by: Shastri Boodan

Dis­play­ing strong op­ti­mism about the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture, Val­ue Op­ti­cal opened its lat­est store, cost­ing more than $1 mil­lion, at the Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day. The new store, which is the sixth branch for the 15 year old busi­ness op­er­a­tion, fea­tures state of the art test­ing equip­ment for eye di­ag­no­sis and pro­tec­tion.

Val­ue Op­ti­cal’s mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, Dan­ny Jones, said this lat­est ven­ture rep­re­sent­ed an in­vest­ment of over $1 mil­lion to con­struct and equip, and the com­pa­ny was op­ti­mistic about the busi­ness prospects for Ch­agua­nas as well as the coun­try as a whole.

Jones said the new out­let will dou­ble the com­pa­ny’s pa­tient ca­pac­i­ty in Cen­tral Trinidad, and the new fa­cil­i­ty can now han­dle over 50 pa­tients dai­ly. He said new ser­vices such as field test­ing and oph­thal­mol­o­gy have been in­tro­duced, and the of­fice has now im­proved its pre-screen­ing fa­cil­i­ties us­ing mod­ern dig­i­tal equip­ment.

Jones said cus­tomers can now en­joy the high­er qual­i­ty am­bi­ence of the new fa­cil­i­ty at com­pet­i­tive prices. The store has a staff of 12 full-time em­ploy­ees and is man­aged by Ryan Cum­ber­batch.

Rod­er­ick C. Stew­art passed peace­ful­ly on March 3rd, 2019 in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da at the age of 76.

He is lov­ing­ly re­mem­bered as; The Son of The late Charles and Ma­bel Stew­art, Fa­ther of Randee, Col­in and Re­nee, Fa­ther in law of Shel­don Pouchet, Broth­er of Pearl, Fred­er­ick(De­ceased), Bar­bara, Grace and Gem­ma, Broth­er in law of Ralph John­son(De­ceased), Arthur My­coo, Joan Stew­art and Jef­frey Lewis, Un­cle of Hei­di(Her­mi), Her­schel, Karen, Shel­don(De­ceased) Chad and Mar­tin, Rel­a­tive of the Stew­art, We­st­on, Mu­saib-Ali, Phillip, Ram­nath and Khan Fam­i­lies, Friend of Kevin Jef­frey, Ramesh Kawals­ingh, Tony Springer and many oth­ers.

A Memo­r­i­al Ser­vice for The Late Rod­er­ick C. Stew­art will be held on Thurs­day April 25th, 2019 at St. Syl­van An­gli­can Church, St. Mary’s Junc­tion, South­ern Main Road, Freeport at 11:00A.M. In Lieu of Flow­ers an of­fer­ing will be re­ceived to aid in the Church’s Build­ing fund. The Cler­gy, Choir, Com­mu­ni­ty of Freeport and Cara­pichaima, Rel­a­tives and Friends are asked to join the Fam­i­ly in this ser­vice of Thanks­giv­ing. In­quires please call: Simp­son’s Shalom Chapel at 636-2450

by: The Health Plus Team

A Sci­ence for World Peace

Yo­ga is de­scribed as the an­cient sci­ence which fo­cus­es on bring­ing har­mo­ny be­tween mind, body, man and na­ture.

Trac­ing its ori­gins from the dawn of civ­i­liza­tion, Yo­ga goes be­yond the ba­sic me­chan­ics of ex­er­cise as it fo­cus­es on the union of the in­di­vid­ual con­scious­ness (soul) with the Uni­ver­sal Con­scious­ness (Spir­it). It is a sys­tem of rais­ing your abil­i­ty to per­ceive, to en­hance and ul­ti­mate­ly reach self-re­al­i­sa­tion.

In keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia’s mot­to “Va­sud­hi­va Ku­tum­bakum,” The Whole World is one Fam­i­ly, Yo­ga is that tool which works to­wards uni­fy­ing the world to­geth­er by pro­mot­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, har­mo­ny, holis­tic well-be­ing and over­all peace.

