Learning process

It has been a great experience. I don’t think I am learning too much. I see it more like “I am practicing my English”. Because it’s true, maybe all the class remember the uses of “past participle” or “to be”, etc. The thing is that we forget this things very easily. We have to use our English, and all the skills we have reached.

The most important thing I think is the conversation class. It opens possibilities to make true the learning process. The use of blogs is good way to train our brain, and to incorporate new words to our vocabulary, but I insist, the only way to finish the process is talking with someone else, and putting in practice what we were taught.

In my case, I think I have really good English and pronunciation. But It’s hard for me to understand and follow a conversation. I think it’s because I don’t have enough vocabulary, and when I hear a word I don’t know I miss the  message, and I get nervous, and that only makes the thing worst. I think the only way to get over this is going to a country where all the people use English as their first language. I am saying this because once I went to United States, but to the worst state for a learning process. Yes I went to Miami chico! Jaja

So my personal learning needs are not just write a blog, and to listen a teacher (who pronounces very slow so we all understand). I want to be put in situation that could happen in real life, a situation where people use their English as they usually do.

I use my English a lot. I often see movies, or tv shows without subtitles. I read some articles and books, etc. The only thing I have stopped doing is use my English in oral interactions. And as I am telling you, the key of learning a foreign language –in this case English- is to putting in practice out loud, talking, discussing, etc. 

Catch me if you can

I think cartoons have nothing interesting. Most TV shows are about the same, they are fun, and tell silly stories. (Of course there are exceptions). The relevance of these tv shows is that many of them accompanied us when we were kids. We grow up with a famous character, we idealized it, etc, etc.

Well, I was one of those kids. I was a fan of Tom and Jerry and I really loved that TV show. So, since I have memory I watched Tom trying to catch the F***ing mouse wherever they were placed.

I had a kind of a ritual to see each episode. Every morning I prepared myself a banana milkshake with toasts, turned on the tv and stayed for hours seeing the three continuous episodes. Yeah, I was a fat kid jaja.

The original author of the series is William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, they both worked for MGM. Then that studio closed, but another one took it and made a lot of episodes too with the same logic, that is the slapstick comedy.

 It centers on a rivalry between its two main characters, Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse. They are hilarious, Tom knows that he is never gonna eat Jerry, and Jerry knows that he’ll never stop running from him. It’s like “Catch me if you can” in cartoons…

Today I still enjoy watching this cartoon, I don’t know why. Maybe it brings me memories of my childhood.

The show is not longer available on the channel I used to put, but you can find all the episodes on YouTube. I do that very often.

The Green Dominó

I am going to tell about my experience. I think I have learned about eco-friendly practices because of my brother. There has been a lot of iniciatives from the local authorities to raise awareness about the pros of taking care of our environment. But in my case, I lived the whole process with my brother’s support.

Diego Tabilo is my brother, and he has created a foundation called “Rescatemos Juan Fernandez” to protect the archipelago from the bad practices of the people. Basically they create consciousness as a way to stop the damage produced by the invader species (fauna, flora, etc) that the humans have brought from continent.

I invite you to his website : www.rescatemosjuanfernandez.cl

So, keeping that in mind. I have seen my brother doing this job, and of course I have incorporated some of this practices in my habits. For example, we recycle the trash, bottles, plastic, etc We reuse things to create new ones, in fact, we are planning to get a new couch, but instead of buying one we are going to reuse some pallets, there are very interesting designs, here’s a photo:

As you can imagine I don’t use a car to get to the university. I use my bike. It’s faster, healthier, etc, etc. I love my bike. That reduces the carbon print of course. Sometimes I think if just 2 from 4 use their bikes we would live in another city, Santiago wouldn’t have this disgusting air.

We have missed the focus of where we want to go. I remember the candidate from last year Alfredo Sfeir. He proposed a whole new way to see our lives, the economy, the culture, etc. If we want to change our world into a cleaner place, we have to stop consuming things just to throw them out. We are better than that.

