Some about English language 

I think I learn a bit in all the english classes that I came, in all this years. At school I never learn. So I supossed to that all that I know about this language comes from my obssesion for TV series: Doctor Who teach me how British people talk, Friends educated me about how people talk in daily life, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air show me the accent of black people in America. This is a funny wat to study (in fact, I never study... like, seriously). I know about how to pronunce because I imitate what I heard. But I don´t know vocabulary (I don´t know the days of the week for example), so I deppend of Google translate and stuff, I don´t know how to conjugate verbs, the times, etc. I have serious grammar problems in English. So I think that what I need is a complete instruction of that, someone that explanis to me the most easy and simply things of this language that I never learn. 

We use blog for practice in class. I think that this is a good idea, but is not enough for me, because of the this that I mentioned. 

Outside of this classes I don´t use this language, only when I watch series or movies (the most part of the time). I don´t have nobody to talk in English, so I can´t practice. But I have become aware that now I understand more when some talk to me in English, or when I watch TV. In fact, when I watch Breaking Bad in the last months I rarely put subtitles. 

This year...

I think that this year has been better than the last year. I meet better people for example. The last year was very stressful for me, it was very upside-down. Now I´m kind used to Santiago. I´m not saying that I like it, but I tolerate to living here. Good things that happen this year? I think that I get my friends closer, and my boyfriend too. I´m still traveling all the weekends, but now I don´t get distress for it. I think that my personality do not bear this lifestyle: studying an stresfull career, living in Santiago, etc. That´s why, even when I had a lot of good times with my new friends of Santiago and my friends of Talca, I´m still let down. I´m not saying that I´m kind of depressed or something, but I know that this lifestyle that I´m carring right now would be finish one day. So, for the time being, I try to enjoy Santiago.
Things that I haven´t done yet? I have to pass my exams, get my driver´s license, make a little bit of money for the summer plans, etc. I planned to travel to the south of Chile (autral highway) in bicycle. This travel take me like a month to make it, so I need 200 thousand pesos for eat and sleep all this days.
This year Christmas and New year would be so boring! I finish my university classes in 27th December, and I finish the exams in 3th January. Also, this dates will be in Wednesday. I hate when the univerisy takes to you the moments that you have to be relaxed with your family. I think that, more than anything, I hate the University.

Rodrigo Rojas De Negri

The day before yesterday in the Contemporany Art Museum (MAC) in Quinta Normal, they was opened an exposition of the photographer Rodrigo Rojas De Negri. The initiative come from the need of known the life and works of this chilean artist, and show to people the history of him, the way at he was killed in Pinochet dictatorship. I´m going to talk a little bit about him.

Rodrigo Rojas de Negri was born on 1967 in Valparaiso. In 1976 his mother was exiled to Canada and he went with her. His passion for the photography born when he knew a friend of his mother Marcelo Montecino. He comes in to his master.  In 1986 De Negri returned to Chile. In Santiago, he began dedicated to take photos of the dictatorship: army, carabineros, people on the streets, etc. 

In 2nd of July, at eight at the morning he was walking with a group of youths: they carried eight wheels and one tank of gasoline. They wanted to make a barricade and stop the transit. And they were detaniees: Carabineros arrested them (De Negri and his friend Carmen Gloria Quintana). They was beaten, sprayed with gasoline and burn them alive. The lieutenant at charge Pedro Enrique Fernadez Dittus, boos of the military patrol, ordered that the burned bodies had to be covered with blankets and put them in to a vehicle. Hours later, the bodies was launched in to a ditch in the outsides of Santiago, in Quilicura. They was discovered and traslated to the hospital (Posta Central). The 6th of July De Negri died because of the burns. 

The lieutenant Fernandez was sended to jail, but in a few years he comes out. This history is not been yet resolved. Justice is needed.

How Green are you?

I have to confess something: I´m not very green at all. And it´s not just me, almost the whole Chilean people don´t have green habits. A few people ride bikes, and even worse, people don´t  recycle. That´s because we don´t have a friendly environment culture, and people don´t know what to do, I think.
I incorporated some green habits in my life, for example, I don´t use plastic bags when I go to the supermarket, or I use my bike sometimes (not all the time, because that´s would be really exhausting). My mother and I planted an organic garden, and we harvest our own vegetables. I think that it´s a good idea, because our vegetables are clean of toxic chemicals and stuff. My family have a car, and they use it a lot. I don´t have one, and I´m not hurry for getting one.
I´v never joined any green organisation, I don´t know why. Possibly because I don´t like fanaticism and that kind of stuff. And also I think that the climate change, and all the environment problems, are not already peoples fault. Those who are blame for climate change are who are owners of industries, or who have a lot of politic power and they do nothing.
I would like to started being vegetarian again. When I was a vegetarian I get sick all the time, that´s why I leave it. But I think that this is a good way to help the environment.  Another good idea is having a small bee hive in our houses. Sounds weird, but in the whole world bees are dying, and have a small bee hive is not dangerous, you only have to take care about you and the bees, and you also get honey for you home ;)

