TV Commercial

I invite everybody to take a look to this television ad. I couldn't determine the country of procedence but the message is the important deal.

It really chokes me up. It started showing images of people enjoying their spare time with family and friends, but then their lifes get together in a car accident. The cause is a man driving while drunk and the consequence is the death of an innocent kid.

The tv ad is intended to invite into a reflection about the responsability we have when we are driving. We have to be at full capacity of our sense, main reason why alcohol and driving are not compatibles.

I didn't like the video a lot, because it is very sad but reality is hard.  The commercial is well produced and the purpose is achieved.

I have to accept that this weekend I drove after drinking some beers and we in that moment I thought "no problem, i can handle it" but it is not true. No matter if it was one, or two or three beers. We must drive with ZERO alcohol in our veins. As I heard on the radio the other day "Somebody is waiting for me, somebody is waiting for you".

My english classes

Speaking a second language is not enough for these days. Living in a global world requires speaking fluently at least two languages, from a big list where we can include Chinese, English, French, German and many others. Due to our proximity to USA and the influence of this country around the world, English is the foreign language with most speakers in Costa Rica.

I just can guarantee that I speak my native language. For many years, I have been taking English classes and I still can’t reach my objective to become bilingual. It not only implies to speak well, but also to use grammar correctly. For 2010 I proposed myself to take English classes again to finally overcome the obstacles from being bilingual.

¿Why is important English learning? ¿What have I done to speak English? ¿How Am I doing it?

English is everywhere; you can see it when you go to the movies, when you listen to music, when you use electronic apparatus and when you socialize with foreign tourists. At work, English is a tool for having a business conversation with suppliers and technical costumer service, and also when reading technical papers of product manual. You can’t runaway; English is not an option, it is a necessity. If you have travel plans for visiting countries different from Latin-America, you can use it everywhere because it’s like a standard.

Since I was a kind, my parents worried about my preparation in a second language. I started my first in Ciudad Quesada in one of the only schools (in that time) who teaches English classes. At third grade I attended to a school in Venecia, near my house without foreign language education but I took extra-classes for a year with a young woman from US with studies in English teaching from England. Years later, I attended to a catholic high school that included some poor quality classes, so I took additional classes focused only in conversation with a lady who lived many years in USA. While my college studies at UCR, I attended for a year to the courses given by “Escuela de Lenguas Modernas” which I think gave me the facility to express myself with more freedom.

At the beginning of year 2010, I proposed myself to resume English classes to preserve what I learned and also to improve my skills towards my main goal: speaking perfectly. Surprisingly ICE gave me the possibility to take English classes again, so that is the reason why I am writing in this blog tonight. My classmates include co-workers, people from my building and some others from Colima and Río Macho. They are nice people; some of them look with lots of enthusiasm to participate actively and some others are a little shy.

Lessons are all day long, but it does not imply that you are going to get bored because the class is very dynamic and activities are changing constantly. It involves some activities from the text book with the participation in conversations about many interest topics like feelings, crimes, luck, school days and success. Activities are also about solving puzzles, listen to conversations and songs.

We receive some of grammar, even when the course is mainly about conversation. On-line homework is part the learning strategy and has the purpose to keep you practicing at home while writing essays and impressions about newspaper articles, songs and other topics referred to those covered by the textbook.

Evaluations every week have helped me to show me some mistakes but. Probably oral presentations have been the most challenging for me due to my stage fright, but it is just a matter of getting used to it.

From my point of view, I can see evident results and I think that I am showing some improvement every week, so I’m going by the right way. I hope my classmates will feel the way I do.

Cyber-crimes

Communications revolution is one of the biggest steps in human history. This revolution began with the telegraph and after appeared the telephone, the radio, the television and finally the computer. Since computer’s invention, information and knowledge spreads at the speed of light. Almost every person is at the distance of just one click to one another. This could be positive, but also implies that you are becoming closer to criminals. Cyber-crime is a new modality of crime that employs computers like a target, a weapon or both to commit its illegal activity.

Every day we employ computers and internet for fundamental activities in our lives like communicating, storing and sharing personal information and for processing of financial transactions.

