A new 'project'

The plot of land next to our house is empty and i realised I have a great project on my hands here. every year in the dry season the owner has the vegetation cut as far as it can possibly be cut. Then, the rest of the year nothing gets done. Last year the weeds were growing over the gate and it was almost like the gates to sleeping beauty's castle, so overgrown was everything. It was almost impossible to comprehend that all that greenery had grown in less than a year.

This year the vegetation was cut about 1,5 - 2 months ago. We had the usual influx of unwanted visitors (we think there is still a snake hiding out somewhere behind the house but we can't find him). I'd forgotten about my intention to take regular pictures of next door's plot but this weekend I took my first ones.

 For the coming year, I'll be taking pictures regularly to show how fast vegetation can grow in the heat and humidity that makes up most of Yangon's weather. The rainy season has started this week so it is a good time to keep an eye on the property next door.

I hope that the land will not be sold somewhere down the line, that would be disastrous to my 'project'. It is a distinct possibility though since land and houses are a hot commodity at the moment and there is no sign of a slacking market. But who knows, i might be lucky and show you some nice 'before-and after' imagery.

OMG!

We have real live (life) internet at home. I can't believe it. It is absolutely like being in another reality...

I had plans to correct some homework but that's so not going to happen...

Facebook, here I come....

OMG!

We have real live (life) internet at home. I can't believe it. It is absolutely like being in another reality...

I had plans to correct some homework but that's so not going to happen...

Facebook, here I come....

Internet on my phone but no go

Since a few weeks I have internet on my phone. Funnily enough, it costs a small fortune to have internet at home from your computer but almost nothing from your phone. Just like with a computer-connection though, it is a hit-and-miss affair and often terribly slow.

For dun, I tried to post something here from my phone during the Thingyan holiday but i was never able to do so.

The good thing is that I can read the news and push the "I Like" button on Facebook. I need to connect often since the applications crash regularly for reasons unknown or are so slow that you're timed out but it is possible and I have spend a few pleasant afternoons and evenings (trying to) browse through unread mails, Facebook updates, and news articles.

So different

The other day I was downtown for the first quiz night in Yangon (that even I know off, there might have been previous attempts). It was a very successful attempt and the bar was full.

For me the most interesting feature of the evening was though the number of foreigners. Most of them fairly young (mid-twenties to early thirties) and I was wondering about what they were doing here.

Then yesterday I was at a workshop from a hardware/software giant and in the hotel there were so many westerners. Again.

Yangon/Myanmar is almost like a treasure chest. The last bastion of golden opportunities. There are masses of 'consultants' and 'specialists' in this country nowadays. People who have been here for a few months consider themselves old-timers and knowledgeable on the culture. On forums this was already a bit the case before especially for tourists with people giving advice who had visited the country years before. Nowadays though it seems like every other person I meet or hear about is here to make their fortune.

It is a fairly unsettling feeling and I wonder how many of them will be here in the next couple of years. If the quiz nights continue (once a month) how many will be able to say in a year's time that they were there during the first one?

More signs of 'progress'

I haven't had much time and, especially energy, to post some more but can't resist now.

There has been some talk amongst the expat community here that it is now possible to get money with a credit card at some ATM's and the other day I even saw an advertisement from a bank to that effect, naming the exact ATM where that was possible. We are heading towards the 21st century.

A fellow expat did mention though that he had tried it a few times and that twice he was charged for the amount he asked for but no money was dispensed. Apparently he is still in sorting things out with his bank. He said it was good to have the option but advised only to use it in an emergency.

This morning I opened the BBC website and what catches my eye, an article on credit card friendly destinations and even Burma was mentioned (still Burma not Myanmar).  On reading the article http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog/20130220-how-credit-card-friendly-is-your-next-destination it appears that Visa is now officially accepted in the country at one place at least. Before there were a few places that accepted credit cards but verification always went via Singapore.

More important for the locals is that it seems that KFC has opened a branch here. A colleague who loves KFC said she would check the place out and report back. If KFC opens, McD shall not be far behind I think. My colleague wrote the word 'progress' between quotes just as I do on this post. Not sure if it is such a wonderful thing now this country is officially open to all the junk food in the world...

