ကိုယ့္ေခြ ၊ ပျခဳပ္ေဗြ၌
ငန္းေျမြ မျခား ၊ ႏွဲသံ ၾကားလွ်င္
ပါးပ်ဥ္း ေထာင္လ်က္ ငါသည္ထြက္၏ ။

အို – ဖြားဖက္ ငါ ၊ အသင္ ငါႏွင့္
ငါ မေလွ်ာ့တမ္း ၊ အားအင္ စမ္းအံ့ ။
အစြမ္း သာသူ ၊ ပန္းဆြတ္ယူလိမ့္ ။
ငါမူ ငါ့ကုိ ေအာင္မည္ေလာ။ ။
ငါ့ကို ငါက ေအာင္မည္ေလာ။ ။

မင္းသု၀ဏ္
မတ္လ၊ ၁၉၈၂။
ရွဳမ၀ မဂၢဇင္းမွ

It’s pretty good poem but I’m confused over the last two stanza.
What I understand is:

“Nga” = Me
“Ngar” = Ego or noun in general

Most probably “Ngar” is your ego but for my own easy translation purpose, lets’ take it as someone, say “X”.
So….when I translate, (or this is how I understand)

The 1st line says:

Will X gonna win over ME? (or) Will your Ego win over You?

The 2nd line again says:

Would ME gonna be beaten by X? (or) Will You get beaten by your own Ego?

In both way, you loses. ie. ME loses, and both lines have the same meaning.

Shouldn’t be like

Will X gonna win over ME (Will your Ego win over You?) and
Will ME gonna win over X? (Will You be able to beat your own Ego?)

Ok now, how to write that in Burmese? Ngar Muu Nga Ko Aung Myi Law…
“Muu” is something like “Ka” rite? hmmm….

I think I understand what this poem is trying to say. I’m just being an annoyingly picky person sometimes. May be my whole understanding of the poem is wrong. Sometimes meaning of the poems are so hard to figure out but I still enjoy reading those kinds and try to understand their hidden meaning.

Translation of the poem is something like this. Actually I have no idea how to translate it properly. It’s not direct translation; I just made up some parts cos’ some are weird to translate.

Ngar (Self or Ego)

I have my Ego and you have yours,
When our Egos meet,
Both turn into a fight,
With volcanic destruction, they clashes.

Ego being the problem,
Think of a chance/way to resolve it,
Search for the goods, throw away the bads,
Though you try to discard it,
It will act as a sleeping cobra,
A note from a flute could arouse,
And turn him into a deadly weapon.

Oh – Ego my buddy, shall we,
Test our strength against will,
May the best one win,
Will you win over me?
Will I be defeated by you?

Min Thu Wun
March 1982,
Via: Shu Ma Wa Magazine.

Note: Is “Ngan Mway” a Cobra? or a Viper? or a Krait? I always confused over those snakes but I know it’s definitely not a Swan, “Ngan“. Oh Yes, I’m absolute sure sure. ahee

Last Saturday, we (my bro and I) were honored to attend our friends’ wedding at Trade-winds in Lami. It was the wedding of one of our ex-colleague and seniors, “Strange Pants“, and his beloved, the fun and cheerful Alisi. The occasion was held on the auspicious and memorable day – 7th July 2007 at 4pm. (07-07-07) Very easy to remember for anniversaries.

Note: Lightbox Enabled.
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Promises and Vows
When we arrived there late and, it was already started; we were about 45min late. We gave our gifts to the welcoming party, sign the guest sheets and quickly went in front to take a seat. Nobody was taking photos that time so I started to take some, shortly followed by some guests and friends photographers. There are some speeches and prayers in both English and Fijian languages. Bride and Groom exchanged Vows in both languages as well. Jachin had a hard time repeating the Fijian words but he managed to keep up and done quite well in the end. The guests applauded him for his effort. While exchanging Vows and rings, Alisi was crying, happy tears…oh just so cute!

Greeting Guests
The couple received lots of congratulations and blessings from the family, relatives and friends. They proceed to greet all the guests and went out to take some family photos. The session was halted for about 30 min to prepare for the next part.

Fijian Ceremony
Second session started with an exchange of gifts and formal greetings/welcoming in Fijian style. Both sides talked in Fijian. I think it’s something like bride’s family handing their daughter formally to the groom’s family and vice-versa. There is this thing called, “Tabua“, whale’s tooth which is used as a gift. I think it’s similar to olden days Burmese style engagement/wedding gifts where Burmese groom side has to give a set of cows and a set of coconut and bananas (Ok I’m not so sure. Different places have different way of giving gifts in asking for their bride’s hand) to the bride side. The more set of cows you give, the better for you. But nowadays, no more cows involved (may be coconut and banana are still used) and getting more materialistic, some bride’s side would ask for money or housing or jewels. Well don’t know properly cos’ I never get to see any close relative’s wedding yet. Same thing in Fijian society but instead of cows, they use this whale’s tooth. I think Jachin side offered quite a number of whale’s teeth during their engagement to Alisi family.

