Never Had A Dream Come True

The old songs always remind me of my past.

It was in nearly 10 years ago. We were in London. We enjoyed this song while sitting down in the living room at one late evening. And, we talked about our plans. We discussed about our future. Fortnight later, She moved out to midland. I moved to East of England. We are still friends. We see once a year. But we do not talk on the phone.


Lyrics

Ooh...

Everybody's got something they had to leave behind
One regret from yesterday that just seems to grow with time
There's no use looking back or wondering (or wondering)
How it could be now or neither been (or neither been)
All this I know but still I can't find ways to let you go

Chorus

I never had a dream come true
Till that day that I found you
Even though I pretend that I've moved on
You'll always be my baby
I never found the words to say
You're the one I think about each day
And I know no matter where love takes me to
A part of me will always be with you

Somewhere in my memory I lost all sense of time
Amd tomorrow can never be
'Cause yesterday is all that fills my mind
There's no use looking back or wondering
How it should be now or neither been (or neither been)
Oh this I know but still I can't find ways to let you go

Chorus

You'll always be the dream that fills my head
(Yes you will, say you will, you know you will, baby)
You'll always be the one I know (I'll never forget)
There's no use looking back or wondering (or wondering)
Because love is a strange and funny thing
No matter how I try and try
I just can't say goodbye
No no no no

Chorus

A part of me will always be with you...

Pay day

It is not uncommon that Burmese fellows working abroad grumble about how much they have to pay tax to both Myanmar government and the country where they live. Someone from Singapore claimed that he had to queue at Myanmar embassy for tax purpose since mid night. Weird!

It is true that Myanmar passport holders in Britain do not need to pay tax to Myanmar embassy in order to renew their passport. But every month, the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) tax taken from salary is too much for me. It is a sort of pain with the appearance of news about members of parliament (လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္ ) are using our tax payers' money for their luxury items and mortgage payments.

This is the income tax rate for 2009. If you earn more, you have to pay more.

Income Tax rates and taxable bands

	2008-09	2009-10
Starting rate for savings: 10%*	£0-£2,320	£0-£2,440
Basic rate: 20%	£0-£34,800	£0-£37,400
Higher rate: 40%	Over £34,800	Over £37,400

After tax, another deduction is NI ( national insurance ) contribution. I think it is about 11% of salary. According to the law, you can claim benefit if you are not capable of working or if you become jobless after an enough NI contribution. But I saw many people who are entitled to claim such benefits without working properly before. Fine, this is the democratic country with full of human rights.

Anyway, for this month, the total deduction from my salary is over £2000. I still don't know how much Burmese double tax payers across the world are paying tax. For me, this single tax makes me suffer enough. I have loads of bills to pay every month. So I have to work extra hours when I have a plan to go holiday nearby country. That is one of the reasons I can not visit Burma for many years. I still believe that some people, such as KOM , are still lucky wherever they work at burger shop or warehouse. They can go back home regularly, spending packs of currency notes. Really nice life style.

A small Tesco and me

I am talking about Tesco branch in my place. I should not say this is a small Tesco. But it is rather small to me as in London, I normally go to Tesco Extra from where I bought foods as well as electric and electronic stuffs when I needed, instead of going other places.

In fact, the Tesco in my town is medium sized store . All foods I want are available there. So that is fine for me.

One thing I like most is an animal charity. Really appreciated. At the entrance, there are 2 boxes for pets.





I picked up cat and dog foods to my trolley while shopping and left in those boxes. Thanks for Tesco for this charity.

One thing you need to know!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Myanmar's surprise trial of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has dashed already slim chances that President Barack Obama's administration would ease U.S. sanctions against the military government of the South-east Asian country. Source

A funny news to me. One thing you need to know..... The U.S and EU's economic sanction against Burma is not going to work, obviously. Some facts of Burma's real situation are as follows.

1. Burma never depends on the USA's economy in the history since it became independent. Burma is not Thailand. Not Philippines either.

