Christmas Greetings

Christmas Greetings

Learn more about Msiba, My Love

Lily Strand publishing has created a website---http://www.msibamylove.com so that online viewers can learn more about their latest publication -Msiba,My Love and its writer Ivan A. Khayiat.


It is also possible to order the book online.


The site has material from Ivan A. Khayiat's early collection of poems Quest by Day, Vigil by Night.. Msiba was launched last Friday in Suriname and has had an enthusiastic response from the public.


This coffee table photo book with the Tagore  award winning poem is a collector's item and an ideal gift. The book is an excellent example of the creative skill of Surinamese.


The book was printed by Suriprint N.V and Design work was done by Studio TMC and ChadLab.com.


Suriname buyers can come to the AlphaMax Academy to get their copies.

Successful Visit to Jarikaba

By Jonathan Liu--High School Senior and member of Business Class

On Wednesday December 14, 2011 the AlphaMax Academy business students went to Jarikaba Stichting Behold Bananen Sector (SBBS). The students left school at 8:00 am and arrived at the Jarikaba banana plantation forty five minutes later. When they arrived to the plantation Mr. Barsingh -the head of agronomic and research department- greeted the student with a warm welcome.            

After a long trip with the bus the business students arrived at the banana plantation. They then rode three more minutes to the banana field. Mr. Barsingh described the field and the banana plants.  Jarikaba has three farms and each farm has a manager and two supervisors.   

                                                                                                             

The banana field is 1280 hectares long. One hectare has 1900 banana trees .The banana are covered with blue plastic bags, so that the pests cannot get to the banana.    

                                                                                                                       

The field has an old sprinkler system to water the banana trees when the field is dry (mostly on hot days). They are trying to put a new sprinkler system. The banana trees are 1.65 M away from each other and are planted in a triangular pattern, so that each tree can get the same amount sun light.

After the field trip the students went to the packinghouse. There is where the bananas are packed in boxes and shipped to other countries. In the packing house the bananas are examined to see if the bananas are too ripe or not ripe. If the banana is not so ripe they are going to export it and if the banana is ripe the going to sell it to the Suriname local market.           

                                                                                                                                             

After the examining the bananas they are then thrown into a pool of water with soap to wash the latex off the banana. The workers then examine to find out if some of the bananas are rotten. If there are rotten bananas they throw them away.  The workers throw the bananas back in to another pool of clean water to wash out the soap .When they are clean the workers pick them up for packing.   

                                

The workers pack the bananas in boxes with two different colors- green and red.                                                                                       

The green boxes are for small bananas and the red box for larger bananas. Further on, the air in the boxes with banana is sucked out, so that the bananas won’t ripen during shipping.

After a long day Mr. Barsingh invited the business students to sit down and gave the students something to drink and to eat. He also told the students about some future plans for the banana sector. It was time to go back to school so the AlphaMax Academy business students thanked Mr. Barsingh for the tour. The students also got some bananas to bring back home.

                                                                

Business Students to visit Jarikaba Banana Plantation

On Wednesday December 14^th, 2011, the AlphaMax Academy business students are going on a fieldtrip to the Jarikaba banana plantation. 


The trip was organized by teacher Sylvana Dankerlui . 


The purpose of the trip is to get the business students to learn how the owners of the plantation set up a business there. From their example, the business students may learn how to make a business plan of their own.  


Jonathan Lui - High School Senior and Member of the Business Class

A Sony VAIO Review by Kristina Taylor

On September 5^th, 2011, I ordered a Sony Vaio laptop, on Sony Companies online.  Although I had to wait an entire month for my order to arrive, I was fairly happy with my order.  An outrageous part of my laptop story is that it is a crazy green color.  Not just apple green, but more of a neon green.  This was ordered in the Sony Fashion Laptop section of the store and I wanted to purchase another color other than a boring silver or black computer.  My laptop costs approximately $600-750.  There are some pros and cons about the Sony Vaio laptop:

Cons:

The screen is flimsy

The CD drive is flimsy as well

It is not recommended for gamers because the card slot does not hold all card types

The Sony VAIO came with its own type of program called Sony Analyzer which constantly feels the need to update your computer

Sony shipping SUCKS

I only received a 1 week trial of Microsoft Office, but a life time of Adobe Photoshop Plus

The Webcam is poor

Pros:

I love the color (green)

It is lightweight- 3.5 pounds

It comes with i3 Windows 7

It does not overheat

The microphone works well

Comes with a free keyboard skin of your own color choice

AlphaMax End of Term Activities

All end of term examination finish today –Friday December 9^th.

