Aye Aye Win
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Burma 2004Just had coffee (3-in-1 mix with cream and sugar) for breakfast today - I got up a bit late, nearly 10:30AM. KZL called and said he’d drop by today instead of the appointed time tomorrow. I finally got time to send a few emails in the morning.
Lunch was rather difficult today - the snake fish was really good but I couldn’t eat it because all the sharp bones and scales of the fish were included in the meat (which was ground together with the bones, etc). It was just impossible to eat it without choking on bits of fish bone or scales. The chilli mix of tomato, onions and all sorts of other things was also so difficult to eat because it had bits of rice hull. I did manage to finish my rice because I knew I had to eat well otherwise I’d get sick, but if this is traditional Myanmar food preparation then I’m afraid it’s really very crude (or I wonder if BY and ZL were playing a joke on me). I asked how they prepared the fish and they told me that they just chop up this huge snake fish without removing the bones and scales or cleaning it up. I can eat fried fish heads and fish intestines, etc. cooked with fermented fish but if the preparation is this bad then it’s just impossible to eat it (unless I was a cat, although I doubt that even a cat would appreciate so many fish bones and scales mixed with the meat).
Anyway, KZL came after lunch and we talked about the sound exhibition. I lent him the minidisc recorder and asked him to come to the center and use the computer for editing. (I bought the minidisc recorder in Singapore airport for about S$299 - I couldn’t find one in the Philippines at all!) Later, KZL asked if I’d like to go to Traders Hotel to see this exhibition by two Myanmar artists - Ma Ohmar and Sein Myint.
The exhibition was just 3 days because the space costs US$550 per day. Many of Sein Myint’s works were sold, however, a painting cost a minimum of US$2,000 and as much as US$10,000.
After Traders Hotel we proceeded to Bogyoke market where KZL got some acrylic
paint and where I was finally able to find good Mandalay rum for Tilak, the Sri Lankan fellow who owns this apartment where I will be staying in Singapore. I asked my hosts if I could get Tilak something for his kindness and they told me I should get him some rum from Burma. 
I got it from a grocery called Tiger. 
So at least it was a nice afternoon. Then in the early evening, HWA, the lady who attended the sound workshop called and we would be going to LES’s apartment again - as LES invited us - to have dinner in honor of Aye Aye Win, the AP journalist who received the prestigious award for her work on Burma. HWA arrived around 6:30PM with her husband (an engineer).
In LES’s apartment, there were so many people in such a small space - there must be more than 20 people! I was able to take a video and LES was taking so many photographs. Everyone talked in Burmese but Aye Aye Win spoke a few times in English for me. LES had arranged for many young people to be there to meet her. So, it was another very politically engaged evening - people getting together in honor of a woman who risks her life to practice her profession in a country run by a government that deals brutally against those who dared to speak about freedom or democracy.
Dinner was really wonderful too - traditional Kachin dinner prepared by LES’s friends. I think food preparations by the ethnic minority are much better than the majority Burmans.
I got back to the center at around 10:30PM and MC and her little daughter and family were in the office watching TV and BY and the carpenter, etc. were at the computer watching DVDs and what looked like Myanmar MTV or karaoke. Obviously, when my hosts are not around, the cook and their families and the carpenter, etc. take over the place, which is fine until things get busted!