2. The required technology and resources for Burma are available in Russia, China and possibly India. Yes, the US technology could be well advanced compared with its rivals. But for Burma, it looks Ok . Burma has a close ties with Russia.

3. For the time being, the US has been struggling for its own internal financial crisis. Its power could still reach beyond its boundary while there are also unfinished businesses with Iraq and Afghanistan . But it would be a tough time to do so.


4. If Burma is invaded by US and UK forces from south, China would capture northern part straight away. This could end up this country with a battle field, like Vietnam. There would be a likely confrontation between the allied forces and China in that situation.

Now we are in 2009. not in 1999. not in 1988. Do you think a policy will be right for 100 years?

Saturday Random Photos @ Town

British summer is what we were looking forward to. Now it has already arrived. Blue sky and sunshine. Flowers everywhere. People look happy and enjoy walking outside. Yesterday, I went down to town centre where I looked around and took the random photos with my mobile for blogging.

This is a small town in south England. Town centre is not really crowded. People smile easily. They look relaxed. But it is not a cosmopolitan place. I rarely see Asians and Afro-Caribbeans at work and on the street. Almost all are white.

On the other hand, life in London is hectic and most people look grumpy. In East London, many people do not speak English at all. When I went home during the weekends, it was disappointing. Some people had no nice manner . They did not seem to care the environment where they lived. The most annoying thing to me was speaking unknown language loudly on the bus and tube.

Some shoppers

A street entertainer

Entertaining with music

Fishing rods. We dont kill fish. It is just a sort of sport.

Fishing accessories

Photo frames

A British father

Nuts

A young lady waiting for something

with a best friend

A mother

Enjoying dog walk at town

No idea why these teenagers lying down on the street.

Street show

Street show

Street show

A young girl participating

Locals

A group of friends

History of shoes

Over the weekend, British weather in south England was great, apart from a few minutes of drizzling. I did not go out. In front of the computer for several hours, I logged in online course and did the practice as part of my preparation for a jump to the States. In fact, this is just my Plan B as everybody might have. I love Britain. But I should be ready if this country's situation deteriorates. Even now, £ has been going down against $ and €.

Sunday morning, I organised my shoes. Some were binned. Some were polished. Those shoes made me remember my recent years.


Todd Barnes shoes, used in 2005. It was a tough time as too many oversea doctors came in at the same time. One vacancy for over 200 applications. I had to go King George Hospital daily. Too many walking and running from 9 to 5. That time, I had another shoes which had already gone.



2007 Summer. I was in mid land. I bought this pair of shoes in Leicester. I think it was from Next. I used only when playing tennis.



I bought these shoes with nice lining inside in early 2007 for an interview. I did not make it. :(. Sine then, I rarely use it.



late 2008. I was in Norfolk, East of England. Very good working situation at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.



2008 Winter. I like these. From Ilford Mark & Spencer. Not lucky though. While wearing these shoes, I was caught over-speed in London Lime house tunnel. 3 points and £60.



My recent shoes. Clark shoes for ordinary people in Britain. I am one of them.



I started using above trainers during my holiday in Rome this year. Now very useful for my 3 times a week running.

Old currency notes and the value of a friendship

While searching something in my computer, I came across this photo that I have already posted somewhere, maybe on this blog.

The Kyat 5 note was what I liked most when I was teens. My parents did not allow to eat out. That meant no pocket money provided when I was in the middle and high school. For me, not a big deal. I bought vitamin pills from the shops (New Bogyoke Market and Open market). And I resold at school class room, saying those pills were tonic, very good in £$%^&*...Too much demand. In a short time, I had to make Paracetamol and Burmeton available. Those days, selling medicines was absolutely legal for everybody in Burma and no license was required. I don't know about now. My profit did go to nearby small Chinese restaurant where I enjoyed garlic noodle with grilled pork.

