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Technology in the university

Today I am tired, very tired. I need to take a rest or I am going to die. We have a lot of quizzes, and I do not have time to do all my homework. In the morning I woke up at six o’clock, and take the grammar book, the phonetics book, the literature textbook and the language book to put inside my bag. Jesus! I need a bigger rucksack, because it is a lot of weight, and I have a backache.

The presentation and research papers are a big problem, because we spend a lot of time doing the university works. We must read a lot, and practice our phonetics and phonology; moreover we need to build our vocabulary. You can see. We are slaves of the university. Today it is a sad fact, but ten years ago, it was an attack of madness to do a presentation. Students and learners spend a lot of time, and a lot of money to bring their homework to the class. I bought thousands and thousands meters of paper to do the famous “papelógrafo”, then I got a black mark, and a ruler. Finally I wrote my main topics. It is clearly, it was a lot of time, and we spent much money too. Sometimes we used to do slides’ presentation; it had a lot of photos or slides, and transparencies. In those times the lives of students were a bit complicate.

Today is easier than those years. We have a lot of resources to do our presentations, research paper and all our homework. It is the best reason to defend the technology inside the university. Moreover, these resources are present in all kind of classes. For example in phonetics class you can use the computers to recorder your voices, then you can listening yourself and correct the mistakes, it is develop in real time. You can consult thousand of words, and you get the correct pronunciation in one second. A grammar book is usually heavy and big, but in the computer labs you get surfing in internet, and you can consult in Oxford or Purdue, they have excellent resources dictionaries to help learners.

If we do not have technology in our lives, we are finished. Ok, we are not finished, but the technology is an excellent way to save time, and you know: time is money.

All learners know about the extreme amount of material that the students usually use. Moreover, you can solve a lot of problems of vocabulary, grammar, and all this resources are in close relation with our knowledge or apprenticeship. The most important is we have the opportunity to be better student.

Miners’ odyssey

The photographers are fighting, they want the best position to take their photos, and they are pushing each other. The cameramen are smoking or talking with their producers. The journalists are doing their preparations, and they are calling to their agencies. Policemen are formed and checking their equipments, the lieutenants are talking with his officers. The television channels are ready to start the satellite broadcast. It is strange, because we try to find the red carpet on the floor, but we can not find it. This time, it is not an Oscar award or the Golden Globe. This time they are miners with their typical helmet and their typical customs. They were buried about two months in the San José mine.

We know that this situation was horrible to everybody, and it was a nightmare for the miner’s relatives. These people were buried under the soil a lot of time, so I understand they need it to talk with their families, wives, sons and daughters, but what is it happening with them?

The “Esperanza Camp” was full of journalist of every continent. They were from the BBC of England, NBC and CNN of the United Stated, RAI of Italy, TVE of Spain Television, and a lot of international television. I read BBC paid a lot of money to have one of the best places to put their cameras. In fact, they were transmitting live through it International channel. Local agencies estimated that more of two thousand journalists were accredited during that week. The Newspaper, Radios and channels need it to get the best or the most exclusive information not only to inform their TV audiences, but they need to have big news, and it was not important how to get this prize. They only need it to keep their high rating, because information is business. Public television is a utopia, it is just business, and they must sale advertising and merchandising. I think mass media do not have real interested in the miners.

The mass media has never respected people’s rights or private lives, so they only want to sell news. For example: one miner is legally married, but he has a lover, so the media did not have respect for the miner private life. Nobody asked him if he was interested in all people to know about his close friendship. Last time people knew that those situations did not their business, but now journalists do not have any problems to show everything about miners’ private lives.

Now miners are still exhilarated but we can see the collateral consequences. It is very probable that miners have several psychological problems. Some miners were examined, because they were very sad, and they did not understand why. It has a simple explanation. They were simple workers of an unknown mine, and in a couple of months they were celebrities.

I agree with helping miners, but they do not need to only an interview or money. They require a psychological treatment.

We can do it

I think that our planet is in extreme danger. Year by year the industry or factories, pollutant people, selfishness and other factors will destroy our ecosystem, because these reason, we are egoistic with our kind of live.

I remember when I was a child nobody knew the means of this strange word. We lived in an epoch where the pollution was not a big problem. The situation turned dramatically when a lot of studies gave the bad news: The earth has been extremely damaged because of our bad habits with the Motherland.

Systematically, people started to develop their conscience about their environment, and new words appeared: habitat, pollution, overfishing, overpopulation, recycling, desertification and deforestation. These words explained the new theatre of the new era.

I must recognize that at home we have a lot of problems to develop habits to help our ecosystem and change our habits. It is very difficult because my borough doesn’t have a recycling system, although we put our plastic bottles in plastic bags, and the paper in one different bag, it does not matter because this system is useless if you do not have a good recycling system. In fact, Ñuñoa has this system, but our country doesn’t have the machine to process the different waste materials. Moreover this ways is not a good option because always we have to put our garbage in plastic bags. It sounds as a joke.

I have an incredible bicycle, but I use it to ride near my house, on the hill or the rural ways. It is very funny because you can breathe clean air. If you decide to ride in the city, I think that is the worst idea that you can choose. Why? Because you are doing an aerobic exercise, you are forcing your lungs, and you are breathing a lot of smog.

