TEGSA’S GOT TALENT
FESTIVAL OF FUN EVENT
MAY 15th 2009

by Muriel Lucas

Tegsa’s Annual Live Event, Naturally Talented Seniors, “ Kicked it up a Notch ”, with an amazing mish-mash of Songs, dance & acts which thrilled an enthusiastic full house crowd at the Commander Hall on l5th May 2009.

The show opened with a terrific Yoga display by our very own VP Dr. Sal Rocha. The picture below says it all.

TEGSA events always starts with delicious snacks or a full served Goan or Indian meal and this time, pulao, spinach chicken and a potato chop followed by an appetizing dessert of bundi ladoo was on the menu.

While ties were loosened and vocal chords tightened for a great evening of fun & entertainment, some would muse that many hidden talents were unlocked, most would say they should remain hidden? – Not this time as there is considerable talent within the membership and this was evidenced by the display, all of which were much appreciated by the audience. Although there were no judges or prizes, each of the performers were motivated by the enthusiastic applause of those who attended, right from the beginning, sometimes during the act, reaching a crescendo after each performance was over.

There was musical backing with a DJ in attendance.

The program & participants :
 

Song – Doug Fernandes	“Island in the Sun”
Song – Freny	“Yesterday once more”
Dance – Joachim & Natty	“Cha Cha”
Act - Shirley & Bernadette	“Fun time – Chinese Food”
Act – Ruth & Wilfred	“A hole in the bucket”
Dance – Fatima & Phil	“60’s Rock & Roll”
Dance – Harriet & Anita	“Egyptian Bellydance”
Song - Joe Fernandes	“Mothers Song”
Song – Sheilah D’Souza	“Sound of Music & Do Re Mi”
Song - Denis Davids	“It’s now or Never”
Act – Aelred & Nella	“Skit on TEGSA’s Committee”
Song – Fidelis Noronha	“Pretty Woman”

While some performances were naturally better than the others, all were well received and the participants left the floor with wide smiles on their faces.
 

BINGO and dancing followed till 10.30 p.m.

It was particularly rewarding to note that the seniors’ joy and excitement was matched, in every instance by the laughter and enthusiasm of all who attended this remarkable talented group of performers, who went above and beyond to celebrate different talents and abilities and each participant came out with flying colours! The emphasis was on participation, not competition, that is what made this event unique – A fair HIT for everyone!!
 

Look out for TEGSA’s Anniversary dance to be held on September 13th, 2009 where the committee really stretch themselves to provide their members with a great time! - And reminisce on an enduring past!!

New Obama Plan Seeks Affordable Broadband Service for All US Homes
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-05-07-voa16.cfm
By Chris Simkins | Washington | 07 May 2009

President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress have set aside more than $7 billion to build broadband Internet networks to bring high speed computer access to every U.S. home. Policy makers say construction of the network and its use will help create jobs in the global digital economy. The goal is to deliver affordable broadband service to people in rural and underserved communities.

Growing number of older Americans using Internet

"The first thing basically that I do when I get on the Internet is generally I go directly to my email," Mona Hunnicutt explains.

Hunnicutt, 58, spends more than two hours a day on the computer. She and 75-year-old Vivian Leeper are semi-retired and are among a growing number of older Americans who use high speed Internet everyday.

"You're forced more or less to get into using the computer and surfing the web and all to get your information," Leeper said.

They use the Internet at work and at home to download medical information, handle financial matters and keep in touch with family. Studies [by SeniorNet and Charles Schwab] suggest more than 50 million Americans over the age of 50 use the Internet. But many seniors cannot afford $30 - $40 a month for a high speed connection.

"I feel that seniors should be given priority discounts because a lot of seniors are on fixed incomes," Hunnicutt said. "And I think a lot of them really would use the Internet more. But they know that it is expensive."

New plan seeks affordable broadband service

President Barack Obama and some members of the U.S. Congress want to change that. As part of the economic stimulus, they approved more than $7 billion to launch a program that will deliver affordable broadband or high speed Internet access across the country.

"I stand by my goal of ensuring that every American has broadband access," Mr. Obama said. "No matter where you live, no matter how much money you have or don't have."

Daniel Wilson is executive director for program development for The National Caucus and Center on Black Aged. The organization works with those who provide broadband connections, such as AT&T and who teach low income African American senior citizens computer skills.

He says the key is to make broadband affordable.

"Many seniors that we talk to, do have the broadband," Wilson said. "But a lot of them do complain the price is a little but more than what they would be able to comfortably afford."