The con­cept of In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Yo­ga was pro­posed by In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di to the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on 27th Sep­tem­ber 2014. It came in­to ef­fect that same year, as the Unit­ed Na­tions for­mal­ly recog­nised 21st June, 2015 as World Yo­ga Day. The de­ci­sion was pos­i­tive­ly adopt­ed by 177 coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This year, the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with var­i­ous part­ners such as the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Yo­ga Com­mit­tee, Min­istry of Health, Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts, Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty, Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) and var­i­ous Yo­ga Cen­tres in T&T, will be cel­e­brat­ing the fifth In­ter­na­tion­al Yo­ga Day on 16th June, 2019 at the Ch­aguara­mas Board­walk.

The High Com­mis­sion of In­dia is proud to an­nounce its ex­ten­sive work be­ing done across the coun­try to raise aware­ness about yo­ga and its over­all health ben­e­fits. At present, yo­ga is be­ing taught in schools at all age lev­els across the coun­try, such as:

St Clement Vedic School, San Fer­nan­do

AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do

Chin­maya Mis­sion schools in Debe, Cou­va and Gas­par­il­lo

SWA­HA Hin­du Col­lege, San­gre Grande

Dayanand Memo­r­i­al Pri­ma­ry School, Pe­nal

In ad­di­tion, Yo­ga is be­ing taught to mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic at the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co-op­er­a­tion, Ch­agua­nas and the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia in Port-of-Spain.

In the near fu­ture, the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia pro­pos­es to ex­tend its out­reach of yo­ga by pro­vid­ing Tech­ni­cal and Teacher’s train­ing cours­es as well as in­cor­po­rat­ing ICT through the use of au­dio-vi­su­al tools to help in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge. The High Com­mis­sion of In­dia al­so in­tends to col­lab­o­rate with nu­mer­ous stake­hold­ers to in­clude Yo­ga as a prac­ti­cal op­tion for healthy liv­ing.

Yo­ga does not ad­here to any par­tic­u­lar re­li­gion, be­lief sys­tem or com­mu­ni­ty. Aimed at achiev­ing in­ner well­be­ing, any­one who prac­tices yo­ga can reap its ben­e­fits, ir­re­spec­tive of one’s faith, eth­nic­i­ty or cul­ture. In keep­ing with that phi­los­o­phy, the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia en­cour­ages all to avail them­selves to the on­go­ing schol­ar­ship cours­es in Yo­ga un­der the flag­ship pro­gramme of ITEC. Since its in­cep­tion in 2017, a num­ber of fel­low Trin­bag­o­ni­ans had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­take in the ITEC pro­gramme ti­tled ‘A Spe­cial Course for Yo­ga Train­ers’.

The High Com­mis­sion of In­dia in­vites the pub­lic to join in as it cel­e­brates the 5th In­ter­na­tion­al Yo­ga Day on Sun­day 16th June at the Ch­aguara­mas Board­walk. There will al­so be food stalls of­fer­ing Veg­e­tar­i­an food of dif­fer­ent types.

Ar­ti­cle cour­tesy

the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia

by: CNC3 Newsroom

A 24-year-old stu­dent has put his plans to turn his big ideas in­to so­lu­tions to break the cy­cle of pover­ty on the back burn­er.

In­stead of reach­ing for his goals, Jude James stepped aside and paved the way for his younger broth­er to ful­fill his own am­bi­tions.

Our team of cam­era­man Tim­o­thy Chasteau and re­porter Jesse Ramdeo tell us more.

by: Rishard Khan

Af­ter mul­ti­ple de­lays that stalled progress on the Ch­agua­nas Traf­fic Al­le­vi­a­tion Project, com­muters in the bor­ough may fi­nal­ly get some re­lief.

This af­ter the Min­istry of Works And Trans­port of­fi­cial­ly opened the last leg of the first phase on Fri­day.

The leg opened on Fri­day was Phase 1B, the Soogrim Trace Round­about with four con­nec­tor roads.

This new road sys­tem gives mo­torists an ad­di­tion­al en­trance and ex­it in­to the area, re­duc­ing the bot­tle­neck of traf­fic. It al­so adds a new road net­work, giv­ing mo­torists more op­tions to get around.

One reg­u­lar com­muter, Resh­ma Hanslal told Guardian Me­dia she was grate­ful for the new road­way.

