The Blog Project

I think that the Blog Project is a very good way of expressing things to your classmates that maybe you wouldn´t do at class. It´s a wonderful way of interacting that allows you to use another register of the language and it´s a space where you can give opinions, explanations or help. Maybe some people can have problems with this project if they don´t have internet or a computer, or both; but I don´t consider that a big problem because you can always go to the computer lab. What can I say? I don´t know who had the idea of this project, but I would like to congratulate her or him.

...about Present-ations

During the preparation of my presentation I basically learned how to organize the information I wanted to provide in order to talk only for 30 minutes maximum. It was not easy, the evening before the presentation I had to change my thesis and my conclusion because I decided to cut one part, the presentation was too long, so I couldn´t tell you all that I explained in my paper. But it doesn´t matter, I think that it´s more important to explain well one thing than explain poorly many things (and if anybody is interested in learning a bit more about jazz and its apearence I can pass you my paper ha ha ha).
I don´t like talking in public very much, I recognize that I´m afraid of that and that i have a bad time before doing it, but just before I do it. When I start talking I really enjoy it, I like explaining things and I like when people pay attention to you and learn something. I think that my presentation was not very complicated to understand because I focused in only two or three points. I guess it was not so bad, I hope you enjoyed it.
From listening to others presentations I learned some things about water resource managament, about the explotation of children and fair trade, about diabetes, about "slow suicide", about the use of cell phones and its history, about the sense of smell, about smart purchasing and the tricks of ads, about computer companies history and competence, about credit cards and debts, about the relation of memory and stress and about the dangers of tobacco. From all your presentations I learned something because all of you made me think. Thank you.

Research Project, "The Making Off"

To be honest, it´s not been easy to give birth to my paper. My biggest problem was to put in twelve pages all that I wanted to say about the origins of jazz music and the discriminative and racist environment that has always surrounded this music genre. I enjoyed the part of looking for books and articles, reading and thinking. But when I started to write I thought I was not going to be able to present a decent and objective development of my thesis; to my surprise things flowed and the ideas got clearer while I was keeping writing. Finally I had to change a little bit the thesis and the final product was not exactly what I had in my mind, but it doesn´t mean that I don´t like what I wrote. I wouldn´t change any word of what I said, and if I did it I would just provide more information like more examples and other approaches to the subject.

I have the feeling that my written expression has improved very fast in a few days, as well as my capacity for organising ideas and develop them. Especially during the last days in the computer lab, I enjoyed the process of writting. It´s been a very rich and educative activity (now that is over I can say that).

Oh! I almost forget!! The best thing it´s that I´ve been listening to a lot of good jazz during these last two weeks!!

Oh, Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I´ve walked in his moccasins

This sentence means that before we judge somebody or his/her actions we should try to understand first in which situation he/she is and what his/her feelings or thoughts are. By doing this it will be more difficult to do something to somebody that we wouldn´t like to be done to us.
I think that to identify or emphatyze with others feelings is a good way to understand us much better and avoid communicative and social problems. After all, we are not so different. This was the moral that we could learn from the video we saw today. By the way, if somebody is interested in watching the video again (Hi Helen) or knowing more information about the experiment take a look in this web: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Animal Experimentation Unit

The unit that I most enjoyed was the one regarding Animal Experimentation, especially because the persuasive paper that we were asked to write using the different articles relating the topic was the most hard that I had to write before the Research Project.
I must admit that I had a hard time trying to connect what was said in the articles with my own approach to the topic, and I must admit that I like suffering. I think that the Persuasive summary was a good training for the paper we are now working on. In my case, all the written tasks we are asked to do are helping me to improve how to connect the ideas that I want to capture on the paper in a most understandable way. It´s not really my style to say things directly, but I´m really enjoying learning how to write in different ways.
And, I must also admit that after working on this topic, and after some years of doubts and meeting vegetarians (including my mother) I have decided not to eat meat anymore. For the moment I´ve been 10 days without tasting any animal that doesn´t come from the sea!

Theo Jansen´s Strandbeest Lecture

I only have good words for describing the lecture that Dong and I attended at Concordia´s Hall. To listen directly to the creator of such a fantastic and original project as strandbeest is not a thing you live everyday.
After Theo´s speech regarding how he started to create the strandbeest, many questions came to my mind relating the meaning of our lives.
Theo´s meaning is working in his marvellous creatures until he dies. I understood that in this meaning there was beauty, strandbeests are something that the rest of human beings can enjoy, not only Theo. There´s something magic on them. Perhaps our meanings of lives will improve if we adapt the concept of beauty in them. I personally would like to transform my life and it´s meaning in something lovely that could be enjoyed by others.
I left you with a video of a Theo´s presentation that I hope you will enjoy.

Popullation

My father has one brother and one sister, and my mother has only one sister; so I cannot say that I have a wide family, but I can say that is a young one because I met all my grandparent´s parents when I was a child.

I have one brother, his name is Carlos, he´s much more responsible than I am and he´s 27 years old.

