NME, my favourite website

Hi everyone 

As a fan of music, movies, TV and just about all things pop culture, it was hard for me to choose which was my favourite website. In this day and age, any and all information is just a click away. I choose a website that gives me access to all of these things and more, NME.com

NME are initials to New Musical Express, a british musical publication, published weekly since 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format, changing from newsprint in 1998. An online version, NEM.com, was launched in 1996. Now, it’s the biggest standalone music site in the world, with over seven million users per month.

I’m a NME fan since before I learnt to read, because my parents bought a magazine, and heard singles appeared on this chart. I remember getting excited when my parents daa came every week when a new NME magazine would find on a store. They couldn’t wait to read the news and reviews on what was going on the world of music. TV and movies, and with that magazine, they taught me reading.

Now, with NME.com, I don’t have to wait next week anymore, and I don’t have problems to buy it, like happened when I came to Chile, because all of the info and more is available with the click of a mouse. While, I will admit that the website has taken some of the fun out of getting the magazine weekly, I can’t help myself and check out the site.

See you on friday!

Rita Lynn

Hi bloggers:
Today, I’m going to write about Constanza’s blog

The blog is creative, I really like the title (Rita Lynn), it use images but I think it needs a little bit much colour and design is a bit simple. About Constanza’s posts, I like a post when she writes about youtube like internet tool, basically for her reference about short movie “the bear that wasn’t”, it’s so good!

I think Cuevana is a great website, because you can watch a lot of movies without pay, like her. However, I agree with her when she writes about low quality of movies that are available. I will watch "El secreto de sus ojos" after your comment. A friend of mine told me about this movie, too, but I haven't had time or internet in my flat. In that way, I will watch it on holidays.

When I judge comments that people write on your blog I think they didn’t read your posts completely. I recommend you to use more videos to illustrate better your posts and these can be more interesting, and more colour in your blog for looks like prettier.

However, I think your blogs is good and very creative.
See you later.

About a movie: The way we were

Hello everyone!

The last time that I write something was in 2009. Now, in 2012, is really great re-write about me in a language that I like very much. I love movies, because it's possible to see different lifestyles, cultures, and create other worlds, like aliens, hobbits in a "fictitious" past of the humankind, magic things like floating things, etc.

Today, in the first post to the class, I'm going to write about a 1973 romantic drama that I really like because it showed me an interesting story about love, and how sometimes it's not possible to think in an eternal love. This movie is The way we were, starring Barbra Streisand an Robert Redford.

Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardner met in college in the 1930s, but their differences are immense: she is a stridently vocal Marxist Jew with strong opinions about everything (in these time, her opinions were anti-war), and he is a carefree WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a closed groups of high-status mostly with British protestant ancestry), and he don't have a particular political bent. She is drawn to him because of his boyish good looks and his natural writing skill, which she finds captivating, although he doesn't work very hard at it. He is intrigued by her conviction and her determination to persuade others to take up social causes. The two meet again at the end of World War II. Katie is working at a radio station, and Hubbell, having served as a naval officer, is trying to return to civilian life. They fall in love and marry despite the differences in their background and temperament. Soon, however, Katie is incensed by the cynical jokes Hubbell's friends make and is unable to understand his acceptance of their insensitivity and shallow dismissal of political engagement. At the same time, his serenity is disturbed by her lack of social graces and her polarizing postures.

Although they are in love, cotidian problems are very common for differences about life: Katie tried to Hubbell seeks a job far way of Hollywood, becoming a serious witter because he's skills to do. With blacklist and McCarthyism encroaching on their lives, Katie's political activism resurfaces, jeopardising Hubbell's position and reputation.

Katie and Hubbell decide to part when she finally understands he's not the man she idealized when she fell in love with him and will always choose the easiest way out, whether it is cheating in his marriage or writing predictable stories for sitcoms. Hubbell, on the other hand, is exhausted, unable to live on the pedestal Katie erected for him and face her disappointment in his decision to compromise his potential.

In the film's final scene, Katie and Hubbell meet by chance, several years after their divorce. There, is finally clear about their story: both are better by each other when are together but love is not enough if they try to live it with perfection and how each thing it's right.

My blogging experience...

English is now the international language, so it is very important to learn English well. We should study English in the correct way, so that we can make the most of the time we spend learning English. Discovering ways to improve their English is a problem which baffles many people.

I believe that what you put into blogging is what you get out of it. I really enjoyed the opportunity to have a blog, write posts and communicate with other bloggers this year. I look at blogging as a different way of learning, instead of sitting there in class with a book open, reading about how to write and how to blog. I’m the kind of person who actually has to get in a try something instead of read about it. I really think that you have to give blogging a chance, and by doing this, I have got a lot out of it. Although blogging may not be the style of learning that everyone likes, I have found it a really great experience. I remember reading a comment that someone left which said something like, “Your blog is great, but why do you write so much?” Well, the simple answer is that I have such a strong passion for writing, it is natural for me to write such long posts. Not many people are like this, but and actually do the opposite. They can’t think of anything to say and their posts are usually quite short according to me.

