For I have sinned

Bless me father for I have sinned. I feel guilty for hating all those who have somehow hurt me and I’m feeling it won’t be easy to get rid of that feeling easily. My mother in law told me about that once but I don’t feel like paying attention to her comments. I definitely feel that she won’t ever walk in my shoes. I know it is a problem but I also know that it is not that bad. I don’t want to see them dead or hurt them back. The only think I’d love is to have them disappeared. Is that bad? I just wish I could forget everything they’ve done to me but having them in front of me, seeing them over and over is not helping me at all.

Did I incite that crappy lady to cheat us and make a shit out of my sister’s life? If that lady wanted to do it, it was her decision. Do I have to love her for doing so? I know that what goes around comes around and life took revenge of all she did to us: her husband changed her for another lady, her daughter was sexually abused by a grandpa and her son is completely into drugs. I’m telling you this not because it makes me happy, however, after experiencing such bad things, I'm still waiting for her to come to say “I’m sorry”.

And what do you think about the guy of the corner? He messed up with my life trying to screw my marriage up with his mean comments. Have I told that moron off for fooling his wife with a bitch? No, I haven't! But there you see him. Trying to rebuild his relationship, like a castle in the air. The only problem is that he will ever know what he did and his wife will ever know he can’t be trusted. That’s what I call a marriage of unknown people.

Yes Father, I know, I know that forgiveness is something that must be given to everybody as the Lord said long time ago but it is way too hard since the ones that have hurt me haven’t come to say sorry. If they only came to say so. What? Pride? I don’t think so. It seems you don’t even understand father. Yes, you’re right. I was the one who decided to get angry. I accept it. That’s why I said bless me for I have sinned. What do I do now? Pray? How many times? Ok. I will. I’ll do it and then I’ll be back to talk about my feelings again.

Bye Bye Porn!

After experiencing a world crisis in economical matters, many industries and companies have gone broken. That is the danger connected with businesses. However, there are other companies that have lost millions but that problem has nothing to do with the crisis but with modernity. Porn industry is one of those victims.

Playboy, for example, has estimated that their income is decreasing 10 million dollars a year and, why is that? The real problem is that people who used to “read” Playboy have changed their priorities, for example, they are already married. Years have gone by and the well known magazine is still the same as it used to be in the 80’s. It has not changed anything in its pages (that is what I was told, hahaha). It seems they have forgotten that the world changes every single day.

Another thing is that the new generations are more into technology. Everything they do, they do it virtually. If they want porn, they have computers with a broadband connection, they have instant messaging services, they have websites (most of them with a common last name: tube) to watch any kind of videos, they have webcams, blogs and many other things to watch what they want: Porn.

In fact, and considering this as my very personal opinion, I hope new generations are not too into porn as what we tend to think. There are many things to do in life. Many things better than watching porn. When I was young, the only thing I was able (but not allowed) to see were a pair of boobs in the adults section of the magazine store and I’m sure it didn’t have any influence in my likes but something I’m sure is that nowadays porn is a lot more rough and offensive and more accessible than ever.

To conclude, I really hope that younger generations may find another hobby instead of watching porn as older generations used to do. I’m sure it is not a good thing to do. Provided what Playboy said about their income, I really hope to see one day the death of porn as one of the things that should have died long time ago.

I'm sick of it

First of all, I’d like to start by saying that not everything pisses me off but there are quite few things that kill me every time I face them. People everywhere would call this a “mania” which is a state of abnormally elevated of irritable mood, according to Wikipedia.

For example, one of the things I hate the most is when people don’t know how to use elevators. They’re in the third floor and go up till the sixth floor but wanting to go to the first floor only because they made a mistake pushing the wrong button. Mistake? Come on, there are only two buttons! If you go down, you press down and wait till the button’s light goes off.