“The traf­fic sit­u­a­tion down by Price Plaza ridicu­lous around that round­about. You have to go there to go back out on to the high­way so I guess it would ease up the traf­fic a whole lot, hope­ful­ly, so com­mut­ing would be eas­i­er to and from home to work on the peak hours. I ap­pre­ci­ate it as a dri­ver on the road.”

Alex Fran­cois, a near­by res­i­dent al­so said he ap­pre­ci­ates the project and is sat­is­fied with it.

Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor at PURE, Hay­den Phillip said: “Traf­fic con­ges­tion ex­pe­ri­enced by mo­torists along the Narsa­loo Ra­maya Marg Road will be re­duced. In ad­di­tion, the ex­it from the Uri­ah But­tler High­way (UBH) at the in­ter­sec­tion of the Narsa­loo Ra­maya Marg Road and Soogrim Trace West will be de­com­mis­sioned lead­ing to an im­prove­ment to the lev­el of traf­fic ex­pe­ri­enced at a dan­ger­ous in­ter­sec­tion. It had a lot of ac­ci­dents tak­ing place there.”

The first phase of the project in­cludes the round­about built at the main en­trance to Price Plaza, the round­about built near the ANSA McAL com­pound, and the con­struc­tion of Soogrim Trace West next to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

The en­tire project con­tains five phas­es. Phase two, a round­about and par­al­lel road near the En­deav­our In­ter­change, be­gins in the next fi­nan­cial year.

Phase three will be an in­ter­change at Munroe Road, to be built in fis­cal 2021. Phase 4 in­volves an over­pass be­ing built at Brent­wood. Phase 5 will see an­oth­er over­pass con­struct­ed at Soogrim Trace.

by: Guardian Media

Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan

Be­cause some so­ci­eties have be­come a bit bur­dened by the chal­lenges that must be ad­dressed with vary­ing lev­els of ur­gency and one’s so­cial ori­en­ta­tion and ex­pe­ri­ences have been im­pact­ed by neg­a­tive in­flu­ences, some in­di­vid­u­als have cho­sen to in­fuse neg­a­tiv­i­ty through­out every sphere of life.

This is in­deed un­for­tu­nate as neg­a­tive en­er­gy is one of the main con­trib­u­tors to lifestyle dis­eases; it af­fects the ef­fec­tive turn­ing of your wheel and al­so bor­ders around hate, en­vy and oth­er neg­a­tive emo­tions that cre­ate a huge black space in your psy­che. Once hu­man sys­tems are fu­elled by neg­a­tive en­er­gy, lit­tle or no room is al­lowed for pos­i­tive light. Many cre­ate their own pot of neg­a­tive en­er­gy by con­tin­u­ous­ly dis­lik­ing oth­ers, while some nev­er see pos­i­tives in any­thing—and here I re­fer to is­sues around pol­i­tics and broad­er na­tion­al is­sues or even con­dem­na­tion of their work­spaces.

Be­gin clear­ing your en­er­gy fil­ter

Neg­a­tiv­i­ty has its own strength and there­fore once present, oth­ers feel it—It’s con­ta­gious and is ex­treme­ly un­healthy if it spread to kids. Let’s start spring clean­ing your en­er­gy fil­ter. Be­gin by just be­ing pleas­ant, there’s no need to blow un­pleas­antries in the face of oth­ers who are un­de­serv­ing. Thoughts about your do­mes­tic and work­spaces are re­flec­tions of that in­ner you so be cau­tious about your in­flows and out­flows. Prac­tice in­clud­ing “but” in your state­ments—for ex­am­ple, every time you ut­ter a neg­a­tive com­ment al­ways in­clude “but” at the end to neu­tralise it with some pos­i­tiv­i­ty. Nav­i­gate through­out every space in your house, clap and ask the Lord to re­move every piece of neg­a­tive en­er­gy that is a stum­bling block to your progress. Though this may ap­pear sim­plis­tic, it is sim­i­lar to the pass­ing of a thun­der­storm where every­thing ap­pears calm and re­freshed fol­low­ing the storm. I have al­ways been a strong ad­vo­cate of love for hu­mankind as its pow­er changes the face of every­thing. Love is a pow­er­ful rem­e­dy for good liv­ing and it changes things. Re­move the clut­ter from your spaces, do some re-ar­rang­ing and you’d def­i­nite­ly ex­pe­ri­ence re­al free­dom of both mind and phys­i­cal space.

