Boxing day

Here in Spain, today is just the day after Christmas and my birthday, too. However, in the UK it is a very important day known as Boxing Day. It is a public holiday in the UK and several former British colonies. It is mainly dedicated to shopping and there is a lot of sport events during the day.
Today, I decided to celebrate my birthday doing some sport, despite I was a bit tired after being running yesterday in the morning. Besides, I am still suffering the flu but I am almost completely recovered now. And I am glad to say that I am in a good shape and I feel every day younger.
Today and yesterday we could enjoy a wonderful weather to practice sports outdoors. However, today was a bit cold to ride a bike without wearing gloves. I know it first hand and you can trust me, it is not a pleasant experience. Anyway, it was a morning of fun and for sure much better than staying at home in a warmer environment.
Fortunately, this year this day is on Sunday and we can enjoy it the same way as English people. Therefore, I celebrated Boxing Day in my way and it was mainly devoted to sport and friends because I do not like a lot going shopping.

Connecting ideas

I do not tend to watch King's Christmas message or, at least, do not tend to pay attention to them. This year I did not watch it and I did not read anything about it. Instead of that, I decided to do something different, something strange. This afternoon, I was watching Queen's Christmas message. What Queen? could you ask. United Kingdom's Queen, that is, Elizabeth II. Why would I do that? Well, I have no answer for that but I have an excuse, I was checking if royal family members speak in a way that I could understand them, just in case I have the chance to talk to one of them, you never know. And my conclusion is that the Queen speaks English correctly (not really a surprise for me but I needed to be sure).
I must also say that Queen's messages is as boring as King's. In fact, I have no intention to repeat this experience. I guess that seen one, seen all of them. In my opinion, it would be more entertaining to watch an episode of the Simpsons, a Comedy Club program, even a documentary on La2 channel. As a matter of fact, it would probably be more interesting any kind of program except Big Brother or any other reality show or gossip programs.
Maybe this lack of interest on my part is because I am not a big fan of monarchies or social classes. I consider that they should be buried in the past and I am not proud of living in a country that supports a monarchy. Somewhat, we could be compared with bees, that show a very social behavior differenciating between queens and workers. Should we be conform with this comparison or aspire to organize our society in a more correct way where social classes, discrimination, unfair wealth distribution, selfishness and other human defects do not exist.
We are all equals and should respect to each others. We should play as a team if we want to survive, and the basis in teams is respect among teammates. In my humble opinion, mankind is doomed to extinction if we keep our current behaviour, but I am aware that this is in our genes and it is not very likely that the change needed really happens.
I am sure that there is a lot of people that disagree with this opinion and I would like to listen to their refutation if it does not include ideas like hope, optimism, prayer or miracle.
For now, we can bet on what kind of apocalypse is waiting for us. If you need some help to collect ideas you can watch a lot of movies that will show you lots of different ways to lead mankind to extinction.

P.S.: I am certainly impressed of how I started writing about Christmas messages and I finished with human extinction. It is hard to explain how my mind links ideas, mainly because I have not a clue how it does.

All the truth? (Making of)

This is a bit strange post. I am going to explain all the steps that I took to create last post on the blog.
Three days ago, I was washing dishes after having lunch at home and on TV there was news about Julian Assange's trial in the UK. Then my mind started doing some work, I guess, and I started thinking about the idea to write something related to that on my blog. When I finished washing dishes, and after several ideas that I did not like much, the good one came up into my mind.
After a while, I started writing and in less than one hour I had finished and I had reviewed it, looking for mistakes. After that, I was going to publish it but I had a big problem. I made a mistake and log out my account without saving what I had written and I lost all that work. I was not in the mood to do it again, so I wrote down the main points and decided to do it next day.
Unfortunately, yesterday I spent all the day in bed because of the flu and I could not write anything that could make any sense.
However, today I feel much better and I finished the post, published it without problems and I had the idea of writing this "bonus".

All the truth?

