Information Technology

Signing up for web hosting

ကဲ၊ ဒီအပတ္ေတာ့ web site sign up လုပ္တဲ့ အေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကရေအာင္။ စိတ္ၾကိဳက္ server ကို ေရြးျပီးျပီ ဆိုပါစို ့။ ဒါဆို ေနာက္တစ္ဆင့္ အေနနဲ ့ sign up လုပ္ဖို ့ပါ။ sign up မလုပ္ခင္ ေအာက္ပါ အခ်က္ ေတြကို အရင္ စဥ္းစား သင့္ပါတယ္။

၁။ domain name registration ကို သတ္သတ္ လုပ္မလား၊ provider ကေပးတဲ့ ဆားဗစ္ ကိုပဲ သံုးမလား။

အမ်ားအားျဖင့္ web host provider ေတြက domain registration ကို အခမဲ့ (သို ့) ေလ်ွာ့ေဈ းနဲ ့ ေပးေလ့ ရွိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ domain name registration ကို hosting company က ကိုင္ထားတာ ဆိုေတာ့ အကယ္လို ့ hosting provider ကို မၾကိဳက္လို ့ ေျပာင္းခ်င္တယ္ဆို ေျပာင္းရ ခက္ပါတယ္။ ကိုယ့္ဖာသာ domain registration လုပ္တာက နည္းနည္း ေဈ းၾကီး ေပမယ့္ web host provider ကို မၾကိဳက္လို ့ ေျပာင္းခ်င္ရင္ အခ်ိန္မေရြး အလြယ္တကူ ေျပာင္းလို ့ ရပါတယ္။ က်ြန္ေတာ္ ကေတာ့ သပ္သပ္၊ domain registration သပ္သပ္ ထားတာပဲ သေဘာ က်ပါတယ္။ က်ြန္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္တိုင္လဲ သပ္သပ္စီပဲ ထားပါတယ္။ ကုန္က် စားရိတ္ ခ်င္းလဲ သိပ္မကြာ ပါဘူး။

၂။ payment ကို ဘယ္လို method သံုးမလဲ။

Payment method  အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳး ရွိပါတယ္။ master card, visa card, paypal တို ့ကေတာ့ အသံုး အမ်ားဆံုး နည္းလမ္း ေတြပါ။ ဒီအထဲမွာ က်ြန္ေတာ္ ကေတာ့ paypal ကို သေဘာ က်ပါတယ္။ ဒါကလဲ အေၾကာင္းေၾကာင္း ေၾကာင့္ web host ေျပာင္းခ်င္တယ္ ဆိုရင္ credit card သံုးခဲ့ရင္ တစ္ခါတစ္ေလ credit card cancel လုပ္ရတာ ခက္ပါတယ္။ ကိုယ္က payment cancel လုပ္ထားေရာ၊ ဒါေပမယ့္ web host က ကိုယ့္ credit card ကေန ပိုက္ဆံ ဆက္ျဖတ္ ေနတာကို ၾကံဳရ တတ္ပါတယ္။ ျပီးေတာ့ paypal သံုးေတာ့ ကိုယ့္ ကတ္ နံပတ္လဲ လံုျခံဳပါတယ္။ မယံု မရွိပါနဲ ့။ provider ေလာကမွာ မလိမ့္ တစ္ပတ္ လုပ္တာေတြ အမ်ားၾကီး ရွိပါတယ္။ က်ြန္ေတာ္ ကိုယ္တိုင္ တစ္ခါ ခံခဲ့ရ ဖူးလို ့ပါ။

၃။ ဘယ္နွစ္လစာ ဝယ္မလဲ။

ေတာ္ေတာ္ မ်ားမ်ားက တစ္နွစ္စာ အျပတ္ ေငြေခ်ရင္ ေဈး ေလ်ွာ့ေပး တတ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ က်ြန္ေတာ္ကေတာ့ အားမေပးပါ။ တစ္ခါခံရ ဖူးကတဲက မွတ္သြားလို ့ပါ။ တစ္နွစ္စာ ေငြေခ်လိုက္တာ နွစ္ပတ္ေနေတာ့ ဘာအေၾကာင္း ျပခ်က္မွ ေရေရ ရာရာ မေပးဘဲ suspend လုပ္လိုက္ေရာ။ ဒါနဲ ့ host provider ကို ဆက္သြယ္ေတာ့ passport copy ေပးရမယ္၊ ဘာေပးရမယ္ဆိုျပီး ေရွာက္ေျပာတာ ၾကံဳရဖူး လို ့ပါ။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ အခုေတာ့ web host ဝယ္ရင္ လေပးပဲ ေပးေတာ့တယ္။ တစ္လတစ္ခါ paypal နဲ ့ ေငြေခ်တယ္။ ဘာျပႆနာမွ မရွိေတာ့ဘူး။

