I like Chile; I like its people and its geography. I am sure that I will always live here. But when I was seventeen I realized that I would like to visit United Kingdom: I know that British are cold, unfriendly, boring, xenophobic and nationalist, or that´s what I have heard about them, and specifically about English people. But I think that its culture, its music, its history, its architectural patrimony and its art, are very interesting.
I would like to go to the UK when I finish my major; obviously I have to work a couple of months to save enough money, considering that life is very expensive there, or in London at least.
There, I would like to go to Glastonbury´s Festival, Stonehenge, London´s Tower, Camden´s Fair, the London Eye, London´s Big Ben, Madame Tussauds´s Museum in London, Top Man Shop in London and a big etc.
I just want to visit the UK, I don´t expect to study or live there, because I hope to pursue a Ph. D. in Spain and I truly think that I´ll live the rest of my life in Chile.
I am a cinema lover. I love classic films, art cinema, documentaries, and a big etcetera.
I select the movies that I watch considering its director. My favourites directors are Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, Gus van Sant, Lars von Trier, Sofia Coppola and Xavier Dolan.
I like A Clockwork Orange, The Shining (they both of Kubrick), Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet (writed and directed by David Lynch), Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky), My Own Private Idaho (Gus van Sant), Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, Antichrist, Melancholia (Lars von Trier), Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola), J'ai tué ma mère and Heartbeats ( Xavier Dolan). Other films that I like are: Trainspotting (directed by Danny Boyle), Billy Elliot (by Stephen Daldry) and Taxi Driver (by Martin Scorsese).
My favourite film is a Clockwork Orange, it drove me crazy when I was seventeen . I love its script, the music of Ludwing van Beethoven, its scenes, the colour, the performances, summarazing, I love all the movie. I´m reading the book now (it was writed by Anthony Burgess in 1962), and I think that the film is better, because although Alex is worst in the novel he change and became a better person, but in the film Kubrick decided to eliminate the last chapter and in my opinion the result is dramatically better.
If someone made a film about my life it would be a tragicomedy and it would have the best soundtrack ever made, with David Bowie, The Smiths, Lou Reed and a big etc.
I don´t really like television, I think that it burn your brains, even more if you watch chilean TV. The media lie because it´s driven by economic forces.
This post takes its name from the strange circumstances in wich our term develops. Although we had a strike that lasted six months, the University´s authorities decided to start the second semester, so here we go.
I am taking six subjects: Procesal Law V, Comercial Law II, Criminology, Social Security, Legal Argumentation and English level four. I have been designate as assistant in the course Penal Law I with the teachers María Inés Horvitz and Antonio Bascuñán to, so I´ve a lot of work for this strange term.
I have great expectations for this semester, so I´m not really angry having clases on Summer. My philosophy is that with hard work you can get everything you want, obviosly that everything doesn´t means literally everything, but all the things that are logically achievable.
I liked my blogging experience. I think that it was a really good way for practice and improve my English knowledge.
An advantage of blogging in the English class is that it helps to practice writing texts and giving opinions in different topics.
I think that this activity hasn´t any disadvantage, anyway as a result of the strike we hadn´t a lot of classes that could be important for developing these activities. I should complete the activities at home instead of do it at classes.
Moving to another point, I think that even when I practiced a lot with this activity, the major that I´m studying at University, doesn´t less me the time that I need to increase my English awareness. I need to practice more and more to internalize the language.
Anyway, with the good and bad things, the blogging experience gave me the opportunity to meet my classmates, talk about funny things, my favorite movie, Penal Law, my childhood, my friends, and other interesting topics.
My favorite subject is Penal Law. This area concerns rules prohibiting, crimes and misdemeanors, that is, actions that violate those rules, performing the types contained in the penal code (substantive criminal law), the due penal process, that is to say, how justice reacts to the commission of a crime and the rules who governs the process that respects the accused´s rights (adjective penal law), enforcement of penalties (executive criminal law) and the phenomenon of crime (criminology).
I like this subject because I think that it concerns the involvement of the most important human rights, those are life, freedom and sometimes property. And even when in most of the countries, death penalty is banned; I ask you, a life without freedom, is really a life? Especially in countries like Chile where prisons are horrible places, with very poor conditions.
In second, I like this subject because is an area that mixes many subjects, such as psychology, sociology, legal medicine, philosophy and obviously laws.
