Sunday, August 16, 2015

A letter to myself

Dear (future) me , 

I know what you have been through and what you have done in your life. You have had  highs and lows , success and failure , love and hate , happiness and sadness. 

I simply do not know what you will be and where you end up in the future but I am sure that you will be finding your way to make yourself happy and be happy with who you will be and what you will be doing. 

Do not let others define you and do not let others to get you down. You are who you are and it's amazing to see you being YOU. 

I know and I believe in you that you will never ever ever follow money and success without a genuine happiness. 

Money is not important at all in your life. It may sound cliché but it is THE truth. Clichés exist for a reason. Do not ever think that money is the only thing that will make you happy. 

Be more positive! I know it's not easy to be positive sometimes but be aware that positivity can (probably) bring you peace to some extent which is a important factor of being happy. 

Thank you in advance for everything you will be doing. I expect the unexpected and I am very excited for you and for your future. 

Yours , 

(present) me

23:28 , 16 Aug 2015

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

New Burma and its Social Media

Burma, a country that was ruled by the military regime isolating from the rest of the world for nearly 6 decades is now opening its doors allowing its people to connect with the outside world by different means.

Once very difficult procedure even to get a passport for an ordinary citizen restricting people getting one like having to go through what they called ‘’Education Clearance’’ which as I understood was some amount of money you had to pay back to the government for its education services that were offered to you throughout your life when you intend to leave the country and right when you apply a passport (no matter if you intend just for a short day vacation to Bangkok , 45 min fly away from the former capital, Rangoon) , is now eased to a great extent in which you can have your passport within 10 days thru a very much simpler procedure without any particular restrictions.

As country is opening up, Burmese are now able to easily be in contact with other people of the world even though there are still some constraints for ordinary people to travel internationally with regards not only to financial incapabilites but also to some visa requirements which has always not been a problem at all for some of the developing countries in the region. For instance, before a recent visa exemption agreement between Burma and Thailand which has come into effective only earlier this month of August, Burmese used to apply for a tourist visa at Thai embassy in Rangoon which you either get in line since early morning (could be as early as 3 am) to lodge your application or have it done overnight by a travel agent with some significant amount of money as a fees.

Given the constraints and circumstances Burma have in place, Burmese people tend to use the benefit of Technology to be able to connect to the outside world which to most of the Burmese generally means their families and friends working or studying overseas. The recent established foreign telecommunication companies such as Telenor or Ooredoo has been playing lately a very important role in the communication sector of Burma which is one of the poorest in the region. With their affordable SIM cards and fast internet connection, people in Burma are now accessible to Internet.

Everyone has got mobile phones and can stay connected. With the help of Technology, people became familiar with social networks and media. Even a stay-home mom who had no clue what the internet was and never touched a computer is now connected via her smartphone and is able to see what’s happening throughout the country and beyond. Many people including older generation are now reading news on their smartphones accessing the news media websites and facebook pages.

Younger generation become very active on social networks, mainly Facebook as Twitter is not very popular here in Burma for some reasons. Youths express themselves from their Facebook pages and actively participate in commenting, discussing and sharing different contents on the internet.

As the news appear very fast on social media, Burmese are also very keen to receive and share news online. News and media agencies has now grown a habit of putting the latest news on their Facebook pages and people became so very familiar with that that people go online and check their Facebook pages to get the news rather than waiting to get the full story from traditional printing media even without any desire to go check to the actual websites of the news agencies. I even saw some people copied-and-pasted the news article from the website on the comments of Facebook post so that other people won’t have to go to the website to attain the information.

There are also immense amount of faux news and misleading information being created and widely shared on social media especially of the news about the politics and religions which already are very sensitive topics to talk about in the country.

Also with little or no knowledge of privacy, (or even lack of) intellectual property rights and laws and regulations on the Internet (Facebook for vast majority of users), there is a great potential risk for misuse such as cyber bullying, grooming and abuse by online predators, identity theft and exposure to inappropriate content including self-harm, racist, hate speech and many more which of course are the threats not only to Burma but also to the world nowadays.

A lot measures and education are being very much needed to take place in the country just like almost every sector of the country as it is trying to open up and tempting to become a fast growing country in the region and catch up with the rest of the world. I hope Burma will be growing safe and sound.