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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Goodbye Mr. Kennedy


When we lose a good man, a respectful leader or somebody who had been contributing the great things in one place of the world, it is the loss of not only for that place, but also for the whole world, since we all are directly or indirectly connected each other. The loss of Senator Edward Kennedy is that kind. It is not only for Kennedy family, but for all families of the world, not only for Democrats, but also for Republicans, not only for the Americans, but also for all world citizens.

During discussion in one of my classes at the College of DuPage, somebody asked a question that which American leaders are the most famous around the world (outside of the United States)? Most of my classmates thought it was George Washington in the first place. I willingly contributed my answer through out my experiences outside of the US, as – first – Abraham Lincoln, second - George Washihgton, third - John F. Kennedy, and fourth – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Kennedys are among the heroes in leadership field of late history of the world.

I have been listened to and remember a piece of Teddy Kennedy’s speech that he gave when his brother, Robert Kennedy was assassinated; he said that “Love is not such a facility of popular magazine!” It came from deepest part of heart!

If we borrow a few words from Ronald Reagan, those he said when we lost Challenger crew, that – “Now, Mr. Kennedy is waving goodbye to the people of the United States and people of the world, to touch the face of God!”
Goodbye Mr. Kennedy! We all shall miss you!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Let Me be Myself


Today, I am listening to the song of "Let me be myself," and the following is my favorite lyrics.
Would you Let Me Be Myself
Coz I'll never find my heart
Behind someone else
I'll never see the light of day
Living in this cell
It's time to make my way
Into the world i knew
And take back all of these times
That I gave in to you

Lately I'm so tired of waiting for you
To say that it's OK, tell me please
Would you one time,
Let Me Be Myself So i can shine,
with my own light Let Me Be Myself,
For a while If you don't mind,
Let Me Be Myself
So i can shine, with my own light
Let Me Be Myself
That's all i ever wanted from this world Was to let me be me..


Picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2528/3776744954_bdff717b2b.jpg

