That's Why we Talk it

Here we are, writing and reading English blogs, writing about our life, tastes and opinions, but all in English, if I don’t know how to write a word, I search it and use it, if I don’t know what to say, I just keep reading over and over again waiting for some ideas to grow in my mind, and after that being able to share all of that, write what I think is easy to me, and it’s become easier to me with every post I’ve wrote, and the what and the how have also become easier to me thanks to the learning of this language in the university, it have been long the time learning English here if you ask to me, but I feel very comfortable with the things I’ve learned here.

However, no matter how comfortable I feel, the idea is to keep learning, specially the speaking part, and a little bit of listening, I would like to learn the phonemes and talk with someone in English in serious conditions and have the opportunity to defend myself speaking in English, I’ve done something like that sometimes inside an online videogame, but with unknown people and without a serious situation, but it still being great to practice the writing and speaking.

As I said, I use the English to talk with some other people in online videogames, specially MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Pay Game) or MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), not everyone are from USA, some people are from a lot of other countries, but English is the language we all know, at least the most part of the times, even a few times I’ve spoken in English with people from Spain, Argentina or Mexico, and it’s hilarious when we realise that. But outside videogames and the English class, I have not too many opportunities to use the English language, just by watching movies, but what I do is to watch international movies, from France, Italy or Brazil, and read the subtitles in English, because they have not them in Spanish, sadly, but it’s good for learning, the problem also is the listening part, because I have sometimes a little amount of problems to understand English, specially the British.    

To Change or not to Change

Sometimes we can turn on our TV and watch some news about the educational system, the education minister, the president or a school authority talking about the constant improvement of the education in the country, and some other news about students complaining about all the things that we are missing about the system and the mistakes of the previous mentioned authorities and their methods. But I think that is because we are never satisfied with the opportunities and tools we can receive, and that is good, it’s a way to make a real improve of our general methods and we can search in a lot of different ways to learn with our mistakes and trying to don’t repeat them in the process of create the ''perfect system'' which in my opinion doesn’t exist.

If would have the power right now to make changes in the education system, I would really don’t know what to do, because I don’t feel with the enough information or statistics to make changes and elevate the approval and quality of things that we can learn or how we use the learning, now, what would I like to learn and how to learn it, that is other business, I would really like to have more independence with my own schedule and manipulate my time in my own ways and maybe have more free time to dedicate it to activities or hobbies, make the university activities become only inside the university and the home activities only in your home, extracurricular activities and optional activities should be that, optional and extracurricular.

About the technology, I feel very comfortable with that, I mean, we always have the research in front and behind us ready to keep going with and for us to create new stuff to make the things easier, but currently I have a lot of respect for the technology and if the progress goes very accelerated we can make a world that Martin Heidegger was very afraid to see.

One of my favourite philosopher Martin Heidegger, he was very critic about the progress and the general technologies, and he believe in the world’s end by the technology destroying the humanity.

Summer Holidays

Summer is really near, this year has been very fast like always and now is time to focus in the final activities to the year and be prepared to receive the next one, but there is a time to dedicate to the complete relax and liberation, and it’s the summer holidays, at this time the people gets crazy thinking in Christmas gifts, the new year dinner, the long and short travels to leave the city and after that, even sometimes without realize it, we are in march, right at our works and our studies again, that’s why I think summer is a valuable time and why we must do whatever we want to make every single second count.

The problem in my case is my lazy life that makes me stay on the bed all day long in summer, watching TV or playing videogames, maybe in the worst cases I would practice some classical music just for being bored, I really hate to go outside on summer, except only when came the time for the beach travels, specially to the south of Chile, the nice weather and the beautiful environment gives me some very good memories of lots of funny times. The last problem is on this summer, because I won’t be able to travel the next year for some personal troubles, I have not too much problems with that and I’m not worried about that at all, but I hope someday I could spent a summer holiday in Venice or some other great place outside in the less time possible; C’mon, some days around the world would be great on anytime for anyone isn’t it?

Some Big Drugs in a Little World

In this modern society, a lot of people talk about drugs and other addictive substances. I’ve not lived in the ancient times, when the opium, coca leaves and ceremonial drugs…To make contact with the spirits and the famous pink elephants, but I don’t need to live there to understand the need of some fantasy and relax with drugs, centuries ago, before the arrival of Colon, Cortez, Pizarro, the natives (and slaves) of south America were used to consume coca leaves to keep them wake and always working hard, the Chinese people consumed opium as an hallucinogen, many years later, in the world crisis of the ’29, the dry law made a huge increase of violence and illegal issues, just to sell some alcohol to the people, and people just wanted to buy it, and currently, we have a lot of different kinds of chemical or natural drugs available in the streets to consume, and the society don’t reject it. Because at worse is the reality, we want more the fantasy.