 We can use internet to communicate to friends in any place around the world by e-mail, video conference, using on-line call services like Skype or publishing broadcast messages trough social network like Facebook and Tweeter.

Computers have become tremendous personal data bases with information like photographs, accounting data, work reports, homeworks and much more. Environmental campaigns have promoted to stop printing documents and to use digital documents instead of that. This implies that digital information has to be backed up with more digital information, converting data bases in a critical point.

Commercial activities can also be done “on-line”, so you don’t have to physically go to a shop to buy clothes, electronics, music and even food. Financial transactions can be done trough internet banking, so you don’t have to be afraid about taking large amounts of money with you or spending hours in queues in a bank.

Technology has its benefits, but there spaces open for criminals to violate rules, interfering with communications, modifying computer information and stealing personal information. We are going to talk about spam, computer viruses and internet fraud.

The word spam is used to refer at unsolicited commercial e-mail. Electronic mail users are infested most of the time with adds about porn, medicines, casinos, travels and many other activities. Investment costs are zero for the spammers and it is very difficult to track the origin of the messages. Spammers can supplant e-mail addresses and give the wrong idea that the messages is being sent from a friend. E-mail providers have to increase capacity unnecessarily to attend the big flow of spam in order to prevent the accidentally lost of and important message. Some other methods for spamming include websites with keywords about popular searches but with no content about it, just to be ranked first by the search engine or pop-up windows with advertisements when you click on a link.

The second kind if crime consists in a computer program with the ability to copy itself, modifying information in the host computer. Viruses can go from one computer to another by removable devices like usb memories, compact discs or by computer networks. Viruses have economical impacts by the fact that people and industries have to spend millions of dollars in antivirus programs. Hacker is the name for criminals dedicated to the creation of viruses and programs for computer intrusion. Hackers can take economical advantage by creating viruses and selling the cure. Hackers are also responsible of creating many damaging programs like spyware and adware. Spyware are programs that collect personal information sent to a hacker to be eventually sold. Adware and advertising programs executed while navigating on internet or during program installation with unwanted advertisements.

The third crime is internet fraud and cheating. Inexistent business and people offer trough e-mail fake tour, prizes for competitions you’ve never participated, ask for donations for children that don’t exist or just ask for bank account or credit card information. Many people fall in this traps paying for services they will never receive of giving personal information that will allow access to criminals to your money

Countries have begun to implement laws against cyber-crimes but without evident results. One big problem with cybernetic crimes is the fact that criminals are hard to find. Consequences are as little as just pissing off users and as serious as collapsing internet servers and data base servers with millions of dollars lost.

Cyber-crime is becoming popular every day and we don’t see an effective solutions to this problem.

Comments about songs

I am a big fan of  british artist, like Radiohead, Oasis, Travis, Coldplay and Franz Ferdinand. 

One of my favorite female singers is also british and his name is Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong, known as Dido.

She jumped to fame when Eminen put a sampled of the song "Thank You" into his popular hit "Stan" in year 2000. Since then, her first Album was re-launched sold millions of copies. The next two albums, "Life for Rent" and "White Flag", were also top sellers but with less popularity.

Two of her more inspiring songs are "Life for rent" and "See the sun" from the album "Life for rent". Both songs are caracterized by a soft music, with slow rithm and the sweet voice of Dido.


Life for Rent
From my point of view, the song is about a girl that cannot stablish stable relationships.

She is not an owner of anything 'cause she rents lifes. With this statement, she is talking to the fact that probably she begins a relationship, but she knows that it has no future beacuse she is with him just for a while.

Her way of think consists in looking for easy giving relationships, with no effort. She thinks in a simple life, going around the world without stinking in a specific place.

She knows that she is going to hurt somebody and she can't derserve good thing for what she does, but she has clear that she's not going to fall in fall because her heart is a shield.

When you are with someone, you hope to receive what you get, but when you are in a relation with a person that doesn't believe in love, well... things are not going to work.

See the sun
This song is about a girl that is taking to a friend of her that is suffering because of the dying of his love.

He cries and he fells a big pain in his heart, he tought that he had found the one, but his love is gone. Dido tell him that tomorrow is going to be a better day  and he is going to "see the sun again".