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

ခဲဝါ နန္႔ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္


တခါက ခဲဝါတေကာင္ေရ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္တေကာင္ကို သူ႔အိမ္မွာ ညစာစားဖို႔ ဖိတ္ပါေရလွတ္။ ခဲဝါေရ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္ကို ညစာစား ဖိတ္ပင္ ဖိတ္ေကလည္း သူ႔မွာ မရိုးသားေရ အႄကံအစည္တခုဟိပါေရလွတ္။ ခဲဝါေရ စြတ္ႁပဳတ္ရည္ကို ကေကာင္းရွည္ႃပီးေက ကၽၪ္းလြန္းေရ ေလာင္းေခၽထဲမွာ ထည့္ပနာ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္ကို ေကြၽးပါေရလွတ္။ ခဲဝါကေတာ့ေက ယင္းေလာင္းေခၽထဲကို လွ်ာထိုးလို႔ ဝင္ေရခါ စြတ္ႁပဳတ္ရည္ကို ကေကာင္းေသာက္လို႔ ရပါေရလွတ္။ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္မွာေတာ့ေက စြတ္ႁပဳတ္ရည္ကို သူ႔ နသြီး အဖၽားေခၽမွာ ရာ မြီႃပီးေက ေသာက္လို႔လည္းမရ၊ ဝမ္းက ဆာဆာနန္႔ တခုလည္းမစားရ၊ မေသာက္ရပဲ အိမ္ႁပန္ဖို႔ ကၽပါေရလွတ္။
ေယခါ ခဲဝါက ကလိမ္ကကၽစ္အႃပံဳးေခၽနန္႔ ကေကာင္းအားနာလားဟန္ကို လုပ္ဗၽာယ္ “အိုး အကို ငွက္ႄကီး၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ္ ကေကာင္းအားနာလားခပါယာေထာ၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္စြတ္ႁပဳတ္ရည္ေရ အကို႔အႄကိဳက္နန္႔ တတည့္မကၽ ထင္ေရ၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ္ခၽက္စြာႁပဳတ္စြာ ၫံ့လို႔ထင္ပါယင့္” ဆို ဆို ပနာေႁပာပါေရလွတ္။ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္ကလည္း “အိုး၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္ကို ညစာစားဖိတ္စြာကိုပင္ ကေကာင္း ေကၽးဇူးတင္ပါယင့္၊ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္ကို ေတာင္းပန္ဖို႔မလိုပါ၊ အကိုခဲဝါအခၽိန္ပီးႏိုင္ဖို႔ဆိုေက လာဖို႔အပါတ္ထဲမွာ ကြၽန္ေတာ့္အိမ္မွာ ညစာ လာစားဖို႔ အကိုခဲဝါကို ႁပန္လို႔ ဖိတ္ပါရစီ” ဆို ဆိုပနာ ေႁပာပါေရလွတ္။ ခဲဝါလည္း ခရုစုတ္ငွက္၏ ဖိတ္ေခၚမႈကို ဝမ္းပမ္းတသာပင္ လက္ခံလိုက္ပါေရလွတ္။
ေနာက္တပါတ္ႂကာေရခါ ခဲဝါေရ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္အိမ္သို႔ ညစာစားဖို႔ ေရာက္လားပါေရလွတ္။ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္မွာ လည္း ခဲဝါထက္မၫံ့ေရ စြတ္ႁပဳတ္ရည္အေကာင္းစားကို ခၽက္ႁပဳတ္ပၽင္ဆင္ထားပါေရလွတ္။ ခဲဝါလည္း စြတ္ႁပဳတ္ရည္ ကို အားရပါးရ ေသာက္ဖို႔ပၽင္ေရခါ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္ေရ သူ႔စြတ္ႁပဳတ္ရည္ကို အဝကၽၪ္းႃပီးေက လိုင္ဖင္းရွည္ေရ ကေတာင္းထဲမွာ ထည့္ ထည့္ ပနာ ထားပါေရလွတ္။ ေယခါ ခဲဝါေရ ကေတာင္းအဝကို သူ႔ နသြီးသြင္းဖို႔ ႄကိဳးစားလိုက္၊ အဝမွာ ဆို႔နိန္လိုက္ ႁဖစ္ ႁဖစ္ ပနာ အနံ႔ကို ရာ ရ ရ ပနာ တခုလည္းမစားရပဲနန္႔ အိမ္ႁပန္ဖို႔ ကၽပါေရလွတ္။ ခဲဝါေရ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္ ကလိမ္ကကၽစ္နန္႔ တသိတမါန္ပၽင္စြာကို သိေကလည္း တခုလည္းမေႁပာႏိုင္ပါလွတ္။ ဇာႁဖစ္လို႔လည္းဆိုေက သူက အယင္ ခရုစုတ္ငွက္ကို ကလိမ္ကၽထားစြာပါကို။
သူမၽားကို လိမ္တတ္၊ ဝါတတ္၊ ကလိမ္ကကၽစ္ ကၽတတ္ေတလူတိေရ သူရို႔ကိုယ္တိုင္ အလိမ္ခံရဖို႔၊ အဝါခံရဖို႔၊ ကလိမ္ကကၽစ္ အကၽခံရဖို႔စြာလည္း ဓမၼတာသေဖါတရားတရပ္ လို႔ ေဒပံုႁပင္ေခၽက ဆိုပါေရ။ သက္ေရာက္မႈ အားလံုးမွာ ယင္းနန္႔ညီမွ်ေရ တန္ႁပန္သက္ေရာက္မႈတိ အႃမဲတမ္းဟိနိန္ကတ္စြာရာမဟုတ္ပါလား။
Picture: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3448/3383333447_c1d2861ed0.jpg?v=1238003934

Special Link: Salute to 70th Anniversary of the Founding of The People's Republic of China!

