WORD PERFECT

Ini adalah sebuah kisah benar mengenai Word Perfect Helpline (bantuan > berkenaan Word Perfect melalui telefon). Seorang pekerja di helpline ini telah diberhentikan. Walau bagaimanapun, pekerja ini telah menyaman Word Perfect atas dakwaan “Memecat Tanpa Sebab”. Inilah perbualan telefon pekerja berkenaan yang menyebabkan beliau dipecat:

“Ridge Hall computer assistance; boleh saya bantu anda?”
“Ya, err, Saya ada masalah dengan Word Perfect.”
“Masalah bagaimana tu encik?”
“Saya sedang menaip, tiba-tiba semua perkataan tersebut hilang.”
“Hilang?”
“Ya, ia hilang.”
“Hmm. Macam mana monitor anda kelihatan sekarang?”
“Kosong, tak ada apa-apa.”
“Tak ada apa-apa?”
“Blank, ia tak respon apa-apa bila saya menaip.”
“Adakah anda masih didalam WordPerfect, atau anda telah keluar?”
“Macam mana saya nak tau?”
“Bolehkah anda nampak C: prompt pada skrin anda?”
“Apa tu si-perom?”
“Tak apalah, boleh tak anda gerak-gerakkan mouse anda di skrin?”
“Cursor pun tak ada: kan saya dah kata ianya tak memberi sebarang respon bila saya taip.”
“Adakah monitor anda ada power indicator?”
“Monitor tu apa?”
“Ianya adalah sebuah alat yang ada skrin padanya dan ianya berbentuk seperti TV.”
“Adakah ianya mempunyai lampu kecil yang menyala bila monitor anda dihidupkan?”
“Saya tak tahu.”
“OK, kalau begitu cuba lihat di belakang monitor anda dan cuba cari socket dimana wayar power anda di pasangkan. Boleh nampak tak?”
“Rasa-rasanya.”
“Bagus. Ikut wayar tersebut hingga ke plug, dan adakah ianya dipasangkan pada soket elektrik di dinding anda.”
“Yaa, terpasang.”
“Masa anda lihat di belakang monitor tadi, perasankah anda ada dua wayar terpasang di belakang monitor anda, bukannya satu?”
“Iya ke?.”
“Sebenarnya ada dua. Sekarang saya nak anda pergi balik ke belakang monitor anda dan cari satu lagi wayar tersebut”
“Okay, jumpa dah.”
“Cuba ikut wayar tersebut dan beritahu saya samada ianya terpasang dengan ketat di belakang computer anda.”
“Alamak tak sampai laa.”
“Ok… boleh cuba jenguk-jenguk samada ianya terpasang atau tidak?”
“Tak boleh.”
“Tak boleh juga ke jika anda cuba panjat apa-apa seperti kerusi dan tengok kat belakang tu?”
“Oh, saya tak nampak bukannya sebab angle tak betul, tapi pasal gelap.”
“Gelap?”
“Ya. Lampu pejabat ni terpadam dan satu-satunya sumber cahaya yang saya ada adalah dari cahaya tingkap.”
“OK, kalau macam tu hidupkanlah lampu pejabat anda.”
“Tak boleh.”
“Tak boleh? Kenapa?”
“Sebab kat pejabat saya “blackout”, tak ada elektrik.”
“Blackout… tak ada elektrik? Aha, Okay, kita dah dapat penyelesaiannya sekarang. Anda masih mempunyai kotak, manual dan barang-barang pembungkusan semasa komputer ini dihantar?”
“Ada… saya simpan kat dalam almari.”
“Bagus. pergi ambil barang-barang tersebut dan unplug komputer anda. Kemudian bungkuskan sepertimana masa ianya baru-baru sampai dulu. Hantar balik ke kedai dimana anda beli dulu.”
“Ehh? Ye ke? Macam tu sekali punya teruk ke?”
“Iya, rasa-rasanya macam itulah.”
“Err… okey lah. Nampaknya saya kena buat macam tu lah. Tapi nak cakap apa dengan pekedai tu?”
“Beritahu mereka anda terlalu bangang untuk memiliki sebuah komputer.”

