Song in French

If you have read previous posts on this blog, you would probably know that I have been learning French for a while. My level in French is quite low, but I am trying to learn something new every day. Today, I am going to show you here a song I have listened to recently, and I was amazed because I understood a lot of it. I hope that this means that I am improving, even if it is slower than I would like. I am not in a rush to learn French, but it is very comforting to see some improvement from time to time.

Ma chambre a la forme d'une cage
Le soleil passe son bras par la fenêtre
Les chasseurs à ma porte comme les petits soldats
Qui veulent me prendre

Je ne veux pas travailler, je ne veux pas déjeuner
Je veux seulement l'oublier et puis je fume...

Déjà j'ai connu le parfum de l'amour
Un million de roses ne m'embaumerait pas autant
Maintenant une seule fleur dans mes entourages me rend malade

Je ne veux pas travailler, je ne veux pas déjeuner
Je veux seulement l'oublier et puis je fume...

Je ne suis pas fière de ça, vu qu'il veut me tuer
C'est magnifique et très sympathique
Mais je ne le connais jamais

Je ne veux pas travailler, non, je ne veux pas déjeuner
Je veux seulement l'oublier et puis je fume...

And below is the English translation of this song.

My room has the shape of a cage
The sun passes his arm around my window
Hunters at my door, like soldiers
that want to catch me.

I don't want to work, I don't want to have breakfast
just want to forget it, and then I smoke

I had already known the perfume of love
A million roses wouldn't stun me so much
Now, one next to me makes me sick

I don't want to work, I don't want to have breakfast
just want to forget it, and then I smoke

I'm not proud of it, after seeing that it wants to kill me
It's great and very likeable,
but I don't know him.

I don't want to work, I don't want to have breakfast
just want to forget it, and then I smoke

Finally, you can listen to the song following this link.

What is love?

I remember a song from the 90's called "What's love?" by Haddaway. It is dance music, and I like to listen to it when I am running or doing some exercise because it is encouraging. The thing is that I never paid attention to the letter of this song, therefore I don´t know what love is.

However, in a second thought I am going to tell you about my idea of what love is. I am not going to write here a complex definition about how love mechanisms work, or discuss whether it is fate related or just some chemical reaction.
In my opinion, love happens when we stop being selfish, and start to worry about somebody else. That is basic love, and it is very simple to explain. Then, of course, there are different kinds of love. I am sure that you can find several classifications on the Internet, but the idea behind all of these kinds of love should be the same, the one I wrote above.
I like to write more in my entries on the blog, but I consider that I have nothing else to write about this subject. And I think that because sometimes less is more.
Well, just one more thing. In case you are interested in the song I mentioned before, you can watch the video here.

Confidence

I have just been watching a couple of videos about conversation skills in English, and I have realized that these videos can encourage some friends of mine who are having problems of confidence when they have to speak English. I would like them to know how much fun they are missing just because of their fear. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes, who doesn't? It is part of the learning process.
During a conversation, whatever the language is, you need to keep it alive. Therefore, you can't stop talking continuously, or whenever you make a mistake. You have to keep going. The most important thing is that, in the end, people you are talking to can understand the message you are trying to communicate.
Below, you can click a couple of links where you can watch the videos I refer to above. I hope you enjoy them and I would love if they help you to overcome your fears.
Video 1
Video 2

Small print

Are most of us illiterates? It feels that way. Lately, it seems that you can't read if you forget to read the small print in every kind of texts, mostly in the important ones. Besides, the small print is getting smaller and smaller. Eventually, it will be necessary an electronic microscope to read it.
Do you have the same feeling I have? I am almost sure that everybody is trying to deceive us. In response to that, people is getting more and more suspicious about other people. This is similar to an snowball effect.
I must admit that I have always been a bit distrustful, and I can't help it. What can I do? It must be in my genes, I don't know. However, in the current situation, I consider this quality really valuable. It can help you to avoid being a victim of most part of  deceptions.
Small print has become a powerful tool. Unfortunately, it is a useful and simple tool to hide important information in order to scam people. It is useful because it really works, and it is simple because you only have to change the font size of letters in a way that you can make a lot of people be unaware of certain critical conditions in all sort of legal documents.