My minute business did not stop in my secondary school. During my final year in the medical school, my father gave me some money to buy a car, after denying to buy a Sony Walkman two years earlier. The reason was that I had been using my girl friend's car all the time. He was not so comfortable for it.

But I never bought a car. Instead, I lent the money to others who were crazy with gambling . They were mainly from Rangoon university, Dental colleague and Medical colleague. Interest rate was 10% a month. It was a glorious time. I drove different and different kinds of cars as I took those temporarily for my money. Of course, I did not communicate with them directly as I was studying for my MB degree. I had some good friends. Their commission fee was 2% and I took only 8% interest for myself. Since then, I have already learnt the value of good friends and meaning of mutual interest.

A wish under the full moon

Lonely night! Someone claimed "Lonely night at Burger King" :)

A genuine lonely? A fake lonely? A temporary lonely? A permanent lonely? One-off lonely? Persistent lonely???? These are queries which came to my mind.

After reading that blog post, I did also check the sky at midnight in London. Oh... nice! A full moon I have not noticed for such a long time. 謝謝 KOM.



I took above photo quickly, trying not to stare at this amazing yellow ball hanging in the starry sky. The reason.... I was told when I was young, if I gazed at the full moon, I might get "lunatic". I never believe it. But I was not too keen to check the moon since then.

According to the literature, there is a some association between moon and mental problem. Someone may know much more than me.

I did research myself for the time being. This is from wiki:

The word lunatic is borrowed from italian "lunacus", Italian which gains its stem from "luna" for moon, which denotes the traditional link made in folklore between madness and the phases of the moon. This probably refers to the symptoms of cyclic mood disorders such as bipolar disorder or cyclothymia, the symptoms of which may also go through phases. As yet there no evidence whatsoever for any causal link between phases of the moon and the progression of mood disorder symptoms. Correlation has been observed in distant parts.

Mental institutions used to be called "lunatic asylums" or colloquially, "loony bins".

It also mentions about Lunar Hypothesis as follows:

In a 1999 Journal of Affective Disorders article, a hypothesis was suggested indicating that the phase of the moon may in the past have had an effect on bipolar patients by providing light during nights which would otherwise have been dark...

What I understand is that people with underlying mental illness might get some problems because of a spot of light in the dark sky. I am still not sure yet.


Anyway, I made a wish under the full moon!
:) :) :)
:) :)
:)

Hello darlin'

hello

this is sanyuaung, boyfriend of xxxxxx

what makes u think u can call my girl darling?

This is only today's most interesting one among the loads of facebook emails, Amazon transactions, KLM offer and some junk mails. A bit confusing. Someone claimed he is boyfriend of her. But what she said before was that she had a fiancé. Is this different person? Same person demoted from fiancé to boy friend?

This is the story. Lately, I got an online friend. She is a professional lady working somewhere in England. Normally, I don't communicate with too many people. She looked nice and decent to me. I treated her as a mature lady with respect and clear mind as she said she had a fiancé. Sometime we emailed. Yesterday, yes, it happened yesterday evening. I felt bored, maybe she too. We emailed to-and-fro, talking about films and eating. Here is part of our talk.

Me: btw, i am eating now with chicken , photo attached :)


She: ၾကြားလုိက္တာ..
စားျပီးၿပီ
ငါးရယ္၊ ခရန္းခ်ဥ္သီးခ်က္ရယ္
အီစကုိလဲ ဟင္းခ်က္တတ္ပါတယ္

Me: mine better. rice is special. cooked with butter, peas, cashew, one sugar

She: ၾကက္သားကင္တာ ေတာ္လုိက္တာ
ဘာအေရာင္မွ မထြက္ဘူး
(အဲ့ဒါ ရြဲ႕ေျပာတာေနာ္)

Me: har har. coloring is child play. what color do you like? yellow, red , orange, green., blue? I have everything

She: you put sugar in everything!
and i meant food colouring as in flavour..
sigh
you need a wife
you still cant cook properly after living abroad for so long
:P

Me: sorry darling. now finished, no more left 4u, see the tray. too much delicious and finished quickly coz very expert in this business, no wife required

the color is phone camera setting was on something else.