ကဲ – ဒီအပတ္ေတာ့ ဒီေလာက္ပါပဲ။ ေနာက္အပတ္မွ domain name registration အေၾကာင္း ဆက္ေျပာပါ့မယ္။

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Information Technology

Server load and CPU usage

ဒီ server load နဲ ့ CPU usage policy ဆိုတာက provider ေတြရဲ့ ဝွက္ဖဲပါပဲ။ ဒီနွစ္ခုက provider အမ်ားစု တိတိက်က် ေဖာ္ျပေလ့ မရွိတဲ့ အရာေတြပါ။ အနည္းအက်ဥ္းေသာ ဆားဗစ္ေတြပဲ ဒါကို ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ေဖာ္ျပၾကပါတယ္။ ဒါေတာင္မွ TOS (Term of Service) ထဲက မထင္မရွား ေနရာေလးမွာ ေဖာ္ျပ ထားတာပါ။ ေတာ္ေတာ္ မ်ားမ်ား ကဆို လံုးဝကို မေျပာ ၾကတာပါ။ ဒါကလဲ အေၾကာင္းရွိပါတယ္။ သူတို ့က Disk storage space and bandwidth ကို အမ်ားၾကီး (သို ့) အကန္ ့အသတ္ မရွိ ေပးထားေတာ့ တစ္ျခား တစ္ဖက္ကေန ျပန္ထိန္း ထားတာပါ။ လူဝင္မ်ားတဲ့ ဆိုဒ္ေတြဆို ဒီ ေပၚလစီကို သံုးျပီး upgrade လုပ္ခိုင္း ေတာ့တာပါပဲ။ နမူနာ အေနနဲ ့ အခု က်ြန္တာ္ သံုးေနတဲ့ web host ရဲ့ CPU usage and server load policy ကို ေအာက္မွာ ေဖာ္ျပ လိုက္ပါတယ္။

Server Limits
25% cpu and or for 3 minutes.
Combined 5% CPU & RAM over 24 hours.
250 email limit per domain per hour.
50 concurrent database connections at one time.
Apache threads to be open no longer then 999 seconds.
Php upload limit of 15 megs.
Max php session time of 300 seconds or less.
Limits are subject to change at anytime.

အေပၚမွာ ျပထားတဲ့ အတိုင္းပဲ CPU ရဲ့ ၂၀% ကို ၃ မိနစ္ ထက္ ပိုျပီး သံုးမိရင္ ဆိုဒ္ အပိတ္ခံရပါ့မယ္ (suspended)။ တစ္ခါ တစ္ရက္လံုး (၂၄ နာရီ) မွာ ၅% ထက္ ပိုသံုးမိ ရင္ လဲ အပိတ္ ခံရပါမယ္။ ဒါကို က်ြန္ေတာ္ ျပန္ရွင္းျပ ပါ့မယ္။

Web page တစ္ခုကို ၾကည့္တိုင္း ၾကည့္တို္င္း CPU ကို သံုးရပါတယ္။ သာမန္ html static pages ေတြ ၾကည့္ရင္ CPU သိပ္မသံုး ေပမယ့္ PHP တို ့၊ ASP တို ့လို server side script ေတြ သံုးတဲ့ ဝက္ဆိုဒ္ေတြ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ CPU usage တစ္အား တက္ပါတယ္။ ဥပမာ အခု ခင္ဗ်ားတို ့ ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့ က်ြန္ေတာ့္ ဗမာေလး ဆိုဒ္ဆို လူတစ္ေယာက္ ဝင္ၾကည့္တိုင္း CPU ၅၀ – ၆၀ % ေလာက္ သံုးပါတယ္။ဒါေပမယ့္ ၀.၁ စကၠန္ ့ ေလာက္ပဲ သံုးတာပါ။ တစ္ေန ့မွ လူ ၁၀၀ – ၂၀၀ ေလာက္ဝင္ၾကည့္ရင္ ျပႆနာ မရွိေပမယ့္ လူ ၄၀၀ -၅၀၀ ေလာက္ဆို ျပႆနာ ရွိလာ နိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဒီလို အခါမ်ိဳး က်ရင္ ဆာဗာက ခုန ေပၚလဆီကို အေၾကာင္းျပျပီး suspend လုပ္ခ် လိုက္တာပါပဲ။ ဒါမွလဲ heavy ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဆိုဒ္ေတြ (အျမတ္ မထြက္တဲ့ ဆိုဒ္ေတြ) ကို ျဖဳတ္ပစ္ နိုင္မွာေလ။