I bet you’ve heard about the next one: the toothpaste. I hate having my toothpaste pressed in the middle instead of the bottom. I have to confess that since I’m married I had to shut my mouth in order to preserve a peaceful “environment” but, even though I use it quietly, something inside of me says “don’t take this any longer”.

The next thing is waiting in line or receiving occupied signal tone when phoning to your telephone company. Instead of solving you problem quickly, you have to wait long time to be heard. The worst thing of it is that you’re being charged for using you phone while calling over and over again looking for your problem to be solved! What a crap!

Another thing is, when walking on the streets, I hate having people walking slower than me right in the middle of the sidewalk. I thing that in this case, the same rule used in motorways and roads should be applied: if you move slowly, use the right side (that’s how we do it in South America). Sometimes I have told off people and complained because of their slowness.

There are many manias I don’t really know why or where I have got them from. The only thing I know is I cannot stand myself anymore. I’m getting sick of it. To finish, Wikipedia says that manias are related to bipolar disorders and, in the most severe cases, manic patients may need to be hospitalized to protect themselves and others. I hope that’s not my case because I hate hospitals as much as I hate doctors. They make me sick!

Let's chillout!

Since being an educator doesn’t mean making lots of money, many things are, in consequence, postponed or completely banned for us. When it comes to talk about music, it may be a luxury when there are other needs that need to be covered first. But, what if you download that music instead of buying it at Musimundo? Downloading it not from Amazon.com but from internet user’s websites?

As far as I know, Chile doesn’t have a restrictive law related to this yet and, independently from what an educator’s reality is, we still have the right to nourish our ears with good music. Therefore here I am once again sharing what a cool website has to offer: chillout music with all its variants.

This music style was developed in the earlier 1990 and it involves genres such as Ambient, Trip-hop, Nu jazz, house, New Age and other sub-genres of Downtempo—a major branch of electronic music. Chillout has been also used in many restaurants and pubs which have included “chill rooms” where people can take a break from dancing or just to relax having a talk with their friends.

What is more, some restaurants have also produced this kind of music such as the Buddha bar in Paris which now has a vast collection of CDs that made this place known worldwide. There are also some companies and groups that devoted all kind of resources in order to promote music like this (not all of them making chillout music) and create their own collection. Some of the most famous are Putumayo Worldmusic and Café Ibiza to name but a few.

Well, after all that has being said, here you have the link for you to seek out for good music and also a track sample to see what I am talking about. Enjoy it and don’t feel guilty for downloading music from internet without paying it. I went to Musimundo and they didn’t even have the CDs you will find in this website so, if someone tells you off for downloading music illegally tell them you would buy it if they had it!.

Give it up to me

Actually I'm uploading this because it deserves to be mentioned. Shakira's new album SheWolf was the most expected release this year, but sadly, the expectatives seemed to be too high for such a horrible production. Even though I said I wouldn't listen to Shakira anymore, yesterday I found a beat that called my attention and, once I focused all my attention on it I couldn't believe my ears... It was Shakira again! redeeming herself for being such a silly wanna-be-gringa trying to become some sort of Madonna's imitator. Anyway, here it is: the song with no content but with an amazing beat "Give it up to me".

To blog, or not to blog

At the beginning of this month I had the chance to go to a seminary about education and blogging. It called my attention for a couple of reasons I’ll mention in a sec. As I said in my first post, blogging never called my attention but, since I found how interesting and fun this can be, my thoughts and opinions are being modified a bit.

Well, as I said before, the seminary called my attention because it announced blogging to be “the new way of learning”, interacting between teachers and students and also because it remarked the fact that technology is, nowadays, the only tool that many students have in order to study and increase their knowledge. Just think about Wikipedia which is an online encyclopedia. It has it all!

The lecturer said that teachers should include this methodology (blogging) in their teaching process in order to relieve all the work they have to do. Imagine how much a teacher has to do to mark tests and essays during the whole weekend because, obviously, cannot do it in classes, where he/she devotes all the time on teaching and planning new classes. I thought it would be nice to have all your pupils doing their homework, researches or essays online and then, at home (or practically wherever you are) check what they have done. That is amazing.