She: i'm not strike, don't call me darling :P

Me: darling is what i called tesco cashier old ladies. of course, you are not old enough.

We continued ........!£$%^&

If you read through above, you may notice I was boasting in funny way and we insulted softly each other. Nothing concern with romantic or no evidence of crossing the line at all. Yes, I called her as darling at one point. It did not mean I was saying she was my love or something similar. I tried to exaggerate my speed of eating as I finished 5 chicken wings in just over 10 mins :)

Well, regarding usage of darling, yes, most commonly it is used among the couples/ lovers.

I did check with Cambridge dictionary (Link is here)

Definition

darling
noun [C]
a person who is greatly loved or liked:

NOTE: This is used as a form of address between people who love each other and people who are being friendly. As a friendly form of address it is not usually used between men. (of course, I can't call strike darling, sorry strike :) )

What a coincidence. Today, I was at my fav fish and chip shop in east London. The waitress brought what I ordered, saying " Haddock darling"

Yes, in London, taxi drivers may say " do you want me to wait here, darling" . Tesco and Asda cashiers offer in their some stores " Do you need help packing, darling?" . At work, I would request to a nurse in polite way " Darling, could you do me a great favour?"

I think this is enough about "darling". I thought early today I would not have any issue to post on my blog. I have been lucky enough :)

By the way, enjoy Hello darl'

UK Burmese society

My uncle arrived in the UK 40 years ago. Apparently, 90% of his class mates left Burma during U Ne Win's era. Most moved to the US. Some to Australia. Some came to the UK. At that time, Burmese doctors were able to work straight away in British hospitals. No need to sit exam. But later it changed. Burmese graduates after 1970s (I can't remember the exact year) need to take the GMC (General medical council) exam for registration, according to my father.

Obviously, the population of migrant Burmese doctors grew gradually during the last decades. But a sharp rise occurred during 1995 -2005. I thought once they finished medical school in Yangon, all of them fled to Heathrow airport desperately. London witnessed loads of oriental looking young graduates preparing exam and applying for jobs.

2006-2007 was the turning point for many oversea doctors. As a result of thousands of international migrant graduates, even native British graduates were unable to secure their jobs. (Britain employment system is based on human right, that is what I was told. Once short-listed, the interview panel only considers the candidate's skill and experience, nothing concern with race, religion, skin colour, nationality ) . The government has no power to change that employment law which is based on human right . So the immigration rules had to be changed. Consequently, those from Indian subcontinent and from Burma had to move to somewhere else, such as Australia and New Zealand. Now, many of my friends have been working in Queensland and New South Wales since then.

However, these days, we can still see at least 1 or 2 Burmese doctors working in NHS hospitals across the UK. In some infirmaries, up to 5 -6 people gather.

When we check on other groups of Burmese immigrants, again, thousands have been living, some settling in British isle. Lately I learnt on the blogs and facebook that young people celebrated Burmese new year and water festival in London. It was amazing. Last week, "Buddha's day" show was also held in west London Ealing area. I have never seen such a well organized Burmese occasion before. (some photos here)

I feel Burmese people are getting more organized these days compared with previous times. What happened before was that there were several groups , mainly based on the political point of view. Some people were reluctant to go to Buddhist monastery where the anti-government activists are dominant, with the thought that someone would be closet informer and might face a big problem when they go back to Burma.

Now the atmosphere looks relaxed. No need to worry too much. Apparently, Burmese government does not bother too much. Well, the new strategy of Naypyidaw authorities is that they pick up only leaders or outstanding activists, instead of random arrests. From the Burmese student's point of view, again, they do not need to care too much for some reason. There are some options to stay away from the control of Burmese generals. Forget about ordinary people. British government has been kind enough to grant son of former Burmese police general San Thein (ရဲခ်ဳပ္စံသိန္း) as political asylum a few years ago, according to my sources. Everybody knows San Thein was a high ranking military officer.

