A memoir of the Karen (Kayin) Transgender Woman of Burma

I have been back home since the beginning of June.  But so far, I have not touched a thing about this blog. It is quite difficult to access the internet and I have been busy with my new job.  I have not updated anything going on with me. Let me tell you how wonderful it is to be back HOME.  I feel relaxed and less and less stressed.  Everyday, I have a chance to go down to the street market, buying the food I love and enjoying it with a sense of joy :-).  I love it, I love it. I am today in downtown accessing internet from a place called "Shake".  Wonderful Passion Fruit Tea and a bowl of noodles with gravy soup made my dinner.  Don't you think it is wonderful? I am with friends.  My friends introduced us to a person working for European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) and one of my friends is talking with him right now while I am writing this and telling him the pros and cons of photographing community and what could be the impact on the community. ...

Yesterday, I read so many articles about President of the United States of America, Obama, concluded that same sex couple should be able to get married.  He has become the first US president to endorse same sex marriage.  I am pleased to share with you here the link from Myanmar News Now -  Obama becomes frist US president to endorse same sex marriage  .  Today, Again, Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key, uttered that he is not personally oppposed to same sex couple getting married.   New Zealand's PM backs gay marriage . What about us in Myanmar (Burma)?   Section 377 of the our penal code is still enforced and it has been defined here below: 377. Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with transportation for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine. Ref:  Burma Law...

Homosexual's love usually starts with sexual relationship. But when this sexual relationship is topped up with  understanding and compromise, it creates a bondage which is hard to detach. We, homosexuals always want  the best for us. We can say,"I love you" so easily but we forgot to tie ourselves strongly with those delicate  strings called understanding. And we are reluctant to kiss each other with forgiveness. We want to get the best  from someone but yet we are to be ready to give the best we have. Love on earth begins at home said Mother Teresa. And have we ever tried to build a relationship like a house  where we can dwell with understanding and make it a home with love? I took this photo of a bunch of flower prepared by my boyfriend when I came home and a notebook, a system  which  I developed to communicate between us. He could hardly write. And unfortunately he found out that day  that I slept with a...

On 2nd May, I came back from Bangkok to Mae Sariang after a skin treatment in a Bangkok hospital.  It was not less than 12 hour bus ride.  But I took the night bus and I slept all the way.  As travelling during the night, I did not have to bear the heat of this season.  I got back earlier in the morning and had to go straight away to a guesthouse room I booked to stay for 16 nights until my end of assignment on 18 May 2012.  My lease for the apartment ended by the end of April and I managed to sell everything that I will not carry home giving at least 50% discount. :-(  I am not so happy about it.  But c'est la vie.  Oh, I want to share you the photo of my room, in fact, it is a bungalow.  I never posted a photo on this blog inside post and please give me any idea if you think it can be improved.  Here you go, how lovely it is.  I am going to stay in this lovely hut until 18 of May....  It was being built when I arrived in...

မိတ်ဆွေ အပေါင်းအသင်းတွေကြားမှာ ဘယ်လိုပွင့်နေပေမယ့် မိဘညီအစ်ကိုတွေကိုတော့ ရှက်သေးတာပဲလေနော်။ မယာတောင် တနယ်ခြားမှာ မို့ ဂါဝန် တကားကားနဲ့ လျောက်သွားရဲတာ။ အကယ်၍သာ ရန်ကုန်မှာဆို ရှင့်လိုပဲ ပုန်းနေရမှာလေနော်။ မယာ ညီမနဲ့ ဟိုတစ်နေ့က ဖုန်းပြောဖြစ်တယ်။ ဘာပြောလဲသိလား။ နင့်ရဲ့ ဖေ့စ်ဘွတ်ပေါ်မှာတဲ့ အကောင်တစ်ကောင်နဲ့ ပလူးနေတာတွေတွေ့လို့တဲ့ မယာ တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲရဲ့ သူငယ်ချင်းတွေက တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲကိုပြောကြတယ်တဲ့။ မြင်လို့တောင်မကောင်းဘူးဆိုတာလဲ ပါသေးတယ်။ ဒါနဲ့ ကျမ တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲက သူ့ အမေ မယာ အဒေါ်ကို ပြန်ပြော အဲ့ဒီကမှတဆင့် မယာ အဒေါ်တွေက ညီမကို ပြန်ပြောကြတယ်။ နောက်ပြီး နင့်အမေမသိစေနဲ့နော်တဲ့။ ရယ်ချင်တယ်တော့။ သူတို့ကရှက်တယ်တဲ့။ မယာ ညီမကတော့ မယာဘက်က မားမားမတ်မတ်ရပ်တည်တဲ့သူပါ။ မယာကို အမြဲတမ်းအားပေးသူပါ။ သူ အမြဲတမ်းပြောလေ့ရှိတာ က နင်ဘာဖြစ်နေဖြစ်နေ နင်ဟာငါ့အစ်ကိုပဲ။ ငါ့ကို အခုလို ပြုစုပျိုးထောင်ပေးတာနင်ပဲ။ နင့်ကြောင့်သာမဟုတ်ရင် ငါအခုလိုပညာတတ်ဖြစ်မှာမဟုတ်ဘူး။ ငါတို့တွေ အပူအပင်ကင်းကင်းနေနိုင်အောင် နင်မားမားမတ်မတ်ရပ်ခဲ့တဲ့ နင့်သတ္ဆိကို ငါဘယ်တော့မှ မမေ့ဘူး။ မယာ မျက်တောင်မခပ်ဘဲ မျက်ရည်တွေ ရေလောင်းချလိုက်သလို ကျလာပါတယ်။ မယာ တ...