Unlimited disk space and bandwidth ဆိုတိုင္း ရမ္း မယံု ၾကပါနဲ ့။ TOS ကိုလဲ ေသေသ ခ်ာခ်ာ ၾကည့္ၾကပါဦး။ TOS မွာ ျပထားတဲ့ CPU usage policy နဲ ့ server load policy ကို ေသေသ ခ်ာခ်ာ ဖတ္ျပီးမွ ဆံုးျဖတ္ၾကပါ။

ကဲ – ေနာက္အပတ္မွ web site sign up လုပ္တဲ့ အေၾကာင္း ဆက္ေျပာ ၾကရေအာင္။

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Information Technology

Web hosting basic – disk space and bandwidth

အရင္ အပါတ္က service ကို ဘယ္လို ေရြးခ်ယ္ ရမလဲ ဆိုတာ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီတစ္ပါတ္ေတာ့ ေနာက္အေရးၾကီးတဲ့ disk space and bandwidth အေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကရ ေအာင္။

service ေရြးတဲ့ အခါမွာ အဲဒီ ဆားဗစ္က disk storage ဘယ္ေလာက္ ေပးလဲဆိုတာလဲ အေရးၾကီးပါတယ္။ အမ်ားအားျဖင့္ေတာ့ ၂၅၀ ဒါမွမဟုတ္ ၅၀၀ MB ေပးတာ မ်ားပါတယ္။ ဒီ storage ဟာ သာမန္ ဝက္ဆိုက္ တစ္ခု အတြက္ေတာ့ ေကာင္းေကာင္း လံုေလာက္ပါတယ္။

သူ ့ထက္ အေရးၾကီးတာကေတာ့ bandwidth ပါ။ Bandwidth ဆိုတာက တစ္လကို ဘယ္ေလာက္ ေဒတာ  download လုပ္နိုင္လဲ ဆိုတာပါ။ webpage တစ္ခုကို ဝင္ၾကည့္တိုင္း ဝက္ဆာဗာကေန ေဒတာေတြ ေဒါင္းလုဒ္ လုပ္ယူ ရပါတယ္။ ဒီလို ေဒါင္းလုဒ္ လုပ္ရင္ လုပ္သေလာက္၊ webpage size ၾကီးရင္ ၾကီးသေလာက္ bandwidth စားပါတယ္။ service မ်ားစုက ၂.၅ ကေန ၅ GB အတြင္းေပးၾကပါတယ္။ ဒီ bandwidth ဟာ သာမန္ ဝက္ဆိုက္ အေသးေလး တစ္ခုအတြက္ လံုေလာက္ေပမယ့္ ကိုယ့္ဆိုက္ကို လူသိမ်ား လာျပီ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ မေလာက္ေတာ့ ပါဘူး။ တစ္ေန ့ကို page view ၅၀၀ ေလာက္ဆို ၅ GB က အသာေလး ကုန္တာပါပဲ။ အခု လူဖတ္မ်ားတဲ့ ျမန္မာ ဘေလာ့ ေတြဟာ ဒီ့ထက္မက လူဝင္ပါတယ္။  ပံုေတြ မ်ားမ်ားပါတဲ့ စာမ်က္နွာ ေတြဆို page view တစ္ရက္ ၅၀၀ ေတာင္မခံပါဘူး။