Newspapers and TV news programs have shown latest weeks a lot of information about Wikileaks, its founder Julian Assange and all the reactions to the massive leak of confidential data. Besides, Julian Assange has been charged for sexual assault to two women who attended to his conferences. This case seems really complex because of the huge amount of information generated, all the people and goverments involved and the possible consecuences of publishing it.
This is a good issue to talk about, but I am not going to do that. Thinking about that something came up to my mind. What if all the above was fake, I mean, if it was carefully prepared, like in a movie. Governments and powerful people who rule the world have all the elements needed to produce a movie of that kind, that is, they are plenty of money. We are helpless against them if they decide to manipulate us and the only thing that we can do is trying to make that work harder. Our problem is that if the movie script, the director, the actors and the other elements needed are good enough we will have to clap our hands at the end and to believe the full story.
I am not saying that the Wikileaks case is fake. I am just pointing the fact that it can happen and it is possibly happening right now somewhere. Communication media are very powerful and make it easier to interfere and modify the normal human behaviour. You only have to see that all the dictatorial regimes in the world try to control as much communication media as possible. In fact, when you watch the news from outside that countries, you can see perfectly what is happening because you have much more information than people living there have.
I read an article several years ago where was questioned the fact that Apollo XI landed on the Moon. In summary, the article explained that it was just a very good film used to intimidate the Soviet Union and make US citizens be proud of their country. It mentioned several images that apparently were against laws of physics. I cannot say if that event in history was real or not and like me, most people in the world. Beyond that, we can believe in communication media, but that is like believing in some god, it is faith not reality.
Another example, in this case completely fake, is the Orson Wells' radio drama based on the War of the Worlds that make listeners believe that an alien invasion was in progress.
Somebody can tell that I am going crazy but I always thought that reality overcomes fiction and I have not much faith, so I have to be a skeptic.
I am also a bit pessimistic, so I think that we are doomed to follow the leader. I mean, we will do what people who really rule the world want, without realizing it. I could compare us with lambs and I think you can find out who the sheperds are.
And to finish this post I would like to recommend you to watch the movie "Wag the dog" where you can see some of the previous ideas in practice.

Just thoughts

I was reading a magazine yesterday early in the morning and I read an article that reviewed the evolution of different religions centering in the fact that now most important religions are monotheist and in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, people believed in several gods. That made me think about the fact that maybe that change in people's beliefs led to the origin of the actual trend in labour market. In last years, can be seen that companies all around the world try to reduce their workforce as much as possible. The main goal is use machines to do work previously performed by human workers. Nowadays, most of human workers are technical professionals that are in charge of preparing, handling and repairing machines that do hard most of the work. So, if we extrapolate what happened to religions over the last centuries, it is possible that in future only machines will do work, and only one man will rule all them (like in the "Lord of the Rings"). And these thoughts make me wonder about the destiny of humankind. Is it maybe extinction in a way similar to that showed in Terminator movies? or maybe i have seen too many episodes of Sarah Connor Chronicles? I do not have an answer yet, but I am completely sure that the answer to this question is waiting for us...

in the future, whether it is going to be sooner or later.

Fame

I am getting up, a harmful shiny light enters the room through the big glass of the window that covers completely one of the room's walls. I think that I should stay in bed for a while yet, but that light does not allow me to sleep or even close my eyes. I cannot think and I try to stand up but I feel quite dizzy, and it seems that my head is about to explode. And that light, that light is really hurting me, it is burning my eyes and I cannot bear it. I try hard to reach the window and close the curtains but I trip over a chair and I fall on the floor. Now, I am feeling more dizziness and more pain and that damned light continues killing me. I crawl on the floor and I manage to close the curtains and I feel a bit better but I need some rest yet. I am thinking about going back to bed but I fall asleep again, this time on the floor.
I wake up again, I am still on the floor, and feeling a lot of pain. My head is like a volcano ready to erupt and I also have a stomach ache and some pain in my right leg. I am able to sit on the edge of the bed and try to remember something but it is difficult. I look around and I see that it is 7:36pm if the clock over my bedside table is correct. I do not know how long I have been sleeping for but It has to be more than twelve hours.
After half an hour under the shower I feel a bit better and even awake. I put some clothes on and head to the room's door. When I open the door I can see a guy, a big guy standing in front of me. He greets me and asks me if I am going to need a car or I am going to stay at the hotel. I am not really sure, I only want to have some breakfast or lunch or dinner whatever is appropiate at this time. I start walking towards the lift and the big guy follows me. I remember his name, he is David and is one of my bodyguards.
As I get off the lift (the doors open), I see a crowd of girls yelling and crying like they were mad and several people, big people, like David keep the crowd away from me while I continue walking to the restaurant. There are a young pretty blonde woman and a man in his fifties who ask me to sit with them. I agree, I sit down and ask something to eat while we chat. They tell me that I have to attend a party tonight in order to continue with my last album promotion and that tomorrow in the morning we are leaving the city, so I should not drink too much there. Now I remember why I have been in so bad condition during all day. Last night I attended another party and I drank a lot and I do not even remember how I got to my room. I suppose that this is part of the job too, or maybe it is a good way to keep me under control, manipulate me and do not let me thinking a lot about what I am doing (last part of the sentence is not there really, it is just what I should think about but I do not because they are doing their job very well).
After I finished my meal, I left the table and I head to the lift again, followed by David. Just before taking the corridor that would take me to the lift, a teenager loomed up out behind a corner. My bodyguard is a bit nervous and is going to hurt the boy but I tell him to release the teenager and he does that way. But, as soon as David releases him, he jumps over me and sticks a razor blade in my stomach and in my chest. I feel big pain and start to drown in my own blood. I barely see David grabbing the kid and calling for help. I ask to myself: is this the price of fame or just part of the job?

