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The End Game for Zawgyi and Unicode

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On September 3, 2019

In English, Myanmar Unicode, Tech

It all starts with a font.

Wait! A font?

Who knows a slightly wrong decision in 2006 will make trouble for 55 million people in the future. Myanmar is the last country which is facing a problem with their language in computers. We call this civil war between fonts.

The majority of the people use locally made font encoding system which is useful for writing and reading on the internet and electronic media. But, it’s not ready to embrace advanced language processing and database storing which are only be made with Unicode encoding system.That lit a fire between Unicode and zawgyi and it’s been clashing for more than 10 years. If you want to know more details about it, please read this article.

However, now we are in 2019, things have changed. It looks like a revolution for IT industry in Myanmar. The government recognized Unicode as a standard method for encoding in computer-based works.

Speaking of Unicode, that includes using fonts which follow Unicode standard and keyboards which can be used with those fonts.

The main problem here is 90% of people who are now using zawgyi font system will not able to see the Burmese texts encoded with Unicode system.

Migrating from zawgyi to Unicode is a nightmare for everyone. And some people raised concerns about what will happen to our past data if we all migrate to Unicode.

Facebook

Since most people use facebook as the internet, facebook themselves play a major role in migrating people from zawgyi to Unicode. Fortunately, there is a special feature which is only available in Myanmar. Facebook auto-converts zawgyi to Unicode and vice versa in FB app and messengers, will soon in page manager and FB for work. It’s more like a translation between languages. The only difference is that it translates Burmese (zawgyi) to Burmese( Unicode). In that way, people can still read and comment regardless of the encoding system they use.No more wall between zawgyi and Unicode. Yay!!

However, that feature is not supported to millions of Burmese people living outside Myanmar. Facebook said people living inside Myanmar are their priorities and they might release the feature for people living abroad in the future update. We believe Facebook will continue to support auto conversion for some time during the transition stage. We are not sure how long will it be. After that period, it’s highly likely that the old contents will eventually be converted to Unicode. In my view, it’s pretty tough, because there are also ethnic languages mixing inside Burmese posts. To distinguish between Burmese(zawgyi) and ethnic languages, more rules and algorithms are needed, and the train data for ethnic languages.

How do we convert our Zawgyi Contents?

That contents need to be divided into personal and work.

For the personal, you have messages, contacts, books, music, and documents named in Burmese. For those parts, there are some simple tools you can use to easily convert to Unicode with just one click. For android, there is an app called MCF MUX which is endorsed by Myanmar Computer Federation, don’t find it in the Play store, you will not see. It can be downloaded from this site. That app can replace your default message app in android and can convert every message from zawgyi to Unicode and vice versa. It can also convert the contact list and documents name.For iOS, the only app I found so far is “Pyaung”. Its functions are very limited, can use for text converting and content converting, that’s it.

For work, there are some software will be used to convert documents from Zg to Unicode, they are window-based, some are written in Java. Not very user-friendly though. I’m still hoping to see more tools for easily migrating our docs, excel and so on to Unicode. Apart from those tools, you can use an online converter such as rabbit converter, simply copy the zawgyi text and paste in the zawgyi box, it will produce Unicode text on the right side. If you have a huge database and it’s quite challenging to convert every single post from zawgyi to Unicode, you will definitely need help from technical experts who have experienced in migration.

Keyboards

Zawgyi has only one font and one keyboard. Unicode has many fonts and different keyboard layouts. Which one is the best? That’s the question people asked so far when they start using Unicode. In reality, giving too many options worsen the frustration. Let’s see this as a smartphone brand. Unicode is the OS (android) and the fonts are the brand name ( such as Samsung, xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, etc) which are developed by different parties. If you found a fault in one brand but not in the others, is it OS fault or brand fault? It’s a brand fault, right? Its similar scenario in Unicode itself is a standard, some fonts don’t follow the standard, they became a fault.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi publicly announced to use Pyidaungsu font in office and government works. It will replace Myanmar3 we’ve been using for 8 years. But, for the font on our website, computers or mobile devices, we can still use any Unicode font we like.

For the keyboard part, there is Zawgyi layout, Pyidaungsu (formerly known as Myanmar3) Layout and Win Layout. It’s similar to QWERTY, QWERTZ or AZERTY. Most people are familiar with the Zawgyi layout. Many office staffs are familiar with the Pyidaungsu layout. There is some keyboard like Keymagic which supports both Zawgyi layout and Pyidaungsu layout and Win + many ethnic layouts. You can choose any layout you want and the output format will always be in Unicode. But, you need to make sure to use Unicode fonts to be able to see those outputs correctly.

