Category: words

Burmese is hard.

As part of my ongoing quest to learn this language, yesterday I started a two week intensive course with the famous John Okell.*

If yesterday was indicative of the course as a whole, the two hours of daily lessons need to be accompanied by seven hours of study, and I am going to spend the next two weeks desperately struggling to keep my head above water.

The rest of the page is covered in my tears.
The rest of the page is covered in my tears.

 

*If you don’t recognise his name then you are probably not involved in the fairly niche world of Burmese language study. But he quite literally wrote the book on learning Burmese.

Not quite a month.

Apologies for the extended absence. In my defence, it hasn’t even been a whole months, and in that time we have:

  • moved house (again)
  • received and unpacked our shipment of house things from Australia
  • restarted Burmese lessons (Jono)
  • travelled to Rakhine (Esther)
  • travelled to northern Shan (Esther)
  • travelled to Bangkok (Jono)
  • worked very hard at a great many things (definitely Esther)
  • set up a media server and found lots of TV to watch (Jono)
  • baked some bread (Jono)
  • learned how to make mohinga (Jono)

And when I type it all out like that it doesn’t actually seem like much, but to quote Calvin “the days are just packed“.

Which is all to say, I hope to follow this up with some more frequent posts over the next days/weeks.

Decamped.

Thingyan approached, and so we left.

Somewhat ironically, we were leaving Yangon to avoid the water festival, only to get rained on everyday in Hong Kong. But rain was a nice change from the 38 degree days we had been getting used to (I realise I will grow to hate the rain come wet season).

And now our all-too-short holiday is all-too-over. We’re sitting in Don Muang Airport waiting for our flight home and trying to avoid rats.

Holiday photos to come once we’re back home and I’ve had a chance to look through them.

Cinchonism, or “avoiding poisoning in home tonic-making”.

This is mainly a rehash of a recent facebook post, so everyone who has seen it there should feel free to ignore it, the photos are the same (and the jokes probably will be too).

During The Great Tonic Shortage of 2013 it was known for Yangonites to arrive at a party, plonk their gin down on the shared table, but keep their cans of tonic secreted on their person, doling them out under close supervision to friends and loved ones.

It hasn’t been that bad since we’ve been here, but the inconsistent supply chain means that anything at any time can just disappear, and the local tonic is universally regarded as pretty rubbish. For all these reasons, but mainly because I like making/overly complicating things, I decided to make my own tonic syrup. Continue reading Cinchonism, or “avoiding poisoning in home tonic-making”.

Easter weekend, wherein two days is discovered to be a poor excuse for a weekly break.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Myanmar, as a majority Buddhist nation, does not really pay much attention to Easter. The Australian Embassy, on the other hand, pays a more attention, and gives its staff a four day weekend. So we celebrated in the traditional manner – entertaining international guests, brunching, and buying glassware.*

Continue reading Easter weekend, wherein two days is discovered to be a poor excuse for a weekly break.

A new era of democracy.

Or “when is a president not a president?”

As previously mentioned, on Tuesday 15 March, I and a large number of my fellow Yangon/Myanmar residents, watched with a considerable level on interest some actually pretty boring proceedings in the Pyithu Hluttaw (Myanmar House of Reps). Continue reading A new era of democracy.

One hundred thousand diamonds.

One of the nice things about learning Burmese is discovering that words you have known for a long time* have other meanings. In this case, the (as of last week**) former president U Thein Sein’s name, which literally translates as Mr One Hundred Thousand Diamonds. Which is a pretty strong leader-of-the-country type name. Also probably a good rap name. Continue reading One hundred thousand diamonds.