This is my advice. If you ever read a paragraph like this, you are not a fool and you are not easy to deceive. Make sure you read and understand the whole text before signing anything.

Heroism

Two brothers have just finished their daily run of about 12 miles. They are walking next to the lake when they hear a big noise and see how a trolleybus was sinking after falling from the dam wall. The older brother swam to the place where he saw the trolleybus sink. He dived into the water in order to help almost one hundred people who where inside that underwater coffin.

When he reached the trolleybus at 10 meters below surface he had to break the back window with his bare feet, and he started to pick up people and bring them back to the surface, where his brother took care of them. He recovered around 30 people from the lake bottom, but only 20 survived. After all that effort in those extreme conditions (cold water, zero visibility, the wounds in his legs, and water pollution) he fainted and remained in a coma for 45 days. All this ruined his brilliant career as finswimmer (11-time World Record holder, 17-time World Champion, 13-time European Champion and 7-time USSR Champion, and he was only 23 years old).
What would you think about the story above? Do you think it is real or just the plot of the last movie I watched? I would probably think the same as you, but the truth is that it really happened. It was in 1976, and the hero in this story is Shavarsh Karapetyan who wasn't recognized by his heroism until 2 years after the event. This delay was due to the fact that, apparently, politicians didn't want to make public the inability of the rescue services to handle the situation. This wasn't the only time he risked his life to save people. In 1985, he was again severely injured when he entered a burning building that had people trapped inside to help them to get out.
In my opinion, this world needs more people like this man, who are able to risk their lives to save other's. Unfortunately, there are more people who are willing to hurt others in order to get their goals. As an example, we have the person who kept hidden this story for two years, just to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that someone who worked for him wasn't doing his job correctly. I just hope that all of us are heroes, and if the situation requires it we will be willing to help no matter what it takes.
I have a question. Why on earth do we idolize athletes, artists, or politicians and we ignore people like this real hero? Do you have an answer?

Some news

It has been a while since my last post. I think I was not in the mood for writing. But, now I am, or at least I am writing and I hope I will post it, eventually.
I put English learning aside for a while, and almost everything else. However, I came back stronger than ever (I mean, I came back), and now I continue trying to improve my English, and I started to learn French in a more serious way, studying a bit every day. I will let you know when my writing skills in French are good enough by my standards writing something here.
For now, I am trying to expand my vocabulary, and get used to listen to people speaking French. In order to help me to get my goal, I am using several tools, but the most helpful until now is this website. They use an interesting method to teach languages (Spanish, French, and German at this time). As part of your learning process, you have to make translations of pieces of documents that you can find on the Internet.

The man behind this idea is the same that invented well-known applications captcha and re-captcha. The main idea of this project is quite similar to the one behind re-captcha. A lot of people will help to do a huge job that computers are not able to do by themselves yet. Indeed, translating all the documents on the web to the most extended languages in the world is not easy task. However, this project intends to use millions of people to help to get the job done.
In my opinion, the most clever idea is the way to achieve that that amount of people help with the task for free. And the answer is giving them (or us, because I am a user too) a quality language course in return. Moreover, there are experts that think this could be Google's next big acquisition (for more information, read this article).
Anyway, I think it is a very helpful and amusing project, and I believe it is going to help me learn French and who know what other languages.

P.S. If you are interested in learning or improving a language, I recommend you to try this tool.