I'm a wimp

I have to fess up. I am a total and utter wimp. I never realised it I was until yesterday though.

I'm still doing my Bando lessons and of late it was just me. Having private lessons was great. The teacher made me work of course but that's good for me. The pacing was just right and I enjoyed it. My fellow Bando student has problems with her ankle and a pupil of our teacher was apparently in a meditation center for a week or so.

Yesterday I find that I'm no longer alone. The pupil was back and also another guy who on occasion drops by. He usually has lessons after us but he joined us yesterday. The guys are way ahead of me and the lesson was done most of the time around what I knew and some new stuff. It was a great workout. Lots of different movements and a lot of kicking as well. Great, I thought and loved it.

Then, all of a sudden, at the end of the lesson out come 2 stuffed pads that are used for protection when hitting and kicking. I honestly thought I wouldn't be too bad at it. As I said, I was a total wimp. It is so much harder than it looks to kick such a pad with enough force. You also have to think about flexed feet and where to kick exactly. Anyways, i realised I have a long way to go... Maybe, one day I can kick those pads the way they are supposed to be kicked.

Ridiculous or what?

A colleague of mine has found an affordable house across from our place. Last weekend, he had the key and he and his wife were starting to have a real good look around to see what they needed to do. The house is really cheap for Yangon standards but it meant that some repair work was in order.

Anyway, he is standing outside in  the garden (yes, it even has a garden!) when the owner of next door's plot comes up to him. That owner told him that his plot was for sale for a mere 10 million dollars.

My colleague was still in shock half an hour later when I came back from the errand I'd been on.

Hubby told me that, contrary to what we thought, it didn't even include the whole plot and buildings there but that the land that was for sale was only a third of what we thought it was! Talking about ridiculous prices. For 10 million dollars I'd buy me a nice property somewhere in Europe like a nice chateau or a lovely mansion. I wouldn't spend it on a tiny plot of land in a small street in Yangon.

I cound't resist

 I saw this when I was going home the other day. For me it is still surprising to see Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's picture everywhere. For many years, even her name was not said out loud, with everyone referring to her as 'The Lady" . So seeing her picture on the back of a car is such a huge step forward.

I debated a whole half minute about whether or not I could /should take my camera and record it. Obviously, I couldn't resist.

Yeah, Teletubbies!!!

BBC takes Teletubbies, TV news and Doctor Who to Burma

 

The Teletubbies have proved to be hugely popular with pre-schoolers

The Teletubbies, 24-hour news and Doctor Who are being introduced to Burma as the BBC launches three pay-TV channels there next January

Finally some good tv-programmes here.Unfortunately for us, I don't think it is the provider that we have. There are basically 2 choices and they didn't differ much. Now, this might be a reason to switch. That, and the fact that we have paid for all channels that our provider offers (58, most of them rubbish) but we get less than half for real and usually not the channels that we want. 

Grade 4 sleepover

Tonight we had our holiday show and for the last 3 years I have had a class sleepover after. For most westerners that sounds like good fun, here we usually have to convince parents that it is ok for their child to sleep away from home that is not with family or with family in a hotel.

My kids are on average 10 years old and for the majority this is the first experience of this kind they have ever had. And again this year  the kids are hyper exited and the parents hoover around for ages. They find it really tough to let go. Which is difficult of course but most parents have this phase a little earlier.

I have had parents unpack their son's pajamas and every year we have one family where we have to stop the maid going along with the kid to change. though I didn't notice this this time now I think of it.

This year I had one of my kids ask me who was going to sleep with them. He meant an adult. Now my TA usually sleeps with the girls (more for her sake than the kids mind). The classrooms are very close together and I always sleep where I can hear everything (with the door open. The mosquitoes will have a field day.) The first year I had a TA and a shadow teacher staying the night as well and they were wondering where I was going to sleep if I did not sleep in the boys or in the girls room. I told them I'd be sleeping in the small room we used as video room. They got really worried whether I would be ok. It was their first sleepover as well. I thought it was endearing but it was kind of sad as well. I can't believe being around 24 years old and never have had a sleepover in my life.