In my experience using key magic in MacBook Pro 2015, not very satisfied with the results. There are some bugs in the keyboard and when I do speed typing, that glitches always slow me down. So I switched to using Myanmar 3 bundle which is Pyidaungsu layout and install directly into /Library/Keyboard Layouts. I’ve been using that for more than 2 years and pretty ok. I only need to practice new layout Pyidaungsu though I was more familiar with Zawgyi layout. But it’s worth to practice, coz Microsoft’s default Myanmar keyboard, Google’s on-screen keyboard and upcoming Myanmar keyboard in new Mac OS will all use Pyidaungsu layout. So, it’s the future standard layout for Myanmar. You better need to practice now.

One thing for window os, there is two Myanmar in win 10, Visual order and phonetic order. The only difference is typing (ေ ) before or after consonants. Phonetic order has some bugs, you should avoid using it.

The impact on smartphone users.

This wave is huge and mobile phone users will feel this movement very soon.

I don’t have exact smartphone demographics and their brands and os. Based on the data I can see from my firebase, most people use Samsung and Xiaomi and the majority of people use android 8. Built-in a font in the android smartphones supports Myanmar Unicode starting from android 4.4. Majority of smartphone users will be able to switch to Unicode easily from their language settings and themes. But for the older devices which were sold before 4.4 and very few percents in the market, it might be harder to see Unicode. Even if the users go to Mobile services, there is nothing much the service centers can do. I think Unicode migration committee has already met with smartphone vendors and mobile shops, hope that there will be some answers from those meetings. In the meanwhile, volunteers will do helping to change zawgyi to Unicode in their community. But, we do need a systematic approach to achieve this. Since everyone is using facebook and messenger, it’s not very hard for them to communicate with the unchanged community. The only pain comes from the famous messaging app like Viber and Joox ( Spotify for Myanmar). They don’t support conversion inside them. I think if people can’t see auto conversion in Viber, they might be switching to the messenger. In the case of Joox, they only support zawgyi in song names and lyrics.

What if we don’t change?

Can the government do something if we don’t change to Unicode?

Humm!

This is not like law enforcement, more like a setting a guideline for everyone. If I don’t change it by Oct 1, I’m pretty sure I will not put into jail or fined. But, the government will still hold the authorities in some places, they can pressure me in that kind of circumstances if I don’t follow their guidelines. So far, I don’t see any announcements which state the fine or incentives

Another thing is from the user side, many people are awakening from the zawgyi’s spell and they are switching to Unicode. If Unicode users are getting increased, they would also demand the companies and service providers to use Unicode.

Good news is that if everyone uses the same system, the headache happening right now in our companies, communication, and development will disappear forever. Plus the data in Burmese will no longer be like garbage. We will have a lot of data which is reusable and store way more systematics. If you want to know more about the timeline, please have a look at the following images which are provided by MCF.

Hotline or Help Desk.

If you need any help switching from zawgyi to Unicode, this is the official hotline from MCF which lead this migration. And you can also get community help, they are not professional, but you will see a lot of likeminded people and response is incredibly quick. I also have my youtube channel where I provided some tutorials about Unicode. See in the last session of this post.

For the campaign and education

Migration committee recently appointed Unicode ambassadors to several famous artists. They could represent Unicode and do promote as public figures. But, what I’m seeing now is social influencers in facebook are starting to write about Unicode related articles and convince a lot of people to adopt this new system .Brodcast media will also host talk about Unicode adoption and I feel like it’s a time when we pushed hard for NLD campaign in 2015 election. Only MCF and people in migration committee will know details plan . Telecom operators are sending message to people that they are going to switch Unicode not only in messages but also the whole content system. Many Facebook pages and websites are migrating as well. As for the education part, I still don’t know how would they handle. I think it’s not necessary to educate everyone. And it’s impossible to educate everyone in Myanmar. We just need to provide tools and support for this great migration to be as smooth as possible.

Official resources :

www.mcf.org.mm

http://www.unicode.today/

Hotline: 09455 736 999

Community Support

https://www.mmunicode.org/

fb.com/groups/mmunicode

Youtube

How to use Unicode and zawgyi like a boss

Learn more about Unicode/zawgyi problem

https://frontiermyanmar.net/en/features/battle-of-the-fonts

Tools/ Tutorials

Toolbox.phandeeyar.org

Knowledge.phandeeyar.org/

bit.ly/UNICODEMADEEASY

http://bit.ly/mmunicodetools

Pyidaungsu font guide.

myanmar chatbot

How did I create a chatbot?