Honored Guests
There were quite a lot of guests attended the wedding. Many came from various part of Fiji and some from abroad. Some special guests are introduced; some came all the way from Tonga and Groom’s relatives from Brisbane Australia. There was a Tongan style food preparations ie. whole pig roasting and plenty of seafood. I forgot to take photos of the food. The meal was splendid with many courses. About 3 or 4 fish dishes, pork, Indian curries, salads, Lobsters, crabs and Fijian dishes. There were lots of food and many people took second helpings. My bro and I enjoyed a big plate full each.

Entertainment
There were three parts of entertainment. The first was a lovely song sang by one Fijian lady, the second was another song sing by Jachin’s younger brother (Jonathan or something) and his friend. I think they sang pretty well but there were some kids at the back screaming and playing and some people are not listening properly. I think the guy relized that too so he didn’t smile or say thank you towards the end of the song. But they did have some audiences, some girls came up in front to take a video. The last one was a dance performance by a young girl. I think she was one of the Bride’s maids too. It’s not a Fijian dance…Tongan?…not sure. The dance involves lots of hand movement and gestures with little head shakes and small footings. I like her costume and head part. She was very shy dancing in front everyone but she received lots of kisses from the audiences and some men danced along with her. It was overall a cute performance.

Speeches
Speeches were given by the fathers of both sides as well as the special speech by the Groom and the Bride. The speech by the bride’s father was quite amusing where he talked about how he remembered the newly son-in-law in their first meeting and their very first impression on Jachin when he was introduced to the family for the first time. I’ve finally found out the reason behind the disappearance of Jachin’s long hair and big beard from that speech. It was after all because of Alisi’s Dad’s ultimatum to cut his hair if Jachin wants to date the daughter. haha It must have been his family influence…I discovered those big beards run in the family. Check out his Dad and the brother. When I first met Jason, he got a big beard, mustaches and a whole lot of long curly hair. He was one of the guys to interview me for my job. I thought he was about 35+ or something because of his appearance. He did scare me a bit during interview compared to the 2nd interviewer, Ian, who looked quite well and keep scratching his head that time. Though Ian has a beard, he didn’t have a big hair like Jason so not that scary. hehe. I thought Jason looked like a grandson of Frank Einstein and I called him “Sir”. Later I found out that he actually was just a few years older than me and quite fun to work with once you get to know him. Apart from that, Jason’s Dad and the couple speeches are quite normal mostly thanking God and everyone. Jachin and Alisi said about 20 – 30 thank yous in their short speech. I think they didn’t prepare their speech properly. But it was fine.

Cutting Wedding Cake
Finally they cut the wedding cake. The cake looked cool and I like the porcelain doll at the top. They both look great posing in those photos.

One thing I noticed from the wedding was that there is no kissing involved after their exchange of Vows. It was absolutely PG rating. hehe The couple kisses outside while they are taking photos, just to pose. May be because the wedding was a mix styled, Fijian and Australian, some usual scenes are missing. Another thing is no throwing of flower bouquet from the Bride after the wedding…may be she did throw it before they left but I didn’t get to see cos’ we came back home early. Aww yah, I like the bouquet, it’s made out of “Tapa“. Alisi’s gown is also made of Tapa and is a beautifully crafted dress.

Anyways the wedding was great and everyone enjoyed it. Around 8:30pm, we came back home. We wished the couple many happiness and many many many children in their near future.

A few days ago, I received an email from GV regarding my post, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s Birthday, translation to Bangla. The translator informed me that he had a hard time translating the word “Daw” but luckily he got some understanding of that word from the book he own, “Living Silence (Burma under military rule)” by Christina Fink. He understands it as a polite prefix for aunts or older women and likes to know if it’s safe to interpret as “respected“.

I guess his translation on the word is quite alright. Although it’s not exactly means as “respected”, it is the most suitable translation in this case. Burmese language is one of very confusing languages as one word can form many different meanings. Forget about the language, this kind of addressing someone is a tough job even for some Burmese themselves (eg. Me).

In English, they tend to address a person by their name directly (in many normal cases) and use Mr. or Mrs/Ms/Miss regardless of the age. Of course it’s a different story when the statuses involve. But I’m only talking about normal cases. In Burmese, to address a normal person, you need to consider the following factors:
# gender
# age
# level of association with that person

The following is how I understand. There are no set rules for this matter so this is just my own understandings. These titles are used regardless of blood relation between the two parties.