အခုတစ္ေလာ နာမည္ၾကီး services ေတြက unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage ဆိုျပီး ေပးလာၾကပါတယ္။ ဒါမ်ိဳးက reseller မွာ မရနိုင္ပါဘူး။ main host မွာပဲ ရနိုင္ပါတယ္။ ျဖစ္နိုင္ရင္ ေတာ့ ဒီလို unlimited storage and bandwidth ေပးတဲ့ ဆားဗစ္မ်ိဳး ရွာသင့္ပါတယ္။

ကဲ – ေနာက္တစ္ပါတ္မွ ေနာက္အေရးၾကီးျပီး service အမ်ားစုရဲ့ ဝွက္ဖဲျဖစ္တဲ့ server load and CPU usage အေၾကာင္း ဆက္ရွင္းျပပါ့မယ္။

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Information Technology

Finding a good web host

ဒီအပတ္ေတာ့ ေကာင္းေကာင္း ဘယ္လို ရွာမလဲ ဆိုတာ ေျပာပါ့မယ္။

လို ့ေျပာရင္ ဘယ္လို operating system သံုးလဲ ဆိုတာ အရင္ ေျပာရပါမယ္။ web server အမ်ားစုက windows server သို ့မဟုတ္ linux server သံုးၾကတာ မ်ားပါတယ္။ ကိုယ့္ web page ေတြကို ဘာနဲ ့ ေရးမွာလဲ ဆိုတာေပၚ မူတည္ျပီး windows server or linux server ကို ေရြးရပါမယ္။ html နဲ ့ပဲ ေရးမယ္ ဆိုရင္ ေတာ့ ဘာ ဆာဗာ သံုးသံုး ျပႆနာ မရွိပါဘူးး။ ASP pages ေတြ သံုးမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ windows server သံုးရပါမယ္။ အခု ေခတ္စားေနတဲ့ PHP သံုးမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ linux server သံုးရပါ့မယ္။ အားလံုး နီးပါးက linux hosting ေပးပါတယ္။ windows server ကေတာ့ အခိ်ဳ ့ company ေတြကပဲ ေပးပါတယ္။ အင္တာနက္ေပၚက web site အမ်ားစု ကလဲ linux server ေပၚမွာ run လုပ္တာပါ။ ဒီ ဗမာေလး ဆိုက္ကိုလဲ linux server ေပၚမွာ တင္ထားတာပါ။

ေကာင္းပါျပီ။ အခု server management software အေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကရေအာင္။ windows server အေၾကာင္းေတာ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ္လဲ မသိေတာ့ ခ်န္ထား ခဲ့ပါ့မယ္။ linux server အေၾကာင္း ေျပာၾကရေအာင္။ linux server မွာ ဆာဗာကို (တစ္ကယ္ေတာ့ web site manager ပါ) manage လုပ္တဲ့ software လိုပါတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ အထူး တိုက္တြန္းလိုတာကေတာ့ cPanel ပါ။ သူက သံုးရလဲ အလြန္လြယ္ စိတ္လဲ ခ်ရပါတယ္။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ hosting ေရြးရင္ cPanel ေပးတဲ့ service ကို ေရြးသင့္ပါတယ္။ cPanel ကိုေတာ့ linux operating system မွာပဲ ရနိုင္ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ cPanel မွာ PHP နဲ ့ MySQL database server ပါျပီးသား ဆိုေတာ့ အခု ေခတ္စားေနတဲ့ CMS (Content Management System) ေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ Drupal, Joomla ေနာက္ျပီး blog software ေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ , Nucleus, B2revolution စတာေတြ အလြယ္တကူ တင္နိုင္ပါတယ္။

cPanel နဲ ့အတူ ပါသင့္တာကေတာ့ Fantasco ပါ။ သူက အခုနက ေျပာခဲ့တဲ့ CMS ေတြအျပင္ အျခား နာမည္ေက်ာ္ open source forum, ecommerce, directory software ေတြကို automatic တင္ေပးနိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ cPanel and Fantastico ကေတာ့ မရွိမျဖစ္ ပါသင့္ပါတယ္။