ကၽီးကန္းနန္႔ ရီကေတာင္း


တခါက ကေကာင္းရီေသာက္ငတ္နိန္ေရ ကၽီးကန္းတေကာင္ေရ ရီကေတာင္းတခုကို တြိပါေရလွတ္။ ရီကေတာင္းထဲမွာ ရီ အလတ္ေလာက္လာဟိႃပီးေက ကၽီးကန္းေရ ရီကို လွမ္းမမွီႏိုင္ႁဖစ္နိန္ပါေရလွတ္။ ကေတာင္းကို ေမာ့ေသာက္ဖို႔ႄကိဳးစားေရခါလည္း ကေတာင္းက သူ႔ထက္ႄကီးနိန္ေရခါ ႁမွင့္လို႔ေတာင္မႁမင့္ႁဖစ္နိန္ပါေရလွတ္။
ကၽီးကန္းလည္း ဇာလုပ္လို႔ဇာကိုင္ရေမမွန္းမသိပဲႁဖစ္နိန္တုန္းမွာ သူ႔ရွိနားက ေကၽာက္စရစ္ခဲေခၽတိကို လားလို႔ ႁမင္ပါေရလွတ္။ ကၽီးကန္းလည္း အႄကံရစြာနန္႔ ေကၽာက္စရစ္ခဲေခၽတခဲကို ကေတာင္းထဲသို႔ ထည့္လိုက္ ပါေရလွတ္။ ေယခါ ကေတာင္းထဲက ရီလည္း တဖဲ့ေခၽ ႁမင့္တက္ပါလတ္ပါေရလွတ္။ ကၽီးကန္းလည္း ေကၽာက္ခဲ ေနာက္တခဲ ထည့္လိုက္ပါေရလွတ္။ ကေတာင္းထဲက ရီလည္း ေနာက္ထပ္တဖဲ့ေခၽႁမင့္တက္ပါလတ္ပါေရ လွတ္။ ယင္းပိုင္နန္႔ပင္ ယင္းအနားမွာဟိေရ ေကၽာက္စရစ္ခဲတိကို ရာ နန္႔ခၽီပနာ ကေတာင္းထဲသို႔ထည့္ပလိုက္ႃပီးေရ အခၽိန္မွာ ကေတာင္းထဲကရီစြာလည္း ကေတာင္းဝ သို႔ ေရာက္ေအာင္ႁမင့္တက္ပါလတ္ပါေရလွတ္။ ကၽီးကန္းလည္း ေယခါမွရာ အရသာဟိေရ ရီအီးအီးကို အားရဗရ တဝႄကီး ေသာက္ခၽ ပလိုက္ပါေရလွတ္။
‘ကိုယ့္ဖက္က အင္အားခၽိနဲ႔ေရအေႁခအေနတရပ္ထဲမွာ စိတ္ရွည္သီးခံမႈ၊ ရည္မွန္းခၽက္ကို အေပၽာက္မခံပဲ ဇြဲ နပဲ သန္သန္ တတိတိႄကိဳးစားမႈ နန္႔ ၪာဏ္ရည္လႊာသံုးတတ္မႈတိက ေအာင္ပြဲကို ရရွိစီေႂကာင္း’ ေဒကၽီးကန္းေခၽက သင္ခန္းစာ ပီးနိန္ပါယင့္။

Picture: http://www.bewicksociety.org/galleries/publications/aesop/crowandpitcher800.jpg

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Meanings of the Given Names (T)


Theodoric: (Germanic) People, rule

People often ask me about - what does my name mean. Sometimes, I also ask other peoples if his or her name means something. These are not important but it is good to know about each other in our cultures of mankind. For my friends who want to know, the meanings of (Western) given names:

Men’s Names (T)Terrence: (Latin) Soft or tender
Theodore: (Greek) Gift of God
Theodoric: (Germanic) People, rule
Thomas: (Aramaic) A twin
Timothy: (Greek) Honoring God
Titus: (Latin) Safe

Women’s Names (T)Teresa, Theresa: (Greek) The harvester
Thelma: (Greek) Nursing

Source: Smith, Elsdon C. “Vocabulary of Given Names.” The World Book Dictionary. 1968.
Picture: http://images.meredith.com/ab/images/2006/08/ss_nursing_mom_diamonds.jpg

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Congratulations Brazil Soccer Team!


Today, Brazilions win for FIFA confedration cup final in South Africa.
Congratulations National Soccer team of Brazil!
It was great pleasure to watch the match and Brazil are such a standard and classic team!
For the U.S. team, though the match finished with the result (U.S. 2 – Brazil 3), politically and ethically, we won!
Keep all of your strength and congratulations again!
Picture:

Friday, June 26, 2009

JRS Curriculum Specialist


Position: JRS Curriculum Specialist
Programme: Mae Hong Son Education
Reports to: Project Director
Organization: Jesuit Refugee Service
Location: Mae Hong Son, Thailand

JRS
Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an international non-governmental organization with a mission to accompany, serve, and advocate the rights of refugees and forcibly displaced people. JRS undertakes services at national and regional levels with the support of an international office in Rome. Founded in November 1980 as a work of the Society of Jesus, JRS programmes are found in over 50 countries, providing assistance to refugees in refugee camps, to people displaced within their own country, and to asylum-seekers in cities and to those held in detention. The main areas of work are in the fields of education, advocacy, emergency assistance, pastoral care, health and nutrition, IGA (Income Generating Activities) and social services. In total, more than 376,000 individuals are direct beneficiaries of JRS projects.

