Woodbrook Secondary alumni enjoying themselves at Veni Mange Restaurant.

The members of the Woodbrook Government Secondary School (WGSS) Alumni Association, former students of the school who graduated over the last 40 years, have been witnesses to the creation of the so-called “global village” via the World-Wide-Web.

Now, WGSS Alumni have given themselves the opportunity to network better than ever before: WGSS E-Alumni is an online (internet based) past student networking group using the popular social network Face-Book.

WGSS E-Alumni was established by past student Joel Stewart in June 2008, and is now considered an important part of the WGSS Alumni Association. The “E” for “electronic,” was added to the name to make a distinction between the Face-Book group and the association, but in a release from the E-Alumni Association, Denise Darlington, the group’s Communications Officer stressed that it is a part of the decades-old WGSS Alumni Association.

The release explained that the Face-Book-based group allows over 300 past students of Woodbrook Government Secondary School from 1960 to 2008, to re-live many happy schooldays, share picong, catch up with old friends, and plan various reunions and “limes.”

On board the group, serving as “online” officers are twelve past students who assist in planning various activities in the far-flung parts of the world where they now reside: USA, Canada, Europe, and other places outside of Trinidad.

Last Year, the E-Alumni committee successfully put together two reunions: one in Trinidad, and the other in New York.

For 2010, at the request of many members, the committee decided to make the reunions annual affairs, giving all Alumni of Woodbrook Secondary School, the opportunity to rekindle friendships, and of course, to network.
The first Annual All Inclusive After Carnival Reunion was held at Veni Mange on February 20.

Patrons representing graduating years from 1971 and earlier to the late 2000s, were treated to mouth-watering fare from the Veni Mange crew. Dishes included souse, bake and shark, geera pork, geera chicken, corn soup, hot wings and much more.
The DJs for the evening were KLS & Trumpet of 96.1FM, both alumni of WGSS.
Also making an appearance was Kindred. Myron B, another WGSS alumnus, closed off the evening’s entertainment.

With yet another successful event under their belt, the WGSS E-Alumni has already started planning for September 2010, when the NY team will be hosting the international reunion.
The E-Alumni is also assisting the Alumni Association with events and membership building drives: A ‘May Day Fun Day’ is carded for Sunday May 2. Sporting events are also being planned: WGSS graduates from the 60’s to the 90’s are in the process of forming a football team in response to an inter year challenge.

Surfing the Internet has become a normal activity with older folk in Trinidad and Tobago. Research shows that the ageing mind keeps sharp with such activity.

Over the years, scientists have advocated a “use-it-or-lose-it” approach to brain function, with recommendations to keep the ageing mind sharp with mental activities such as reading, writing, word-puzzles and scrabble. Others suggest that an active lifestyle- gardening, golf, or even keeping up with the grand-children, all have their benefits.

Now, senior cyber-squatters who prefer web-browsing to scrabble or baby-sitting have something to be happy about: Researchers found that older adults who start browsing the Web experience improved brain function after only a few days. The research suggests that surfing the Internet just might be the ideal way to preserve mental skills as the brain ages.

According to Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatry professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of ‘iBrain,’ the research proves that “you can teach an old brain new tech tricks.”

Dr. Small said that the research was conducted with people who had little Internet experience, and found that after just a week of practice, there was a “much greater extent of activity particularly in the areas

of the brain that make decisions, the thinking brain, which makes sense because, when you’re searching online, you’re making a lot of decisions. “It’s interactive,” he said.

Paul Sanberg, director of the University of South Florida’s Center of Excellence for Ageing and Brain Repair in Tampa, also worked on the research. He said: “This makes intuitive sense, that getting on the Internet and exploring and getting new information and learning would help. “It supports the value of exploring the Internet for the elderly.”

The new research reinforces the “use-it-or-lose-it” theory: “We found a number of years ago that people who engaged in cognitive activities had better functioning and perspective than those who did not,” said Dr. Richard Lipton, a professor of neurology and epidemiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and director of the Einstein Ageing Study. “Our study is often referenced as the crossword-puzzle study – that doing puzzles, writing for pleasure, playing chess and engaging in a broader array of cognitive activities seem to protect against age-related decline in cognitive function and also dementia.”

For the research, 24 normal adults, aged 55 to 78, were asked to surf the Internet while hooked up to an MRI machine. Half the participants were in the habit of using the Internet daily, and the other half had little experience with it.