By

On January 14, 2019

In Blog, English, Tech

I started a chatbot in Chatfuel which is connected with Myanmar First aid FB page. (m.me/myanmarfirstaid).

But it would probably be migrated to My opd page which is more relevant.

I’m going to explain how I created this chatbot

The services  I used.

  1. Chatfuel
  2. Integromat
  3. Google Custom Search
  4. Google Sheets.

  • Basically, Chatfuel serves as a front end to display information to users.
  • Google sheet is the database.
  • Integormat is the medium between chatfuel and Google sheet to transfer data.
  • Google custom search is a separate service which is useful when the information does not exist in the Google sheet. It uses the same user attribute (aka user’s input) and searches in the custom search engine. The Google CSE needs to be prepared by advanced. Not very difficult though, I’m gonna explain details in next session.

Chatfuel

It has blocks and cards. I used automate session to give the users the options.

The bot has different functions.

  1. Depression test (calculation, if statements and showing results)
  2. Blood pressure ( same as depression test, collect user input and show answers with if statements )
  3. Blood glucose ( same as Blood pressure, collect user inputs and show answers with if statements )
  4. Searching for the drug. if the users click on drug search. It will reach to “collect “ block. In which, I set up user attributes card, to store the input users typed in as a variable. Then I called the JSON plugin. So, another work is to go to integromat or other automation services to search data in Google sheet. See more details in Integromat. The search result would be shown inside integromat. So, I don’t specifically need to customize in Chatfuel.
  5. Dictionary. It’s similar to searching drug. But, I used different service ( flowxo). It’s more complicated than integromat. Besides, it stops functioning. So, I’m not gonna explain here.
  6. In order to use Google custom search, I set up a plugin called Google search. I could also use another search engine, such as Bing or swift type search. But, I haven’t tested them yet. After adding Google custom search, I need to add API key and custom search engine ID. There is a link to that services,  you have to follow the guidance and you will get an API key and CSE id. Then, chatfuel will do the next steps.

2. Integromat

Create an account. Then start creating a new scenario. Even though they use different terminology. It’s similar to projects. From the scenarios, you can set up a new workflow. Don’t need to worry too much, check this reference. Because I have to explain very long if want to deep into integromat.

Steps.

  1. Create a webhook, put the link in chatfuel’s JSON plugin as post method. Don’t forget to add user attributes under the address.
  2. Then, you might want to type something from chatbot( don’t forget to show the card you are actually working on, I mean drug search card). Webhook from integromat will recognize the input and start working.
  3. After that, link to google drive account, and select the google sheet you store data.
  4. Choose file, then choose workbook. You need to select which column you wanna find the data. That is the filter section working.
  5. Then, array aggregator comes in, which is to rearrange data from sheet to a new format. You can select which columns you wanna show in the results page. So, can rule out unnecessary columns.
  6. Then, the next step is routing. Which is useful when you want to create results for all possible outcomes. Such as, if there is no data, go to this place and do that. If there is data, show this and do that. Something like that.
  7. From the routing, you can create chatfuel cards, There are messages, user-attributes and redirect to blocks. From the message, you can create text, image, sound etc. To understand the data structure, you need to learn a bit in this link.
  8. If there is no data, I created an option 2 from routing and shows error text then redirect to a new chatfuel block ( which is google custom search). So that, users will be able to see results in google.

3.Google custom search

It is very easy to use. Search from the google custom search and it will give you a link to the website. You need a google account. You can put as many web address as you wish. In my case, I added Myanmar healthcare websites. So, the query will be searched only inside those websites. You can edit site ranking and other options.

https://cse.google.com/cse/all

You will get a search engine id and put it in the chatfuel plugin. Then its’ done.

How did we develop My OPD?

By

On December 8, 2017

In Blog, English, Mobile Apps

When I first arrived in Yangon in July 2017, I had a hangout with my old classmates in the china town. They were studying master degree in emergency medicine ,pediatrics and public health. So, we talked about random subjects before we reached to a point that we all agree.

They said they were facing over workload in the emergency department.
However, not all patients attending are not emergency .Some are visiting to hospitals for OPD treatment. Basically, there is no filter mechanism to redriect these patients to corresponding specialists. They said there are specialist opd clinics on some weekdays but patients don’t know about the details when and where they can visit. Not only the patients, even general practitioners , doctors from other hospitals who are referring the patients to tertiary centers don’t have the information about OPD dates in hospitals.

The point is there is no comprehensive information system to publish all kinds of hospitals’ OPD days. I asked that where can I find all this information quick and easily . They said No, even the ministry of health doesn’t have that data. The hospitals don’t need to share these opd days to ministry. So, there is no option except the fact that you have to contact each and every hospital in person .