Some can complain that students will be even lazier because they won’t do an effort on reading and writing and analyzing most of the things they do and will only copy and paste everything they find. Actually, and contradicting this thought, if you Google something, you’ll have to read a lot before finding what you really need. Subsequently, to express what you want to say you’ll need to clarify your ideas and then post it… after checking that your other classmates haven’t posted the same in their blogs.

In addition, computing is what the students know the most nowadays. Therefore, why shouldn’t a teacher take advantage of this by giving them and bringing the students what they really like? The only drawback we can find when talking about blogging is the fact that only 50% of all the population in Chile has internet connection at home or at least, have access to it, which can be a major problem to face if blogging wants to be incorporated as a teaching and learning tool. Another problem is having students that don’t really want to do anything with it but that is up to every teacher and his/her teaching abilities.

Personally, blogging was and IS a good thing to be done. Firstly, it makes you think and be careful on what you post (you don’t want everybody to realize all the mistakes you make in a sentence). Secondly, you can write as much as you want of whatever you have in mind to write about. Isn’t that perfect? One of my assignments was writing about my favorite website but, as I didn’t have one, I wrote about my favorite music style and it was still accepted.

With no doubts, blogging should be used to teach in classrooms (or should I say everywhere?). I will do it for sure. I hate wasting paper in things that can be done in a pc. You see? There is another advantage: is environmentally friendly. To conclude, I have to admit that education has gone to old with its methods and techniques. Christopher Columbus was taught centuries ago just as we are being taught these years. We have to start a new way of learning, and blogging, who knows, may be part of it.

What a nightmare!

Cool!

That’s all I had to say after today’s class in which I had the chance to do whatever I wanted to do on Internet. Yeah, right! Whatever I wanted according to what the teacher told us to do (it doesn’t mean I’m complaining about it). If I have this kind of attitude is just because I had to face, once again, the reality of not comprehending crosswords puzzles at all. I mean, who do they think we are? How am I suppose to guess the word that fits in every blank space if there are many (not to say thousands) options?

How does this problem is still chasing me, when I thought test or quizzes at university were not based on this kind of methodology? I’m afraid that, instead of studying from English Grammar in Use, I’ll have to start buying crosswords magazines in order to train my mind and put my knowledge “up to it”.

I love taking pop quizzes on internet. I’m amazed of how many sources you can find to complement your classes as a teacher but, one thing I’m sure of: I’m not using crosswords puzzles ever. There might be more people around, like me, trying to hide themselves to the embarrassing truth of not knowing what to do with something like it. That’s something I desperately hope for.

Theater

Last week I had the chance to go to Teatro La Memoria to see the play “Rata de dos patas” (rat of two legs) and I had the impression that this good play would not become famous at all just because there are not enough chances of publishing such good activities anywhere.

It is interesting to see how the media tries to devote some time talking about culture and things connected with arts. The New York Times makes an effort on publishing about theater but, according to what I felt, they didn’t reach a good level of what commenting theater is about. They just talked about the event itself and how many people attended. The Brisbane Times website doesn’t even have a place to seek for such events, which tells us that, maybe, in Australia (or more exactly, the place where the newspaper comes from) people don’t even know what theater is.

What I’d highlight the most today is that The Guardian had in fact a good place related to the topic, and not only a place where they talk and describe about it but a place to blog your own opinion about the issue. What is more, apart from informing you about the play itself, they teach you some social concerns by including information about social concerns like Jean Charles de Menezes, who was a man confused with a terrorist and murdered by the police in England and that has became the theme of many plays within the city.

It would be very interesting to see at least one fourth of a page in Las Ultimas Noticias talking about good things like theater instead of gossiping about what this soccer player did last night with that brainless model. That is not culture at all but, if they sell that is because we’re asking for it, aren’t we?