A num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als have shared that their neg­a­tive en­er­gy is fu­elled by for­mer re­la­tion­ships which crushed their psy­che, man­hood, self-es­teem and even the will to con­tin­ue liv­ing. I say to those so af­fect­ed don’t al­low neg­a­tive en­er­gy to con­sume your be­ing and in­stead pick up the pieces and build a big­ger and brighter fu­ture.

Neg­a­tive sig­nals

Some dis­play strange be­hav­iours to which they’d as­cribe blame to oth­ers how­ev­er, most of those signs come from with­in that in­ter­nal fil­ter which some al­low to con­trol their be­ing. Do you find your­self al­ways try­ing to prove to oth­ers that you’re right to the ex­tent that you think you have pow­er over oth­ers? This is the first ter­ri­ble sig­nal of stor­ing neg­a­tive en­er­gy; every­body’s opin­ion mat­ter and you can’t and shouldn’t at­tempt to have pow­er over any­one, whilst you may of­fer ad­vice not every­one is will­ing to ac­cept. Life is a jour­ney not a com­pe­ti­tion, and so there is no need to con­stant­ly prove any­thing to the world.

An­oth­er sig­nal is your erup­tive re­ac­tion to the slight­est sit­u­a­tion; every­one is wrong and you’re al­ways right. This type of neg­a­tiv­i­ty sheds bad vibes and mood swings. You can’t be right about every­thing, life is about di­ver­si­ty, unique­ness, and democ­ra­cy.

Con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sign­ing blame par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion­ships when you are the trig­ger of the sit­u­a­tion is a deep sign of neg­a­tive en­er­gy; life can be un­fair at times and view­ing sit­u­a­tions from a ma­ture per­spec­tive would as­sist in chang­ing your lens and avoid blam­ing oth­ers un­nec­es­sar­i­ly. Al­so you may not re­alise that the sit­u­a­tion arose as a re­sult of your own ac­tions and it may be ad­vis­able to in­tro­spect to see where you slipped. Mak­ing un­healthy and hurt­ful state­ments to oth­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly your part­ner is an­oth­er strong sig­nal of stor­ing neg­a­tive en­er­gy es­pe­cial­ly in mo­ments of anger or when you’re backed in a cor­ner about a sit­u­a­tion cre­at­ed by you. Self-crit­i­cism re­turns you to past mis­takes. Stop blam­ing you…past in­ci­dents should be viewed as ex­pe­ri­ences and lessons to avoid re­peats.

Re­vers­ing neg­a­tive en­er­gy

Start im­ple­ment­ing the “No Com­plain­ing Rule”—don’t com­plain un­less you can of­fer at least two so­lu­tions; al­ways be aware of the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment and avoid be­com­ing con­sumed by it—re­mem­ber you have no con­trol over ex­ter­nal pe­riph­er­als and so it’s best to de­vel­op strate­gies to man­age and as­sist in nav­i­gat­ing the ex­ter­nals. Sur­round your­self with pos­i­tive in­di­vid­u­als in­clud­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers; once you dis­cov­er neg­a­tive vibes stay away. Check and cap­i­talise on op­por­tu­ni­ties, not chal­lenges as this ap­proach is use­ful both in your home and work space. Prac­tice zoom fo­cus­ing which al­lows you to switch off the neg­a­tive voic­es and re­place them with pos­i­tive ones. Switch your life’s chan­nel to re­flect an in­spi­ra­tional sto­ry and not a hor­ror movie.

Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan is Pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work/com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant

by: Nigel Simon

For­mer na­tion­al girl’s Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 women’s foot­ball team cap­tain, Anique Walk­er fired in sev­en goals to in­spire Po­lice FC to a 21-0 drub­bing of Cen­tral FC in Round Four of the 2019 T&T Women’s League Foot­ball (WoLF) sea­son.

Play­ing at New Set­tle­ment Ground, Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day, the trio of Sta­cy Paul, Maya Ma­touk and Isha Roberts al­so added hat-tricks for the ram­pant Law-women while Tama­ra John­son, Shenelle Pelchi­er, Sha­keema Fores­tine, na­tion­al de­fend­er Rhea Bel­grave and Nkenge Nedd chipped in with one each.