My friends suggested that I could make an app to show this information. Of course, I do have to collect the data manually..But , If there was a platform where both health care practitioners and patients find the dates easily, there will be tremendous impact on the health system. All I have to do is initiate it . I am not sure they were being serious or not. Because, we all are drunk at that time. But, I considered about that thing seriously .
Finally, I decided to make it because I already have my new friend who is very good at programming . I have to explain which kind of app I want and he can make it happen . He is also an enthusiast about improving health system by means of technology.

At the night, when I got back to home, a half drunk I started to collect the opd days from different hospitals. I uploaded a post on Facebook, asking for help from my classmates from different hospitals. Some of them were very helpful by sending pictures and texts from messenger. I copied all the information from pictures into a google sheet which was designed by my developer friend.

IMG_20170823_151445

Pictures of OPD schedule sent by my friends

After working 4 months on this project, we finally had a prototype of our app.
On December 1 2017, we were able to upload our first collaborated app on google play store. It has OPD information from more than 50 hospitals and keep increasing everyday . We squeezed our time and used minimal budget to produce this one. WE are very happy that we made it .
But, this is the first step. We aimed this one to be the reliable app for every practitioners and patients. So, we have a vision to improve this app with advanced features. Although, we could develop My OPD app with free services we had, we cannot rely on that free thing if we have a plan to be advanced.
Not only the human resource, but also the money,management and cooperation might be needed in the future.
We still have to wait and see how the public will respond.
After that , we could make more steps.

 

MY OPD, Download 

December 8 2017

Dr. Nyein Chan Ko Ko
Myanmar

< if donation is the some kind of contribution not only about the money. We are contributing our knowledge, technology , money and time for the community . I hope people could see this and make it useful.>

IMG_20170817_234518_325

Designing how do we show data on app.

 

CIVIL WAR BETWEEN FONTS

By

On August 12, 2017

In Blog, English, Mobile Technology, Myanmar Unicode

This post is about one of the civil wars in Myanmar. What ? Are you thinking about guns ,bombs and tanks ? 

Haha, not that civil war, this one is digital civil war. It is called Zawgyi vs Unicode civil war. A lot of foreigners who came to Myanmar to do tech business will ever heard about Zawgyi and Unicode.

For instance, when you want to develop a product for Myanmar people, the first question developer will ask you is which font will you use ? unicode or zawgyi ?

Seriously? What’s wrong with that ? Is that kind of simplified vs traditional chinese ?

Nah! Not really…

The story started when local developers tried to digitalize local languages.Before that time, we used ASCII Myanmar fonts which are almost obsolete by now. Many groups tried to develop a standard unicode system and couple of encoding system called unicode arose at that time.

Zawgyi was one of them . It’s a pseudo unicode. It was an unfinished product. Zawgyi developers intended to use zawgyi system to solve the most recent problem at that time, reading and writing burmese words on internet.People really enjoyed to use zawgyi because it was superb and more practical than any other methods. Seeing the font correctly and typing easily is the most important issue for ordinary users .Zawgyi was indeed a lot useful for all of us. It involved in major role to communicate between Burmese on internet. I catched up a time when we didn’t use burmese font on internet. We only relied on buglish which are english words pronounced in burmese words.  However, zawgyi lacked of some fundamental methods to apply in more advanced features such as sorting,searching and database.  I cannot say about very techincal issue,so  assume that their system was incomplete and faced many difficulties to upgrade to standard unicode. On the other hand, one system ,developed by a coalition team between developers,language experts and others was accepted by unicode consortium as a standard Burmese unicode method.

But, many people were already familiar with zawgyi encoding system.Smartphones and internet had reached to burmese people very quickly after 2010.People were start using internet from smartphone.If you bring your phone to nearby mobile service, almost every shops can make your phone to display  zawgyi .However, popular OS such as android and iOS hadn’t adopted Burmese unicode yet .So far as I know, the first OS which can display burmese unicode correctly is Android 4.4 kitkat which was released in 2013. It was too late for Myanmar unicode to lure users.

Millions of Burmese people are using zawgyi in their device.

Only few people accepted unicode.They are resistance forces against zawgyi. However,most of the phone in the market can display burmese unicode correctly starting from the end of 2015. A lot of Burmese contents were proliferating on internet. But, as you know, data was messy without any systematic order and structure because most of them were not correctly encoded. Government was getting realized the importance of unicode when they tried to change to E-Government system. Every IT projects developed in Myanmar always faced that issue between zawgyi and unicode. They had to invest more time to solve that language problem .And developers as well.They want to end this war. They don’t want to think about this compatibility issues anymore.Until now, most of the content written in Burmese language was being uploaded on Facebook . So, Facebook is kind of most responsible team in order to migrate all of Myanmar users to unicode environment. Today ,we see the most significant change in facebook.