ေနာက္တစ္ခုက reseller or main host ပါ။ Reseller က ေစ်းသက္သာပါတယ္။ Main host က ေစ်း နဲနဲ ပို ၾကီးပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ပိုစိတ္ခ်ရ ပါတယ္။ အကယ္လို ့ အင္တာနက္ ေပၚကတဆင့္ ေငြေခ်ဖို ့ အဆင္ေျပမယ္ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ main host ကို ေရြးသင့္ပါတယ္။ အဲလိုမွ မဟုတ္ရင္ေတာ့ ျမန္မာ ျပည္တြင္းက reseller တစ္ခုခုကို ေမးၾကည့္ၾကပါ။ (က်ြန္ေတာ္ကေတာ့ အလုပ္မအားလို ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ့္ reseller site ေပၚမွာ တင္မေပးနိုင္တာ ခြင့္လြတ္ၾကပါ။) အေပၚက က်ြန္ေတာ္ ေျပာခဲ့တဲ့ features ေတြ ပါမပါ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာ ေမးျပီးမွ ဝယ္ၾကပါ။

ဒီတစ္ပါတ္ေတာ့ ဒီေလာက္ပါပဲ။ ေနာက္တစ္ပါတ္မွ အလြန္ အေရးၾကီးတဲ့ disk space and bandwidth အေၾကာင္း ေျပာပါ့မယ္။

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Information Technology

Web hosting for Myanmar

There are very few articles written about in Myanmar language. If there is any article explaining about in Myanmar, they are not well written and not well explained. In this article and the articles that follow, I will try to explain, in simple terms, the basics of for Myanmar people. Most IT professionals in Myanmar are quite good at writing programs or basic html web pages, but most of them have very little or few experience in . Most IT training schools and programs in Myanmar that teach web site creation focus their teaching in high level html and programming languages rather than easy development of web sites. I am not an IT professional but I successfully run a number of websites using the Content Management Systems (CMS). They are easy to set up, easy to develop and easy to run and modify. You don’t even need to know any html or php or any programming to run a website (but knowing them helps you). I will also explain how to choose your webhost, what are you look for in your web host and what are the limitations imposed by your webhosts (sometimes, hidden in complicated “term of use”). After all these articles, you will be able to set up and run your own website successfully in a few minutes.

The following article is intentionally written in Burmese (Myanmar language) using Zaw Gyi font.

အခု ေဆာင္းပါးက နဲ ့ ပါတ္သက္ျပီး ရွင္းျပတဲ့ ပထမဆံုး ေဆာင္းပါးပါ။ ယခု ေဆာင္းပါးမွာ html တို ့၊ php တို ့လို ပညာရပ္ ဆိုင္ရာေတြ မပါပါဘူး။ သိခ်င္ရင္ေတာ့ ေအာက္ပါ ေနရာမွာ ဗမာလို ဖတ္ရွုနိုင္ပါတယ္။

www.phpmyanmar.com

ဆိုတာ ဘာလဲ

ဆိုတာ ေတာ္ေတာ္ မ်ားမ်ားကေတာ့ သိျပီးသား ထင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ မသိေသး သူေတြအတြက္ ဒီေနရာမွာ နည္းနည္း ျပန္ရွင္းျပ ပါ့မယ္။

အင္တာနက္မွာ ကိ္ုယ့္ Web site တင္ဖို ့ဆိုတာ တစ္ေယာက္ေယာက္က host လုပ္မွပါ။ ဒီလို host လုပ္ဖို ့ hosting provider လိုပါတယ္။ Hosting provider ဆိုတာက service ပါပဲ။ နဲ ့ ေတာက္ေရွာက္ ခ်ိတ္ထားတဲ့ computer server ေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ web site အတြက္ ပရိုဂရမ္ေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ အားလံုး အဆင္သင့္ ပါ။ ဒါကို host လုပ္တဲ့ company က ေစ်းနွုန္း သတ္မွတ္ျပီး ေရာင္းပါတယ္။ website တင္ခ်င္တဲ့ လူက ဒါကိုဝယ္ျပီး web site တင္တာပါ။ hosting company က ဆာဗာ ကို ပံုမွန္ အလုပ္လုပ္ေအာင္ တာဝန္ယူ ပါတယ္။

