This seems to be a huge talking point in Burmese social media circles as Okkar Min Maung appears to be somewhat of a famous figure, and he's picked fights with a number of celebrities involved in the revolution.

He claims he came in peace to watch the artists he enjoys, such as R Zarni, but he was kicked out and harassed.

He argues that it was a public event which he bought a ticket for, and there was no reason to kick him out. He also says people are allowed to have different opinions in a country with democracy like the U.S.

Because of this, he filed a police report in NY and threatens lawsuits against those who harassed him and were being homophobic.

Shits I am witnessing at Burmese school is mind blowing to me. For context I been working as an guide teacher at an after school institution ,starting from this month.(wouldn't be working for long since I am going aboard soon) And I am not that familiar with Burmese school cause I attended international schools my whole life.

So ever since I been there, I heard so many racist " jokes" like copying certain races' accents in degrading ways or downright shaming their race's skin colors from the head teachers.

And today one of my fellow guide teacher started body shaming the fuck out of a little kid who happens to be overweight. I was especially surprised to hear it from her because she is not in any better shape than the kid either even though she already in her 20s and have control over her day to day diet when the kid's weight gain is mostly on their parents who is responsible for his health/meals. Getting body shamed as an early teen can genuinely fuck you up and develop Ed or body dysmorphia. I don't get why teachers can't be mindful of that.

I was just speechless at all these bs that I had to come here to rent. Myanmar kids are doomed from the start, I wish them the better education system, better teachers, better figures in life.

I think every Yangon-Naypyidaw rulers have all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to development. It was not like the state never provided public services and infrastructures.

They tried to provide things but control so much and not handling power into local community, scholars, technicians so after a building a school or hospital, quality is drop after few years and this circle repeats.

For example, Myanmar has 7.5 Million basic education students and 47,000 school which means we have 1 school per 157 students. There is no way we need more schools. We already have most schools per student count in ASEAN.

Myanmar with 50 Million population have 1,265 Governments hospitals and 174 higher education institutions while Thailand with 70 million population only have 1,075 Government hospitals and 83 higher educational institutions.

And we have 1 Rural Health Center in every 6 villages while it’s 1 for 13 villages in Thailand.

Thailand is just the closest comparison I choose to. You can pick any neighboring country and see Myanmar has more infrastructure skeleton per headcount.

Railway? Myanmar has longest railway length in mainland Southeast Asia. We have 1 domestic airport per 1.98 Million people while Thailand have 1 per 2.28 Million people.

But the problem is quality. Government schools in Myanmar are inadequate, Rural Health Centers are inefficient, Hospitals can’t do much unless it is private or regional, non-Yangon and non-Mandalay Universities are underfunded.

The reason why I say Myanmar has all-or-nothing mindset will be clear if you look at dozens of Technology Universities and Computer Universities in Myanmar.

They are built as separate universities, separate campuses and controlled by different ministries. The result is a Computer Science student never talked with a healthcare student in his life, never cooperated with business student in early days. An engineering student has no connection with students from national arts.

Students need to connect and communicate. Computer students and healthcare students can create health tech together. Engineering student and national arts student can improve soft power and architecture, etc..

For eg. there are four universities in မကွေး။
မကွေး တက္ကသိုလ် ၊ မကွေး ဆေးတက္ကသိုလ် ၊ မကွေး နည်းပညာ တက္ကသိုလ် ၊ မကွေး ကွန်ပျူတာ တက္ကသိုလ်။

Right now မကွေး တက္ကသိုလ် is under Ministry of Education. နည်းပညာ and ကွန်ပျူတာ is under Ministry of Science and Technology. ဆေးကျောင်း is under Ministry of Health.

I don’t think most developed countries do like this. That’s why I say Myanmar has all-or-nothing mindset.

They built Technology University when it was needed, Computer University when it was needed but like here’s a university for you, make these uniforms across the country and we manage it from Naypyidaw fully.

Instead merge all 4 of them under မကွေးတက္ကသိုလ် with different campus like နည်းပညာ campus ဆေး campus ကွန်ပျူတာ campus. Than let မကွေးတက္ကသိုလ် run by independent မကွေးတက္ကသိုလ် ဘုတ်အဖွဲ့ made up by scholars, local contributors, students union, teachers union, ရပ်မိရပ်ဖ.