Last week, I was in Chiang Mai to meet my dentist for the final treatment. Yes, hopefully the final treatment to replant two teeth extracted in November last year. As usual, I travelled 4 hours to Chiang Mai on a modest van squeezing among other people while having such a gigantic body. Alas Alas a woman almost my size was sitting besides me with a 4 year old child. Undoubtedly, she only bought one seat for herself. When the van started engine, I was ready with my inhaler. The zigzag road to Chiang Mai did not usually make me dizzy but I am sure that I would feel unusual on that day. :-) I want to take the opportunity to tell you that if you are travelling and thinking about taking your child/ren who are under 18 but old enough to sit on their own, please spare some money so that you and the child are at comfort all the way. You will smile to your child on the way and you child will not utter a single noise or disgusting sound all the way. But if you are thinking to save e...

Today is 1st April 2012.  I hope it is not a fooling day for us.  So far the news agencies reported the landslide success of the NLD.  I personally is so excited to learn about it..... I hope the results of the elction will not be overturned upside down tomorrow......

How do you feel when you have to give up something you love to do for something you must do?  Don't tell me you are good.   I know you actually came to be in awkward position and you feel like a loser.  I can tell you because I am a loser too.   All my life since I started working, I made up my mind that I will forever be an instrument of peace.  With a great deal of passion I invested in my head, I am proud of myself all these years.  In these 10 years, I have met so many people some are extraordinarily amazing and some are extremely frustrating.  But temptation never stops me to halt growing my passion to be an ambassador for what I am doing. The years changed my heart to live a meaningful human life and with the strength inspired by my passion at one point, I left my   bright future .  I was hardly blamed that I was wrong.  I never thought I was wrong.  I knew and was convinced that this was my choice to leave a future ...

I like this speech of the secretary-general.  I hope the countries come together to protect us.

I usually wake up on Saturday morning around 9 am or even late.  Not that it is my habit but I do it on purpose.  Because, I always get up at 7:30 am the latest from Monday to Friday no matter how late I go to bed, I have to wake up to go to the my workplace.  The office official hours are from 8 am to 4:30 pm.  Mostly, I arrive in my office at 8:30 am.  I never feel bad about being that late because, I always work until 5 pm or sometimes 6 pm depending on my workloads and moods. I love my Head of Office.  He is such a nice, smart casual and flexible personality in his mid thirties and recently got an adorable son.  I never heard he complained about someone late to the office.  I also have a colleague who comes to the office on time, leaves on time or sometimes earlier and often gives me comment when I am late to the office.  When I arrive in the office building, the first thing I do is checking my pigeon hole to see if there is any corresp...

To My little piggy Brother You always looked after me, For me you were always there, I remember how you took care of me, I never had to fear. I never felt lonely, Whether it was day or night, Those days were really bubbly, At times we would fight. I thank the God up there, He gave me a brother like you, What more can I ask for, There is no one like you. You have been a real friend, Guiding me all these years, I have no words to thank you, Those fond memories fill my eyes with tears. Cheers…Happy Brothers week… Yours, Opa

Sometimes, I am thinking, what's the point of having a relationship with someone?  Well, it is easy.  I want an accompany.  I am a gay but still I am a human being and not an island.  Yes!  But am I having the right companion?  No one knows.  I do not even know if I am having the right companion! A friend of mine reminded me that in a gay relationship, it is very rare and even could be none to find a true love relationship.  His statement is true 100% almost but quite inconvenient to accept.  I questioned myself.  Isn't there any true gay relationship? Living together or being in whatever relationship in a dwelling under the same roof is in fact not very easy.  Every aspect of being together is compromises.  Your partner who you want to be your companion is not compatible with you in most circumstances intellectually and this usually is the beginning of the compromises to start. My very close friend applauded his partne...

The posts on facebook and news websites confirmed that the Burmese government and KNU had agreed and signed on ceasefire this afternoon after having been in conflicts for more than 63 years.

What day is today?  Today is Thursday!  To be exact, today is 12 January 2012 which means I am into 12 days already in 2012.  I did not make any special resolution for this year but what I am really into is to have a healthy and happy balanced life .  And that is not very easy.  I am thinking seriously, have I had one?  I am not sure.  But I can try to achieve one.  And how do I achieve it.  Sitting and thinking does not bring any changes.  Obviously, just need to work out your ass. By the end of 2011, the scale told me I turned officially 129 Kg.  With my height, my BMI turned out to be 39.61 (Obese Class 2).  The situation is severe.  I am not overweight.  I am obese.  I cannot pretend that I am happy and active.  I am dull and tend to immobile often.  That's the truth and I do accept it.  I am thinking how can I lose and maintain a healthy weight loss. In the beginning of December, I travelled...