Advocates estimate 43 million U.S. households still use slower connections through telephone lines. Julius Hollis, founder of the nonprofit Alliance for Digital Equality, promotes broadband usage for unserved or underserved minority communities.

"Parallel with building an infrastructure we have to look at the applications that we are using in broadband to better prepare our U.S. consumers how to functional in this digital world," Hollis said.

Broadband is useful tool for seniors

Richard Reeves, 75, pays his bills online. He spends countless hours browsing the Web, researching topics and sending digital photographs to his family and friends. Reeves believes 85 percent of seniors would use the Internet if they had high speed connections.

"Seniors have health issues and they can go on line and they can find things," Reeves said. "They have access to any health plan they have, everybody has a Web site and they can get on to it.

One study [by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] says the country has dropped from fourth in the world to 15th in broadband penetration. And advocates say nationwide access would help not only seniors but anybody who relies on digital technology.

Do-It-Yourself HD Video
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/14/.html
By Rob Pegoraro | Friday, May 15, 2009 10:00 AM

Getting a movie to watch in high definition on an HDTV can be an expensive proposition, between the cost of a Blu-ray player or a cable or satellite subscription. But if you want to shoot that movie yourself, you need not spend more than $200. You won't get the finer points of a Hollywood production, but you will have your own (more or less) high-def footage, ready to play on a TV and, with a few extra steps, online.

That budget covers one of two new handheld HD video cameras: San Francisco-based Pure Digital's Flip UltraHD, $199.99, and Rochester-based Kodak's Zx1, $149.99. (Sony makes a comparable model, the Webbie HD, but did not provide a sample unit.)

A week of testing showed offsetting strengths and weaknesses between the Kodak and the Flip that added up to one key difference: The former is made for people used to plugging cameras into computers, and the latter is not.

Both of these rectangular devices look a great deal alike, each with a big red button to start and stop recording that falls naturally under your thumb. The slightly chunkier, heavier (6 oz.) Flip, however, surrounds its lens with a raised projection that makes it harder to mar the view with a stray finger.

Each stores footage on flash memory. The Flip has 8 gigabytes built in, which the company says will hold two hours of video. The Kodak only includes 128 megabytes, which you'll need to augment by popping your own SD Card into the slot on its side.

These cameras record footage in a compressed format called "H.264." If you pan slowly over still objects in daylight, you should get video that is difficult to tell from regular HDTV. But if you shoot moving objects, the recording will probably look a little blurry (in part because of the lack of an image-stabilization feature). Shooting in low light doesn't help either.

The Kodak yielded slightly smoother, finer footage. The Flip left colors over-saturated; in darker conditions, its backgrounds looked grainy and speckled. You can watch your videos on nearly all HDTVs by connecting the camera to the set with an HDMI cable. These two cameras use rechargeable AA batteries. The pair included, with a charger, in Kodak's box expired way too quickly, but a second set did far better. Kodak says its camera should run for two hours on a charge. Flip, in turn, says the UltraHD should last about 2 1/2 hours on most AAs.

In either case, you should run out of storage before the batteries die. At that point, you'd have to plug the camera into a computer to offload recordings, which would also recharge it. That's where the Flip takes the lead. Like other Pure Digital models, its USB connector flips out from the side to connect directly to a computer. The Kodak, meanwhile, requires you to plug in a separate, easily misplaced USB cable.

The Flip's built-in software runs on Windows XP or Vista and Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5. It fires up when you plug in the camera, although Window laptops had to be restarted once, while on a Mac laptop I had to enter my user account password.

From then on, the camera's FlipShare program kept things simple. Beyond playing your movies or saving them to the computer, it can send a link to a clip in e-mail, upload it to MySpace or YouTube, take a snapshot of one frame, create a movie by adding credits and a soundtrack, or order up a DVD copy of the clip. FlipShare is not exactly iMovie in a box. You can crop a clip, but that's about it. Its DVD-export option requires you to bring your own DVD-creation software or pay Flip $19.99 to mail you a finished disc.

Some of these simplifications look more like oversights. For example, FlipShare's YouTube uploader ignored that site's high-definition support and yielded a blurry, low-resolution clip. But I'll take FlipShare's occasional simple-mindedness over the unholy mess that is Kodak's bundled ArcSoft MediaImpression.

This application (Win XP or Vista only) requires the same protracted, annoying installation as any other Windows program. Instead of listing the videos on the camera, it offers a cluttered "folder tree" view of every storage option on the computer -- which doesn't list the running time of each clip. MediaImpression can e-mail a clip, but instead of linking to a Web copy, it attaches the original, enormous file to a message and, by default, doesn't compress it first. Memo to Kodak: Most e-mail services won't even accept 118-megabyte attachments.