In the 90s, I wanted to join Greenpeace. I believe that those boys and girls were real heroes. I remember that they put their bodies to stop the harpoons of Japanese whale ships. It was amazing because they risked their lives to save the whales.

I think people need an extreme change. The mankind has the opportunity to change this situation. We need to understand that the world is our home, and we must protect it. How we can do that? We should produce less heat. We need to turn off a lot the lights, because this is one cause of global warming. Also we can buy products that don’t damage the environment, and the most important is an advice: YOU CAN START IT RIGHT NOW.

A glance to videogames

In my neighbourhood, near my house was a great baker, and always I bought bread in that baker because my mother loved their “marraquetas”. One time beside the baker opened a business. It had a great notice in his roof. The new site was called “Videojuegos”. I saw those machines, and obviously, it was amazing. The video games were very funny to me, but I think that it was my undoing. The videogames token costs 5 pesos, and I spend all my change. As a result my mother punished me, but it was not enough, because I knew a new way to pass the time.

The first videogame I played was the famous Pacman. Everybody knows this game, a big yellow sphere eating the points, fruit and the colour’s ghost. It was very funny until I found the games called Popeye and Donkey Kong. I spent a lot of my time in Diana’s Videogames. It was placed in the subway of “Paseo Ahumada”. Today there is a commercial office. In this place I saw a lot of videogames. It looked like the paradise of videogames, and when I and my friend got money, we went all afternoon to play “Double Dragon”.

I do not remember the year, but definitely when Street Fighter came out to the markets the level of videogames reached his height period. Why? People started to do championship. Moreover this game was incredible. You could get fight with other guys, so people wait his turn in the queue only to fight with the champion.

The first time I have a personal computer, I did not like the videogames, because it was very poor in graphics definition. Moreover the computers games did not fight side by side with the arcades games. When I played “Age of Empire” I returned to my old hobby. It was amazing again, because it was very funny, and we could learn history through the game. I could play easily 20 hour in one day, and then I played my favourite game: “Medal of Honour” a simple third person game based in the Second World War. I think it was the most wonderful games in all the time. Why? It was the first time that a game had the real sound of guns, environment, and machines. Other point was that the enemies was A.I. (Artificial intelligent) etc.

The evolved of videogames is grow year by year. I do not know where we will arrive, but I am sure that I always will be a fan.

Searching the knoledge

I believe that one of the most important wonder of the modern world is the internet (obviously the computer too). You can do a lot thing, for example listening to the music, read a good or bad book, watch a movie, read the newspaper, learn to cook and of course study English language.

In my blog site, in the right column, I have a few resources and others sites to help me when I do my essays, homework’s and others works. For example, the web site called “Ego4u” is very interesting. Why? Because in this site you can find exercises of all topics as grammar, verbal phrases, passive voice, pronunciation and others. You do not need to move to other site, you have all in the same site. The best feature of “Ego4u” is that it is interactive; you can do the exercises and then checked the correct answer.

The Rae’s dictionary is very important and it has the second place in my priorities. Why? Because it is necessary to consult every time new words, moreover, you need to understands different meanings in different context. So, you must have a good dictionary nearly. The RAE is a good election, but Maria Milliner’s dictionary is excellent too.

Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries are my favourite’s dictionaries. It is very easy to explain. I like British English, and this election is better to me. Moreover both sites have a lot of resources to learn English. It is possible to find tip’s of pronunciation, spelling, writing and reading.

Finally I have in my blog Wordreference, because I think that it is an excellent site with incredible dictionaries. It is bilingual dictionary and always it is useful to consult a word that does not have other dictionaries.

Eventually I should buy a dictionary of synonym and antonyms in Spanish and English too, but it is very expensive I prefer look in the internet. I recommend using these dictionaries. For example: last week Ricardo tried to find a word. He was finding in the worst dictionary, and he never did it, So believe me and try to follow my advice.

The secret charm of food

I love food; it is obviously you need food to live. I love all kind of food especially when I eating a new taste or a new meal. The food it’s an important element in our lives. I do not eat fast food or junk food, because I do not like the taste. I know that the meat of hamburgers is not real meat; nobody knows what ingredients have it.

I taste many kinds of nourishment, I love canned food like tuna (with lemon and olive oil and others spices, maybe a bit of pepper). One time I ate a canned of beam’s and toast, I think that is delicious and of course it’s so easy to make (a joke). I need to have in my fridge convenience food (prepackaged food products) because sometimes I do not have time to cooking a meal, I am late to arrive to my job, so I need to eat very quickly.

A few weeks ago Fernando (our classmate) was eating his meal, and he gave us a big arepa. The arepas are dough flour; (it is look like a Chilean panqueque) and you can throw a lot of thing as cheese, meat, chicken fried, avocado, tomatoes and the list haven't finish. It had an amazing flavour, it was melting inside my mouth, it was incredible, moreover it only had cheese and the join of these elements created an explosion of flavour.

I am a good cooker (not professional but I like cooking) and my family thought one time that I would study to be a chief. I can give you some advice to cooking a delicious baked fish, you need to buy a big reineta and put on the oven, and you need to put on the fish a bit of salt, pepper, English sauce, butter and a pinch of rosemary. I can sure you'll have an amazing experience.