There are two field trips next week. One on Tues. 13 Dec for High School History students to Fort Zeelandia. The other for the High School Business students on Wednesday the 14th December, 2011. This group of students will be going to Jarikaba.

There will be a school party for all students at the main building—Scabiosastraat 4 on Thurs. 15 December from 9.am to 12.30pm.

School report cards will be available for collection between 8.00 and 10.00 am on Friday 16^th December.

End of Term Field Trips

AlphaMax Academy is organizing an educational fieldtrip for High School History students to Fort Zeelandia on Tuesday the 13th December, 2011. The departure time will be at 7.45am and the students will be back at school approximately 9.30am.

There will be a fieldtrip for the High School Business students on Wednesday the 14th December, 2011. The students will be going to Jarikaba. They will leave at 7.45am and return to school at approximately 12.30pm.

Staff Tutor Ms. Sylvana Dankerlui will be in charge of both trips.

10 Minutes of National Fame

by Ruth Saman

Monday November 5, 2011 was the first day of the Children’s Day of Broadcasting in Suriname– an initiative of the STVS and the AlphaMax Academy.  Surinamese students worked with the STVS crew to launch this project; this project might be an ongoing project.  Kristina Taylor, Reann Kersenhout, Justin Ho, Emmanuel Landburg, Jason Jones, Yamil Baptista, Aaron Cheuk A Lam and Cherise Playfair are some

of the students who participated in this project.

Ruth on National TV

Along with Cherise Playfair, I presented part of the STVS evening news for 10 minutes.  During the voice checks on Friday December 2, 2011 I was very nervous, and the recording room was very cold.  Before me, other students went, and when I it was my turn, I felt as if my nerves took over because I started my presentation before the camera man gave me the cue.  When I finally got the cue, I presented the news and surprisingly, I was calm.  I was very comfortable being in the spotlight.  As a result the STVS team decided that my performance on my screen test was good enough for me to present the evening news. So I got the chance to be seen on television nationwide.

On Monday December 5, the day of the news presentation, Cherise and I had to be at the TV station by 12 noon.  In the morning, we came to school and left at 11.  We started taping the presentation at approximately 1.30.  I felt very calm and confident while doing it.

That night, when I watched the news, I waited impatiently on the part of the news that Cherise was doing to end. Then there I was…reading the news on National TV.  Seeing myself on television was something new for me, but it lasted only for 10 minutes.  So I had my ten minutes of fame, I told myself.

After seeing this, I felt that I had revealed one of my many hidden talents.

Ruth on STVS Evening News

Children's Day Broadcast a Huge Success.

Children's Day Broadcast on December, 5th 2011 was a huge success. STVS, Suriname National station and the oldest TV station in the country broadcasted several hours of programming done by young people.

AlphaMax students collaborated on this project and they did so enthusiastically.

 The National Evening news was presented Ruth Saman and Cherise Playfair. They got to read the day’s news for that evening.

Jason Jones had his hands full with the sports items. He had to interview a couple of people who are in the sports business. Tarren Antonius and Justin Ho also did interviews on a program called 'Monday Live'.

There was a logo for the day that was created by Shafeek. Editing and other technical work was done by Shafeek, Yamil, Araon and Timothy.

Parents and friends of the AMA students were delighted at the skills displayed by our students. 

Nicole Moeljadi

Gabriel Grauwde launches his personal website

Gabriel Grauwde ,GAC class of 2012 has created a personal biographical website. Its URL is

http://gabrielgrauwde.weebly.com/. He is inviting his classmates and friends to visit his site and make comments on how he can improve it. He wants to give a picture of his academic and non academic achievements.

Gabriel is an outstanding Surinamese youth swimmer. He is in his final year at AlphaMax Academy and is a member of the GAC class.