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/june/11/yehey/top_stories/20060611top1.html

The Manila Times, Sunday, June 11, 2006

SPECIAL REPORT

Nearly impossible to feed their brains with lessons because

6 million pupils go to school hungry

Basic education: The poverty and malnutrition factors

By Likha Cuevas

WHAT if the classroom shortage, the poor quality of textbooks and the lack of intellectually and pedagogically qualified teachers are solved?  How wonderful it would be if all Filipino children can be in education’s enchanted kingdom.

Do you think the problems of Philippine basic education would then disappear?

No! Not for almost one-third of all school-age Filipino children.  Of the 20 million schoolchildren who began the 2006-07 school year last week, almost 30 percent belong to families living below the poverty line.  The children of these poor families, about six million of them, go to school hungry or in a state of malnutrition every day.

Some actually go to school without having had any kind of breakfast, others after eating a handful of rice and a piece of tuyo (dried fish). Well-to-do pupils who are used to three square meals a day might faint with hunger by three o’ clock p.m. if subjected to this kind of deprivation.

These poor children don’t take packed lunch and snacks with them. More than a third of them are likely to be suffering from different ranges of malnutrition.

You cannot think straight—you cannot absorb what you are being taught—when you’re hungry. The body has to address its more basic need first before it can address the cognitive need of the mind.

Signs of malnutrition

Clinical research shows that being underheight and underweight are signs of malnutrition. Studies in 2001 show that 31.8 percent of Filipino school-age children are underweight, 32 percent are stunted and 6.6 percent suffer from wasting disorders.

The Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology said Filipino schoolchildren suffer from protein-energy malnutrition, iron-deficiency anemia and deficiencies in vitamin A and iodine. (See side bar: “What malnutrition does to Filipino school kids.”)

The institute’s researches also show that clinically severe malnutrition and moderate malnutrition exponentially increase mortality risk in young children and that moderate malnutrition may pose delayed cognitive and psychomotor development.

Scientists associate malnutrition with poverty incidence in the country. The National Statistical Coordination Board says that poor families—those with per-capita income below the poverty threshold—made up 33 percent of total families in 2000 and 30 percent in 2003. 

Because too many families could not afford to buy enough food, the government launched a number of feeding programs through the Department of Education as a stopgap measure to address the malnutrition incidence in schoolchildren. This shows the government’s awareness of the relevance of nutrition to education.

Feeding programs

According to the Department of Education, the supplementary feeding program provides additional food equivalent to about a quarter of an individual’s daily food requirement. “It is intended to fill the deficiency in the quality and quantity of one’s home diet,” the department said.

The department is implementing the Breakfast-Feeding Program, School Milk Project, and Applied Nutrition Program. In addition, the Office of the President launched the Food for School Program in 2004 to deal with both the health status and academic performance of elementary schoolchildren in selected schools nationwide.

Rogelio A. Limson, head of the department’s school-feeding program, said breakfast feeding assuages short-term hunger by giving first graders from fifth-class municipalities noodles and biscuits every morning for 120 school days.

Limson said 414 schools and 22,222 pupils benefited from this program last school year, when it operated on a budget of P4 million.

Breakfast feeding is accompanied by the Food-for-School Program under the office of President Arroyo in coordination with the Department of Education, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the National Nutrition Council, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the National Economic and Development Authority and the Department of Agriculture’s National Food Authority.

The Food-for-School Program is carried out in 55 provinces in Regions 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Caraga and the

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/june/11/yehey/top_stories/20060611top2.html

Sunday, June 11, 2006

By The Manila Times Research staff

MILLIONS of Filipino children go to school without proper or enough nutrients and energy to help them through the day. Getting through the work and learning of a day in school can be fun for a well-fed pupil. It is usually painful for a malnourished child.

Of every 100 primary school-age children, 26 were underweight and 37 were underheight or short, the latest nutrition survey (2003) done by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) of the Department of Science and Technology.

“Being underheight or short reflects current malnutrition or a long-standing poor nutritional status,” the research institute said.