There were al­so lop­sided vic­to­ries for Trinci­ty Na­tion­als, Queen’s Park Crick­et Club and St Au­gus­tine FC.

Trinci­ty Na­tion­als ham­mered De­fence Force FC 7-1 at De­fence Force Head­quar­ters, Teteron, Ch­aguara­mas; Queen’s Park trashed Malvern 12-0 led by hat-tricks from Jes­si­ca Har­ri­g­an and Lily Stauble at Diego Mar­tin Recre­ation Ground; while St Au­gus­tine spanked its ju­nior team, St Au­gus­tine Ju­niors 5-0 led by a brace from na­tion­al strik­er, Aaliyah Prince at Ed­die Hart Ground, Tacarigua.

In the two oth­er match­es, Jew­els edged To­ba­go Chi­cas 1-0 cour­tesy a strike from De­r­isha Bris­tol in the sev­enth minute, while Club San­do and Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T bat­tled to a 1-1 draw

RE­SULTS

Trinci­ty Na­tion­als FC 7 (Maylee John­son 5′, Asha James 13′, 10′, Kay­deen Jack 26′, Ranelle Pas­call 51′, M. Mejias 72′, 83′) vs De­fence Force FC 1 (C. Thomas 11′)

QPCC Foot­ball FC 12 (Jes­si­ca Har­ri­g­an 4′, 37′, 43′, Stephanie Woo Ling8′, Lily Stauble 13′, 14′, 22′, Olivia Jag­ger­nauth 19′, Afiyah Corn­wall 40′, 55′, 70′, Saman­tha C Kissoon 54′) vs Malvern

Club San­do FC 1 (Aaliyah Pas­call 80′) vs UTT 1 (Zoe Swift 7′)

Jew­els FC 1 (De­r­isha Bris­tol 7′) vs To­ba­go Chi­cas 0

Po­lice FC 21 (Sta­cy Paul 3, Tama­ra John­son 1, Shenelle Pelchi­er 1, Anique Walk­er 7, Sha­keema Fores­tine 1, Maya Ma­touk 3, Isha Roberts3, Rhea Bel­grave 1, Nkenge Nedd 1) vs Cen­tral FC 0

St Au­gus­tine 5 (Aaliyah Prince 11′, 46′, Chan­tal Wal­cott 24′, Maria Frances Ser­rant 50′, Shanelle Sum­mer Ar­joon 73′) vs St Au­gus­tine Jr. 0

by: Shastri Boodan

Cen­tral Elite’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Bring the Rhythm has tak­en the large Band of the Year ti­tle in this year’s Ch­agua­nas Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

The band’s in­di­vid­u­als Mar­lon Fran­cois (Mas is We Thing), Aris­sa Gar­cia (We Need Love) and Daen Fran­cois (Bring Down the Pow­er) al­so swept the King, Queen and Fe­male In­di­vid­ual ti­tles.

Sec­ond place in the large band cat­e­go­ry went to Chase Vil­lage Car­ni­val’s Wings. Chase Vil­lage’s Sel­wyn Fran­cis, with his por­tray­al of The Ea­gle Soars, al­so won the Male In­di­vid­ual ti­tle.

The small band cat­e­go­ry was won by Cre­ative Ex­pres­sions for their Ma­ma Dis is Mas while Mad­ness Crew’s Deep Blue Sea placed sec­ond.

Car­ni­val com­mit­tee chair­man Or­lan­do Nages­sar said he was hap­py to see a large turnout of band and spec­ta­tors this year. He said he was es­pe­cial­ly pleased to see more youth in­volve­ment in tra­di­tion­al mas, adding J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions had grown ex­po­nen­tial­ly in Ch­agua­nas with more than 25,000 spec­ta­tors at­tend­ing the event.

Nages­sar said J’Ou­vert was on the rise part­ly due to the greater fes­tive en­vi­ron­ment that sur­rounds this part of Car­ni­val and the low cost of play­ing in a J’Ou­vert band.

ASP Richard Smith said there were a few in­ci­dents of fights and a few ar­rests of peo­ple with weapons such as knives. Smith said apart from this there were no ma­jor in­ci­dents for cel­e­bra­tions in Cen­tral.