THINGYAN WATER FESTIVAL
In water festival you will very likely to get wet if you leave your apartment in anywhere Myanmar. Tradition is to throw water on other people to "clean" previous year dust and start new year fresh. Water festival is celebrated at 14,15,16 of April, this ending to Myanmar New Year at 17.04-2016.
If you have never experienced this, I recommend it as a once in a life time experience to your bucket list (second time is an other story). This will be also be official end of the warm season or summer and the start of the rainy season. There are three seasons in Myanmar and the "winter" starts around end of October when rains will end.
Aung San Suu Kyi, "The Lady"
Some people have compared her to Gandhi, referring this to non-violent revolution for changing the country peacefully towards more democratic direction. Who is she and how did she get in to position to lead the country currently? Here are some notes and facts;
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the famous Burmese general Aung San, who was fighting against British colony rulers before Burma got the independence at 4th of January 1948. General Aung San was murdered half a year before this.
Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British colony; Burma at 19 June 1945. She studied in the university of Delhi, graduating in 1964 and University of Oxford in 1968. She married British husband and has two sons. She arrived back to Burma at end of 1980's and lead her party NLD, National League for Democracy, to 1990 elections, which NLD also won. The results were later cancelled and that lead to her long time house arrest and suspension of the party activity.
To cut the very long story shorter, She remained under the house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010. NLD boycotted the 2010 elections, resulting to military backed Union Solidarity and Development Party the victory. At 2012 she become as MP and last elections NLD received landslide victory, having 67% of the seats, where 75% was available for elections and rest 25% were reserved for military.
Myanmar leader system has a president and 2 vice presidents, second reserved for military. Aung San Suu Kyi cannot be elected as president due the recent law changes by the previous military government, prohibiting anyone who has "foreign" passport holder relatives to be elected as president. Aung San Suu Kyi has two children, having British passports.
She has received Nobel piece price as well as several other honors and awards.
First acts as foreign minister of the Myanmar, she met Chinese, Italian, German and Canadian foreign ministers. Finland visit is probably still far ahead, hopefully happening eventually (attn. Soini!)
Then something to read if you are interested in;
Myanmar mobile leaps along
Much talk in the telecoms market has been dedicated to the digital leapfrog: the almighty hop from legacy technology to a mobile-first future. Myanmar’s operators – state-owned incumbent Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), Ooredoo and Telenor – have seen subscriber figures jump by millions over the past few years; and though coverage rates have climbed higher than ever before, they’re not stopping now.
MPT
“For MPT, mobile subscribers tripled from 6 million to 19 million,” said KSGM public relations adviser Yosuke Fukuma in an email. “More than US$3 billion [has been] invested in the ICT sector led by telecoms, with over 50,000 jobs created in the telecoms sector, according to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology [MCIT].”
Future challenges for the state-owned operator include mobile network enhancement and the launch of 4G, building nationwide broadband infrastructure for high-speed internet services, and encouraging mobile financial services, mobile education, mobile health, e-government and other extensions across industries, he said.
Ooredoo
Ooredoo CEO Rene Meza said the company was extremely pleased with the progress it had made on expanding its network.
“The transformation the country has seen in the telecommunications sector is supported largely by the fact that currently close to 80 percent of Myanmar’s population has access to high-speed mobile internet delivered by our 3G network and more than 7700 kilometres [4800 miles] of fibre optic built,” Mr Meza said, adding that the company’s investment of more than $1.7 billion had helped.
Ooredoo has moved on to the second phase of its rollout – into the Myanmar countryside. “Most of the challenges we had at the beginning of our journey are now behind us and we continue to rapidly expand our network coverage and infrastructure, which is getting into deep rural areas,” Mr Meza said.
“For this transformation to continue and for Myanmar to continue being a world example of technological leapfrogging, the right and efficient allocation of spectrum is fundamentally crucial as the country and consumers get ready for new technologies like 4G to be introduced.”
Telenor
Telenor Myanmar CEO Petter Furberg said at the company’s third sustainability briefing that the company had reached 62 percent coverage by February and had turned on about 5000 towers.
He said coverage could be defined differently with regards to signal strength.
“The thing that surprised us most [was] the data – 52pc monthly data users is very high [in a] country with this type of GDP, so it’s promising in terms of what you can do on that platform,” he said.
“When we add financial services, [that] will allow you over time to participate in the global internet ... We have the opportunity to leapfrog.”
The sustainability briefing highlighted health, safety, security and environmental issues Telenor faces in Myanmar, including cases of underage labour in the supply chain.
“I don’t think it’s impossible to eradicate it … I think we are definitely improving Myanmar in this respect,” he said.
Meanwhile, new challenges could crop up.
“I think [they’ll] potentially be related to … security, and how governments will use new laws and regulations that are coming with respect to their rights and opportunities to access confidential information.”
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