This was an improvement over the finding that 33 out of every 100 were underweight and 41 out of every 100 were underheight in 2001.

Being underweight means a child’s weight relative to her/his age is less than that of a normal child and being underheight or short means his/her height is less than that of a normal child of the same age. On the other hand, being overweight—which is another sign of malnutrition—is when a child’s weight is much more than that of a normal child of the same age.

The 1998 National Nutrition Survey conducted by FNRI-DOST saw four malnutrition problems of Filipino children—protein-energy malnutrition, iron deficiency anemia, vitamin A deficiency and iodine deficiency disorders.

Dr. Ma. Veritas Fajos-Luna, chairman and associate professor of the Department of Food and Nutrition at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD), explained that being protein-energy malnourished means that the children do not have enough calories to burn, especially for physical and mental activities.

“The truth here is that Filipinos consume more than 100 percent of the recommended daily allowance for protein but it’s the calories that we are lacking,” Fojas-Luna said. She says calories from carbohydrates are the main sources of energy.

Based on the dietary survey done every five years by FNRI, only protein meets the corresponding recommended daily allowance (RDA) at 106.2 percent while energy is 87.8 percent of RDA, and intakes of vitamins and minerals remain “grossly inadequate,” which ranges from 57.1 percent to 88.1 percent.

“However, since we lack enough calories to burn, our body turns to the proteins that we consume as its source of energy,” Fojas-Luna said. Because most of the proteins are burnt by the body for energy, the nutrient is not able to do its main function of building and rebuilding muscles and tissues.

“This is why malnourished children are stunted and thin,” she said. “They do not build muscles and bones to grow tall and strong,” she said.

Since the body’s proteins are depleted to create of energy, children also cannot fight infection and combat diseases, which is also one function of proteins. Proteins are what keep the immune system healthy. “These children easily get sick. They are often absent from school. They do not perform well in mental and physical activities,” Fojas-Luna said.

Filipinos have low mineral intake, as the dietary survey shows, and because of this many children are afflicted with iron deficiency anemia. According to Fojas-Luna, iron helps in manufacturing red blood cells that bring oxygen to all parts of the body.

“If a child has low red blood cell count, he or she easily gets tired, has no interest in learning or class activities owing to his feeling of fatigue. And he or she cannot concentrate on lectures,” the nutrition professor said.

Iodine deficiency affects the thyroid gland. Iodine is needed to produce hormones needed by the body for various functions. Since the thyroid becomes hyperactive when it tries to capture even minute amounts of iodine in the body, it becomes enlarged. That is goiter, Fojas-Luna said.

Children of iodine-deficient mothers may become retarded, deaf-mute or suffer from “cretinism” (mental and physical undevelopment). Children with low iodine counts, the nutrition professor said, may become mentally slow.

Vitamin A is needed to produce mucous in the membranes of different organs of the body. “We get the sniffles when we have allergens inside the body. We cough or sneeze it out to get the alien entity like dust out of our system. We are able to do that because of the mucous that traps allergens. Mucous is manufactured by our bodies with the help of Vitamin A,” Fojas Luna said.

Without the ability to expel allergens, says the professor, the processes inside the body are hampered. And this makes children sick.

Without Vitamin A, the eyes also dry out, which leads to eye injuries. “Dry eyes cannot expel dust and other objects that get inside,” she said. Chronic dryness of the eyes can eventually lead to blindness.

Vitamin A is also responsible for binding proteins in the retina of the eye which enables people to adjust to darkness. Vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness. “Vitamin A-deficient children become withdrawn at dusk because they cannot see very well in the dark. They reduce their physical activity when it gets dark,” Fojas Luna said.

Malnutrition is debilitating to schoolchildren. FNRI urges that health and nutrition programs and interventions be intensified. It warns, however, that programs on health and nutrition would go nowhere if the root cause of the problem is not addressed.

“There is the greater need for programs and projects that will raise the economic condition of the majority of the Filipino people as malnutrition is associated mainly with poverty. If all the young Filipinos are to attain their greatest potential physically and mentally, the government must not ignore the malnutrition of about one-fourth to one-third of the children,” FNRI said.