Of course, many students in west London seek asylum. One of the predisposing factors would be recent restriction of student visa extension. According to the home office website, the show money is around £7,000 per annum. As a blogger, if you check on the Burmese blogs, you can see anti- government slogans on some blogs . That means logically that the blog owner does not need to care about Burmese government. He/she could have been a British subject or could be a successful asylum seeker. I learnt a lot of such stories from my business parter who has been living in West London area.

Who said no good Burmese food in Britain

I still remember someone from Woking was mourning in her living room, expressing her feeling how much she missed Burma, claiming that no good Burmese foods available in this country. Well it may be true if she kept staying in a limited small place. In fact, Woking is not such a small town. A rather crowded cosmopolitan place.

This evening, no grill, no oven bake at all. I cooked Burmese foods.

Rice ,with parsley and one tea spoonful of Flora: cooked in microwave. You know cooking time is 20 min in full power of 650 Watts. Rice and water ratio is 1:2. KOM said she use rice cooker what I never own one in Britain.

Pork, carrot and green beans with sage and onion: Mince pork and seasoning put on the hob. After 5 min, defrosted carrot and beans were added. mixed properly. 10-12 min later, OXO gravy powder with a hint of sage and onion was poured down after dissolving with a cup of water. After 6-7 min, ready to serve.

Vegetable variety fry: nothing special. Hot fry with soya sauce and oyster sauce. 5 min job in max gas mark.

Total cooking time for all above was around 22-24 min.

Who said Burmese foods not easily available in Britain?

Rice, Pork mince with a hint of sage and onion, veg variety fry

confused.com 2

It was my early days in England. Her name was Rebecca. She was a nurse. A single mum with 2 kids, struggling her tough life. She took off-sick frequently. I overheard nursing stuffs talking about her " Becky's late again" "Becky doesn't not turn up again". I must admit, at first I confused if Becky was her nick name. How funny I am. Of course, Becky is short name of Rebecca, like some other names, such as Bob for Robert, Bill for William, Debbie for Deborah, Toni or Vicky for Victoria , Andy for Andrew and so on.

I think these are not really English language from Cambridge grammar or Oxford dictionary. I might a bit exaggerate if I say that being familiar with host country's tradition and culture is essential for someone from east working and living in English speaking society. But, at least such kind of knowledge will help your well-being in new society, making friendship with other people in harmony in a short time like Mae. Appreciate that.

In west London, I am really glad to see loads of Burmese speaking people. They are well organized. They shared in 2 or 3 bed houses. They have been clever enough how to sort out to remain in the UK legally. They are able to make extensive friendship within the Burmese community as if west London were part of Burma. It is really nice. According to my contacts living there, it is a well known fact that guys usually compete bitterly each other to win a relationship once a girl arrived from Yangon . I think it is multi factorial. One of the reasons would be patriotic, I suspect. :)

It can be said that friendship and relationship are linking each other at some point, but different in terms of nature of personal involvement. Chronologically, relationship is usually preceded by friendship in many models. Some start relationship in first instance. Some may take up to a decade. Well it is a complicated sociology topic what I never understand completely. But one interesting thing I came across on the Face book is some one from Myanmar has been advertising that she is in an open relationship. Oh Jesus! Burmese people have been in such a great time.

I know the meaning of open relationship before. Anyway I checked on the net.

An open relationship denotes a relationship (often between two people) in which the participants are free to have sexual intercourse with other partners. If the couple making this agreement are married, it is an open marriage.(Wiki)

a facebook setting that allows you to give in to your sluttastic urges while keeping a "saftey net" around in the event that you're unable to hook up with anything hotter. (Urban dictionary definition 3)

I really confuse what is going on among Burmese facebookers. Recently, a chap has been declaring himself that he is interested in both men and women . I think I am not stupid enough to announce on the world class social network if I were really interested in guys :)