There is no longer a barrier between zawgyi user and unicode user.

Before that time, zawgyi user can only see posts written in zawgyi format, so unicode was just a unreadable mess for them . For unicode users, they had to click font conversion button in order to read zawgyi encoded texts.

That wall between unicode and zawgyi came to collapse today.

Zawgyi user can read unicode text without changing any setting .
And, unicode users can read zawgyi text without clicking any conversion button .

It seems like all the unicode encoded text convert automatically to zawgyi in zawgyi users’ app and all zawgyi encoded text convert to unicode automatically in unicode users’ app.

It’s not one sided change. It changed on both side.

So, zawgyi users are happy because they can read unicode .

Unicode users were also happy at first , but when they realized that their contents were being converted into zawgyi in zawgyi users’ app, they were so upset.

They afraid that this kind of neutralization between unicode and zawgyi by facebook will have negative impact on unicode migration.

If zawgyi users can read unicode without using unicode, Unicode users think  that  people will still be using zawgyi for life long.

So, everybody has different opinion on this change.

For me, I see from positive side.

Most people want to change to unicode but there is a fear in them .

That is they will feel lonely if they use unicode since most of their friends and family are using zawgyi. So, most of them responded same words “ they will move to unicode when everybody use unicode”.

In order to break the communication barrier between their friends and family, every single one need to use unicode. That is a tremendous migration.

So , what I think is , if someone use unicode and his friends or family can also communicate him without using unicode , there will not be any communication barrier between them.

It will be easy for unicode user to attract others to move to unicode environment.

The change what facebook did is the same scenario.

However, there is a little flaw in this, people are worried about ethnic languages which are included in burmese unicode. Facebook neutralization doesn’t support ethnic languages until now. I think ,we can think about that issue later because facebook can only support burmese language in their language setting .If we can attract many people to use unicode , that kind of ethnic language problem will be solved itself.

And there is one more step need to do to break the communication barrier. That is messenger.

Conversion feature doesn’t work in messenger. So, the problem between zawgyi and unicode will still be the same.

The next day after we received update for android facebook app, ios version also received similar update.

That update is quite different from android users’. It’s one sided conversion.

All the zawgyi contents convert to unicode automatically.Iphone users are complaining about it on social media, they can no longer see zawgyi font correctly on facebook. A solution has already come out.

Just remove zawgyi from ur phone and keep clean unicode font and keyboard.

Then, your problem will be solved.

Most ios users are not satisfied with the solution.They hope that facebook will restore previous feature in next update.

So, some of them are afraid to update their app.

I don’t know what facebook is planning to do with burmese texts. I really wish they are on the right track.

None of local developers will not be able to solve this problem.The outermos effort we could can do is producing some tools for unicode.

It’s impossible to hack facebook system just to use unicode.

Some people don’t understand this barrier.They think that local developers are so lame and facebook is the only savior who could end this war.

It’s half true. Only facebook can change their setting, set their language policy. Even our government doesn’t have ayn authority over facebok. On the one hand, local developers are producing some small scale solutions in order to have smooth migration even though they don’t have any support.

I am so passionate to migrate to unicode. But, you know, you can’t run alone. You have to wait and help others to know the track so that everyone will reach same destination eventually.

I use both unicode and zawgyi. I prefer zawgyi in facebook because it is much more easier to communicate with my friends. But for work ,such as writing , database, sheet and for other things, I use only unicode. I can write both unicode and zawgyi effortlessly.

We have to do many things to improve tech ecosystem in Myanmar, this unicode and zawgyi troublesome is a block on the way . Unless we remove this one, we will never reach anywhere.

People who have power to initiate this migration will need to realize this truth.

I am nobody comparing with them. I am neither developer who can create awesome conversion tools or solutions or authorities who have power to order everyone to use unicode.

 

Haha, just nobody ..

The only thing I can do is to push them. To call for help.

From global organizations , global tech firms, and others who can see my post.

I hope one day we will no longer have headache for this font problem.

We want to step ahead into data age, and wanna taste the essence of AI.

 

 

WRITER. NYEIN CHAN KO KO

11.8.2017

YANGON

Dream into action.