Some things that I would like to change in penal law are:
-Between crime and poverty exist a very close relation. Yesterday, I went to three oral trials, with some classmates. All defendants were accused for drug trafficking (Law number 20000), and they were poor people. They said that they trafficked out of necessity; we could think that all the defendants said the same think, but I think that this is just an excuse, the excuse of blind people or people that prefers to be blind instead of to do something trying to change the things.
-Animal abuse. All the politicians talk us about economic growth and development, but nobody notices that development and culture means a good relation with nature to. We need a substantive develop in this area. Animals aren´t thinks, because they have the ability to feel pain.
The best place to eat is Restaurant Manhattan. It´s located in pedestrian street Rosa Rodríguez number 1373, local number 16, center Santiago.
Last month Bárbara told me about this place, because the lunch in our faculty´s casino isn´t good and the prices neither. We and a group of friends decided to eat in that place a Friday.
That lunch was really good, it was meat (I chose chicken), accompanying (rise or pasta), salad (cabbage, lettuce, tomato, potatoes, beans, black beans, peas, broccoli and cauliflower), sauces, natural juice or soda, bread and dessert. We eat all those things for two thousand and eight hundred pesos.
The place is cozy and people who attend are executives or people who work in downtown. Restaurant Manhattan is a big place, with a capacity of two hundred people roughly speaking.
I don´t know many places to eat, I generally have lunch in my faculty. In my first year at university I knew Vegetales, located in Providencia street, that place have good lunches to, but the dishes consist of less food and the prices are similar to Manhattan´s prices, so I prefer obviously the second one. I can really say that this is a good place to have lunch, because it´s cheaper and the food is ok.
In the image, Restaurant Manhattan is the number 1.
When I was a child I used to visit one of my father´s aunt, Chepa, her name was Josefina, but all the family named her as Chepa or Yaye (some cousins). She died last year, I was in Santiago when it happened and I couldn´t go to the ceremony. I was really sorry because of it.
This photo was taken in her house, specifically in the dining. I was wearing a Coke´s jockey that my father gived me. They are my sister and my younger brother. I guess that I was five years old, because I didn´t go to school yet. My sister was four and my brother was three. These day we were celebrating my eldest brother´s birthday, so we ate some cake, cookies, fries and all the things that children eat at birthaday´s parties. I guess that my father took this photo, but I´m not sure.
I have other photos of that special day, but I chose this because I like it. I think that it shows in a very clear way our faces, and even when it´s not a very old photo, it looks like an old one.
When I was sixteen I went to the public library of my town, I needed a book for a homework and my family didn´t have it. In front of the library was a woman who looked alike an old teacher that I had at primary school, Marta. I was really excited because I hadn´t seen her for a long time, so I walked up to her. She was talking with another woman, and I just could see her back, but it didn´t matter because I would give her a big surprise.. I just touched her back and said: Hello miss, How are you? Do you remember me?
She turned around and said: Who are you child?.. She was another woman. She looked alike my old teacher, but she wasn´t her.
Obviously I couldn´t see my face in that moment, but I´m sure that I just blushed, I felt really ashamed ...
Nowadays I think that when I was a teen all the things were so terrible to me, but life isn´t so horrible. Ok!, you can´t go touching people´s backs when they look like someone you know, but it doesn´t really matter if you confuse people sometimes, or not?
Hello. This time I want to write about a little machine that have changed my life: My Mp3.
I bought it in summer of 2008, before to come to Santiago, I had worked that summer, and I remembered how I needed a technological device to listen to music when I am traveling, specially in a city like Santiago, where you need to travel a lot.
My Mp3 costed me thirty five thousand pesos, it´s a Sony machine, black colour, a little shiny. It have just two gigas: I know it´s limited capacity, but I don´t have money to buy an Ipod, and I think that it´s ok, because if someone steal it, he or her won´t get a lot of money for it.
I bought it with headphones, but I´m really good breaking them, so I´ve had to buy many headphones the last three years. In my last birthday, Bárbara, Seba and Álvaro gave me a new Sony headphones, I really want this to last a long time, I will strive for it.
Why I love it, because I always say that now, without music, my life have no sense. I really get angry when I break the headphones and it doesn´t work, I must spend all the time that take me to arrive home, listening to cars, busses, people, underground, etc.
Last summer I went to El Tabo with some friends: Bárbara, Sebastian, Chio, Cata and Naty (Perrita).
We had talked about go to Buenos Aires this year and to do something last summer as well, but we haven´t go to Buenos Aires yet and we didn´t planed very well the summer´s trip, that makes me remember something that my brother always said : Best things happen when you aren´t waiting for them.
