May 2004 Archives

If you listen to what the astrologers have to say after reading my palm and what all my sun sign, moon rising and Chinese zodiac predictions say, one thing is consistent for sure: my life is full of changes.
I know, life in general is full of changes. But while change grows on people and happens to them over time, change walks with me, holds my hand while I'm driving and knocks on my door during late night hours and drops me off in unfamiliar places.
i can't say that it's all change's fault. I encourage him. I call him constantly, tell him how bored I am and how i need something more, something more exciting.
But, for a girl who's lived in 3 differnt countries in 23 years and moved more than a dozen times in her life, I hate change. I mean, I love new things but I hate the feeling of being lost.
Transferring to UC Berkeley was no exception. Although I knew I needed change, especially the kind of change that would let me get a real degree and some educational experience.
And I disliked the change intensely. Change No.1: I was so sick with Thyroiditis Change No.2: everythign I had heard about UC Berkeley was absolutely false in my opinion: the much respected English Department that I was supposed to be graduating in let me down, I was simply told I could not graduate in the second major i wanted and somehow...
Anyway, I never thought I could live through it. Never thought I could graduate or find a real life in Berkeley.
However, I did!
Change took me by surprise. Shook me around and laughed in my face.
I didn't give up. I hounded the College advisors till they took my courses required for my graduation. I took bitter herbs daily till I could finally walk around without being light headed.
Then , came my very last final on Friday, May 14th. I called everyon i knew and told them howi was fnally done.
And I waited for the euphoria to hit me. Waited for the "thank the lord, i'm finally done" to wash over me.
And though glad that I am not up at crack of the dawn writing research papers, I am kind of missing college life alrady.
Now i sit back and think of all the things that I could have don differnt, done better... you know, the kind of regret that seeps in after one is faced with life changing moments such as switching from colleg student to full timworking person.
and then, i finally ralized while i was packing that..
change is always going to be there.. i'm always going to have to face it. It's not how my life's changed that matters.
It's actually how I deal with it and that I try to enjoy the present and not look back and whine about how I want the old stuff back or how I could be doing things different.
I know Oprah probably preached this constantly on her show: enjoy the present. But how many people actually can say they do just that and don't care to hang on to the past? I am just curious because I want to try it. I want to try it because my life is rather like riding in a car with no shocks that's being driven fast over several potholes. I get weary of the ride sometimes and I tend to wallow and hide in pleasant past memories and don't appreciate the present or I tend to be so caught up in past pain that I don't appreciate the present.
So there, I said it and it's on my blog so I have to try to keep up with it.. and any feedback from anyone who's got the secret of living fully in the present, please, let me know.

I was going to do homework today but I came upon this:

Posted by poster on April 06, 2004 at 08:23:37:

POLITICAL PRISONER Aung San Suu Kyi

(Her son’s heartbreaking story)

Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi gave up love, her
children and her freedom, to fight for democracy. In this world exclusive interview, her younger son, Kim Aris, tells William Langley of his mother's sacrifice and its terrible toll.

The ageing lakeside villa on Rangoon's University Avenue is slipping into decay. Its white stucco exterior is crumbling and the tropical gardens that once bloomed with frangipani, jasmine and lilies are now overgrown and infested with snakes. To pay the bills, the sole occupant has sold almost all of her possessions, and the gloomy, mildewed rooms are bare but for a bed, a table and a few rickety chairs.

This is the home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the most celebrated political prisoner in the world. Few people are permitted to see her and those who do tend to speak of a woman of serene courage, poise and beauty. For most of the past 15 years, Suu, as she likes to be known, has lived alone here, cut off from her supporters, friends and family.

Suu's long battle to bring democracy to Burma (officially, the Union of Myanmar) has won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and assured her of a reverential following in the West. Yet her efforts have come at a heavy personal cost, and they raise - perhaps inevitably for a female activist - the question of where commitment to a cause becomes the abandonment of other responsibilities. For, by becoming her nation's lodestone of freedom, Suu has been obliged to put politics before all else, even her husband and children.

Until the late 1980s, Suu was settled in England, living with husband Michael Aris, a university professor, and their two young sons, Alexander and Kim. It was, by all accounts, a good marriage and a happy life, full of adventure, affection and intellectual stimulation.

Michael had wooed Suu the hard way. As a young man, he had heard stories of an exotic, ethereally beautiful Burmese girl studying at Oxford, who wore orchids in her hair, dressed in the traditional lungyi - a silk sarong - and, to the despair of the male undergraduates besieging her, refused to sleep with anyone.

Michael set off in ardent pursuit, first securing an introduction, teaching himself Burmese and then writing Suu hundreds of love letters. They were finally married at a friend's house in London on New Year's Day, 1972. Their first son, Alexander, was born the following year, and Kim in 1977.

Both boys have long chosen to keep a low profile, fearful that by speaking out publicly they might worsen their mother's predicament. Last month, though, as Suu began her 15th year in the guarded villa, Kim Aris agreed to talk exclusively to The

Weekly about the mother he knows behind the revered political icon.

"It is hard even for the family to get reliable information, and I haven't been able to see her for more than two years, yet I think about her all the time," he said at his home in Oxford. "She is a very calm person, she doesn't get angry and she has a strong will."