After the initial MRI scan, participants were asked to do Internet searches for an hour on each of seven days over two weeks. They then returned to the clinic for more brain scans. “At baseline, those with prior Internet experience showed a much greater extent of brain activation,” Dr. Small said.

The study also found that those who had just been introduced to the Internet were catching up quickly to those who were old hands at cyber-surfing. Researchers say this demonstrates that over a relatively short period of time, patterns of brain activation change while engaging in cognitive activities.

]]> http://www.tntinsider.com/lifestyles/02131/web-surfing-good-for-old-folks/feed/ 0 http://www.tntinsider.com/lifestyles/0529/give-boys-dolls-as-toys/ http://www.tntinsider.com/lifestyles/0529/give-boys-dolls-as-toys/#comments Sun, 10 May 2009 05:45:34 +0000 Josanne Cox http://www.tntinsider.com/?p=529 Margaret Mead, in her famous study of three cultures in Papua New Guinea, found very different gender roles in all three cultures.

All of this is simply to state that it is culture that defines ways in which men and women are expected to behave and it all may well start from the toys that you give your child to play with. For example, girls who are diagnosed with the pink princess syndrome are so inflicted by way of parental choice, not by some genetically determined outcome. However, a variation in the manifestation of this syndrome has shown that a princess is a very important person who has dominion over an entire kingdom and is responsible for the care and comfort of her people.

Back to the boys. They have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY) which determine femaleness and maleness respectively. I see much wisdom in this creation because if it is that men were in fact meant to be the head of the home, then they cannot be expected to be able to lead what they do not truly understand! By their very design, they are equipped to understand the female and respond to her accordingly. My suggestion therefore is to nurture with nature in mind and allow our boys to play with dolls! Wait, wait, allow me to continue please…

What I consider a phenomenon is the way in which a male carrying around a doll may be frowned upon in his early years, yet women find it very attractive when he is an adult and is taking his baby for a walk in its stroller! So what was once an effeminate act later symbolises manliness, dutifulness and is even considered to be sexy. So, who really makes the rules here?
Here’s a list of things that dolls (NOT BARBIES – since they do not reflect reality) can do to harness the strength of the male:

It is a way for them to work through and learn to understand and accept what is going on in their lives.

It assists in recreating the things they see in their daily lives.

It helps to develop language and social skills.

It encourages the progress of essential life-skills.

The child learns to be nurturing and affectionate.

It opens the door to creativity and imagination.

The child learns how to resolve social conflicts and interpersonal skills.

The best way for a boy to understand the gentleness of being a good parent is through mimicking and practice just as the girls are taught from a very tender age. The fear that a boy may develop a female orientation because of playing with dolls has no substantial data up to today. In fact, if society demands for the new man to put into practice nurturing and caring, this is exactly what needs to be done.

Of course, even if you are unprejudiced about your son’s choice of toys, it is likely that your friends, family members, and even complete strangers probably won’t be. Respectfully, acknowledge their comments or neutralise them with humour, but also remind yourself to place confidence in and value your own opinion. Or, you can remind them of the many headlines that reflect that it is not by accident that a son may run after his parent or sibling or peer with his gun then . . . bang . . . bang . . . bang “I go shoot yuh! I go shoot yuh!”

I was talking to Owen Charles, an old soldier in the struggle for social change and President of the Blanchisseuse Community Council, about how society has changed.

He nodded and related to me that when he was a road officer keeping the bench trail between Matelot and Blanchisseuse properly maintained, how he would enter any house when people were not home.

The doors were never locked. If Charles felt like it he would borrow the licensed shot gun, shoot a lappe, deer or agouti, cut off the meat he wanted and replace the gun in the gun box leaving a piece of the meat for the owner.

Houses did not have what is now known as burglar proofing nor were they securely locked unless people were going out or away for long periods. Children ran through neighours’ houses, ate at their tables without believing there were restrictions at meal times. Many yards would be full of children playing hoop, stick-him-up or pitching three hole or circle marbles.

Then, too, there were the watchful (sometimes spiteful wanting a licking to be applied by the parents) eyes of neighbours and elders; depending on the childhood infraction you could be apprehended and even flogged. To complain could mean another licking so you avoided the person and the situation. Who could pass by an adult you knew without saying a ‘good morning’ or a ‘good afternoon’ and sometimes to those you did not even know? When you got on the 3rd class train the entire carriage answered to your good morning greeting.

Family had a special place, especially, visiting aunts and uncles at happy infrequent occasions when the pennies or six cents pieces would come out for children to later gorge ourselves on paradise plums and bellyful brown cake.