This program includes fairly capable editing and movie-making tools and can upload clips to YouTube without sacrificing resolution (it can also send clips to a newer video-sharing site, Vimeo). But even then, it finds a way to screw things up: The dialog that shows the progress of a file upload blocks access to the rest of the program, preventing you from editing or e-mailing a different clip. Someone already versed in the ways of digital cameras may not find Kodak's software a barrier but that user probably already owns a camera that shoots decent video. As camera video modes get better, they won't leave much room for the likes of Kodak's Zx1. But a fuss-free model like the Flip still may be able to find an audience.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at robp@washpost.com. Read more at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/

Book Review-Harnessing the Trade Winds

The Story of the Centuries-Old Indian Trade with East Africa, using the Monsoon Winds
Author:Blanche Rocha D’Souza

Harnessing the Trade Winds is the outcome of a generation of research undertaken in Nairobi, Mombassa and Zanzibar in East Africa, and Mumbai and Goa in India. Of her work the author says: “In all my research I found that Arab and particularly European, sources of information downplayed the importance of Indian trade in the Indian Ocean which goes back at least three thousand years BC. [The book] attempts to rekindle in the Indian diaspora a justifiable pride in the achievements of its forebears in East Africa, and indeed other parts of the world. In East Africa they promoted the development of agriculture and industry and the globalization of trade stemming from their trading activities.”

ISBN 9789966712325 | 208 pages | 216 x 140 mm | B/W Illustrations | 2008 | Zand Graphics, Kenya |

From: goanet-news-bounces@lists.goanet.org
on behalf of Goanet Reader (goanetreader@gmail.com)
Sent: May 21, 2009 11:06:13 PM
Africa, India, trade and a Goan author

THE PRINTED WORD/By Frederick Noronha
Excerpts….

Blanche Rocha D'Souza subtitles her book "the story of the centuries-old Indian trade with East Africa using the monsoon winds". D'Souza grew up as a child in Kenya, where her father was district cashier. She studied in Karachi and Mumbai, trained as a teacher, learnt library science in Kenya, was senior cataloguer at the US Library of Congress and later graduated in social psychology. Quite a global migrant even in the Goan scheme of things!

Her 204-page Kenya-published book (ISBN 9966712321), coming from Zand Graphics at Nairobi, is unfortunately not easily available in Goa. Mine is a borrowed copy. Which is a pity, because it is both interesting and informative.

D'Souza joins the small but dedicated rank of people who have cut against the silence, and taken on the task of chronicling the history of Goan migration globally. There have been others like Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes (wish her work was published in Goa), J.B.Pinto of Saligao who wrote in the 1960s, Teresa Albuquerque (who earlier focussed on the Goans of Kenya and, indirectly, of Bombay) among others.

This small band has been focussing on the many tens of thousands who have migrated out of Goa over the centuries. Obviously, such a small number of researchers is not sufficient. With India finally waking up to the potential of its expats -- tiny Goa should have been at this point decades ago -- one hopes much such studies come to light.

Of course, we know that there are others working on this topic right now. But more on that when it actually happens. If you're wondering what the 'trading wings' are all about, read this quote from the National Geographic, August 1999, which features at the start of Chapter 15: "Around 120 BC, members of the Egyptian Coast Guard found an Indian sailor shipwrecked on the Red Sea.

"They took him to Ptolemy VII. The sailor spoke a language that no one in Alexandria knew, so Ptolemy ordered that the sailor be taught Greek.

"Thus educated, the sailor taught his captors something amazing; the Monsoons over the Indian Ocean blow in a regular pattern -- from northeast to southwest in winter, and the opposite direction in summer."

The Trade Winds are the most consistent wind system on earth, we're told. Evidence suggests Indians made voyages across the open sea to East Africa "from antiquity" while Malays used the ocean currents to reach Madagascar. In eighteen (mostly short) chapters, D'Souza goes into quite some depth to trace links you'd never suspect even existed. Her background in librarian science obviously gives her an edge in collating such a wide range of facts.

It covers themes like the early Indian Ocean trade, Indians in East Africa, Indian equations with various foreign powers (British, Arabs, Portuguese), the Indian trader, the "indentured Indian", the Uganda railway, and the trading winds. Surely, one of the contentious chapters would be the one dealing with Indians and the slave trade. D'Souza refers to tracks such as African slaves here, the fact that the Muslim king of Gaur in Bengal (1459-1474) had some eight thousand slaves, and the influx of Abyssinian (Ethiopian) and other East Africans into western India in the fifth century.