We went to the beach´s house of Bárbara´s family, located in El Tabo, a little town near to Cartagena and El Quisco, in the fifth region. The trip started in January 21, at night, I had come to Santiago in the afternoon, because another friend, Mariela, invited me to her birthday´s party, Sebastian was invited to, so we went to the party, that was a meeting instead of a party. At midnight we went to Bárbara´s house, where the girls were.
We arrived to El Tabo around two o´clock... So, we started a really crazy experience, full of horror stories, waves, sand, orange tea, music, photos, videos, a parking fine... and some things that are not suitable to write here. The whole trip was conducted by the idea that we were on a reality show, so we made some stupid competitions, and we promised that in our next trip, the show will continue.
I must said that I´ve done other trips that I always remember, but it was very special because at University I´ve met wonderful people, at school to, but I realized that with my new friends I can really be how I want to be.
My favourite movie is A Clockwork Orange.
This is Crime-Drama-Sci Fi film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, in the cast, Malcolm McDowell as main character.
The film is based in the same name novel, written by Anthony Burgess.
It tells us the story of Alex DeLarge, a young british who lives in the future Britain, with his parents in a poor suburban neighbourhood. Alex is a charismatic, psychopathic delinquent whose pleasures are classical music (especially Beethoven), rape, and ultra-violence. He spend the time raiding houses, raping women and fighting in the streets, with his friends, the droogs (this is the way that Alex uses to call his friends, they all participate in a gang). Alex narrates most of the film in Nadsat, a language based in a mix of russian and english.
The film tells the horrific crimes of his gang, his capture, and attempted rehabilitation via a controversial technique.
One day, at night, Alex and his droogs invade the mansion of a woman. Alex hits the woman with a phallic statue, and when he hears the police sirens approaching the house, he tries to run away, but is attacked by his droogs, who leave him stunned and bleeding. Alex is captured by the police, they says his that the woman has died, making him a murderer. Alex is sentenced to 14 years in jail.
Two years into the sentence, the Minister of the Interior arrives at the prison looking for volunteers for the Ludovico technique, an experimental aversion therapy for rehabilitating criminals. The process involves drugging Alex while strapping him to a chair, forcing his eyelids to stay open, and subjecting him to watch violent movies. Alex, initially pleased by the violent images, starts to become repulsed due to the drugs; he soon realises that the films soundtracks are by his favourite composer Ludwing van Beethoven, and that the Ludovico technique will make him averse to that and tries to end the treatment to no avail.
I really like this film because it shows us the way how politicians and states can use people to achieve their objectives. Also the film in its time (1972) was really controversial, even in many countries it was censured, and I think that this makes it more interesting. And for finished, Blur (the britpop band) made a video based in A Clockwork Orange, for the song The Universal.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869. He was a major political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence movement. At school, Gandhi was an avarage student. But, he passed the matriculation exam for Samaldas College, however he was unhappy, in part because his family wanted him to become a barrister. On 4 September 1888, Gandhi travelled to London, England, to study law at Univesrity College London.
He was a pioneer in Satyagraha, a philosophy that is largely concerned with truth and ‘resistance to evil through active, non-violent resistance’, wich led India to independence and inspired civil-rights and freedom movements around the world. As a product of his work, he even spent a number of years in jail in South Africa and India.
Following his philosophy, Gandhi swore to speak the truth and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a community and wore the traditional Indian shawl, woven from yarn that he had spun by hand. He ate vegetarian food and undertook long fasts for self-purification and social protest.
I think that through his fight, many people felt stronger for fighting for their rights, that is to say, he was and he is an example for all who believe in freedom and human rights.
I admire him because he was really brave, he believed in some principles and fought all his life for these.
I think that is a quite pretentious talk about our selves, but this is my first post so I think that it could be interesting write about me.
I am a young guy who studies Law at University of Chile. I was born in Peumo, in the sixth region of my country, but in 2008 I came to Santiago and started my major. I always had good marks at school and I got good results in the PSU, so I decided to study something "big"... like everyone else think, but in fact, is a very difficult and eat-lifes major and career, maybe. If the buddhists have the reason and all we will reincarnate in other creature, I really want to be an artist, preferently a musician like Lou Reed or David Bowie. But meanwhile, I just can spend my time getting better in all the different areas as soon as posible and as far as posible: And one of these areas is languages, and specially English. So, that explains why I´m here now, writing this post in a language that isn´t the natural here.