Brave pigeon

I always thought that the best members for a hypothetical bird's air force would be hawks and eagles but as we can see in this picture there are other kinds of birds really interested in serving their "country" or their race to fight against their enemies and show them that birds can defend themselves from any kind of threat.
This is the story about Nicky and his inborn desire to become a pilot and fly all over the world. In fact, Nicky would love to be a war pilot and defend everybody against their enemies during the World War II, that was taking place in that moment. This story happened in 1940's, and it started in a place called Middlesborough in the UK.
Let me introduce Nicky. It is a little pigeon that has a dream, probably since its birthday. The idea of becoming a war pilot is stronger than ever now because of the war that is coming about in Europe. Its parents keep telling it that should think about other things and forget that crazy thoughts but these advises always fall on deaf ears. Nicky gets crazy every time it hears stories about RAF pilots fighting against nazis and trying to keep people in the UK and other ally countries safe and out of German soldiers' reach. In this precise moment, our little pigeon is reading an article in a newspaper page that found on the ground about an English pilot who was brought down and is kept prisoner in German territory. While Nicky progress in its reading, it is getting more and more angry. After finishing with the article, it drops the page and starts to free its anger shouting and explaining in loud voice what should be done to rescue that brave pilot. This is nothing unusual for all Nicky's friends and acquaintances, it happens quite often but they do not care a lot about that.
One day, Nicky's life would change forever due to an advertisement that it read in the newspaper. "WE NEED PIGEONS TO HELP IN OUR FIGHT AGAINST GERMAN ARMY"; that was the main content of the advertisement and it turned that normal day for most people in the happiest day ever for Nicky. It almost forgot to take note of the address to apply and take advantage of that big opportunity to fulfill its dreams. Nevertheless, it took that blessed piece of paper and went home to tell its parents.
"I am going to be a real pilot and I am going to fight in war against those bloddy bastards", told Nicky to its mom as it entered their nest. Nancy was Nicky's mom and, at that time thought that Nicky had read another story on some newspaper and its imagination was working hard again. But, after the whole and detailed explanation that heard from its son, Nancy realized that this was serious and it could be a very dangerous experience for its son and a lot of suffer for them, their parents.
Four days later, Nicky was standing in line to apply to join air force. There was a lot of pigeons on that line, volunteering for going to war. Nicky had been waiting for five and a half hours but that worth it and it did not feel tired or sorry about being there. It was a bit weird that all the others pigeons were in the company of humans but that did not worry Nicky. Fifty minutes later, Nicky get to the front of the line it had been for the last six hours and could see an army officer taking the applications and giving some information to the appliers. Nicky did not have a human to introduce it, so it flied from the ground to the window where the officer was. The officer seemed a bit surprised for a while and then he took Nicky and give it to a soldier who was putting pigeons in cages. These cages were not very luxurious but they were going to fight for their country and that was enough for Nicky. That noble task could require some sacrifice but it would be rewarded widely if its dream could be become true. Taking into account that most people never see their dreams come true it is understandable the happiness that Nicky showed on its face.
After about another hour waiting inside the back side of a lorry, it looked that they were starting their way to the training camp. In fact, that was right but fate reserved a light disappointment and an important decision would have to be taken. Nicky started chatting with its cage partners and after a while it realized that they were heading a training camp for carrier pigeons. As you can imagine, Nicky was undone and it felt down and without any meaning for its life. It remained silent and thinking during the rest of the ride to the camp. Its first idea was to leave as soon as they arrive at their destination, but a the end of the journey it had made a very different decision. Nicky was going to train as hard as it could, become a good carrier pigeon and help its country the best it could delivering cyphered messages to the front and back avoiding to be captured or reached by fire. It soon realized that its mission was very important and those messages that they carried could change the future of war.
Nicky did not become a war pilot as it dreamed during its life but it delivered succesfully more than 500 top secret messages and retired after the end of WWII. Now it lives in a quite place in the north of France with its family. Sometimes it remembers some of its dangerous trips doing them again but in company of its children, its wife or some of its multiple friends.

Back to life

It has been a while since I wrote my last words here. I have been quite busy completing some courses to get certifications and adquire new knowlegde and skills. But now, I have finished with that for a while and I will have more spare time. Anyway, I have not forgotten to improve my English. In fact, I had a very good chance to practice my conversation and I took it. For the last one and a half months, I have been attending English classes with a native teacher near my house and I am taking advantage of every minute of English conversation that we had. Apart from that, I am going to visit Dublin and surroundings on next August to know the city and practice all I recently learnt.
Moreover, I intend to study harder now that I have time to do it. And, of course, I will try to write posts here more often.