By

On November 23, 2016

In Blog, English, Mobile Technology, My Story

In 2013, after I have graduated from university of medicine, I actually didn’t know how to live my life.
I was desperate and hopeless like others fresh graduate. During my gap period, I realized that it was a good time to turn my dreams into action.
That’s why I started to create mobile apps which was my dream. Many people believe that programming is essential to develop software. In my view, it was possible to develop ordinary mobile apps with the help of online development tools.
The first one I made was zodiac app. I made it to test the capability of the tool. Unexpectedly, I found out a way to generate revenue from apps.
As soon as I published the app, it became viral one on Facebook which encouraged me to continue the development.
I was staying in my room every day and nights and figuring out how my app should be look alike.
My next product was mobile health app, called Myanmar Fist Aid.
The idea came from my prior experience of using heath apps during internship in hospitals.
At first, I considered to develop remedy app, but I was worried the accuracy of my treatment since I was not a professional in home remedies.
Then, I switched my idea to just first aid which is more resourceful and easy to find references.
By the time I released my app, I heard many applauses from users.
I am still thinking that it was a golden time with sharp and innovative ideas. I cannot create anymore like this because of not having a strong foundation on the subject.
I have published 6 apps so far on google play.
The one named “Myanmar Zodiac “ hit the 100,000 download in mid -2016.
Others are about 50000+ in average.
Some people would wonder that I could have generated much money from these downloads.
The reality is I couldn’t, because all my earnings were generated from banner ads.
Splash screen ads were not installed by me. It was from the company by which the tool was operated.
Splash screen ads used to generate more money than ordinary banner ads, according to the articles.
I once requested them to allow me to use splash screen ads, but they didn’t allow.
I believe my app is the most downloaded one which used their tool.
I think their revenue must be doubled than mine. If I were able to program myself and the ads installed in apps were all mine, I could have been rich.
With my 3 years of experience on apps, I should have found a small company.
However, I don’t have enough courage to do it.
At least, I should have someone, a closed friend, who are good in managing, along with developers who are easy to communicate.

So, what would be my another destiny.

screen-shot-2016-11-23-at-9-47-46-am

Top downloaded apps between 2015 and 2016. Myanmar First Aid

Situations in Myanmar.

By

On November 22, 2016

In Blog, English, My Story

During these 3 days, there were many conflicts and clashes occurred around the country.
Trending topics are a breakout of child rape cases, bomb threat in Yangon super centers, battle in Muse where is the economic zone between China and Myanmar, another one is Rakhine state.
The world shows more interest in Rakhine case. They exaggerated the case as Genocide but it is not . All Myanmar citizens know well what is happening in Rakhine.
We see it as unstable, critical region for Myanmar.
If we lose our eye on the area, it can become easily transformed into a state like ISIS.
There are already terrorists manipulating in the region.
However, many of advocates share fake news to see our government as a bad, corrupted and Genocide government.
The truth behind is already forgotten. I see this is as media war.
Burning down the houses was not done by the soldiers. The government already explained this .It was made by a terrorist group who was trying to use Rakhine as it’s one of the bases.
Because our country is not well developed , poor and receiving grants and support from other donor countries and organizations, that organizations who received their funding from rich Muslim countries want to manipulate our internal affairs .
We will not sell our states to that folks  by hoping the grants.
You can say about human rights if you are living in rich and developed countries , you will think what is happening right now in Rakhine are the worst stories you’ve ever heard.
But it is not.
There are many similar stories like that in other regions.
If you are an outsider , you will see the case from different perceptive because you are not the one who is really suffering.
You will forget easily after shouting out “We need human rights for people in Rakhine”.
Every wise men who have studied the history of Rakhine back from historic time, will not easily say the criticize words. What we see is just the tip of ice-berg, people don’t want to hear the real answer.
What I wish is not to break down the states apart from the Union.
At the same time, to be able to live people peacefully under the power of law.  At this time, the rule of law is hardly practiced, not any steps should not be wrong for the government.
I believe and understand Daw Aung San Suu Kyi lead government .
I still believe she will bring peace and prosperity to all of her children across the country.
However, the situation is the worst within the 1 year of NLD victory.
Though I have full of hope, I’ am a bit afraid of turning wheels like we used to have in the last decades.
Plz, God ! Bless Myanmar.

I believe , I can fly.