Position Purpose
JRS has been working with the Karenni Education Department (KnED) in Mae Hong Son’s two northernmost refugee camps since 1997. JRS partners with the Karenni Education Department (KnED) to implement and deliver educational services and training in the following areas: primary, secondary, vocational, special education, teacher training and management. JRS works with KnED to provide technical support to the entire education system. JRS Mae Hong Son is currently providing assistance to over 7,000 children and 420 teachers in 11 primary schools, 5 middle schools and 2 high schools in two refugee camps. The primary goal of this support is to ensure the continuity of education while simultaneously developing the capacity of refugee educators for future self-sufficiency. Currently, refugees from these camps are being offered the chance to resettle to third countries (principally the US), resulting in a diminishing population with changing educational needs.

The curriculum used in Karenni schools is developed by KnED. The JRS Curriculum Specialist will work closely with KnED to support curriculum development, help outline existing curriculum, and develop new curriculum in response to changing needs.

Responsibilities
· Develop a framework of existing curriculum for better coordination with MOE, KED and other ethnic groups.
· Assist with review and development of basic curriculum.
· Conduct research and provide information to KnED.
· Attend in-camp meetings as requested by KnED.
· Represent KnED at curriculum related meeting held outside of the camps.
· Liaise and maintain regular communication with organizations involved in refugee curriculum (ZOA, KED, NHEC, MOE and other).
· Support active KnED decision making and capacity development.
· Collaborate and coordinate with other JRS team members, CBOs and NGOs working in the camp.

Required Qualifications/Experience
· Relevant degree – Bachelor (minimum)
· At least 2 years teaching experience.
· Experience with curriculum development/design.
· Previous development experience and/or experience in limited-resource, challenging environments
· Fluent written and oral Burmese and English
· Thai or Karenni language skills desirable
· Computer skills
· Flexibility and the ability to operate in a complex and rapidly changing environment
· Experience of the Burmese refugee situation desirable
Conditions: A two-year contract with an initial three-month probationary period.

Starting date: ASAP

Closing date for applications: 15 July 2009

Applications: Please apply by sending your cover letter and CV (including two references) to curriculumdeveloper@jrs.or.th

Only short listed candidates will be contacted.
Note: I have received this offer today from one of my friends' email, and I post this here for people who are qualified and interested in. Thanks and good luck!

JRS Teacher Trainer




JOB DESCRIPTION

Position: JRS Teacher Trainer
Programme: Mae Hong Son Education
Reports to: Project Director
Organization: Jesuit Refugee Service
Location: Mae Hong Son, Thailand

JRS:
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an international non-governmental organization with a mission to accompany, serve, and advocate the rights of refugees and forcibly displaced people. JRS undertakes services at national and regional levels with the support of an international office in Rome. Founded in November 1980 as a work of the Society of Jesus, JRS programs are found in over 50 countries, providing assistance to refugees in refugee camps, to people displaced within their own country, and to asylum-seekers in cities and held in detention. The main areas of work are in the fields of education, advocacy, emergency assistance, pastoral care, health and nutrition, IGA (Income Generating Activities) and social services. In total, more than 376,000 individuals are direct beneficiaries of JRS projects.

Position Purpose:
JRS has been working with the Karenni Education Department (KnED) in Mae Hong Son’s two northernmost refugee camps since 1997. JRS partners with the Karenni Education Department (KnED) to implement and deliver educational services and training in the following areas: primary, secondary, vocational, special education, teacher training and management. JRS works with KnED to provide technical support to the entire education system. JRS Mae Hong Son is currently providing assistance to over 7,000 children and 420 teachers in 11 primary schools, 5 middle schools and 2 high schools in two refugee camps. The primary goal of this support is to ensure the continuity of education while simultaneously developing the capacity of refugee educators for future self-sufficiency. Currently, refugees from these camps are being offered the chance to resettle to third countries (principally the US), resulting in a diminishing population with changing educational needs.

Due to the increasing turnover of teachers going on resettlement, JRS requires teacher trainers to be able to train teachers directly in Burmese, and to work with KnED to ensure quality education for children in the two refugee camps.