Celebration

I am not really a football fan, but in the past I enjoyed when Spanish national football team won a championship. However, today I have been watching the game (the Eurocup final) in a bar full of people enjoying the historical event, and I didn't feel even a bit of excitement. I was reading a magazine during the first half, and I focused on TV only from time to time. Besides, I left the bar just after the fourth goal was scored, and before the game finished and the celebrations started. I don't feel I have anything to celebrate, and I am not pretending. When I was having my tea at the bar, I thought that the game was quite interesting, but nothing else. It was a feeling similar to watch a cricket match between England and Pakistan, I guess. I thought I was one in a million, I felt like a freak. Nonetheless, there are more people who feel like I do. I have just read this, and now I feel better. And I don't feel better because I am not a freak anymore (I don't mind about that, actually). I feel better because there are other people who know what is really important, and what is not. Finally, I am not criticizing people who enjoy Spanish team's victories. I am just worried about the fact that most people don't care about the economic situation of our country as much as about winning the Eurocup championship.

Note: I bet that tomorrow's edition of the majority of Spanish newspapers will put in their front page a huge picture of the Spanish football team, instead of a headline explaining the rising prices of gas, butane and electricity. And what is worse, people is not going to start reading until they find something related to the game.

Dreaming

I have just received a message in my phone. It is a poll about the actions to take against the last politician found guilty of accepting bribes. There are three basic choices: to let him out, to let him out and pay a fine for the double of the money he accepted, or to fire him and send him to jail for 2 years. You can also send your suggestions for the punishment, but I think the second one would be fair. There are still almost 12 hours left to send my vote. I will use my computer because the Internet connection in my phone is not completely reliable, but if you are answering an official poll there is no charge applied to the message.

By tomorrow noon the sentence chosen will be known, and 24 hours later it will be effective. I consider this punishments necessary and really effective in order to discourage other public servants to take advantage of their position to get personal profit. Besides, since this idea has been put in practice, the cases of corruption discovered have decreased in more than 65%.
I remembered when this system based in phone messages were used in those old TV programs like "Big brother" and the like to help to decide which of the participants were going to be sent home (expelled). It was a dark time in our recent history, however the consequences of that and other stupid things that happened then made people think, and in the end take control of the situation before it was too late. Back then, there were a lot of tools, but we needed to start using technology for something useful and not just to waste our time and don't think about things that really matter.
In my opinion, one of the most important decisions we take in the past using this system was about the maximum wages, and the ways to pay workers for their extra effort, or their value for a company. Finally, it was decided that there would be a standard monthly pay for every worker in the country, and there would be extra benefits in the form of days off, or to accumulate points that can be used to get promotions, change your job location, etc. The standard salary allows everybody to live with all needs covered and even some luxuries are possible.

This is just fiction, but I would love to read something like this during my lifetime. Do you think it will be possible? You can send an SMS to ...

The well

I remember when I was a child, maybe 8 or 10 years old. During the early winter, there was a time when people in my village usually made a powerful beverage called "augardente", meaning literally "flaming water". At the time, it was quite an adventure when my parents let me go to the place where the person in charge of the distillation was doing the "magic", I mean, turning the waste generated in grape's harvesting into that drink for tough people. There was a fire, and around it several people telling stories and tasting that transparent liquid, almost like water for the untrained eye. So similar to it, and at the same time so different. I particularly remember a story about a well that still exists today near where we were sit enjoying the warmth of the fire during the cold winter nights. I guess that they only told us that story to make fun of us, and because they knew we would believe it. The thing was that the well was so deep that you could not see the bottom of it, and if you got too close it would swallow you. After telling us how dangerous it was, and after catching our complete attention, they started to enumerate the things that had already fallen in it, and never came back. The list included a cow, several cats an dogs, a goat, and my neighbor's grandmother. Thinking about it, it was like a black hole in the Earth instead of in the middle of the universe. It is just a funny story now, however, at that time it was really frightening and scary, it was like a horror movie's script. And I have never been close enough to that well in order to see or not to see the bottom of it. Later, when I was a bit older, someone told me once that the well was actually quite deep (about 70ft), and several animals had fallen into it because there were no protections at all in that place. Nowadays, it doesn't sound really scary , but dangerous.