At the beginning of the year, I didn’t really understand blogs that much. I had never come in contact with one before, and I didn’t understand why we were doing blogs in English. I assumed that English was just learning about grammar and spelling, but as I looked into it more I began to realise that English revolves around us everyday. Communicating with people, understanding how other people live and basically “exploring the language we speak” is how I describe English. I have continued to write new posts throughout the year, and every new post has improved my writing skills. I have put the most into blogging, and have really got the most out of it. When I look back at my very first post, the length of the post was tiny compared to what my posts are like now. I can now look back and read all my previous posts, watching my writing grow, improve and become more passionate along the way. Blogging is truly a great thing to be doing, as long as you put a lot of effort into it.

Everyone has their own style of learning that helps them learn. Whether it’s reading from a book, listening to someone explain how to do something, following a picture or a diagram, listening to the instructions being sung out with music or building something that will help them understand the topic, everyone has at least one style that they know helps them learn well. Just like all these styles I have listed above, blogging is yet another type of learning style that some people prefer. I know that I’m definitely one of these people that’s learnt so much from blogging, but other people may not like this style as much as, just say, listening someone explain how to do something. It all depends on your personal preference to how much you learn out of blogging. I don't know, I really like this experience... Good bye!

My ideal job

At university, a professor suggest me a career working in public affairs. Later, I knew that the Meca of public affairs is in Brussels with Fleishman-Hillard, one of the world’s largest PR firms. I hope to be in ten years, after an MA at the College of Europe (Warsaw), to be in the European Parliament working for a well-respected member. All in all, it is pretty much my ideal job.

Public affairs consultancy allows me to continue my fascination with the politics and policies of Brussels, while seeking out why it all matters to the real world. As a consultant, I will be fortunate to constantly gain an insight into the inner workings of a wide range of organizations from global consumer goods manufacturers to air traffic managers and chemicals producers.

I love giving strategic communications advice on public policy issues to getting down to implementing advocacy campaigns on individual amendments to legislative texts. Every day is different and every day you learn something new, whether from clients, the institutions or from colleagues in the office and elsewhere in the world.

While the public perception of “lobbyists” may be somewhat negative, those who have worked in Brussels know that successful “lobbying” in the EU is an open process based more on the use of good communication techniques than personal contacts.It's very difficult to obtain this kind of job, because you must compete with many great sociologists and political analysts for a few jobs, it is also the difficulty of the language, and sometimes even europeans can be very racist. So I only hope that that the current drive for regulation in Brussels does not destroy what it seeks to protect and that work continues as it is today; professional, challenging and fun, at least until I arrive there.

Do schools kill creativity?

In English class, we had to watch a short film about how creativity isn't encouraged in children's learning.

Thanks Ken, that was a great presentation. I agree that children need to be able to explore different avenues. I find more and more young people coming out of the educational system who did everything right according to the curriculum but are basically helpless and need to be retrained on how to work. I am reminded of what Mao Zedong once said. He said that the most important person in the aftermath of a major catastrophe will be the guy who knows how to make the plumbing work.

I think we need to match young people to their talents and train them to be a success in their chosen field no matter if they wear a tie to work or not. We need to find out what people are best at and then help them achieve success and not just “educate” the heck out of them according to some general formula and then put them in a corporate pigeonhole.

What an excellent speaker. I particularly agree with his comment about the academic world shifting beneath our feet. We need a new system that better suits this new world we’re in. I’d like to add that schools are one thing, but also, it seems to me that regulations hinder creativity. Arts funding promotes certain types of creativity in favour of others and so acts as a kind of censorship.

My favourite subject

My favourite subject is Sociological Theory I, because is the basic knowledge for my future as sociologist. Teacher isn't bad too. His name is Octavio Avendaño, and is so practical, very clear and friendly to explain difficult and boried theories of classic authors of the sociology, even make them so interesting.

I like this subject, in first place, because I want to make Sociological Theory my specialization area, so it's too important undesrtanding perfectly classic theories. And in the second place because every process design of social programmes in Public Politics (which are considered relevant for overcoming of the poverty, central topic in government management) needs a classic theory for explain macrosocial behaviour and reasons of certain social fact, and, as the study of human social life, groups and societies, classical sociology theory is important, is a wide-ranging subject concerned with analysing social relationships and social institutions and the way in which they shape people's lives.

I have learnt a lot, for example, economical implications in human progress according to Marxist theory, religion as social representation and built by itself, german philosophy like influence in classic theory, laws and government institutions in modern society developmen, etc. I just want to conclude this semester to continue learning about sociological theory, but later it will be about the influence in other authors and in develop of sociology.