English Language

I like to learn things and learning English it´s not the exception, but one thing that I hate of this English classes are the schedule of it, I mean, taking classes all Fridays in the afternoon it´s not the best idea, because all that you want is take a breath of every day’s obligations, and you are not with the energy that you need to learn new things.  However I think that my favorite part of English classes were the blog´s writings, because you can express your feelings and ideas about a certain topics and watch the same of your classmates. 

I think that I know how to read, write and hear the English language: I think that it is in those areas that I’m good at, and I think that I am good because I am always reading English texts, hearing English people talking in movies or singing in the songs, etc. My weakest point is the speaking, but I think that these English classes have been useful to me in this way, because we have been practicing speaking in almost every class. I don´t have any plan to improve my spoken English outside of this course, because I think that it´s not too important to me at this time. Also, my spoken English is no so poor, and I think that I can manage myself if I have to speak in English in the future. 

I think that English is important these days because this language has become a sort of universal language in our world… for example, if you want to communicate with a Japanese, its more probable that he or she know English and it’s less probable that you know Japanese, so it’s useful. And also you can use it to read English papers when you want to stay update in certain topics, and for thousands of other things.

This year

To be honest I don´t like to classify the things that happen in my life as “good” or “bad”, because if you look deeper you can realize that what we usually call “bad things” brings out many times spectacular opportunities and experience. So I like to think that way (but it´s hard!).  However you can obviously realize the good and bad things that happen to you at least in the superficial dimension. This year I made my first assistantship in course at university, so that gave me some experience and knowledge that I appreciate. Also, I have approved all the courses that I have taken, so I feel good about that.  I think that a bad thing that happened to me this year is something related with my career: last year I was enthusiastic about develop my professional practice in the clinical psychology area, but lately I have been dubious about that, so right now I am little lost about it.

I don´t know what my achievements could be jaja… when I pass from one year to another I don´t expect nothing in particular, and I think that that it´s a legitimate way of seeing future. However, it´s true that I have general wishes when I pass to a new year, like being happy, enjoy times with people I love and that, and I think that this year have gone this way, so I’m glad about that.

An important event that I would like to highlight this year (and that its related with my personal life) is the surprise birthday that my family organized to me, in which they contacted my old school friends and was really beauty. 

Was Jesus an extraterrestrial?

To be honest I think that I have never read a book which pretends to reveal secrets in history, but I do know about some of them. For example, there is an spanish author called Juan José Benitez who have written an extremely long book saga about the life and passion of Jesus Christ (called “Caballo de Troya”), revealing his secret life and the struggles he has to pass in his lifetime, things that are absent in the historycal and traditional body of knowledge (I mean, these kind of things are not detailed in the bible, and even the scientific evidence about the existence of Jesus is controversial).

The interesting thing about JJ Benitez is his close relationship with the ufology issue, in fact, he used to be in the 70s a recognized jounalist focused in these kind of topics. So, in his saga he talks about Jesus´ life in a third view perspective, and he try to link (implicitly) the relationship between him and the extraterrestrial life. It´s weird, I know.
Obviously, Benitez has recieved a lot of questioning about his work, but he has said that certain parts of the books are fiction, but the most part of the history is truth.

I don´t know if it´s truth o not, because I have not read the saga, but if I have the chance I will take a look on the books. But I think that these kind of things must be read with an open and curious mind, because if they are not true, at least you can pass a great time reading them.

Green People

I think that I am not what ussualy people call as a “green person”, because I dont do the things that are generally associated with that name. I am not the kind of people who avoids eating animals, or the kind of people that are concerned about recycle and stuff, even when I consider those actions as really valuable and admirable.

I think people learn these kind of practices in their families, although there are exceptions. For example, my family have never been a “green” one, but my brother became vegetarian a few months ago, even when we all love to eat meat. So I think that becoming a green person depends mostly of your personal values, and of the desire to respect them.

I use public transport instead of a car, but the main reason of this is because I hate the stress created by the driving and, by the other hand,  Santiago is full of cars everywhere, so if I can avoid to drive cars, the better. I dont have a license in fact, so I cant anyway.

To reduce my carbon footprint I have stopped to breath jaja. No, I dont know, I always get concerned about turn off the lights that are not being used, or sometimes unplug the electrodomestics at night. I think that Santiago cant be a green city because they are all hurried and worried from here to there, and stressed of becoming successful and that blind them from seeing the really important things, like keep our enviroment clean and breatheable.

Video 1

Animals as victims of human impact in nature

In Chile there is a particular case of endangered animal, I mean the condor. It is at least peculiar that an animal that is supposed to be a national emblem is considered at the same time a vulnerable one. The Chilean condor is an animal that feeds itself by other corpse animals, flying around its food in circles until it decides to land. This animal is considered a complex one because it has a well-structured social system in which the older males feed themselves first when they found food, then the older female, and finally the younger ones. The problem is that there are some people that hunt the condors by fun or with the purpose to make them their “trophies”, so they are in evident danger of becoming extinct specie.

I think that the hydroelectric plants are a threat to the natural environment of almost every animal, but this is not the only human construction that affects the life of wild animals... there are many others that make the same or more amount of danger by taking away or simply destroying their natural environments, like the construction of malls or even the simple construction of homes or roads.

I believe that the dominant groups in our society are not doing the sufficient to fix the damage done or at least to avoid to doing even more damage. The projects like HidroAysen are the demonstration of this. Finally, I think that the deeper problem is that the conservation of natural environments are not being watched as a real problem, because the political class think that the real problem is an energy problem, and every way to solve this is acceptable. 

