dear stan & dr than naing oo,
the late Sayawun
Tin Shwe was the most prolific writer of our
time.he had written a lot of articles and published more than one
hundred books (maybe more, about 150) before he died.he was a close
friend of mine and a fellow writer, tete-a-tete pal and a comrade-in-
plumes.he told me in 1998 just before i left burma that he was going
to die in one or two years due to a malignant disease and he said,
goodbye ko nyo, farewell for this life." i thought he was joking and
replied in jest," are you talking nonesense like before in UK? now,
publish my book soon and give me the royalty before i go to
malaysia." he said, "I am serious,ko nyo.i'm not joking and i'm not
afraid to die.yes,i'll finish your book soon." true, he published my
book from his publishing house and paid me all the royalties before
i left for malaysia in september 1998.
he did not die until 2001 or 2002.i was very sad when i read his
obituary in the myammah alin on the internet.i used to browse
through the government newspapers for wedding news and obituaries
when they were printed.they are no longer printed now. that's why i
did not know the deaths of some friends in time or for a long time.
i know some deaths of medical doctors when i read "the who's who in
medicine and heath" of dr khin thet htar and saygyi dr mya tu on
line ,thanks to the
sayawun tin shwe was full of ideas when he was attending the DCMT
course in the london school of tropical medicine and hygiene.once he
told us he would like to go back to burma to see his medical school
sweetheart as her brother had given consent to him.dr thar hla shwe
and i laughed him and said," what are you saying? that can happen
only in fiction.you are already married and have children.besides,
you are a state scholar.you can't go back without the government's
permission."only then he said,"ya, it's real life!" and another
day,
he would tell us he would be sitting for the MRCGP course."why, ko
tin shwe?",i asked him.he replied," The examinatuon is easy.i can
pass without reading and i will get a membership ." "don't be
stupid.just finish this DCMT course and apply for a higher degree
when the time comes", i said and he duly did it when dr nyi nyi, the
then educatinal secretary.came to london.he was permitted to work
(study) for Ph.D. in the same subject that is tropical medicine.he
later got his FRCP for his works at the medical research
department.he even told me, " ko nyo, if you like to have an FRCP ,
i'll help you."i said," no,thank you ko tin shwe.i don't need
it."
he asked me how
i wrote short stories.he said,"i can't write short
stories and novels, but i can write articles." " how did you start
writing article?,"i asked.he replied," there was a beautiful nurse
in ward 1 at rangoon general hospital where i was posted in the
final part 2 class.i tried to befriend her and court her.she told me
she would not love a man who could not write like her as she was
writing health education articles in the kyemon daily newspaper and
other publications.so, i did not win her love.but i was indignant
and tried to write after graduation as saya min yu way encouraged me
and corrected my burmese.see how i write." he gave me his articles
written in his long hands.i read them and found them very educative,
but his burmese was that of a primary student.he continued writing
health education articles even while working for his Ph.D.
he was very simple and very friendly.professor woodruff was very
fond of him.when he finished his Ph.D.thesis professor woodruff
asked him what he needed.he replied that he would be grateful if
professor could lend him a few hundred pounds so that he could buy a
car to be taken to burma.professor woodruff gave him three hundred
pounds free.he was driving a blue vaux wagon whe he arrived back in
burma.
we met quite often in
department at IM2, mingaladon whenever he wished to talk to me or to
get articles from me. once he invited me and dr nan ommar to give a
health education talk at htauk-kyant leprosorium and we had to
comply with his request.his patients did not read much, but they
were very fond of him.he was no doubt a devoted leprologist.he would
see a leper patient any time and at any place.so, his clinic was
bare of other patients as he saw lepers at the same time.he was
wanted by the WHO to work as a senior leprologist, but he said the
government did not allow him to work there.
in rangoon, he was working at the department of medical research
and he would be seen giving health education talks at high schools
and nunneries too.yes, he gave free clinics at the daw nya-na-wa-ti
nunnery and at the zi-vi-ta-dana hospital in yangon.he wrote several
articles in monthly burmese magazines too.some of his articles were
used as prescribed texts for the middle school students. he won the
national literary prize twice or thrice, all in the knowledge
category.