Justice

I read the newspaper almost everyday, and watch the news, and I realize that something is really wrong in this world. It is not about if we deserve what is happening right now. It is about justice, it is about powerful people taking advantage of weaker people, it is about people becoming richer and richer while others are losing their jobs, or are dying of hunger. I hear a lot of times the expressions: "it is the way it is", "it is a tough world", and others with a similar meaning. However, I think that the world is like we want it to be, or at least the way we let it to be. Therefore, if we think that something is wrong, we are the ones who can change it. If we are waiting for the governments, or the powerful people to solve this situation, we are going to wait until the end of times. And that is the way it is, they are the ones who set up this big crisis in order to achieve their goals, and they are not going to back up now that they are half-way to get their reward. In my opinion, there is still a bit of hope. We have the real power here. We just need to realize it, stop fighting among us, and figure it out how to start acting as one united force. What is going on now is about justice, and there is not justice left in this world. There are just laws, there are just money and power. And we have a lot of power, we just need to learn how to use it correctly, and do not let others to manipulate us in order to fight their battles. I am sure there is a lot going on in our lives right now, and I think that we all should have the opportunity to worry about what really worth it. But, in this situation of crisis, we have no choice but to be worried about jobs, money, our rights, our future, etc.

Blue eyes

I am going to write a few words about myself, and I am going to explain the reason why I chose the title "Behind blue eyes" for this blog. You will see it is not big deal at all.
First of all, I have blue eyes, but that is not why I chose the name, at least not directly. I remember that some time before starting this blog I watched a film called "Gothika" starred by Halle Berry and Penelope Cruz. In the soundtrack there was a song I really liked, and still like. The song is called "Behind blue eyes" by Limp bizkit, and that is all about the name of the blog.
"Behind blue eyes" makes me think about the importance of valuing people by what they really are and not only by their appearance. In these days where how you look is so important that can cause severe problems, mainly to younger people, it is good to have something that remains you what is really important to focus on. My blog's title reminds me that.
I am sure that everybody has met somebody really good-looking at some point in their lives, but when you know them a bit deeper you realize that you do not like them at all. That is because beauty is a superficial thing, and only catches your attention for a while (at first sight). I know that sometimes is hard to beat the spell of beauty, and I also know that it is also possible that somebody is beautiful on the surface, and in the inside. We should not think that somebody is not worthy because of their physical beauty. We should just try to know people for a while before making an impression of them.
I am not really worried about what people think about me when they look at me, however I am more concerned about what people's opinion is about me when they know me a bit better than just the first impression. But that is right just if we are talking about people I respect, and who made a good impression on me.
Another reason to name my blog the way I did is because I usually write my opinions, and those reflect how I see the world through my eyes, my blue eyes.
I will let you watch the video of the song that inspired the title of this blog. You can click on this link to watch it.

French

I have been trying to learn French for a while. I cannot say that I was successful until now. However, I think that this is about to change. I found a really interesting, and useful online resource. It is a webpage where you can find several tools to help you in the process of learning different languages like Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, etc. I find particularly helpful the Coffee Break course where you can learn easily trough 15 to 20 minutes lessons in audio mp3 format.

I started this course about a week ago, and I listened to first 10 lessons. I recalled a lot of what I learnt when I was in high school (I attended French classes then, but we could not practice conversation because our teacher was not a native speaker, and her level was far from good).
In my opinion, the best way to encourage a student to learn something is showing practical use of the concepts and theory explained. When regarding to language learning, practical use means making conversation.
My first French lessons were boring and almost painful, and I never felt capable of writing or speaking anything more than basic expressions (merci, bonjour, je m'appelle, au revoir, and a few more), and my reading skills are not much better.
After ten lessons, I am looking forward to listen to the next one to learn more things about French language, to increase my confidence, and I hope that in a few months I will be speaking, and writing using French, like I do in English.
I would like you to visit this page, because I am 100% sure that it is a valuable resource if you are interested in French learning. Besides, I think it is fair to advertise their site considering how helpful it is to me. If you want to learn other languages you can try the home page, where they have lessons in other languages.
To sum up, I hope these resources help you to find the right path for you in language learning. As far as I am concerned, I can finally say "Je parle un peu de franÇais". Hopefully, in a while I will know how to say "I know a lot of French", and it will be true. Anyway, I intent to keep writing in English in this blog.