Is Santiago de Chile a modern city?

I was reading “el mostrador” and I found this article that caught my attention.

 Here’s the link:

http://www.elmostrador.cl/cultura/2014/05/05/santiago-por-que-todavia-estas-a-anos-luz-de-ser-una-ciudad-moderna/

Basically, Marco Fajardo tells why he thinks Santiago is not the modern city we were told. He detects the problems and provides possible solutions to change this city

 I was surprised, because I didn’t know what to feel. This guy says that Santiago is very far to be a modern city. Okay, that’s sounds good to me, I agree.

But the truth is that I was expecting an argumentation more solid, maybe socialist, and with socialist I mean more interesting.  Instead of that, I was reading an article who took a more republican way.

Yes, some things that he mentioned are true, and I see them too. But hey, you can’t say that you want more “cafes” and parks just because. You are not seeing the problem behind all this.

Santiago I think is a modern city, a postmodern indeed. And that is not something to be proud. We are surrounded by narcissist people that only worry about clothing, instagraming, or whatever. The real problems are underneath the surface. And I have to tell you, you are so in that area, that you are barely seeing where you stand.

I think the article you wrote is interesting to reflect about the journalism and even more, about the people. I’m not giving you credits; in fact I am using you as an example of what we don’t have to do.

We are the citizens of this city, so we are responsible of what it is going to be in the future. 

What about sex scenes?

LINK: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/21/nymphomaniac-stranger-by-the-lake-sex-cinema

The article I have chosen is related to cinema. I had the idea to talk about a French film I saw last summer which name is “l’inconnu du lac” directed by Alan Guiraudie, but I found one very interesting that compares this movie and also Nymphomaniac (by Lars von trier), to talk about the reason of explicit sex scenes in this new age, and the opinion of the actors who perfom what the directors want.

The article starts mentioning that Nymphomaniac opens in cinemas that weekend. So that justifies the need to ask the actors about what they think of the increasingly graphic sex scenes in movies.

Some of the asked actors answered in a negative way. Many of them had second thoughts while they were performing. Many women felt like sluts or whores, they felt used as porn product, etc. Or even when the movies were released, they were all exposed to moral comments that complained about the real intensions behind those scenes.

Others saw deeper, I think, because they believed in what the directors wanted of them. They thought the scenes as an artistic way to show the “act”, and not as just more “porn”

In addition, these two films used doubles for the explicit scenes. The actors just had to pretend desire and love. The whole dirty part was given to the doubles, or in sometimes to prosthesis.

As a conclusion, I think that it really has to be a dramatic experience for some actors. But there is a huge difference between these two movies and porn. Porn is shot in a different way, and it is clear to me.

I invite you to see more about Lars von Trier and from Alan Guiraudie. Also there is a famous movie called “Blue is the warmest color” which can also be analyzed with this judgment.

Video

https://vimeo.com/93933937

Miseryland, not with the "t".

Well, is not that hard to remember this party.

It took place in Picarquin, San Francisco de Mostazal in a festival called "Mysteryland".

It was december of 2011 and with a couple of friends we went there. We bought the tickets with months of anticipation. We wanted all perfect.

 It was the first time that this festival took place in Chile (it is from Holand) and we were so excited, because it was like a camping party in the middle of nowhere for three days. The most incredible part was that  the alcohol was allowed  to be brought by the public.

But that’s not the reason I remember this party. It was supposed to be an amazing weekend with my friends, but it turned into a mess. 

My closest friend had a fight with her girlfriend, which is also friend of mine. One thing took to another, and we were all angry. 

The music, the people, the atmosphere surrounding us was so good. But we were just not in the same frequencies. 

We spent a lot of money to enjoy this trip, and we leave things behind so we all could go there with no problems. And just with this fight between them all went to hell.

Now that I see this with perspective, I feel the same. That’s a shame.