By

On November 10, 2016

In Blog, English, My Story

3 years after glorious graduation day, the first decision I made was to continue my further study.
So, there were two choices that was where would I study?
If I want to continue my study inside the country, I definitely will have to join the civil service.
My mentors advised me not to join civil service since it was too stressful and too many steps for further study.
I followed their advice.
On 2015 February, I decided to study abroad by applying a scholarship.
Before that time, I used to believe that scholarship was for outstanding students.
I was not an outstanding student in the university, didn’t get high credits either.
But, many people told me not to give up my dream, there were many opportunities if you really wanted to apply the scholarship.
Yes, they were right.
There were so many scholarships awarded every year to Burmese students.
First and foremost, my English language proficiency skill was needed to upgrade urgently.Therefore, I attended some IELTS classes in order to understand about the test.
I realized myself that the weakest ones were writing and speaking.
I tried to improve myself by self-practicing.
During that time, I was researching about scholarship providers and the subjects I might interest.
Fortunately, I met a grateful teacher who can guide a lot of things about scholarship,IELTS and even shared about her countless oversea experiences which has truly inspired to me.
At this time, my situation is not quite satisfactory.
No permanent job, although working part time in one of UN organizations.
I am not sure saying part time is true or not.
Mostly, I work over the internet and nobody sees me in person. That is why I felt like a shadow sometimes.
But, I believe, I will be able to overcome all these obstacles before mid 2017.
I am quite confident that my English is in satisfactory level to take the IELTS test.
I must keep going not to lose my goal.
Meanwhile,I will be seeing my friends and my colleagues who are progressing day by day.
I won’t let the depression overwhelming me .

Finally, I would say..
I believe.. I can fly..

How did I develop a website?

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On November 8, 2016

In Blog, English, Tech

In this post, I am gonna explain about how did I develop my first web project.
Actually, I have never developed a real website; the greatest thing I have ever done was building blogs using templates.
My friend who I worked together in the conference offered me a project which was to develop a website for her organization.
I thought it wouldn’t be that difficult for me to take such responsibility.
I have some web developer friends, I can do most of the work and if there was something needed to be solved by professionals, I thought I could ask to my friend.
In reality, starting from collecting information, making a mockup and figuring out to be able to upload on server were all not not easy tasks.
Firstly, I researched how to write a proposal on Google search engine.
After submitting the proposal, designing the website step became a challenge.
Again, I researched some elegant themes on Google, discussed with my friend whether she liked it or not.
If I got confirmation, I began developing stage.
Fortunately, I chose WordPress to manage contents, which is simple and a lot of useful plugins can be found in the store.
Since I didn’t have prior knowledge on which plugins should I use, I tested recommended plugins from tech blogs, one by one.
Experienced developers recommended to develop website offline on your computer.
So I followed their suggestion ,but building a workplace to be able to handle that website in my computer was also a complicated task.
After drafting the website, another step is to upload it online.
I rented  a hosting and domain name from a US based company.
Again, I didn’t know how to upload this huge website on the database.
Couples of days were spent to be able to find the appropriate solution.
I used a plugin called “Duplicator”, installed it on WordPress, export the frame of the website, but media data were left behind.
Finally, I successfully migrated the website to online database and then, linked it with the domain name.
There were more details steps in the process , but I will leave it for now.
Remaining data such as images and videos were compressed into a zip folder and uploaded separately into cpanel of the hired hosting.
After I placing the media folder at the right location, website was available live online
It was actually not a final step, in order to make sure the functionality of the website, I uploaded and removed several times before I handed it over to the client.
Monthly backup schedule was also set up by defining the backup location in free cloud storage, Dropbox.
I tested the speed of the website with some speedster which said I need to reduce image size to make it faster.
I did all the necessary tasks I thought I should do.
However, I forgot to hide my personal information during registering the website.
Although I hid it as soon as I realized that is security weakness, I cannot erase remaining traces which are all on google.
I created several tutorial videos alongside with website manual and handed it over to the client.
I successfully finished up my project .
As an experience, I knew basic stages of web development.
My only weakness was unable to perform coding.
 I could not be sure how high is the website security though I used some security services from a hosting company.
Whenever I have spare time, I used to look up the website.
I am quite satisfied with my work . Despite not being perfect, it is still a good looking one among other ugly websites.

Side effect

By

On October 9, 2016

In Blog, English, My Story

​People might want to ask me why didn’t I publish my posts on facebook.

The reason is I just wanted to write freely rather than listening  the feedback from people on my writing.s

Whenever I tend to wrtie on facebook, I confronted a lot of distractions such as, notifications poped up, friend message alerts, newsfeed update and so on.

Beside those, my fingers can’t freely go on its way, my thoughts are like under controlled . I was afraid of somehow , my writings would unintentionally insult someone in my friend list.

Yes, I can not write freely as I wish.

Aa a result, my facebook is mess up with garbage posts day by day instead of strong ,knowledgable posts.

