Wednesday, October 27

From the Caribbean Sea to South East Asia

Once again I am pleased to present new visitors. We have now moved from The Caribbean Sea and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to Myanmar on the 22nd and Macau today.
Republic of the Union of Myanmar, adopted a new state flag on 21 October 2010 (6 days ago) to replace the former socialist flag in use since 1974. The new flag was introduced along with implementing changes to the country's name and national anthem, which were laid out in the 2008 Constitution. The design of the flag has three horizontal stripes of yellow, green and red with a five-pointed white star in the middle. The three colors of the stripes are meant to symbolize solidarity, peace and tranquility, and courage and decisiveness.The previous flag adopted on 3 January 1974 upon the declaration of a socialist republic by Ne Win depicted 14 stars, encircling a gear and a rice plant in a blue-colored canton against a red field. The rice stands for agriculture, the gear represents industry, and the 14 stars represent each of the 14 member states of the Union. Both flags originated in the Burmese Resistance and the country call them: Flag of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (1974-1988) and the Union of Myanmar (1988-2010).
Maybe it is time for us in Norway to start using Myanmar instead of Burma as the name of the republic. We did so (as all other Asian officials) when living in Asia Pacific 15 years ago, but as you know, it took some time to stop using Peking instead of Beijing too
The other new flag is from Macau.
The Regional flag of the Macau ( Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ), is light green with a lotus flower above the stylized Governor Nobre de Carvalho Bridge and water in white, beneath an arc of five gold, five-pointed stars: one large in the center of the arc and four smaller ones.

Macau was a Portuguese colony and both the first and last European colony in China.Portuguese traders first settled in Macau in the 16th century and subsequently administered the region until the handover on 20 December 1999. Before the Portuguese settlement in the early 16th century, Macau was known as Haojing (Oyster Mirror) or Jinghai (Mirror Sea).
During our stay in Southeast Asia we mostly thought of Macau as a gambling city, and we never visited the Portuguese colony (both the first and last European colony in China) although it was close to Hong Kong where we stayed many times.

4 comments:

Rune Eide said...

Du sprer deg rundt ser jeg, men så er du jo "lokalkjent" i området for å si det slik.

PS Takk for kommentaren. Med det rette utstyret og med din malerbakgrunn hadde du gjort det stort som studio og akt fotograf.

Anne said...

Underlig så liten verden virker over internett du,men på en annen side viser du jo flagg som jeg aldri har sett før...

Ler litt av Runes kommentar over her, yes sir, utstyr og akt og fantasiene her settes veldig i sving ja .-))

ArneA said...

Only to make things right.
My FIRST visitor from Myanmar found my blog on Oct 13. 2009.
However the new flag adopted Oct 21 2010 has not been shown earlier.

9na said...

Verden rundt med arne... :)