ေရႊမႏၲေလး

Classic! My kind of song and beauty :) I'm sort of old-fashioned lay... :D

ေရႊမႏၲေလး, sung by ပန္းအိျဖဴ...

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သီတင္းကြ်တ္ 2009

Thadingyut is perhaps the second important traditional burmese festival next to Thingyan... as I can sense from the celebrative mood amongst the online burmese community now.

I am taking this opportunity to wish my Myanmar friends မဂၤလာရွိေသာ သီတင္းကြ်တ္လျပည့္ေန႔ျဖစ္ပါေစ :) Read More... ဆက္ဖတ္ရန္... 展开内容... Collapse... ျပန္ပိတ္ရန္... 收起内容...

ဒီေန႕ဟာ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္၏ ေမြးေန႕ ပဲ

Today marks another year of life for me. Just an ordinary day. I wasn't quite feeling in the pink of my health (these days, I seemed to tire easily). But I promised my class to be present because they were looking forward to celebrate my birthday. I was told that some of them had prepared mystery gifts for me... :)

This class would probably be my last class to be taught for a whole year. I will be leaving by the end of July next year (my next birthday), so my next class will only be with me for half a year. I must say that this year's class is another wonderful one for me.

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အေျမာ္အျမင္

Prudence is a much needed value-belief in these days of natural resources depletion and global economic recession. Without exercising due care, we may be unknowingly degrading Earth into a planetary dumping ground.


I recalled encountering a little Myanmar girl who was selling strung သဇင္ (an orchid scientifically known as Bulbophyllum auricomum) at ေရႊတိဂုံဘုရား (Shwedagon Paya). The meagre income that she earned from flower-peddling may seem insignificant to some people but I know it was going to make her smile for a long while. I am impressed by people in developing countries who can often reduce excesses and utilise simple materials at hand to craft something useful. They truly practise "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (and Re-think)", slogan of nature conservation and environmental protection, towards sustainability.

This 2006 award-winning short film by Ferdinand Dimadura succinctly reminds us that one's callous wastage can be another's treasure find...

May all be ေျမာ္ျမင္ဆင္ျခင္ တတ္ေသာသူ (a prudent person). Read More... ဆက္ဖတ္ရန္... 展开内容... Collapse... ျပန္ပိတ္ရန္... 收起内容...

Singing the pandemic blues away

An indomitable spirit is required to drive away anxieties hanging over uncertainties during challenging times. Be it a true pandemic or a rousing pandemonium in the current situation, the world needs some soothing of nerves. The following videos and songs were mentioned in my previous post but I have decided to move them here for better organisation.

H1N1 in 1918...
The Flu Pandemic - by The Flying Fish Sailors, studio-recorded in their Loch Ness Monster CD album in 1999.
(An earlier version, recorded live at Rockefeller’s Nightclub, Son Of Blarneyfest, in 1996 is available too)...

The Flu Pandemic - Lyrics © 1999 Topmast Productions and the Flying Fish Sailors

Chorus: It was the Flu pandemic
And it swept the whole world wide
It caught soldiers and civilians
And they died, died, died!
Whether they’re lying in the trenches
Or lying in their beds
Twenty million of them got it
And they’re dead, dead, dead!

There was a soldier on the battleground in 1917
He turned there to his buddy with his face a ghastly green
He said “We made it both through Passchendaele, the Somme, and Flanders too
But now my number’s up my lad for I’ve gone and caught the flu”

chorus

Well a nurse was in the hospital when Tommy was brought in
When he sneezed she caught a face full that was flying in the wind
She wrote a letter home to England to tell them of her plight
But the letter never got there ’cause the postman too had died

chorus

From the meadow-lands of Somerset and o’er the bounding main
To the shores of old Americay they sung the same refrain
Mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts as well as the odd nephew
Brothers and sisters and bosses and lovers were all got by the flu

chorus

Well a farmer out in China watched his family dropping down
And a businessman in Cairo hit the street without a sound
And an eager little Bolshevik in old Sevastopol couldn’t keep up his grinnin’ at Lenin as Comrade Virus took its toll

H1N1 in 2009...
La cumbia de la Influenza (Gripe Porcina) / The Swine Flu Cumbia - an original idea of Federico Casas, brought to reality by Marc Monster, Agrupación Cariño and Jordi Adame (see interview).
(Both Mexican and English versions of the song are available too)...


La Gripa del Marrano - by Atómica
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H1N1 reading resources collection

Amidst the flurry of information from the media on H1N1, here are more links to cater to my blog readers of various disposition...

Serious scientific readers
NCBI GenBank 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) virus sequences
BioHealthBase Influenza virus sequences

Fervently up-to-date readers
WHO Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response (EPR) for Influenza A (H1N1)
Timeline map of laboratory-confirmed H1N1 cases as reported to WHO
H1N1 Swine Flu HealthMap
UpToDate Topic Review: Epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and diagnosis of swine H1N1 influenza A

General casual readers
Swine Flu
Swine flu: How serious is the global threat?
Mayo Clinic expert answers your questions on swine flu
Swine Flu Q & A
Influenza pandemic

Uniquely-creative readers
Making music out of swine flu - by CNNhealth.com
“Swine Flu Hemagglutinin”: amino acid sequence as ambient music
(Download and listen to the music)
Algorithm used to produce “Swine Flu Hemagglutinin”


Let's promote accurate timely information and social responsibility... not rumours, fear-mongering or complacency!
(More links and updates will be added in this post as time permits) Read More... ဆက္ဖတ္ရန္... 展开内容... Collapse... ျပန္ပိတ္ရန္... 收起内容...

Unholy Trinity

This Karaweik here is acutely concerned... the current global alert on possible pandemic arising from the Influenza type A subtype H1N1 ('Swine Flu') outbreak does not seem to augur good prognosis on world health.

Most notable in the alert is this 'triple reassortment' chimera character of the indicated virus, meaning that the viral genes contain code segments that originated from viruses in their respective host organism cells (birds, pigs and humans). For those who read scientific journals, here is a fairly recent review paper [ J Mol Genet Med (2009), 3(1), 158-166 ] about the implications of triple reassortment genes in veterinary and human virology. The authors also raised issues that make us think deeper about these things.

Meanwhile, here is a simple introduction to this particular form of influenza and some well-dispensed advice...


Be informed and take good precautions! Read More... ဆက္ဖတ္ရန္... 展开内容... Collapse... ျပန္ပိတ္ရန္... 收起内容...