Update: we had a parent call us the next morning at about half past 6. She hadn't been able to sleep all night and was waiting for us in the teashop. She and her husband were there when we arrived. Their daughter wasn't too interested in seeing mum and dad, she was too busy with her friends (as it should be). Apparently, it was the first time their daughter had slept somewhere without her parents.

Myanmar lessons

For a few weeks now, one of our Myanmar teachers gives us lessons in the language. It is quite embarrassing to have to admit that I've been here almost 7 years now and still can't speak the language apart from some useful (and some less useful) words.

Twice before did I start but on both occasions I was pregnant shortly after and was too tired to continue. That won't happen this time I'm sure.

We learn not only to speak but also to read and write but the Myanmar alphabet is horrendous.

To give you a few letters of the Myanmar alphabet (all consonants except one letter, the vowels, tone-symbols, and what else are not included):

U and V both have the ‘ba’ sound

Cand Dboth have the  ‘za’ sound

Yand Xboth have the  ‘ya’ sound

One of these days I'll post the complete alphabet. Then you can see the difficulties us poor Myanmar-learners face.

Finally, cool weather

This morning was the first morning the morning air had that little nip of cold that I like and that means that winter has arrived here in Myanmar.  It is already early December and it seemed like winter would never arrive.

This is the one season most westerners who live here find nice since the temperatures hoover around the 20 degrees Celsius.

Thandar even ran back into the house to get a light jacket and I think I'll dress Eaindra and Xenne slightly warmer to tomorrow morning.

I'm very happy since it'll also mean we can leave the aircon off at night and have the windows open.. Yes!

First motorbikes in Yangon

Actually, what I wrote in the title is not correct. Motorbikes have been here for a while but there were very very few of them and you only saw them every once in a blue moon.

Lately there are more and more of them and I see them regularly in my quarter. They are not allowed on the main roads and Yangon is in that respect very unlike other Asian cities. I think it is a good thing they are not allowed since traffic is already bad enough without the motorbikes weaving through traffic. The majority of the drivers in Yangon (and Myanmar for that matter) are awful chauffeurs and barely know the difference between the accelerator and the brakes. You don't really want to encourage an environment where the death toll is set to rise.

The banishment of the motorbikes on the main road is a good thing, like I said, but I think it is difficult to stop the tide. We were on a main junction waiting for the traffic light and there she was; the first mum to drive her daughter to school on a motor bike. It was bound to happen of course and she will be the first of many. Give it a year or two and even Yangon's streets will be swamped with those horrible machines defying all traffic rules and regulations. 

Unbelievable.. there are now even more car sales centres!

In the past week I have travelled around Yangon a bit more than I usually do. What surprised me so much is that there are now even more car sales centers. And I do not mean one or two new ones, there are many. Even in areas where there are already a fair few. They all seem to be selling the exact same types of cars and I doubt prices will vary much since they all have to go through the same car import scheme that the government has.

All these places are build on prime locations almost like it is an impulse buy decision. A couple drives by a car sales center and says to each other "shall we buy a car honey?".

Maybe  just don't understand the Myanmar psyche but even with something as expensive to set up as a car sales center, they seem to copy what someone else is doing and what they see as being successful. No matter if the other makes money or not, the perception is what counts....

There are now car sales centers in the front yard of houses to enormous steel constructions. They are almost as abundant as phone shops. How is it possible that these places can be profitable?
 

Weather troubles

At the moment we have a huge rainstorm dropping its water content all over the area here. It almost feels like being back home in wintertime. The sky is almost black and it is relatively cold at the moment.

This isn't the first downpour cum storm this week either. We had a similar one yesterday although I heard later that it was a very local one.

These past weeks every third day or so we have these storms. Sometimes accompanied with a massive release of electricity in the form of lightning. Sometimes just ear deafening booms. Like the one yesterday that made the glass window next to my computer rattle.

Usually around this time of year we have warm, dry weather. Now it sometimes seems like we are in the middle of the monsoon instead of cooing down to the Myanmar winter.