It can be assumed as unproductive.
Most of the time, facebook posts are not really funny though they say it’s fun.

Sometimes, I feel like being lectured by big words,attitude, disciplines, moral ,blah blah…

I have seen most of them already, I don’t need to read again and again.

Besides, crimes, battles, gosspi and advets are everywhere.

I was really pissed of them.
I only have 2000 friends in my list.

I barely knew some of them even though I didn’t accept the requests too easily.

If it was possible, I want to deactivate it for a long time but I can’t.

My pages ,groups and apps need an admin before I quit them all.

So, the only thing I can do is change password which I can’t remember easily and note it down somewhere.

In that way, I couldn’t login my acc effortlessly. 

Whenever I tend to use facebook, unable to login easily will always give me a second thought.
I finished 2 novels, one in english and one in burmese while I was off from fb.

Another english novel is reading in progress.

And I have time to practise a lot of english lessons including reading and listening.

I have a plan to sit a test in december , wanna get high score but the result is still unsatisfactory.

Especially speaking and writing is still bad.My targeted bandscore is overall 7 , individual not less than 6.5.

I know my reading and listening bandscore could not be lower than 6.5, writing is actually incompetent even though I used to practise on this blog.

Ah!

11:05am already.

I should off to bed.

Sleeping late at night usually makes me dizzy in next morning.

Good Night.

p.s I know non of my friend from facebook would be reading this, I will still writing..

It’s fun.

Better than writing in my notebook.
Arthur

9.10.2016

What is the realistic solution?

By

On September 11, 2016

In Blog, English, My Story

Today , doctors on facebook are getting rage for a speech by one of the MPs from Ayeyarwady region.
She said ” All the government doctors have to arrive their duty on time , every late arrival will be taken an action according to rules and regulations.
No wonder, doctors in service are gonna be raged out . There are so many unfair things in their working environment ,that made them less tolerant and be sensitive to any words which seemed to be burden for them.
They’ve been doing works days and nights .May be they are not able to arrive in time but they aren’t also dismissed at the exact time .
If a doctor has to work for 24 hours from 8am to next day 8am, he usually leaved from duty at about 11am or 1pm ,sometimes even missed their lunch.
And then, they get back to the work next day .
It’s quite difficult to consider every aspects of the problem.
Like the MP who said that words is also a doctor but not in service. Thus, she can’t understand well about the feelings of in service doctors.
She will have an idea to consider for patients but forgetting the capacity of government doctors.
I am also a doctor who didn’t join to service . According to official data , there are about 10000 doctors currently serving in government hospitals among 30000 registered in board. Therefore, 2 out of 3 doctors are not serving in government work. May be they are not practicing medicine or may be they don’t want to join to government service.
On the other hand, government itself can’t afford to assign all those doctors in hospitals. They can not pay sufficient money for the welfare of health care staffs.
1500 doctors were currently picked up by union civil service board and they are under training in the civil service institutes.
It seems the current workload of doctors will be reduced a bit after those 1500 reinforcements have finished their training.
But, even with these numbers of doctors and health care staffs, we can not give sufficient health care to 51 million people.
There are patients in rural and remote who are not having enough care ,they are going to quacks to cure their diseases.
I don’t know how the system error can be fixed to run smoothly again.
People are dying everyday without receiving necessary treatments .Some of them even died at tertiary hospitals for the late arrival or for inadequate treatments.
The inadequate treatments doesn’t mean health care providers are not caring properly them at the hospitals.
Sometimes, the hospitals can not hold the growth of patients admission. Each and every patient need thorough investigation, rightful diagnosis and treatment and proper counsellings for mentally distressed conditions. However, our hospitals can not provide that far , they are lack of services in one area or sometimes in multiple areas.
There is no insurance policy to cover health care fees for those needy patients.
Government’s free health care policy didn’t work out .A lot of corruptions and unable to use budget wisely caused the allocated funding already in vain.I am really afraid of having illness. You can not get tender loving care at the hospitals , that’s true.
Your illness will be taken away at the hospital but you won’t see the smiles in their face.This is not because of they don’t want to , this is because they are in stressful condition, always worrying about their insecure lives .

The health care system in Myanmar must be changed .
We should not be sheep , we should not be spent our days and efforts in hospitals only by hoping a new day to come.
Outsiders will not understand the pain of health care persons.
Health care staffs,their very low wage incomparable to regional annual salaries , they hate it but they can’t escape from it .
The government need to develop a wise plan for the welfare of health care staffs and patients.
The solution will not be realistic if it only favors the patients and not considering about that of health care providers’.

Arthur Chan

11.9.2016

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