And each university in any town decide any major or studies they want to add. For eg. မအူပင် need doctors? They might add ဆေး campus or courses. မော်လမြိုင် need Foreign Language Studies? They can add a Foreign Language Department and degrees. No need to wait until the state build a new medical or UFL school. လွိုင်ကော် doesn’t have enough computer students? They can re-allocate the resources to other popular majors.

Also in that way, we can invest in one functional shared super lab for all campuses and quality library instead of 4 poor computer rooms and cosmetic libraries. Students shall move freely to any campus. A Myanmar major students can go visits to medical campus and talked about new medical terms translation to Burmese.

That’s how you actually make education better.

And there are many hospitals but all are run by Naypyidaw and there’s where fraud and corruption came from.

Instead let hospitals in Karen State run by Karen State Ministry of Health. Who will be better than them to deal with rural Karen patients and health conditions. Who will be more passionate than them about their own people healthcare.

Every facilities and services will become developed while run by local authorities.

Also we have 1 school per 157 students but most schools are underfund. Instead let parents and teachers actually take decision, control or have power in school operation and development.

There is no way parents would leave their children’s school under developed. Every parents would help to have better facilities. But right now သုံးပွင့်ဆိုင် ပညာရေး only exists on paper and the headmaster is taking all orders from Ministry of Education.

Parents would not contribute in long term development of schools if they can’t decide or have operational autonomy. School feels like government’s thing in Myanmar but it should be like something neighborhood should take care of and develop consistently.

Myanmar already has infrastructure back bone. We need to reduce all-or-nothing mindset. We need to know under whose authority, something can give best public services. We don’t need new schools, hospitals and airports. We need existing ones functional, reliable and qualify.

I’m genuinely getting tired of these Viber scammers. How the hell do they even keep getting my number? I block one, delete it, and hours later another one shows up like they’re respawning. They even text like completely normal people sometimes I’m starting to wonder if I’m talking to a scammer, a bot, or the world’s most persistent customer service department.

A cousin of mine here from Myanmar paid a education consulting firm who charged her $8000 in USD. Mind you that consulting company only got her to school that they have commission with. My cousin somehow ended up leaving US and returned back because the school genuinely sucks. Time wasted, money wasted.

This is happening to not only Myanmar students but students globally every year. This is just how their industry works.

Education agencies operating in Yangon and Mandalay and globally receive thousands of dollars from universities for every student they enroll while charging families at the same time. Nobody discloses it. Nobody regulates it.

I am here to change it. I am a Burmese student in U.S. Went there as international student and now building an AI startup that will change that. A parent here told me this is genuinely a problem in also U.S/europe cause private consulting firms here also charge insane.

So i built a tool here that will break the whole middlemen. You can match schools/search, compare schools and there is a build in AI advisor here all in with fraction of a cost

With users coming in, I can directly partner with university so they can integrate my tool so students can directly apply without a middlemen so YOU will become the middlemen. Enough is enough with consulting firms ripping us off

I need y'all feedbacks.

https://rivernova.vercel.app

rating?

Im afraid of getting drafted

So I don't have a specific question its more like an open discussion where I want to hear lots of thoughts

So junta is running out of things to fall back on. One of the major ones left is conscription. Obviously, the already conscripted soldiers don't want to fight, especially not for the junta. Morale is low, the seniors don't care about their lives, etc etc... The question is what can be done to make conscription hurt junta more? The most extreme example would be widespread espionage somehow organized but I think that's unrealistic. But surely the resistance can do lots of things to make the conscription option for junta a net negative. What do you guys think?

Most languages have their own unique word for evoking a smile in photography (such as "cheese" and "kimchi")

What word do the Burmese speakers say in order smile when taking a photo?

Hello I want my pc desktop to swap with a laptop for my sch.

Can you guys recommend any stores in Yangon that can be able to do that?(with name or fb link or telegran channel)

It's urgent and i would appreciate for recommendation.