Tag Archives: reading

My preoccupation with advocating that we do more to encourage a love for reading stems from a conviction that it is a fundamental aspect of our development as a society. It’s not so much about learning to read, important as that is, but more about finding pleasure in the act. …

It has been a long time since I was so captivated by a book that I neglected other activities just to succumb to it. The book, Edible Economics – A Hungry Economist Explains the World, by Ha-Joon Chang, was enlightening, and such a pleasure to read that it was a …

Seeing a big picture requires a lens shaped by multiple streams of information. If you live within the confines of a cave, everything you know is defined by its walls. Not so? It follows that how you respond to events is determined by the knowledge that you have to work …

“[…] For some children, reading happens naturally, but that’s not the case for a lot of children. “A simple rule like English words can’t end in the letter ‘v’ will teach children to spell so many words [like] ‘have’, ‘above’, ‘give’, ‘live’…” Wired868 highlights the day-to-day lives of everyday Trinbagonians in …

Last Saturday, just before the tea break during the West Indies Test against Bangladesh, I scurried to my kitchen to prepare some herbs for the bhaji rice I was planning to cook on Sunday. It had been pouring heavily, thunder and lightning dropping a menacing feel to the afternoon. Suddenly, …

In the late 1990s, in response to one of my weekly columns, retired Professor Emeritus Desmond Imbert called me. It was the beginning of a rather odd friendship that went on for years—when he died in 2010, we had still never met in person. Communication was always at his instigation, …

In a land where public institutions are symbols of frustration, two stand out by dint of their commitment to service and innovation. I am referring to Nalis, our National Library and Information Service Authority, and our National ­Archives. In the course of my various episodes of research, I became convinced …

“In a great country like ours, we should aspire for every child to grow up to achieve his or her full potential. Anything less is a waste of talent and a blemish on human dignity and flourishing.” Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute), 2023. In April 2009, our country hosted President Barack …

English colonialism has left a long and often miserable legacy. Cricket and tea have often been cited as the most positive contributions to its former colonies, but my interest today is not in exploring the quality of those exports. Something else triggered me. I was thinking of the impact of …

When she was a wee thing, my daughter loved stories. She had favourites and wanted to hear them over and over.  There would be phases; the same one from the night before and the night before, before eventually moving on to another. By the time she was about five, she …

A long time ago I had this dream of opening a café of sorts. A place where I could serve small dishes made with local ingredients; where the food and drink were simple, tasty and fresh. I wanted the quality to be outstanding, but I also imagined it to be …

Sometimes you have a memory that seems so improbable you wonder if it was a dream. I was looking at a slightly battered book that I had acquired at the Couva office of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) when I had gone to see what records they had …