À la prochaine.

Communication media

I have just seen my blog's statistics for the first time, and I am really surprised. My blog has been read in several locations all over the world, including USA, Germany, Japan or Russia. Something like that would have been inconceivable just about thirty years ago (at the time when I was born). However, these days you can publish anything you want to, and in a matter of seconds it will be available worldwide.
Regular people become immensely famous throughout the globe just publishing, for example, a video in Youtube. Sometimes, people watch the video because it is funny, or it shows somebody's talent, or even somebody's lack of it. You can also publish pictures, music, writings, or anything else you can save in electronic format.
On one hand, there are thousands of applications that allow us to communicate in any imaginable way over the Internet. On the other hand, communication issues among people are increasing. We can see everyday in the news the problems caused because the lack of understanding between different cultures, different gender or skin color, or different governments.
All the facts commented above make me think carefully about that, and it really seem confusing, even paradoxical. I am sure that the explanation to this behavior is not that simple, but I consider that people do not use all the power of communication media available to them to get to know better to other people, to share with them their thoughts about things really important, or to look for commonly accepted solutions to real problems.
To sum up, communication media are just the tool, and the way we use them is what really matters. As far as I am concerned, I am really happy to see that people from such different locations visit my blog. I would also love to see their opinions and comments.

The experiment

I am not an expert in lab experiments, but in this post they gave me the inspiration I needed. Apparently, when lab technicians are trying to find a new vaccine, or new antibiotics, they use microscopic living organisms in order to carry out their research. After observing the behavior of these small participants in different environments and situations, the scientists have to obtain conclusions. During the experiments the main characters are these tiny creatures, and they are going to continue being the stars if the tests succeed, and they become a new drug, maybe a cure for a deadly disease.
Consider this crazy theory. What if we are also an experiment. We would be that tiny creatures, and the world as we know it, the universe, would be the space where the experiment takes place. It looks like a crazy thought, but I think that the microorganisms involved in the experiments conducted in labs are not aware of the lab technicians, or aware of their intentions.
Continuing with this hypothesis, what kind of experiment would be our universe? Are we going to be successful or just another failed test?
After a second thought, it could be a little consolation thinking that maybe all the wars, fights and hate in the world are just part of our genes and our purpose in life is to help others to find out something important, even if we do not know anything about it.

New Year's resolutions (IV)

Again, like one year ago, here I am in front of my computer reading my last year's resolutions, and figuring out if I carried out all my plans for last year. I will try to finish quickly in order to go back to bed, and to sleep a few hours more. My feet feel awful, therefore I guess I will be much better in bed.
It was not a really bad year after all. However, there are a lot of things that I would improve if I had the chance. I was not able to take French learning seriously, but I trust that I will do, eventually. Although I could not travel abroad this year, I am willing to do it again soon. I would love to enjoy the atmosphere in Irish pubs again, and visit other countries that remain unknown to me.
One of my biggest achievements during 2011 was obtaining the official EOI certification in English, and I am proud of getting it in my first attempt. I am aware of the fact that writing in this blog has been really helpful to pass the exams. I have been writing regularly here, and my idea is keep it that way. It would be fantastic if in one year from now the number of posts exceeded one hundred.
I left the gym after being injured for a couple of months, and I did not come back. Nonetheless, I continued doing a lot of exercise (running and cycling, basically). The fact that we had a much longer than usual summer season was the perfect excuse to do workout outdoors. It is much more fun than going to gym, and it is also much healthier. Besides, It gave me the chance to spend more time with some of my friends.
I have met a lot of people during last year, and made a few new friends too.
After considering all last year's achievements, I have just one resolution for the year that has just started. I will try to put all my effort in getting what I want, and do not give up easily, because I know I can do it better. I have 365 days ahead to prove it, and I do not want to regret for not having done something. To begin with, I am going to sleep a bit more, otherwise I will regret it tomorrow.