Responsibilities:
· Coordinate and implement pre-service training to new and inexperienced teachers, in conjunction with KnED
· Identify models for in-service training to existing teachers
· Identify gaps in training and help provide an institutional response
· Support monitoring of systems to ensure quality of teaching and learning
· Act as resource person to KnED for management training for head teachers


Required Qualifications/Experience:
· Relevant degree – Bachelor (minimum)
· At least five years teaching experience
· Experience of training teachers
· Previous development experience and/or experience in limited-resource, challenging environments
· Fluent written and oral Burmese and English
· Karenni language skills desirable
· Computer skills desirable
· Flexibility and the ability to operate in a complex and rapidly changing environment
· Experience of the Burmese refugee situation desirable
· Management experience preferable

Conditions: A two-year contract with an initial three-month probationary period.

Starting date: ASAP

Closing date for applications: 15 July 2009

Applications: Please apply by sending your cover letter and CV (including two references) to teachertrainer@jrs.or.th

Only short listed candidates will be contacted.

Note: I have received this offer today from one of my friends, and I post this for people who are qualified and interested in. Thanks and good luck!

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Congratulations U.S. Men National Soccer Team!

Congratulations National Soccer Team of USA!!!

Today, my friends and I were watching the soccer match of FIFA Confedration Cup 2009 semifinal, which played between the national teams of USA and Spain at TV (Univision).

Every single player in Spain national team was very much professional player than players of US national team. In the first half time of the match, ball possisions were 33% for US team, and 67% for team of Spain. According to the current FIFA rankings, national team of Spain is also 1st. This means Spanish team is currently the best team in the world.

Nevertheless, the final result was USA 2 - Spain 0, Great Win and Great Lose.

Congratulations National Soccer Team of USA!

The best of U.S. team in this match were;

(1) Team work (great, great team work)

(2) Spirit (true spirit of Never Give-Up, though we are not that good players).

Special Thanks and Congratulations!

P.S. (Goal keeper of US team should be awarded as the player of the match in this tournament.)

Go USA!!!

Meanings of the Given Names (S)

Selwyn = Friend

People often ask me about - what does my name mean. Sometimes, I also ask other peoples if his or her name means something. These are not important but it is good to know about each other in our cultures of mankind. For my friends who want to know, the meanings of (Western) given names:

Men’s Names (S)
Samson: (Hebrew) Sun’s man; resplendent
Samuel: (Hebrew) His name is God; name of God; God hath heard
Sanders: (Greek) Helper of Men
Sanford: (Old English) Sandy river crossing
Saul: (Hebrew) Requested; desire
Scott: (Celtic) One from Scotland or Ireland
Sebastian: (Greek) Venerable
Selwyn: (Old English) House, friend
Septimus: (Latin) The seventh
Seth: (Hebrew) The appointed
Sewell: (Germanic) Victory, power
Sextus: (Latin) The sixth
Shelby: (Old English) village where willows grow
Sheldon: (Old English) Steep-sided valley, flat-topped hill
Sherman: (Old English) The shearman or cutter
Sidney: (Celtic) A telescoping of St. Denis
Sigfried: (Germanic) Victory, peace
Sigmund: (Germanic) Victory, protection
Silas: (Latin) Of the forest
Simon, Simeon: (Hebrew) God has heard; hearkening; snub-nosed
Solomon: (Hebrew) Peaceful
Stanislas: (Slavonic) War camp; camp glory
Stephen, Steven: (Greek) Crown or garland
Stewart, Stuart: (Old English) One in charge of the household

Women’s Names (S)
Sabina: (Latin) Sabine; of an ancient Italian tribe
Sally: (Hebrew) Princess
Sandra, Zandra: (Greek) Helper of men
Sapphira: (Greek) From the gem sapphire
Sarah, Sara: (Hebrew) Princess
Selma: (Germanic) Divine, helmet
Sharon: (Hebrew) Plain or level country
Sheila: (Latin-Irish) Blind
Shirley: (Old English) From Shireley, England
Sibyl: (Greek) A prophetess
Silvia, Sylvia: (Latin) Wood or forest
Sonja, Sonya: (Greek-Russian) Wisdom
Stella: (Latin) Star
Susan, Suzanne: (Hebrew) Lily
Source: Smith, Elsdon C. “Vocabulary of Given Names.” The World Book Dictionary. 1968.