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is one of my favorite program on TV. The program it´s about a Time Lord (a time traveler alien) knows as The Doctor. He explores the universe in his TARDIS (a time spaceship) with his companions and friends. In the exterior the spaceship looks like a blue British police box, common on 1960.  

Along the seasons of the program, the Doctor changes his faces, with a total of 11 actors that embodies the character. The Doctor works to save the civilization and the whole life in the universe. 

Doctor Who appeared for the first time on 1963 on BBC television. That was one of the first science fiction programs on TV, and they have a horrible special effects. When something explode, or something fly, you can see the twines, and the robots has made with carton. 

In 2005 appears on TV a remake of the program, and the continue of the original history. They are two very popular Doctor characters: Matt Smith and David Tennant. 

In Chile, this program is not in TV, even in cable television. You have to see that on internet, they are a lot of websites that upload the episodes with subtitles in spanish. I hired Netflix and there I can see all the programs that I like, one of them is this one. 

Are the poor getting poorer?

If UK ir coming out of reccesion or going into recovery is not the point, the importat thing is that the benefists should be spread around. Thats why the situation of poor people is comming up in to the Bristish policy.
They are basically two groups with diffrerent conclussions about the situation of "the poor". They are those that claim that poor are getting poorer either because income is gettin concentrated in the hands of the rich or because standards of living are getting worse. On the other side are those who said that the poor are getting richer. Who has the right conclusion?

Chart 1: Real incomes

Some British people have seen their incomes rise, but some of the poores people have seen them fall in the last times. This chart is usefull to understand this: the group with the lowest income is in the firse percentile, the group with the second lowest income is in the second percentile, and then we come to the last (99^th) with the group that earns the most. This chart shows how incomes has been changed betweet 1980-2012. You can see that the incomes og the poorest 1% UK population has been falled, and the incomes of the richest 1% hast been risen by about 3%.
 
  Graph: The Institute for Fiscal Studies

Chart 2: Standards of living

UK is a developed country, so "hunger" is not an indicator of how people live. For this reason, the UK government monitors something that they called "severe material deprivation", wich is when people can´t afford at least four of the basics. The chart shows that more people are unable to afford the basics.  

 

Chart 3: Policy change

What was the impact of the coalition? This chart (wich uses the same percentiles that the previous one) shows that the poores 10% of the UK populations stand to lose 4,3% of their incomes as a direct consequence of the direct tax and benefit reforms that has been introduced yet, and planned between April 2012 and April 2015. The richet 20% of the UK will se their incomes rise by 1%.

 

New taken from: 
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/oct/02/poor-richer-poverty-living-standards

Gordon Matta Clark 

Today I´m going to talk to you about one of the artist that I most admire. Gordon Matta Clark (New York, 1943 - 1978) was an American artist, with Chilean ancestry. He explore in some kind of experiment architecture and interventions. One of his most famous interventions was the "cut buildings" He has been called "the only deconstructivist architect". He works whit the decomposition as a entropologic process of elements dismantling: walls, floors, windows and doors.  

     

His parents was artist too, his mother was  Anne Clark, and his father was the famous Chilean surrealist artist Roberto Matta. He study architecture in the Ithaca University in New York, and literature in Paris, but he decides to be an artist and non perform as an architect.   

Matta Clark uses a different kind of format to document his work, including shooting, videos, an photography.  

His works included actuation, recycling, and works about the spot and texture. Also, he uses different kinds of "words games" with the intention to re-conceptualize the roles and preconceived social relationships (even people and architecture). 

He was situated in the hermeneutics and marxist ideology that proposes that the transformations of the citizen organizations are a modern project of emancipation, that functions with actions of convulsive beauty and times of crisis. He wanted to undermine the bases of the late capitalism by means of questioning the concept of property. Weird right? 

His investigations with his architecture group proposes things about history and philosophy that have a strong connection with the property and identity, also thing like the relation among the concept of property and the conditions of the use of that, the consume and the transformations of that in waste.