I always feel sorry for the people who are flying in or out of  Yangon when there is a storm like this. I hate flying on perfect flying days and anything less than perfect flying weather is worse. Flying in a storm like the one battering Yangon right now is something I do so not want to experience.

Weddings

We had a wedding last week of one of our teachers. On Thursday afternoon form 4 to 6 pm we all went to the wedding hall. We left our presents on the gift 'counter', as someone called it, and congratulated the newly weds.

After that we sat down at large round tables and were shortly after served massive amounts of food. Mostly meat and fish since that is what people like and it is a way of showing that you are wealthy enough to provide this.

What I always find interesting is that people sit down, eat, and leave as soon as they had their fill. A table behind us came in about 10 minutes after we did and had left way before we even had finished eating. Maybe their table companions weren't greact conversationalists but it is a pattern.

We had the remainder of the wedding with a dinner on Friday. I thought it was going to be different since only a few of us were invited. It was almost the same. The dinner hall was enormous and there were so many tables full of wedding guests.

To the disappointment of one of my colleagues we didn't see any of the official ceremony. That said, the food was very good and we ate our fill.

THE VISIT is over

Since we had an unexpected long weekend, we went to a favourite teashop of ours.  After all, we could take it easy and be out of the house for a little while as well.

When we arrived, the live coverage of President Obama’s visit was about to start. It was filmed at the airport and it was obvious that he hadn’t arrived yes. Even though there wasn’t much to see, all eyes in the teashop were glued to the TV set in one corner.

We saw him land (on TV) and how he greeted the reception committee. There was an intermezzo in which probably some formalities took place on the airport side. We saw a short recap of Barack Obama’s life.

We left while President Obama was driving along Pyay Road towards his meeting places. The streets were lined in students in their traditional school uniforms of white top and green trousers or longyis.

A friend who lives very close to Pyay Raod told me that her street was repaved this week and that all the owners had had orders to paint their gates. Heaven forbid that President Obama would look into a side street and find a street full of potholes and badly maintained fronts!

I do wonder what he has made of Myanmar. Just looking at some of the buildings that he would encounter like the international airport with its bumpy landing strip; some very modern and recently constructed business properties along Pyay Road, the houses along New University Road (since he would visit Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who lives along that road and the American Embassy is there as well), and the beautiful Shwedagon Pagoda which he managed to visit briefly.

It was odd seeing President Obama and Hillary Clinton decent from the plane. I’ve been here a few years now and it still surprises me how fast some things have changed. Myanmar has gone from a country you couldn’t talk about to a country everybody is discussing. From a pariah state to a country that has seen more dignitaries in the last year than in the previous 50 together.

Don’t get me wrong, I thing that this visit has been good for Myanmar. By the look on the faces of the people in the teashop what probably counted most for them was the fact that this visit was happening at all. It must have been something they thought would never ever come to pass. For the people here, the fact that he has been here must have been the biggest boost of confidence they have had in a very very long time. 

Quite a disruptive visit

We were speculating last week about having a day off tomorrow because of President Obama’s visit. Unfortunately, the always welcome words ‘you have an extra day off’ were never spoken.

This afternoon, during KK’s cooking class, we talked about it again, same result though, no one had heard the words that would give us an extra day.

Then this evening at around 9 pm, my assistant teacher called. She had it from a colleague. We have indeed a long weekend thanks to President Obama’s visit. Apparently a large section of Pyay Road will be blocked of tomorrow and our school happens to be on Pyay Road.  There is no use having the school open when nobody can get there.

Even though I have no problem at all with having an extra day to spend with the kids, I am a bit disappointed. We were working on persuasive writing with Grade 4 and they have sent beautiful letters of invitation to President Obama that I delivered last week at the embassy. They invited him to our classroom for some Myanmar snacks and a short lesson on the language and history.

It is a pity that the kids can not even have the suspense of the slight possibility that President Obama  could come for a visit.

Me, in stead of getting ready for another workday tomorrow, realize I can read some more in the excellent book I grabbed from the Library on Friday.