Meeting old friends
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Burma 2004I got up a bit earlier today, around 9:00AM, and just had tea and was able to email some urgent matters to Nisar Keshvani about LEA. It has been raining too until around early afternoon. YN called in sick and so couldn’t come to work, and SMA, the young Kachin fellow who was supposed to help with the website didn’t arrive either. I was expecting them both so we could work on the Myanmar arts website and brochure. Anyway, I did make use of the spare time to write - but only very little.
Lunch was quite good today - I really love the vegetable salad and watercress with rice - especially when I pour in some dried chilli. 
I told BY and MC that this was the kind of food that I really like - so at least they wouldn’t be preparing those really inedible things again! 
KMZ arrived at around 4PM, and shortly KSW - and we both headed to her husband’s office along Ah Lan Pya Pagoda Street to meet KMZ’s husband who works there and his photographer friend. Turns out that his photographer friend SN (and also executive director of the office) was doing research on U Aung Soe - quite a well-known Myanmar artist (whose mother was so poor she sold moke hingar in the streets). KSW told me that SN is Muslim and has been a good friend of KMZ’s husband since they were in kindergarten - and that SN is still single. Funny, because during the sound workshop where we recorded interviews, KMZ interviewed DW about his being single - which everyone thought was so funny (later, DW called his finished sound work “Single Life in the Toilet”).
I really was intrigued by U Aung Soe’s work - in the 50s he started with oil and acrylic and later when Burma was under the socialist movement and artists’ materials were unavailable, U Aung Soe started using paper and markers and pens and developed these really intriguing and remarkable illustrations.
The symbolism in his illustration is just remarkable. He was educated in India, lived and worked in Myanmar and died in the early 90’s of heart failure. Earlier, Swiftwinds published a book about another important Myanmar artist Paw Oo Thett, and I liked the book so much so I bought one copy (for 4,000 kyats). If they had a book available about U Aung Soe, I’d get it. SN is doing research and has compiled so many photos of U Aung Soe’s works and should be able tp publish a book soon. However, many of U Aung Soe’s most interesting works are already in private owners’ hands - private owners outside of Myanmar especially in Singapore.
After the office, we walked to a very busy area near Sule Pagoda to have dinner - chicken biryani in this restaurant along Pagoda Road. I’m not really a biryani fanatic because these are not very good in Manila but the one we had here is quite good. After dinner, we proceeded to see SM.
It was very good to see him again, although now he’s not doing very well - he’s into a construction supplies business (inherited from his father) but business is not very good for small business people like SM. KSW and SM arranged for me to have a tour of the galleries with their artist-friends when I am free - most probably Monday after the web design (the last!) workshop during my stay here in Yangon. Last year, SM had been to Bangladesh to conduct an art workshop. KSW told me that SM comes from the Rakhine state (western side of Burma the part closest to Bangladesh) and that he had “recanted his citizenship” and stays in Yangon (although they still speak their own language).
KSW took the bus home and I shared a taxi with KMZ. It was past 7:00PM when we reached the center, and I got a bit worried about KMZ going home quite late by bus (which takes about one hour and no taxis go to her place) although BY told me that she will be fine - and ZL accompanied her to the bus stop.
When I got back to the center, MC and her two little daughters were watching TV. He daughters are really cute and I asked how they got their names, because I noticed that some Myanmar people got their father’s names. But in MC’s case this was not so - her daughters were named after the day of the week that they were born, CS was Monday born, and AAT was Sunday born.
I should rest now - I need to be up early tomorrow.
