• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Manchester to Rome 2022

  • ManRom22
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Burma News and filoFAX

February 1, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Burma

Some say February 1st is the first day of Spring north of the equator. We woke to TV coverage of scenes in Burma where it’s Groundhog Day the day before Groundhog Day. The military have taken control yet again.

From 1991 to 2021 – the Tatmadaw are back in charge
and doubtless, again patrolling the Shwedagon Pagoda that survived 2,500 years before them.

It may not have been inevitable but it was increasingly likely that the generals would resume their rule. The National League for Democracy has been under their control, if indirectly, since a share of power was returned to them in 2010. Isn’t it coercive control if the democratically elected representatives always worry that a coup could be used to resolve disagreements?

The military had written the new Burmese constitution. It names and prohibits Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming President. So a new office of State Counsellor was created. Daw Suu was appointed to the role and she promptly told the world she was above the president. The Tatmadaw (Burmese military) responded with standard military finesse – persecution, jailings and assassinations stifled the voices of the electorate and elected.

Fearing that the Tatmadaw’s influence was being reduced by the recent overwhelming democratic rejection of their participation in parliament, they struck.

They used to tell a very bad joke when I was in Burma. You were told to imagine walking through the jungle with just one bullet in your gun. You see a cobra rising on your right while a Chinaman watches from the left. The jocular advice was to shoot the Chinaman because you’d know what the snake will do. Some might ask what the Tatmadaw expect their northern neighbours will request in return for their support.

filoFax

Coincidence or not, I have been writing recently about memories of Burma that resurfaced when I found an old diary. What I actually found was a Memory Minder from 1990. A leather-bound  Executive Edition, according to the message emblazoned on some of the dividers.

Full marks to filoFAX and my wife who bought it for me. filoFax had produced a book that I carried around the world for nine years. I used it as an ever expanding personal bible which has preserved my testaments ever since. Short on detail, it’s full of memory keys. Two decades later, the memories are still recoverable from somewhere in the organic mess that is my brain.

As a personal organiser, the black filoFax really has stood the tests of times and locations. Searing desert heat in Niger, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Patagonia to name a few. Desiccation in the Bolivian altiplano. Wave thrown salt from the south of Argentina to the north of Nova Scotia. Tropical humidity and leather eating mould in Burma, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. A suitcase that travelled beyond Singapore and made it to Melbourne before returning to me in Rangoon, two months later. An object of intense interest on customs inspection in Pakistan.

It continues to be interesting to me to see what interested me in the 1990’s. For example, there are notes that range from the sublime to the ridiculous:

  • Sophie’s World: Jostein Gaarder April ’96: ‘Socrates saw his task as helping people to ‘give birth’ to the correct insight’.
  • Xmas ’97: ‘Happy birthday to Jesus’ – in tuxedos and cocktail dresses.

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: aung san suu kyi, burma, filofax, groundhog day, photos, travel

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe


Recent Comments

  • Simon Robinson on Journaldate: 365.6
  • Chris Westrup on Journaldate: 365.6
  • Belinda O'Byrne on Five Thing Day
  • Clair & Sean on The Muglins Issued
  • Ciaran Benson on The Muglins Issued

Categories

  • Anchoritism
  • Fake Memoir
  • ManRom2021
  • Photozines
  • Uncategorized

Tags

ahmet altan albert einstein argentina art bbc birds bird watching booklink brexit brian greene burma cancer colum mccann computing Covid-19 dog dun laoghaire fabhappy fitbit flowers food gardening geology geophysics hans rosling irish times leinster rugby lia mills london movies nobel prize pandemic PEN international photo photography photos poetry popular sahara simonscarves the guardian travel tv volcano walking

Recent Posts

  • An Idea of O’Brien
  • Journaldate: 365.6
  • Screensavers and Proteins Part 2
  • The Garden Issued
  • Kayak, Dinghy or Boots?

Archives

  • March 2021 (1)
  • February 2021 (28)
  • January 2021 (31)
  • December 2020 (31)
  • November 2020 (30)
  • October 2020 (31)
  • September 2020 (30)
  • August 2020 (31)
  • July 2020 (31)
  • June 2020 (30)
  • May 2020 (31)
  • April 2020 (30)
  • March 2020 (31)

Footer

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
  • ManRom22
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Subscribe


Copyright © 2021 · Revolution Pro on Genesis Framework