I would like to have children, at least two, but I don´t know when that´s going to happen because I have been always moving from one city to another for the last ten years.

The population of Spain is 45.2 million people (according to wikipedia), and Spain's population density is lower than that of most Western European countries. I have already discovered this last data and I considered it funny because some politicians say that we are too much people in Spain and that we shouldn´t allow the entrance of immigrants. Spain is the "door" to Europe of african immigrants who are willing to improve their lifes.

I come from an island named Mallorca, it´s in the Mediterranean sea and it´s a touristic destiny because the beaches and the weather are wonderful.

It´s interesting to know that during the summer the population of the island increases five times. That means that the number of cars increase, and so the pollution. The use of water is a problem because there are not enough reserves of drinking water for everybody. The natural balance of the beaches is specially altered, the huge number of people that visit them is destroying these beautiful and unique ecosystems, and the life in them.

But money rules, and things haven´t changed for the last 15 years.

Novel Project

In my opinion the Novel Project has been an entertaining way of learning more about the culture of Canada, specially because the authors were canadian or the plots were situated in Canada; and improving our knowledge in english. I am an habitual reader so it´s not been difficult for me to dedicate time to such a wonderful novel as Alias Grace.

The class discutions were very helpful for clarifying important points of the story and listen to different and valid interpretations, as well as for practising our speaking by explaining what we understood.

To write a book review was very helpful to focus on what I considered to be the main aspects of the novel, and also force myself to find the simplest way of explaining the story, which is not easy.

The oral presentation was the most difficult task of all because Alias Grace is plenty of meanings and dimensions, and specially because we didn´t want to tell you the end of the story. Also because explaining something in public requires a good level of english, and the nerves sometimes provoke that you just cannot find the words. But when it is over everything is fine again.

As being part of an audience I must say that I enjoyed all your lectures guys, and I had the perception that you all are hard workers.

My general punctuation to this activity is a 10, there´s a good balance between team and individual work, and you learn a lot, not only from the stories you read, but also from your partners appreciations.

Modest comment on the video about the use of the language and the gender

It´s not the first time I hear that women are better than men doing different tasks at the same time. Once I read that women have developed this skill over time (here we have evolution again my friends). 70.000 years ago, more or less, when our ancestors survived in the wilderness, women had to protect their offspring from other predators, and sometimes, at the same time they had to feed them. This two tasks were considered by the article as the responsible for the better developing of this capacity in women. I don´t know if this is totally truth and I don´t even remember where I read that, so don´t take it very seriously, remember that we have to be critical my friends. See you tomorrow!

Summary on the article of the "Tale of the Gimli Glider"

In 1983 an Air Canada Boeing 767 jet ran out of fuel before it could arrive to its destination. Nobody died in this accident due to the skill of the two pilots who were able to land on an airstrip in Gimli after 200 kilometres of gliding the plane with no energy. The pilots used a gliding technique called sideslipping that causes a lot of drag when a plane is descending. After this emergency land the aircraft was called the gimli glider and its tale has circled the globe.

Twenty five years after this accident the gimli glider is being retired to the Mojave Airport in the California dessert.

The accident is well described in the article and there are some funny declarations of the pilots.

The article also gives a detailed explanation with some pictures and a diagram of what is the slideslipping technique; despite this, I think it´s necessary some knowledge of Aeronautics to satisfactorily comprehend this concept.

In your opinion what is the most important factor that affects proficiency in learning a second language?

In my opinion what most affects proficiency in learning a second language is the will or motivation to learn that new language. Of course there are other factors or characteristics that affect the succesful adcquisition of a second language like intelligence, age, opportunities to practice your speaking, etc...But for me it´s obvious that if you don´t have the desire to learn you probably won´t dedicate much effort or time to improve your knowledge. And that can be extrapolate to many things in life.

Repsol Tower in Madrid

Torre Repsol (Repsol Tower) is going to be the tallest building in Madrid, the main city of Spain.

Its construction began on the year 2004 and it's supposed to be finished this year. It is going to have 45 floors and its total height would be 250 metres.

If you ever go to Madrid, unless you are a skyscraper´s fan, don't go to see this building. Better visit the Royal Palace, it's not so high but it's much more beautiful!

Skyscrapers

I think that skyscrapers are built with the only purpose of being huge billboards for big companies. They are not built for making better homes for people, they neither try to help the environment. The reality is that they are mostly used for being neuralgic cores of companies.
Projects like Sky City are just science fiction, I'm sure that we all would get crazy if we lived in a place like that. Jules Verne, in my opinion the best science fiction writer, and a prophet, wrote a novel more than one century ago called "Une ville flottante", the novel is about an artificial huge boat as big as a city where people could live and work, so they needn´t to come back to land. At the end of the novel this boat sinks because the people fights against themselves for a bit of indepency.
And what I consider to be worst is...Imagine you live at the top of an skyscraper, what would you do if all the lifts are out of order and you want to get to your house...