In 1988, Kim was 11 and on a family visit to Rangoon, when his mother first came to prominance in the fight for democracy. The military government that had ruled Burma since the 1960s was cracking down on protesters demanding free elections and human rights. Almost unwittingly, Suu was caught up in the struggle and emerged as a leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).

On July 20, 1989. Suu was placed under house arrest. “I remember the soldiers coming to the house, says Kim. “There was a huge amount of activity and lots of guns and shouting. Of course, I wasn’t really aware of what it was all about, nut, for a young boy, it was incredibly exciting. Mother tried to be reassuring, at least when I was around, and I can’t remember ever being frightened. A few days later, my father arrived from England.

He stayed for a week or so while my parents decided what to do, and that was the last time we were all together as a family. Then Dad took Alex and me home, and Mum stayed on."

The decision to remain in Rangoon was an agonising one for Suu. She could have left for safety, but the regime made it clear that if she left, she would not be allowed back into Burma.

And so, while Michael returned to the family home in Oxford with their sons, Suu bunkered down in the fading, colonial­-era villa on the shore of Lake Inya, denied any visitors and guarded by a corps of morose-looking heavies in army fatigues.

Determined to break Suu's resistance, the regime set about undermining and belittling its prize prisoner in any way it could. Crude propaganda in the state press portrayed her as a whore and a "Western party girl", who only visited her homeland to create trouble.

Effectively a single father, Michael coped as best he could, but the house, says Kim, was not the same without the restless, creative presence of Suu. “One of the things I remember about her that she was a fantastic cook, not just Oriental food, which she was obviously great at, but pretty much everything. We ate well and there were always friends coming and things happening, and we had some fantastic travels. Without her, I suppose we lived a simpler life.

Sometimes, we’d be able to speak to Mum on the telephone; and we'd write letters to each other. As I grew older, I became a bit more comfortable with the situation, but we all missed her badly."

Tall and slender, with fine, shaggy hair, Kim, 26, says he now understands why his mother wouldn't come home.

"It must have been incredibly difficult for her," he says with a sigh, "but at the end of the day, freedom for Burma was the most important thing to her. I have to respect her reasoning. It wasn't easy for us, but I am proud she took that decision."

Michael and the boys visited Suu when they could, but the journey to Rangoon was long and costly, and the ruling junta liked to amuse itself by giving permission for visits and then changing its mind.

In the early days of her confinement, Suu's living conditions were very harsh and her health declined. "Sometimes," she recalled in an interview, "I didn't have enough money to buy food. I became so weak from malnourishment that my hair fell out. I thought I had damaged my heart. Every time I moved, it went thump­thump! Then my eyes went bad."

Tormented by his inability to help his beloved wife, Michael could offer nothing more than moral support, but never once did he urge her to back down and return to the family. "She wouldn't have done it, anyway," says Kim. "I think Dad must have known that."

Yet, from the bleakness of the family's situation emerged a few happy moments. On one visit to the villa where his mother was confined, Kim was taught Burmese kickboxing by one of his mother's guards. Another trip coincided with Waso, the fourth month of the Burmese Buddhist calendar – roughly similar to the Christian season of lent – when teenage boys have their heads shaved and are temporarily ordained into monasteries.

As a novice monk, Kim was sent out on the streets to "beg" in the ceremonial manner - a traditional demonstration of humility and penitence. He developed a lasting fondness for the country and its people, but everywhere he went the government's spies were watching.

greatest modern hero, General Aung San, who had led his country to the brink of independence from Britain, only to be shot dead by a jealous rival in 1947.

Suu was just two when her father was assassinated and, having no memory of him, later became obsessed with his life and achievements. "I think she had this daughter's hero worship for her father," says Peter Carey, an Oxford historian and close friend of the Aris family.

Although she settled into Western life easily, her homeland was never far from Suu's thoughts. Before she accepted Michael's proposal of marriage she sent him a fateful letter. "I ask only one thing," she wrote. "That should my people need me, you would help me do my duty by them," In another letter she told him:

These were happy times for the family. For several years, while Michael lectured, wrote and travelled, Suu worked on a lengthy biography of her father and raised her boys. Always alert to happenings in her homeland, she nevertheless showed few signs of being ready to give up the comforts of her middle-class Western lifestyle for the poor, backward land she had left as a teenager.

By any standards, Burma's problems were profound. While other South-East Asian nations began to develop politically and economically, Burma remained mired in failure and ruled over by a repressive, secretive and corrupt gang of generals. Although thoughts of a foray into Burmese politics remained far from Suu's mind, Peter Carey suspects she was looking, calendar - roughly similar to the Christian season of Lent-when teenage boys have their heads shaved and are temporarily ordained into monasteries.

Kim, who is married with two young children, Jasmine and Jamie, now works as a carpenter, while his older brother Alex is an academic in Canada. Neither has any involvement in politics. "It's probably best that we don't," says Kim. "It wouldn't help her, and she wouldn't want it. It's something she wants to do herself."

In a sense, Suu was destined from the start to play a role in her country's future. Born in 1945, she is the child of Burma's greatest modern hero, General Aung San, who had led his country to the brink of independence from Britain, only to be shot dead by a jealous rival in 1947.