This is a country that takes a long time to move, but when it does, it tends to do so with a single-minded determination and a somewhat startling speed.
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have previously pledged to support nascent changes in Myanmar that began last year with the election of a new president, U Thein Sein, but relations between the United States and Myanmar are now warming with startling speed after a quarter century of tensions.
The platinum coin discussion has moved with startling speed, from an idea nobody took seriously (and which, as I've mentioned, senior officials were unaware of just last month), to assertions that it's ridiculous and illegal, to grudging acknowledgment that it's almost surely legal coupled with strained attempts to dismiss it as an option nonetheless.
Newman and Manning lived in a world that was changing at startling speed.
On Heroine Song, for example, a two-string lute-like instrument is plucked with startling speed, the tone modulated with occasional bends, while a male and female vocalist sing about Princess Thuong Ngan, "the soul of the mountain river, who helps us to find strength in life".
"He moved with quite startling speed and intelligence — an instinctive reaction almost — to trouble spots," said the New Zealand captain Colin Meads, who thought that Davies was one of the two players who contributed most to his team's defeat.
Now, with three months' hindsight and having witnessed the startling speed with which an elaborately woven peace effort can unravel, officials and diplomats are considering whether those risks were greater than the Clinton administration had anticipated.
After strapping the MASK-equipped headset on, I was able to see an onscreen avatar mimic my emotions with startling speed.
And, from a geologist's point of view, both changes happened with startling speed.
But at its end I looked at the vast, dark fields, emptying with startling speed and carpeted with the debris of a retreating army.