India, she says, could have not been unaware of the slave trade, since they "exercised such a predominant influence over East African trade". D'Souza goes on to say that Indians were indirectly
implicated in the slave trade "inasmuch as Indian merchant capital was financing both movements, in and out of the interior of Africa, where manufactured goods found their way into the interior to be exchanged for slaves and ivory."

But, she suggests, British explorers (like Dr Livingstone) tried to "implicate" Indians in the slave trade -- perhaps more than responsible for it. D'Souza argues that there is no slavery in the Hindu concept of slavery. "There was no need for slaves, since the Hindu caste system with its distinct divisions of labour took care of all aspects of the job market," she writes.

Goans, who have an East Africa link, and this is not a small number, would find specially interesting D'Souza focus on the Indians and the Portuguese, the Uganda Railway, and the sprinkling of references throughout the book.

References to the Dr. Ribeiro Goan School, and Pio Gama Pinto come up early in the preface to this book itself. There are (at least) eight references to Goa in the index, and another five to Goans. Not surprising, considering the author's interest and her interests. All in all, an interesting title for reasons more than just the origins of the author.

Towards the end of the book, D'Souza focuses on the plants that Asia took across to Africa, amidst many other topics. Besides the onion (which, she says specifically, came from Goa), there are also a number of trees (coconut palm, jackfruit, guava, mango, tamarind, cashew), grains (millet, rice, wheat, sorghum, simsim and sesame).

Fruits from India that reached Africa include sweet and bitter oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruit, papaya, Indian figs, bananas, pomegranates and pineapples. There are also a number of vegetables, legumes, root plants, medicinal plants (camphor, neem and tulsi) and cash crops (sugarcane, cotton, rice).

In the blurb, her book is described interestingly: "Blanche D'Souza's book is a most direct statement on 'brown man's' transcripts over thousands of years of trade, labour and migration for settlements against a deep backdrop of Arab, British and Portuguese rivalries in the Indian Ocean."

We could certainly do with more of these.
-- Frederick Noronha can be contacted on 2409490 (after 2 pm) or SMS 9822122436. Email fn@goa-india.org

First published in the Gomantak Times, May 18, 2009

Book Review
A visual diary of artist Mario De Miranda
http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/br/2009/05/12/stories/2009051250201400.htm 
Chitrapu Uday Bhaskar | May 12, 2009

MARIO DE MIRANDA: Pub. by Gerard da Cunha and Architecture Anonymous, House No 674, Torda, Salvador do Mundo, Bardez, Goa. Rs. 2700. www.mariodemiranda.in/ 

On May 2 this year, one of India’s most accomplished artists — it seems so inadequate to introduce Mario Miranda as a mere ‘cartoonist’ though he is better recognised as just that — turned 83.

And what a plethora of delightful, rib-tickling, satirical, quirky, reflective and ruminative images this unassuming man has produced over the last 56 years since he first began freelancing for The Current in Bombay (as Mumbai was then called) in 1952! We would not have known of this stupendous body of work but for the painstaking labour of Gerard da Cunha and Bevinda Collaco who pored over 8,000 drawings and related compositions and then distilled them into this sumptuous volume.

Social chronicler

Arranged into 45 sections that are a visual feast, interspersed with essays written by Mario aficionados, the volume walks the reader through the artist’s life and his evolution as one of India’s best known social chroniclers. Mario was born in 1926 in Daman, then a Portuguese enclave, in a Goan Roman Catholic family of Saraswat Brahmin origin. His family was part of the local aristocracy as senior government officials and the senior Miranda was the Administrator of Daman. Consequently the young lad imbibed the best of two cultures — that of distant Portugal and the indigenous Goan ethos and this rare multi-cultural empathy is more than evident in his later work.

Manohar Malgonkar’s biographical essay is rich in personal detail and offers an insightful overview of the artist and the spatio-temporal context in which he was groomed — from Goa to Bangalore to Bombay and then to Lisbon and London before he finally dropped anchor in Bombay again after the liberation of Goa in 1961. Many have wondered as to how and where Mario learnt to draw such spontaneous cartoons — and Malgonkar tells us: “The simple answer is that he did not become a cartoonist. He was born a cartoonist. The fact is that he has never received any formal training in an art institution. To draw figures has been an irrepressible compulsion of his life.” The little boy who made a ‘nuisance’ of himself by drawing charcoal figures on the walls of an impeccable house was encouraged by his mother to fill up notebooks with his sketches and squiggles.