ဒါက သူ ့ အေျခခံပါ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ လက္ေတြ ့မွာ ဒီ့ထက္ ပိုရွဳပ္ပါတယ္။ provider တိုင္းက ကိုယ္ပိုင္ ဆာဗာ မရွိပါဘူး။ အမ်ားအားျဖင့္ တစ္ျခား company တစ္ခုက ပိုင္တဲ့ ဆာဗာကို ငွားသံုးတာပါ။ ဆာဗာေတြ ခ်ည္း ငွားစားတဲ့ company ေတြရွိပါတယ္။ ဒီ company က ဆာဗာေတြ နဲ ့ ခ်ိတ္ျပီး တစ္လံုး ဘယ္ေလာက္ဆိုျပီး ငွားစားပါတယ္။ သူတို ့ကို Data center ေတြလို ့ ေခၚပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ ေဒတာစင္တာ ေတြက ဆာဗာ ေတြကို company ၾကီးေတြက ငွားျပီး web server ေတြ run ျပီးေတာ့ web site ေတြ ေရာင္းစားပါတယ္။ တစ္ခါ သူတို ့ဆီက reseller လို ့ေခၚတဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းငယ္ေလးေတြက ျပန္ဝယ္ျပီး တစ္ဆင့္ျပန္ ေရာင္းပါတယ္။ ဥပမာ အခု ဗမာေလး ဆိုက္က reseller site ေပၚမွာ host လုပ္ထားတာပါ။ (Reseller လဲ က်ြန္ေတာ္ပါပဲ၊ ျပန္ေရာင္းဖို ့ မဟုတ္ပါ၊ အျခား ဆိုက္ေတြပါ တင္လို ့ရေအာင္ reseller ဝယ္ထားတာပါ။)

ဒီတစ္ပတ္ေတာ့ ဒီေလာက္ပါပဲ။ ေနာက္အပတ္မွ ဘယ္လို ရွာမလဲ ဆိုတာ ဆက္ေျပာပါ့မယ္။

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Blogging

New: Comment authors have their own page on Bamarlay

I have just added a new plugin by Vladimir, a long time vateren and plug in developer, the SEO Super Comment. From now on, the comment authors will have their own page on Bamarlay’s Diary. If you click the name of the comment’s author, you will be directed to that author’s comments page. Here on this page, you will see the latest comment that the comment author posted together with all the other comments that has been posted by this author. I believe this is a good way to see all the comments by the commentators. Please feel free to post comments and see how your comments appear on your own page.

To show this comment author page, I have posted a comment to this post. This will bring you to my admin comments page. Go ahead, try it.

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Miscellaneous

What am I doing recently

Well, I was a bit busy recently. I even find it difficult to my blogs regularly. To summerize my activity during these days, the following is a brief.

  • Just coming back from Chaing Mai. Stayed in a very nice hotel for four nights (with the expense of WHO and CDC). Attending a training conducted by WHO. Hope I did not get H1N1.
  • My sister and my father are visiting me in Thailand. I was busy sending them to all the places in Bangkok (either shopping centers or restaurants). My sis got fever while she was in Thailand, and went back to Singapore with fever. She was really scared that she got H1N1 (not because she is afraid of that swine flu, but afraid of being quarantined). I gave her a few tablets of paracetamol to take while on the plane. Fortunately, she passed the Singapore immigration and health check undetected. Now, Singapore has at least one unreported H1N1.
  • Back to a small town in Thailand. Back to rat race.
  • Bought a new Olympus binocular. Hope it will be very useful next time I visited Myanmar (Burma) especially near Kandawgyi Park and Inya Lake.
  • Bought a new Nokia Music Express 5800. Bought is just because it was cool, but found it very useful as I can now check my gmail, access the GPS map and see my blog statistics on the go.
  • Bought a new Acer Netbook. Very small, very light, but the battery last incredible 6 hours! Now, I bring it everywhere I go.
  • Set up a broad band at home (another house). They said broadband, but it seems like running at the same speed as the cafes in Myanmar. Sometimes very slow. It is from TT&T. Don’t use it if you can.
  • I am now planning to buy a new video camera (camcorder). Like the Cannon camcorder with SD card.

Will you of my life later. Now, will go to bed. (Have to work tomorrow).

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Miscellaneous

Getting married to a Myanmar (Burmese) guy

Jude Williams has asked me information on getting married to a Burmese man. Apparently, she found it difficult to find information on getting married to a Burmese. There are no information available on to a Burmese (guy or girl). I think it is time to give you some information on this issue for those Burmese guys and girls who found difficulty getting married to a foreigner, and those foreign men and ladies want to get married to a Burmese.