( During our
times, as Saya Nyo mentioned, one of the Burmese
textbooks was " Selected prose for highschool Burmese" written by
many famous writers. One of Sayawin Tin Shwe's work was in there and
it was " Lu-Nar-Ah-Mhet 95414" i.e "medical record number
59414"
about
with mitral stenosis. He wrote it in an observer's role but
describing minute by minute accounts from scrubbing to chest
closure. Those matriculated around 1979 like me would remember it.
- Than
(there were
three or four articles of sayawun tin shwe used in the textbook.
one was
entitled, "tha-ye chauk-chin" (haunting of ghosts)'. it was about
the big rats in the Ma-naw-ya-man Hospital, mandalay (A leprosorium,
now extinct, it has been moved to ma-da-ya) masqerading every thing
at night and making big noises.people nearby were very frightened up
to the point of panic and he was to find the truth. - Saya Nyo.)
he and i were involved in the literary activities and we were
chosen by the minister for culture as the excecutive committee
members of the myanmar writers and journalists association for ten
years.we played leading parts in publishing writers' magazine and
poetry magazine during our tenure.he was always supportive of me.he
would defend me if some one critcised me. he would defend me when
some one spoke ill of me. i was the chairman, he the member of the
editorial board of the "Say-Pyin_Nya magazine (Medical Education
magazine) appointed by the then health minister u saw tun.
i truly missed him and i'm sad that he was gone.he was such a nice
fellow, always courteous, always obliging and very generous. .it's a
great loss for the medical profession and the country.there is now a
literary prize called "Sayawun Tin Shwe Prize" for health education
literature given every year by a trust.
* by the way, i captioned sayawun tin shwe alias the human gutenburg
alluding to him as a non-fatiguable writer.Johann Gutenburg was the
inventor of the printing machine.but i did not want it to be
confused with the "Gutenberg machine" meaning the time machine of
H.G.Wells.please see the insert.
Johann
Gutenburg
c.1400- death?
Inventor of the printing press
by Rit Nosotro ( Last updated: 05/30/2006 08:42:56 )
The best-selling book of all time has sold 6 billion copies as of
2001, more than the totals of the next 20 top-sellers put together
and equal to fifteen times the amount of literature housed in the
Library of Congress. It has been translated into 337 languages is
present in countries around the world, including predominantly
Hindu, Buddhist, and Voodoo countries.
In its many
years of publication, the words have never been changed from
the original message. This timeless book is The Bible, the first
manuscript to be mass produced by machine, thanks to Johann
Gutenburg's invention of movable type.
Born to a
wealthy family around 1400 in
a goldsmith, was
to become the inventor of removable type that was also
reusable as
well. The Chinese had formed earthenware type in the 11th century
and the letterpress as early as the 6th century, but neither proved
acceptable for the mass production of printed materials. The Dutch
may have also experimented with a crude sort of movable type in the
1430's, but Gutenburg's methods of casting type are the basis from
which modern printing has evolved.
His invention
replaced the tedious and time consuming task of copying
books, word for
word, letter for letter, by hand. Gutenburg began
experimenting
with the idea of movable type around 1438 and formed
a partnership
with Andreas Dritzhen, which quickly fell through.
He then
partnered with Johann Fust, a wealthy German Lawyer and goldsmith who provided
him
with financial backing, and the duo set up a printing press sometime
between 1446 in 1450.
The first book
to be printed on Gutenburg's contraption was The Bible
in March of
1455; between 160 and 200 of these books were
originally
printed, either on paper or vellum, a fine parchment
of calves skin.
Each copy was approximately 1300
pages long and 16 by 12 inches, divided into two or three volumes.
Gutenburg's Bible, as the original printed version is often known,
has also been called the 42-Line Bible (printed in 1455) and the 36-
Line Bible (printed in 1460) due the fact that most of the columns
had the aforesaid number of lines.
Also attributed
as being printed on Gutenburg's press in 1454 is
Pope Nicholas
V's Letter of Indulgence. Only 48 complete copies
of Gutenburg's
Bible survived to see the twentieth century.
One of three
"perfect" copies is now held
in the Library of Congress and the other two are held in European
libraries. A copy is also held on permanent display in the Great
Hall Library and viewed by about one million people per year.The
contribution that Johann Gutenburg made to society was amazing. With
the invention of movable type, books were able to be widely
produced, literature distributed, and the public's eyes opened to
information around them.
The fact that
Gutenburg first chose to print God's Word also