She (Dido) represents the kind of friend that we need when we are in bad moments, that moments when we think that everything is over. Friedship is not only for good times, but also for bad times. Hapiness is not easy to reach, life has big obstacles and you're gonna face the death of people important to you.

Comment of the NY Times article

Today I'm going to make a comment about an interesting article I read from the New York Times called A Guide to the Caribben on a budget.

The articule, as written before is focused on US citizens (I refuse to call them americans) who are looking for cheap options for running away from winter and would like to visit the Caribean Islands.

The author, Seth Kugel, talk to us from his own experience and many recomendations from his pals.

He starts making an important clarification: cheaper island are more far away than expensives ones. This afirmation has the obvious implication that airfares are more expensive for longer distances. So it depends on the kind of vacations you want.

So lest start taking about the recomendations...
Bahamas
Airline tickets are the cheapest (from New York) and you can also take the chance of several promotions offered by hotels. Some of the promotions include the ticket for your companion when you pay before december for a four night staying. Some hotels tend to reduce his prices with non-all inclusive options.

Casually, I was taking a look to websites with tourist information about Bahamas. I realized that in general hotels are very expensive and the kind of tourism promoted is destinated for the noth american visitor, so architecture, foods and attractions are going to make you feel like you where in the US. I also saw through those webpages about the existence of a very famous hotel called Atlantis Hotel, located in Paradise Island. This place is huge, it seems to be a big entertainment city, with lots of big buildings, pools, aquariums, casinos, shopping centers, discoteques and bays.

Dominican Republic
Jamaica and Dominican Republic offer the best deals of deals, probably due to their low cost and high availabity of workers.

Dominican Republic is highly visited on christmas by many north-american, but also by dominicals living in USA. You can pay less than hundred dollars for double occupancy in high quality hotels like Barceló.

The writter of this articule made an important observation: if you want to get into dominican culture, you must stay away from Punta Cana. A recommended option for tourist looking for a more interaction with local people consists in Puerto Plata and the Colonial Zone.

It is interesting that very popular places are invaded by the world culture (pop culture mostly), you easilly will find fast food restaurants, asian food, discoteques playing music in english, people wearing USA made brands. If you really want to be in contact with the local lifestyle, you have to go out from touristic places. It can be dangerous, but otherwise you're not going to know other country. Be open to take some risks is a must when you are traveling.

Jamaica
This country is well-know because of its "relax" living style. Montego Bay is the place to go in Jamaica. You probably find find a place for you, since there are atractions for many tastes: couples, families and adventurers.

Barbados
It is very easy to find places under $100 and bus service is good. I don't know if this is the kind of vacation that a typical new yorker family is looking for. Maybe for college stundents or adventurers, but I can't imagine an enterprise executive into a backpacking tour.

Aruba. Bonaire and Saba
Seems to be cathching dollar places, specialy for gamblers. You can get rooms as cheap as $40 each night, but probably airfares will cost twice the price of Dominican Republic airfares. Some bautiful islands will require to employ ferry. As you can see the more longer from US, the more difficult is the access to services and places.

Some interesting additional advices given by the author:
- Take with you things that you know are expensive (because their imported) in the destination country
- Look for hostels
- Try restaurants away from the beach

My decision?
From my perspective, I have two type of vacation: adventure trips and resting trip.
If I plans were going to be for a resting trip, probably I would prefer to save a significant quantity of money and pay for an all-inclusive in Dominican Republic or even Bahamas.

If i were looking for adventure, my decision would be the cheapest one. Aruba would be ok for me.

Summary and impressions about expositions

Book: "A briefer history of time"
This book consists in an easy comprehending version of its predecessor "A brief hystory of time" (a best seller). Seven years ago i read "A brief history of time" and it called my attention by the fact that the author proposed himself not to use mathematical equations in the book and try to explains his theories without them, well... he did it. So, "A briefer history of time" is an easy digest version of a book written for the popular reader. Physical principles explained in both books are born and expantion of universe, space, time and forces. It is interesting that physics has proposed itself to explain all forces with just one equation.