Observer

Right from 1947 when the picture folio begins, to the current century, the various sections in which the cartoons and other compositions have been arranged provide a breathtaking visual diary as it were of the last 60 years. Mario prefers to describe himself as a social cartoonist — as opposed to a political one — but to my mind he leavens the two streams in a very subtle and unobtrusive manner. Above all, Mario is the ultimate ‘observer’ — mindful of the smallest detail and imbued with that uncanny retinal ability to notice the slightest human foible and quirky trait and render the vignette with wit devoid of malice.

Over the decades, Mario’s cartoons acquired an individual identity and he was soon embellishing the pages of India’s best known newspapers and magazines published from Bombay and I recall being introduced to his work in mofussil India in the early 1960’s through the pages of the now forgotten Illustrated Weekly of India. Most of his work has been grouped in the form of personal visual diaries that range from Goa and Bombay to New York and Paris and as the artist notes, where others took recourse to word, he recorded his life through images.

Viruosity

Well-known critic Ranjit Hoskote in his brief essay on Mario’s art makes a perceptive observation when he avers: “I am not given to hyperbole; believe me when I say that Mario’s Diaries provide the connoisseur of images with very rare excitement. Every page comes at us with ebullient energy…these superbly executed drawings and watercolours, [some] made when the artist was in his early 20s, are proposals for the narration of a world that is at once intensely local and unselfconsciously international in its tenor.” We can take Hoskote’s word as gospel. One minor quibble though — some of the Portuguese captions could have been translated into English.

The pompous politician, the buxom secretary, the winsome Goan lass — Mario’s images have now become legendary but there is more to the man than being just a cartoonist. He is an artist of rare virtuosity and his huge body of work includes some very poignant portraits and vibrant murals. There is a strong case to accord Mario his rightful place in the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Mumbai branch would be the appropriate place to begin with.

The last word on Mario must go to Nissim Ezekiel, who in a very brief but poetic introduction to a 1968 book on the artist confessed: “The total effect on me of an hour with Mario’s cartoons is hallucinatory. I feel exalted. The ego collapses. I no longer trust the commonplace images of the world as it appears to my eyes but accept the images in the mirror of Mario’s art.”

© Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu

Robin Cardozo - Funding facilitator
From: http://www.canadianimmigrant.ca/immigrantstories/moneybusiness/article/3767
Gloria Elayadathusseril

When L. Robin Cardozo, a yuppie Pakistani moved to Canada in the late ’70s, he possessed a British degree in chartered accountancy — and an immigrant’s unshakable faith in thriving — with an eye on Canada’s corporate world.

He wasn’t disappointed when it came to climbing the corporate ladder. But at the same time, he felt the steps were rather precarious, particularly for a new immigrant. “I did face challenges when I came first… I was certainly aware of that,” remembers Cardozo. The 23-year-old man, who went to England as a student, had just arrived in Canada and reunited with his parents and siblings, also new immigrants in the country. “I was paid much less than many others, and had to put in double the effort to prove myself.”

But that paid off. Cardozo was offered progressive positions at various professional accounting firms and in the financial services industry. He however moved away from the corporate world and entered the non-profit circle, when he landed a job at the United Way of Greater Toronto. And there too his exemplary work was acknowledged and was offered senior positions in finance and human resources.

When he left the organization in 1999, he was the vice president and chief operating officer, and had also been bestowed with its highest national honour, the André Mailhot Award. Today, Cardozo is at the helm of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, one of Canada’s largest granting organizations. As the chief executive, he leads the non-profit agency of the provincial government in its mission “to make strategic investments that will help build healthy and vibrant communities in Ontario.” With that mission in mind, Cardozo has begun hosting ethnic media roundtables to discuss topics including grant opportunities that benefit various communities and to get media feedback on effective ways to reach communities. (The foundation awards annually $110 million to 1500 charitable and non-profit organizations of all social and cultural backgrounds.)

“It is really important for me to meet with communities,” he says adding that he shares the knowledge he gains from such participation with his colleagues for effective dissemination of funding. “I am also part of various network groups and take part in workshops and conference panels.”

Having garnered immense experience in his chosen field, Cardozo believes he must offer expert advice to those who need it. So he voluntarily serves on the boards of several organizations including the Bridgepoint Health, Active Healthy Kids Canada, the Youth Challenge Fund and Maytree Foundation’s DiverseCity initiative.

“When I was at the United Way, I was exposed to community groups and I was able to use my skills in corporate law and the effects of management principles and strategic planning, and now I use those skills at Trillium,” Cardozo, who was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario (FCA) in 2000, points out. Looking back at his more than 20 years of involvement in the non-profit sector, Cardozo feels sense of accomplishment. “Working in the not-for-profit sector is a terrific thing,” he says. “I have found it enormously gratifying and I get to appreciate that Canada is really special!”