Of course, remembering the floggings by parents or primary school teachers were never happy memories. The debate continues concerning its usefulness, this writer being a strong advocate of the non-flogging method.

A murder, then, was a big sensation with all the bush lawyers summing up the case, taking bets on the jury’s decision. The “Trinidad Guardian” an everyday read by all and sundry, with the “Phantom and “Mandrake the Magician” popular comics.

Of course, some women followed “Portia Faces life” and “Dr Paul” on either “Radio Trinidad” or “Redifussion” the square or rectangular radio, with two frequencies (the ‘Golden Network’ and the ‘Silver Network’), which was mounted on a wall.

A rogue cop was something few and far between, like a teacher who came to school and avoided teaching. The petty criminal feared the law and its officers since the law itself was not petty and its enforcers were not themselves criminals. It was not conceivable that police officers would rape a young girl while investigating a crime or a school teacher refusing to visit a classroom for an entire week.

Carnival costumes were constructed by a host of wire benders and j’ouvert morning was a powerful social statement while people enjoyed themselves. Skimpy expensive mass produced items could not come from China. The kings and queens of carnival were a community produced thing with copper artists rivalling wirebenders in creativity.

Steel band sides came out with their fancy sailor mas’ and baby powder was a prelude to mud mas’. Beauty queens of course, were white.

Television came into our living rooms in 1962 changing our lives forever; nor did every family have a fridge or washing machine then. An ice box filled on Sunday lasted until Tuesday and clothes irons heated on kerosene stoves or coal pots were the order of the day.

They were, comparatively, speaking “backward” times never to return. Today hundreds of citizens are killed at random. Doors are double locked, houses are fenced, burglar proofing constitute a multi-million dollar trade.

Children are raped; homes are not sacred places. People walk by each other as people do on the streets of New York. The unofficial curfew at 6 p.m. is properly followed by more than half the population and, few are the women or men who hang out clothes to dry on lines.

Long ago, most yards had fierce yappy pot hounds. Now many people take comfort in their genetically engineered little lions, the pit-bull.

To argue that our standard of living has not radically improved would be futile. The quality of life we, certainly, enjoyed before, however, has hit rock bottom. Nay, dismal levels. We continue to fail in managing our present State with a chronic excuse: it’s the price of progress.

Remittances – money sent back home to relatives – have helped Latin American and Caribbean governments struggling to create jobs and eradicate poverty.

Remittances amounted to over $62.3 billion in 2006 and $72 billion in 2007 (which are the latest available figures) and were projected to grow to over $100 billion next year.

This is not likely to happen given the prevailing economic conditions in the United States and the United Kingdom where companies are failing and record numbers of workers are losing their jobs.

This will put pressure on Caribbean economies, particularly those like Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines and others which suffer from high unemployment and which saw these remittances as a godsend.

The Inter American Bank (IDB), in a 2006 report, noted that Jamaicans and Guyanese living in the U.S. and the U.K. repatriated some US $1.9 billion.

Trinidad and Tobago nationals sent back some US $97 billion home.

Remittances which apart from assisting poverty stricken families and the unemployed represent much-needed foreign exchange inflows.

These repatriated funds are key players in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of these countries: in Jamaica remittances account for 19 per cent of GDP, Guyana for a whopping 34.3 per cent in Haiti for 24.1 per cent and in the Dominican Republic for 9.3 per cent.

In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, however, which has a GDP of over US $19 billion (TT $115 billion), remittances account for only 0.7 per cent.

The IDP report noted that Caribbean migrant workers lived on the margins and remittances are” widely recognised as critical to the survival of millions of individual families, and the health of many national economies throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.”

With the economic situation worsening in the United States,surely there will be less and less money to send back home.

Mexico, the single largest beneficiary of remittances, has already seen a decline. Last year remittances dropped from the 2007 figure of $26 billion to some $25 billion .This was a 3.6 per cent decline and it was the first time on record that this has occurred.

Remittances happen to be Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income, oil being the first and the decline represents a trend not only through the hemisphere but world wide.

Global remittances are expected to drop by at least one per cent in 2009, according to World Bank economist Dilip Ratha.

Robert Meins of the IDB stressed:

“Remittances are the single strongest poverty-reduction tool that many countries have. This could translate into a great deal of hardship for a lot of people, which I think is under appreciated.”

The barrel trade, which go hand in hand with remittances, will also take a hit which means less foodstuff , clothing and household articles for impoverished households.