Well, for me the only good things about this holiday are that I don’t have to work this weekend, and that I can party five days in a road… About the other things, I really don’t care. This bicentenary is a fake. The so renowned freedom said around these days is just a promise of fidelity to the Spaniard crown, a promise that after they ended their conflict with the French ones we would be here for them. But instead we killed our people; we took their lands and we gave them to foreign people; we denigrated them till the point they now have to pray for a little compassion by doing a hunger strike. If being a Chilean is forgetting our roots and killing my own people, I don’t want to be one. Lately, I just don’t feel any proud of being Chilean, I don’t like the thing we’re turning into, we’re just being as selfish as the people with power want us to be. I don’t want to get in the populism of our beloved president, but the thing that’s going on with the Mapuche people really is an issue. We cannot discriminate our own people, we cannot treat them like foreign (not that we have to treat them badly either) when the owners of this land in first instance were them.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
El Túnel, by Ernesto Sábato.
Registration code A 863 S113t 12a. ed. c.1
The story of my book is about a painter, Juan Pablo Castell, and how he fells in love with a woman, the development of the relationship, and the dramatic end of it. Juan Pablo found in her something special, something that other women didn’t have; she shared with him the interest for some specific detail in one of his painting, something that was really important in his particular way to understand life, he thought that she was the only person able to understand him, she wasn’t just a new love for him, but an obsession. They saw each other for several months, but the relationship was all the time complicated and the more things he found out about her, the more he became mad. At the end everything was so blurred, that he started to assume some issues about Maria’s past and present, and by this taking some extreme decisions that would drag him till the bottom of darkness. He kills Maria thinking that she was cheating on him, and by this he made their lives get together forever.
The title of my book is “El Túnel”, and the name couldn’t be more related to what the whole story is about. Juan Pablo Castell (the main character) is quite depressive, analytic and complicated, so for him, his entire life is considered a dark, and lonely tunnel. When he analyses the life of her beloved one, Maria, he tend to think that his and her life are somehow two parallel tunnels, but in some point of the road, they were going to get together. Sadly for him, the final results weren’t as he was expecting them to be. He discovered that she wasn’t in a dark, lonely tunnel like him; she was part of the outside world, she was like the others, she wasn’t reachable anymore. Now she was out there, and he could only see her through little windows installed in his own tunnel to see the exterior. And there was she, but only her image, because he wasn’t able to touch or listen to her. Their tunnels weren’t going to join anywhere, she wasn’t traveling in a tunnel.
The story of my book is about a painter, Juan Pablo Castell, and how he fells in love with a woman, the development of the relationship, and the dramatic end of it. Juan Pablo found in her something special, something that other women didn’t have; she shared with him the interest for some specific detail in one of his painting, something that was really important in his particular way to understand life, he thought that she was the only person able to understand him, she wasn’t just a new love for him, but an obsession. They saw each other for several months, but the relationship was all the time complicated and the more things he found out about her, the more he became mad. At the end everything was so blurred, that he started to assume some issues about Maria’s past and present, and by this taking some extreme decisions that would drag him till the bottom of darkness. He kills Maria thinking that she was cheating on him, and by this he made their lives get together forever.
The writer tries to create a character more than complex, Juan Pablo is unique, like nobody we’ll ever meet in our entire life. Not only because he’s mad and a psycho, but for the way he sees life, how he analyses everything, or because of the way he’s able to interpret some situation that for us would be just another simple thing. Even though for a normal person understanding a guy like him is hard, the writer is capable to make us analyze issues at the same time he’s narrating them. You’re able to see that with a little bit of effort (or a lot of it), you could get to some similar result. However, it’s never easy to understand how someone can get that crazy about a person, to reach the limit of killing him/her just because he suffered a deception.
I would say that the main lesson of the story is… Never get involved with a person who shows some weird behavior… he could be a psycho. Seriously, the main lesson could be that your own life can not be held in somebody else’s hand. Not because a person in particular doesn’t love you, everything is going to be ruined for you. Love comes and goes, getting obsessed with somebody in particular is many times an option, whether you could or not help it, a matter of self-love. Any person with a bit of respect for his own person wouldn’t do what Juan Pablo did, by giving his life away for nothing more than an obsession.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Functional Language and Expressions
Make it easier: To arrange things in order to make them easier
Make do: make sth happening
Make a difference: To stand out (something or yourself) in order to establish the difference among the others
Make a point: To emphasize your own opinion about something
Make time: to dedicate some time to do something specific
Make or break: something decisive for something or someone
Make the most of something: to take advantage of a situation or object in order to make it more productive, lasting, etc.
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To name but two, three, etc.: to give to or three examples about sth
To name but a few: Just to name a couple of thing among a world of possibilities
To mention but two: the first one
Such as: like
In particular: something in specific
Among other things: between many other things
For instance, for example: to give examples about something
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Idioms
To be under the weather: to feel down
To be given a clean bill of health: to be in a good state of health, having good health
To be at death’s door: to feel so ill, that you can’t handle it
To be going/coming down with something: you’re about to get ill
A bug going around: there’s a virus in the environment. Everyone is getting sick
To be in good shape: to have a good physic, being physically fit
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Functional language “Changing the subject”
That reminds me: because of something said recently, I remembered another thing
Anyway, as I was saying: taking up again something said before
By the way: related to that, I’m gonna tell you something
Come to think of it: now that I remember, this or that happened…
Talking of: we’re talking about something/ someone, so we’re starting a new conversation with another details of the same thing
As for: and related to you… and about you…
Make do: make sth happening
Make a difference: To stand out (something or yourself) in order to establish the difference among the others
Make a point: To emphasize your own opinion about something
Make time: to dedicate some time to do something specific
Make or break: something decisive for something or someone
Make the most of something: to take advantage of a situation or object in order to make it more productive, lasting, etc.
------------------------------------------
To name but two, three, etc.: to give to or three examples about sth
To name but a few: Just to name a couple of thing among a world of possibilities
To mention but two: the first one
Such as: like
In particular: something in specific
Among other things: between many other things
For instance, for example: to give examples about something
---------------------------------------------------------
Idioms
To be under the weather: to feel down
To be given a clean bill of health: to be in a good state of health, having good health
To be at death’s door: to feel so ill, that you can’t handle it
To be going/coming down with something: you’re about to get ill
A bug going around: there’s a virus in the environment. Everyone is getting sick
To be in good shape: to have a good physic, being physically fit
---------------------------------------------------------
Functional language “Changing the subject”
That reminds me: because of something said recently, I remembered another thing
Anyway, as I was saying: taking up again something said before
By the way: related to that, I’m gonna tell you something
Come to think of it: now that I remember, this or that happened…
Talking of: we’re talking about something/ someone, so we’re starting a new conversation with another details of the same thing
As for: and related to you… and about you…
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