Mundane Thingyan

Although Thingyan only comes once a year, I no longer think of it as a special occasion. For me, it’s just another 5 days where I stay inside the home in fear of getting wet. As usual, I spent the days watching American series like the X-Files, Bones, and Numbers. Who knows, maybe in my next life, I might become a detective, but I don’t think I want to chase after aliens in fear of being abducted. My sister is more into the X-Files while I attempted to vary my attention by watching other movies and some good and some crappy Thingyan VCDs. You might notice that I haven’t write any reviews at all this year since I lost my mood after watching crappy videos that kept plagiarizing western and eastern music. The only VCD worth watching was “My Heart Beats In Thingyan” and “Yar Thi Sar 2″ although I didn’t like all the songs.

The first three days of Thingyan wasn’t actually peaceful at home for me because my neighbors set up some loudspeakers in front of the house and kept playing those quite annoying techno music (have I ever mention that I hate techno?). Luckily, a quarrel broke out among them after my mother told them to lower the volume so they stopped playing music at the end. Otherwise, I couldn’t concentrate on the TV or the books.

One thing I really dislike about this year’s Thingyan is that the electricity went out while MRTV was airing “Thingyan Moe”. It is the classic Thingyan movie which is only aired once a year. I had been looking forward to watching it for 3 years and I only got to the first 15 minutes. Blast it! I’ll have to wait for next year since I can’t download the movie from online like I used to. I was even thinking of writing about the movie in details but since I lack the necessary data, I can’t do so now

As I spent most of my times in front of the TV, I only managed read “Brisingr”, the third book of the Inheritance cycle and Jue’s “He/She Will Never…..You”. I had wanted to read back all the Jue books I have at home, but I only managed to read two books so far since my summer vacation starts.

Unhappy New Year

Should I say ‘happy new year’? There’s a part of me that don’t want to say it.

My Thingyan this year has been as usual. Just like last year, I stayed home during the whole festival, watching dramas and movies, and reading when the electricity was out. My parents were on vacation and I was left in charge of the treasury at home, even though I wasn’t the eldest in the house. I am in fact the youngest now. My aunt was asked to come over while my parents were away and she just spend most of the times sleeping or cooking with my cousin. My holiday would have been a usual one if not for the terrible news of the bomb attack in Yangon. Although I am not in the Thingyan spirit, there were youngsters who were enjoying the festival in front of my house by throwing water to the passing car. As the bomb attack happened before the last day, there were hardly any Thingyan cars on our road the next day. I felt sorry for the kids who were disappointed that they didn’t get the enjoy it fully as they should have been.

Two days later, I heard about the bomb blast in Myitsone. I was at first worried because just in the morning, my parents called from their trip and told us that they were at Myitsone now. But since they were there in the morning, they must be on their way to Laizar by the time the bombs exploded. So far, they haven’t called us, but I’m sure they are okay. My father has his mobile phone with him so we can call him and leave messages.

I’ve been dying to use the internet for days now, but the nearest cyber cafe was closed until today. Today is their 3rd anniversary so internet usage is free for the day.

Forum Meeting before Thingyan

On the day before Thingyan Eve, I met with a couple of friends from Native Myanmar forum. I was supposed to meet them in front of FMI Center at 10 am. I am usually late to meetings so I was afraid of arriving late but when we got there, my sister and I are the only one who arrived first. They all came quite later. I should have come half an hour later ‘cuz that’s the standard time for our forum meetings.

While waiting near the gate of FMI, I saw a couple of people with spiked hairs and creepy clothing. I guess those punks are trying to show off again since they probably paid a lot of get those hairdo. I really wonder how they go to sleep at night with those spiky things sticking out from their hair.

Since no one else comes after 10:45 am, we went to Bogyoke Market first. There was nothing for me to buy and the market was pretty much empty as the market festival has already ended. After awhile, we decided to go to a restaurant at Yauk Road. On the way, we met Ko Lynn Seck and asked him to join us. He recommended a restaurant which is pretty nice for large groups to gather. It is a quiet restaurant and I liked the atmosphere at first. I ordered an ice coffee and we all ordered lunch a few minutes later. The drinks came first but the lunch took quite a long time to arrive. I was hungry at first but after drinking the ice coffee while waiting and chatting, I wasn’t that much hungry anymore so I only ate a little.

We must have spent around 2 to 3 hours at that restaurant. I know that’s a long time but it’s normal for meetings to take that long as we have so much to talk about. What really annoyed me was that during our conversation, the restaurant suddenly playing music at loud volume and I could barely hear what others were talking. They was either trying to cover up our conversation as we were discussing a certain hot topic from forum or that they were annoyed with us and wanted us to leave quickly. Whatever the reason is, it is still quite rude and I don’t want to go there again.

Trip to Bago

On April 12th our family went on a short trip to Bago. My father wanted to take some Thingyan photos and we all wanted to get out of the city for awhile. My brother went to the mandat so he didn’t join us. I invited SYM to go with us as she was also bored stuck at home. There wasn’t much water throwing activities in Bago proabably because they didn’t enough water or they decided to have fun in Yangon instead. We first went to Shwemawdaw Pagoda and have a short snack on the way out. I didn’t get to eat breakfast as the electricity went out when I woke up so I was starving at that time.

Shwemawdaw Pagoda

On the way to Shwetharlyaung, we saw a big buddha reclining image which was newly built. We thought it was Sein Tharlyaung but it was Mya Tharlyaung. It was too hot to walk without our shoes so we only took some photos and left quickly. I want to visit there again when the weather isn’t so hot.

Mya Tharlyaung

When we arrived at Shwetharlyaung Pagoda, it was really surprising to hear Zaw Paing’s Thingyan album played at the pagoda with loud speakers. At Shwemawdaw, I only heard prayers but at Shwetharlyaung, it was really out of place to play pop music at a pagoda. We ate lunch at the pagoda near the car parking lot. Usually we go on trips, we eat at the restaurants but this time, we brought lunch from home instead.

Mahar Pagoda

Next, we went to Mahar Pagoda and after that, we managed to convince my father to take us to Koe Thein Koe Than Pagoda. He didn’t want to go there as my aunt once experience something which I rather not write about as it’s hard to explain it in English. We saw a lot of motorcycles going the same way and they were going to the Shwe Gu Lay stream where they play in the dirty water and drink palm juice. It was too hot to walk and my feet were burning so I didn’t get much chance to check out other pagodas beside Koe Thein Koe Than.

Shwe Gyu Lay Stream

On the way out, my mother bought 3 lacquerware jars, 2 is pumpkin shaped and another is min goot fruit, I might use one of the pumpkin jars to put candies at work. She also bought some ripe ovid fruits (that’s what the dictionary said for ‘ma yan thee’) for me as I have been wanting to eat them for a long time. On the way out from Bago, we visited a pagoda which I think the name is Mahamuni …something.

Lacquerware Jars

It still was too early to go back home and my father said he’ll take a drive around the mandats near our home so in order to waste time, we stopped over at a restaurant to drink suger-cane juices. When we arrived in Yangon, my father drove to Kyauktawgyi Pagoda and there we spent another half an hour at the pagoda. I would have like to sit and watch the scenery from the top of the hills but my father didn’t put our shoes inside the front (our car is a public car) and I got worried about them so we went down immediately after coming up. Only my parents stayed on top.

Truthfully, I don’t like going to mandats and getting water splashed so I sat at the far corner of the car while the rest of them got splashed with water. I have lost my Thingyan spirit years ago so now I don’t think it’s fun anymore.

Note: Althought I put my name as watermarks on the photos, I only took the last picture of the lacquerware jars. The rest are taken by my sister and my father.