  1. Burmese law allows Myanmar citizens to get married to a foreigner. In the past, it used to be easy to get it done. Just head to a local judge and he will marry you. However, since about 10 years ago, local judges refused to do it on the ground that it is difficult to distinguish between real and the human trafficking. Today, no judge or local court would marry a Burmese and a foreigner.
  2. Even after you get married, your certificate (actually a contract in Burma) is in Burmese language. It has to be translated into English. You can get a certified notary translation of your certificate into English but the Foreign Office will refuse to certify that notary. You can still use it if your embassy accepts the notary without a certification by the Foreign Office, but some embassies would not.
  3. The best way to get your done is to do it in a foreign country. You can do it either in Thailand or in Singapore. If you are doing it is Thailand, you will need an affidavit of freedom to get married. This has to be endorsed by your embassy. For a Burmese, he can get an affidavit in a court in Myanmar, get it translated into English by a notary public, and then get a certification from the Foreign Office in Myanmar. This can then be endorsed by the Thai Embassy in Yangon or endorsed by the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok. Both of you will need this affidavit. Then, go to a nearest amphur (local district administrative office) and get your done. However, please check with the district office you intend to get married before you do anything as the requirements by the office may vary from one office to another.
  4. Easier one is to get married in Singapore. This is what I have done after I cannot do it either in Myanmar or in Thailand. All you need is a valid passport. You can file your application online. However, the applicant (either you or your fiancé) has to be in Singapore at the time of filing for at least 15 days. After the filing, you can leave Singapore as there is 21 days waiting period. You will need two witnesses (either Singaporean or foreigner of at least 21 years of age). You can choose get married at the ROM (Registry of ) or with a solemnizer in a hotel. However, getting a solemnizer is sometimes difficult. You can get the complete information at Registry of Marriage website.

The above information is true to my knowledge at the time of writing this article. Hope it will be useful to you.

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Opinion

A long time of absence – My sincere apology

It has been a long time since I last updated this blog. To admit the truth, I was quite busy recently. My work consumes most of my energy, and what is left of my energy is consumed by editing articles on Myanmar Today. Believe me. Editing articles written in non-standard English is not a preasurable experience. I admit that I am not a very good English writer, but editing something into a readable article is not alwasy easy. Many a times, I ended up rewriting the whole article. Thankfully, all of the contributors to Myanmar Today are my friends so they are more than happy for my editing effort. (They can get away  with just the outlines of the article and let the editor do the hard work of writing it into a readable one).

Recently, I was struck down by a severe influenza. It left me debilitated and weak for the whole week. I was dizzy the whole day, with a very severe headache and bodyache. I just lied down the whole day for about three days without even able to lift my head up from the pillow. This was the most serious illness I got since I was a teenager. Ironically, I got influenza after I come back from the Swine Flu Workshop! Thankfully, it was not a swine flu (or at least, that is what I think because I didn’t go and see the doctor).

Hopefully, I believe I would be able to this blog with a few articles every month. Or at least, I will try my best to .

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.

Miscellaneous

Three years in Chin Hills

I first arrived to Chin State on one cold November evening in 2004. I was taking a jeep, sitting in the back seat, depressed. The road to Mindat from Pakokku was the worst road I have ever traveled in my life. A worn out paved road with so many holes and bumps, and a lot of dirsts. And it took half a day to traveled that 96 miles from Pakokku to Mindat. It is like a nightmare come true to me.

I entered the small Chin town at around 6:00 PM. Everything was dark, dull and gloomy. The whole town was engulfed in a cold darkness. I was more than depressed now. I really wanted to cry. I just want to run away.

Three years later, I left Chin State. It was one November afternoon, in 2007. The weather was sunny and fine. And all my friends there came to say farewell to me. This was my last day in Chin State. I am finally leaving. But I am not happy. I cannot smile. I tried to smile to everybody but my smile was lifeless. Everybody tried to smile, but with tears in my eyes. I nearly cried at that moment. But I didn’t want to show my tears to anybody. I was just pretending that I was happy, but not. It was quite painful to leave a place you have been living for quite a long time (three years in a very remote place is quite a long time). You have many friends and many memories. And these memories will always be with me forever.

One day, I will go back to Chin State and visit the places I have lived and traveled again.

Do you like this post? Perhaps you might want to subscribe to my blog.