Micro-speech
Henry speech was about his difficulties and, in general, for engineers to communicate with other people. I do agree that engineers are caracterized for being shy. Some people have the ability to talk in front of people, and they hardly become enginners, but mostly in the future they become journalists, politicians, teachers or lawyers.In my opinion, Henry did it well taking to a group of people, so i don't really understand his problem.

White Sharks
Probably most of us have seen the movie "Jaws", so we are familiarized with the situation concerning to the danger represented by white sharks. I didn't know that California has the biggest white shark population around the world, so propably i'll never visits their beaches in my life. I understood that the origin of white shark is because of the convergency of many rivers that attrack many animal for eating salmon of their waters.

"Open bars"
Javier shared with us an articule taken from La Nación about activities called "Open Bars" which consist in paying an amount at the entrace of a bar with the privilege of drinking all you want. The articule criticizes the changes on behavior because of the consumption of alcohol, where people tend to be more sociable because they have lost any inhibitions. Other problem asociated is the allowance of selling alcoholic drinks to young people under 18. In my opinion "Open Bars" are a good way for buying a lot of alcohol at an affordable price in a place with nice music and ambience. The problem of young consumers is a matter of supervision.

ICE - One century of electric activity in CR
It consists in a review of a book refered to a hundred years of electric energy supplying in our country. It highlights the contribution of Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) to the development of energy, and later, of telecommunications. In this moment, ICE has to be more competitive because of the opening of telecommunications market. I think that costarrican owe to ICE part of its economical growth along its last century of history.

Family, Work and english clases
Luis Chaverri told us about his family. He has arround 20 years of being married and his son in at college. He told us that he never coursed english classes while he was at school. His son helped to him preparing this presentation, he's a very good student and wants to be a doctor. It is very satisfactory to see a father expressing how proud is he about his family and work.

Becoming elderly
The book read by Sandra was about a couple of elderly persons waiting for help. She made a reflection about retirement and the need of looking forward and plan our lives thinking in elderly. Everybody has the hope of keeping in contact with their relatives. The message is simple: take care of old people, they did it for you, so they deserve the same.

Carlos Castañeda
Carlos Castañeda was a writter, author of many books. His stories where about "chamanes", name used to designate indian magicians.The writter seemed to be a very particular personal, with a very strange personality.

"Un actor se prepara"
María José is a theatrical actress, so she read a lot about theatrical performance.She presented us a book she has read about acting, writted by a russian director. Its thematic is about techniques for body expression. I admire people who practice acting, because they have to memorize dialogs (somenthing that i can't).

Rich father, poor father
This book explains a theory about financial intelligence. The main idea is that i may be more important how to manage money instead of being rich, because you can lose it accessing to loans you can't pay. The book is about this two cases, a rich father with no control over his finances and a poor father who knows what to do with his money. The message about this story is about giving to our kids a proper financial education.

Learning a foreign language
Cristian made a presentation with some tips for learning easily languages different from our native language. He indicates that is easier to learn languages which precedence are from the same linguistical root, for example italian and spanish or german and dutch. He also told us about an italian priest who learned about 27 languages (with great ponouncition). I think that the main key is trying to thing in the other language and practicing as much as we can.

Famous quotes

“Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more.” (George Bernard Shaw)

The main goal of science is to help human beings to obtain answers to both simply and complex questions that arise from the daily living. There is not absolut truth, so, you will never have the certainty that you have reached an answer. It is almost a rule that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know about it.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” (Seneca)
I don't believe in lucky. Once i read that lucky is for prepared people (or something like that), maybe the person who said that had some knownlegde about Seneca. In my opinion, destiny is a simply excuse for those who don't want to be responsible of its own actions. You earn what you have fight it for. I can tell you that you'll be lucky if you have been working hard and you take the chance when it comes to you.

"The future depends on what we do in the present." (Gandhi)
As the quote before, nothing is creation of magic. Future is not coming to you, you build it. Things that will happen tomorrow are a product of what i had planned for it in my life. You can't sit down there and wonder that destiny is going to course of you life. This quote remind me that we must plan  our lives and stop thinking about living day by day. Where am i going to be within 5 years? How am i going to face my retirement? Maybe this second question is several years ahead but waiting 2 years before you will be timeless to react.