Anxiety and mental health stigma

In this notice, the author talks about the stereotypes that surround the mental disorders` issue in our society, focusing specially in the stress and anxiety related disorders, which can be defined as a maladaptive pattern of feeling this emotion in situations in which this emotion is not needed. Anxiety –say the author- is an emotion that has been shaped through evolution to letting us respond efficiently when we percieve dangerous stimulus, so we can execute appropiate responses. The problem begins when this response is activated in situations that is not needed, disturbing the person and impeding him from enjoying other aspects in life.

"mental patient fancy dress costume"

These kind of disorders are, according to statistics, more common that we may think. The numbers say that about 25% of people will experience in one year some kind of mental disorder, and the numbers related to anxiety disorders specifically  reach the 10% in England.

Also, the column talks about the neuroscience behind this problems, exposing the way in which some particular encephalic structures are activated when people experience anxiety and that kind of stuff. But the main purpose of the author lies in the critique that he makes about the way in which our society see the mental disoders, and the disastrous consequenses that this has to the same people. For example, a few days ago, some shop started to sell a mental-ill custom for the halloween holydays, reproducing the stereotypes and prejudices surrounding these people. The scandal was so big, that the shop had to apologize in their Twitter and even made a donation to a mental-disorders organization. The custom was called “mental patient fancy dress costume” and it was on sale for 20 euros. 

The link: http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/sep/27/neuroscience-psychology

Book based movies

We all know the fact that book-based movies are ninety nine percent of the time worse than the book itself, because of many reasons: they are usually made only for commercial purposes (they think that if the book has succeeded, a movie will bring a lot of people to cinema, and that means dollars), they are made by people that don’t know the real intentions that the book´s author wanted to express; and, most importantly,  they lack the complexity and possibilities that only the reading can bring, by encouraging the reader´s imagination and letting him picture the words in his mind.

In this way, I think that, in some cases, it is necessary for the film-makers change some aspects of the book in order to adapt the story into the big screen, but the director has to have always in his mind that the changes must be as minimum as he can, in order to show some respect to the original idea.  

I think that it´s not necessary to read the book before seeing the movie. In fact, if you do this, mostly of time you will get disappointed, because the movie probably will not has the quality that the book has. And I think that this is the main reason by which these kind of movies are generally criticized as “bad movies” by the audience. However, there are some cases in which the movie overcomes the book, even if the movie is not related at all with the book. For example, The Shining by Stanley Kubrick is considered these days as a masterpiece of the horror movies, even when in the beginning it was considered real garbage by the specialized audience. Even Stephen King (the book´s author) was angry because the movie was not what he was expecting. But I think that this only can happen with Kubrick in the camera. Generally book based movies are real trash.

Music that break Parameters

First of all, I have to say that, in my opinion, there is only one band that must be considered as the ultimate broken-parameters band: The Beatles. You like them or not, you cannot deny the fact that they have influenced almost every band since their formation, changing their musical composition dramatically through their active and short period as a band. The band from Liverpool was received dichotomously by the audience: from one side there was the female young girls that built the “beatlemania” thing, shouting and crying when the musicians were in front of them and making everything that was needed to stay closer to the Fab-Four. And, from the other side, there was the specialized critics that considered the band as only a teenage-thing, that it was not anything more than that. And they was right. I mean, the only revolutionary thing that had The Beatles in their beggining was the histeria that brought to the (mostly female) audience. The real revolution came with the years, when this guys started to experiment with psychotropic drugs while they were composing their music, and by this time they started to be considered as a mature and psychodelic band that left behind the commercial pop side to make an incursion to more complex and deeper music.

I think that the bands that break parameters have generally a well stablished political side: the side opposed to the traditional conservatism, because they have to have necesarilly an opend mind to new things.

Finally, I think that in the national scene Los Jaivas could be considered as one of this bands, because they mix in a interesting way the folk latin music with the progressive rock, with a beautiful outcome that can be appreciated in Cds like El Indio or Alturas de Machu Pichu.

A Country I'd like to visit

When I was in school, my English teacher showed us a video about an unknown country for me at that time. The video showed a country in which there were a lot of castles and green fields that I considered really beautiful and, since then, I`ve been waiting to travel there. Of course, I’m talking about United Kingdom, but specifically England. 

I`d like to go to England because I like the accent of their language, the monuments that exist there, and essentially I’d like to visit places related with English music (like the Beatles` album cover, Abbey Road), because I have to admit that I’m a big fan of music, but English music in particular. If I was there I would spend my time in music`s stores, concerts, and underground pubs (to catch out emergent rock bands and get drunk and start a classic pub fight haha).

I think that I wanted to live there, but not in London, because it would be like escape from one irritating city to arrive into an irritating and expensive city xD. I think that it would be perfect to live in a peripheral but beautiful city, or to live in another UK country, like Wales.

My ideal job

I think that my ideal job would be essentially like this: work only the time that I´d like and get well paid by it. This job would consist of taking care of nature so I´d be able to breath clean air and watch the trees and stuff like that. Also, I would live near my place of work (or even better: I would live IN my work´s place), so I would not need to struggle everyday with the annoying highways, the delays, the hurry, and everything that makes irritating the city.

In this job, the only quality you´d need to have is love to enjoy relaxing times in nature, nothing else. It is, in fact, a very easy-to-qualify job, because you do not need to have an extremely large curriculum to work in here (and you will get paid!). 

I think that I would be good at this job because I already have a beach´s house, and when I am there I love spending time taking walks to nowhere in particular and feeling the breeze in my face. I also enjoy to pass time with animals, so I think that this would be a great job for me.The saddest part here is that no one, I think, would pay be for doing practically nothing. I mean, seriously, who would spend his/her money in giving me money for taking vacations?