Those are the most official ones that I can think of but there are many others slangs and names usage depending on situation, status, title, regional, relationship etc.

The above usages also act as a term to replace the word “You” while talking with a respected group. A direct translation of English word “You” in Burmese is “Nin” or “Min” but those terms are only used while talking among the same age group or between close friends. There are also many different ways of addressing oneself, the word “I“, depending on the situation. Though a direct translation of “I” is “Ngar“, that word is reserved to use only among close friends and is very rude to use with elders or distance friends/strangers. The following is how Burmese use to address themselves as, “I“, according to their age.

Again, all of the above are for normal situations between normal people. There are many more addresses to use with abnormal special cases such as talking to a Buddhist Monk or to King or Queen or Generals. Seriously, I get a headache whenever I have to talk with Burmese. I have to think about 2 – 3min before uttering a word in Burmese while the English “You, I, Mr, Mrs/Ms/Miss” words make addressing so simple.

Have been said and getting back to the main point, I simply used the word “Daw” in that post as an elderly woman of 30+ age with the meaning somewhat related to the lady or rather the respected lady. I feel very impolite to address her as just her name,”Aung San Suu Kyi”, and I don’t feel familiar enough to call her “Mother” or “Aunty” though she is older than my mom and suits the title. So using a respectable generalization is the best solution.

Another note on that post is that it was translated into 7 different languages. I’m getting scare to write for GV as it is viewed by many viewers from various background. With my incompetence language skill, I feel ashamed to post there. Online/web medium is a scary thing, one mistake will be caught by thousands eyes. I don’t care if people look down upon me for my mistakes but I don’t want them to look down upon my country/men for my lack of skills. Damn it’s a hard job being a writer. My respect for journalists grew these days. I’ve never been good at writing and never have an interest in professional writing. I only write for myself. As long as I understand what I write, I’m all fine. But ever since I started blogging, I can no longer write for myself only. I guess as your blog grow, you have to grow along with it. You have to mature along with your reader. So I must try to improve as best as I can. Yep, that’s the spirit May!!

Blogger’s been sick for almost two weeks. The first week she was completely down but this week recovering. Although nasty cough and nose blockage hustling her, she tries to be back to her usual self and catching up with overdue work. Blogger has been ignoring mayvelous and other regular routines for quite sometimes but hope to follow them up from next week.

Blogger thanks all friends and visitors for your patience and support. Hope you have a good health and a peaceful day.

ဘေလာ့ဂါ ႏွစ္ပတ္ ဖ်ားသြားပါတယ္။ ဟိုအပတ္တုန္းက တခ်ိန္လံုး အိပ္ရာထဲ ေကြးေနခဲ့ရတယ္။ ဒီအပတ္ေတာ့ အဖ်ားမရွိေတာ့ပဲ သက္သာလာပါျပီ။ အလုပ္ေၾကြးေတြမ်ားေနတာနဲ႔ ရံုးျပန္တက္ျပီး တတ္ႏိုင္သေလာက္ လုပ္ေနပါတယ္။ ေခ်ာင္းအရမ္းဆိုး ျပီး၊ ႏွာေခါင္းပိတ္ သလိပ္ကပ္တာ မေပ်ာက္ပဲ က်န္ေနတုန္းပါ။ ေနရထိုင္ရ ေတာ္ေတာ္ ဒုကၡေရာက္ပါတယ္။ ေမဗလပ္စ္ နဲ႔ တျခားအလုပ္ကေလးေတြကို လွည့္ေတာင္မၾကည့္မိတာ ဒီေန႔ေတာ့ အလုပ္နဲနဲ ပါးသြားတာနဲ႔ ပိုစ့္တခုေလာက္ေတာ့ တင္ဦးမွဆိုပီး ျပန္ၾကည့္မိတာပါ။ ေရွ႔ အပတ္ေလာက္မွ ေကာင္းေကာင္းျပန္ေရးျဖစ္မယ္ထင္ပါတယ္။

သူငယ္ခ်င္းမ်ားနဲ႔ လာလည္ သတင္းေမး၊ အားေပးၾကသူ အားလံုးကို ေက်းဇူးမ်ားၾကီးတင္ပါတယ္။ မိတ္ေဆြအေပါင္း ကိုယ္စိတ္ႏွလံုး ေအးခ်မ္း က်န္းမာၾကပါေစ။ မဂၤလာ ရွိေသာ ေန႔ျဖစ္ပါေစ ရွင္။