Last summer he represented Suriname at the International Triathlon Games in Lausanne, Switzerland. Gabriel came to AlphaMax after spending twelve years in Barbados. His dream is to represent Suriname at the 2016 Olympics.Gabriel’s current plan is to study in the US in the fall of 2012.

AlphaMax Students on STVS Children's Day of Broadcasting

AlphaMax students will be working along with other Surinamese students to produce a day of Surinamese Children’s broadcasting to be aired for over eight hours on STVS on December 5^th.Broadcsting of these programs will begin at noon.

Teams of high school students at AMA will be working on scripting, arranging interviews, interviewing on camera and presenting. One team comprising Yamil Baptista, Timothy Naaarendorp, Aaron Cheuk-A-Lam  and Shaffique Nazir will be working on technical matters.

Xiomara and Tarique Getrouwe –outstanding athletes from the school are scheduled to be interviewed on a one hour live program that will focus entirely on young people.

Some of our students will be part of the promo for the day of broadcasting. Shaffique Nazir has designed the logo for the program and this will be placed on the polo shirts that participants will wear in the next scheduled day of broadcasting in January.

Our students will join others to be news anchors and sports news anchors. Ruth Saman and Cerise Playfair are to be news anchors while Jason Jones will do sports.

Films dealing with youth themes will be aired during the day and each film will be introduced by young people.

The young people who won first prizes in the recent National Tagore Creative Work competition will be featured.  So our winners-Kristina Taylor, Claire Patandin, Reann Kersenhout and Shaffique Nazir will have features done on them.

AMA high school business class will do a segment on the current Euro zone financial crisis and will be interviewing two senior people from the Ministry of Finance and a banker. This feature will be part of the regular morning programming .Tarren Antonius and Justin Ho will be on the streets with the regular STVS reporters.

High School music teacher Mr. Ivor Mitchell has given the program one of his music compositions to be background music for a feature that will highlight the art entries in the recent Tagore Art competition.

Ivan A. Khayiat's "Msiba-My Love" will be launched on Dec 9th

Lily Strand Publishing in Suriname is launching a unique coffee table book Msiba-My Love on December 9^th at 7.00 pm at the Tower Auditorium in downtown Paramaribo. ‘Msiba- my Love’ is the winner of the 2011 National Tagore Award for poetry. The book has a stunning collection of photographic images of Suriname together with the texts of three poems. During the launch there will be a fifteen minute high definition video presentation of images of Suriname’s Brokopondo interior with audio of the main poem in English and Dutch. A specially composed musical soundtrack complements the male and female voices reading the poem.

Masba, My Love is not only a unique collection of poems but also a deeply moving plea for respect for mother earth, Suriname and its people. 

The centre piece of this collection is “Msiba My Love”. It is a symphonic poem in three movements which profoundly explores the many layers of an economic and ecological crime that was committed in Suriname in the 1960s.  In the name of progress a multi- national company together with the Dutch colonial government forcibly removed   thriving Maroon communities from their ancestral homes to create the Afobaka hydro electric dam. These communities had been living there for over 200 years and held a sacred spiritual connection with their mother communities in Africa. Msiba communicates the excruciating pain caused by the severing of the spinal cord of not only the Maroon nation but the nation of Suriname. The emotional intensity aroused by the words, images, rhythms, and cadences of this fascinating poem is so great that one young Surinamer was moved to tears just reading the poem.

Msiba however is more than the poem. It is an artistic effort to use both the force of the poem and the powerful impact of photographic images to create a multimedia presentation.  Each image in the book has been carefully selected to act either as a companion or a counter point to the lines in the poem.   “Reading” this poem is a multi sensory experience which resonates at all three important levels physical, emotional, and spiritual.

 “Forest Tears”, the second poem, poses the questions that we all need ask about our relationship with the planet today. The collection ends with the exquisitely beautiful “I love you” which celebrates simultaneously the love of a woman and the country she comes from. The stunningly beautiful images of Suriname and the poem evoke the joy of fresh new love.

Ivan Khayiat is a gifted writer with the ability to touch the reader at the very core of his being. Everyone who reads these poems will do so over and over. Each time the reader will come away with even greater insights into our need to be attuned to mother earth. Each reader will also feel the pain of the vicious crime that was committed to this peaceful nation nearly 50 years ago.                                                                                                                                                                 

Milton M.Drepaul