Al Capone, he was in the ''most wanted'' list of the FBI and the 

number one ''Public Enemy'', for alcohol smuggling .

In a personal way, alcohol and cigarettes are my way to get near to the fantasy, but inside my neighborhood, there are some people who abuse a lot of different kind of drugs, not only alcohol, also cocaine and cannabis, that kind of things bring to the neighborhood a couple of troubles, but the last years all have been quiet, my neighbors have never touched again any kind of drugs, except for some occasional beer or wine. But inside my family or friends I’ve never had a problem with drugs of abuse, not even for excessive coffee (I don’t like coffee, so don’t hate me please).

Paracelsus thought that the human body is chemistry, and he was right, we are all chemistry and we can change our chemistry.

Post Graduate Studies

Currently I am a student of chemistry in an undergraduate school, this is my first year, but I would like very much to finish a Professional degree, and after that go further and try to get a Master Degree, and on that way my next step is to have the enough knowledge to get a job adequate to my personal interest, and feeling good with my own achievements and comfortable with my life.

More specifically, if I start to study a Master Degree, I would like to do it right here, in my currently university, and focus my path on the metallurgy subject, because I think is very interesting the productive activities of Chile, besides, this is a miner country, so the job is right here, and the minerals too, the cooper, iron, lithium, they’re crying for us . What are we waiting for? The economy would increase a lot if we all focus our resources in the mineral process and the manufacture of products made of these minerals, then, the exports would increase the profit of many industries nationals and internationals.

But there is a challenge to make true this ‘’wonderful’’ economical stage, because we need people very prepared to the jobs, and that’s why I want to improve myself with a graduate school to create a better future for me and all around, my reason is to contribute with my grain of sand in this economy and get paid for that, that sounds good to me.

Some kind of job.

The entire world is filled with opportunities to have a good job, even if you don’t have the resources or the enough educational level to get a dreamed job, you can start from the bottom and try to keep going further, get promoted, and finally acquire the experience to improve your opportunities, and the better part is that you never are going to waste your time, because you are trying to get paid, satisfy your needs and if you know save the enough money, you can even enjoy some good days of drinks, beach, rest and wasting money.

Once I finish my career, I’m going to be a chemist, and in this country are a lot of vacancies on many kinds of jobs, all of them related with chemistry, it could be a pharmaceutical, environmental, industrial, etc. But my interest are currently focused in an industrial chemist, that’s because I like very much the productive area of Chile, also, this country is in my opinion very focused on the primary economy, but it have not the enough work in the secondary economy, manufacture industries, and many of them are closely related to the chemistry, so I would really like to be inside a factory, and it would be great if that factory is related to metallurgical activities.       

Old and New Hobbies...

Hobbies for me are my own way to escape the reality not for vanity or being selfish, but the most part of the day I don’t feel comfortable with myself and I try to become something else every time, that’s why videogames are my main hobby, to have the opportunity to travel among other wonderful new worlds and experiment a new kind of emotions and sensations, while you are sit in your world controlling other different characters all of them with their own stories to tell.

But even with videogames as a hobby they’re all sometimes frustrating and a little bit stressful (Dark Souls), so when that happens, my new escape is the music. As a child my dream were to become a great pianist, it was an amazing hobby, every single day going to piano classes and practicing even without warming up, but now for medical issues I can’t play piano anymore, but trying to keep on with the music and practicing other instruments, without problems to play, like cello and some keyboard, as I written some months ago in some older posts the last semester; music and videogames are my main hobbies, I’m not really good at sports, and I don’t like too much reading, but except all of that, I try to make any other activity available to improve myself, for example, I would like to learn other kind of instruments to play and maybe become good at it, the theater is also a very interesting idea for me, but I have not enough time to dedicate myself to that. But someday I will.

       Old photo from old posts (And old times)

Your Brain And You

Once you woke up in the morning you are trying to remain without falling asleep and just keep living the day just like we all have to live, we see the same people and eat the same food that most probably we already have eaten before, so why don’t we just drive ourselves mad? Why aren’t we thinking like savages trying to escape from our reality and routine? That’s because we have an amazing and strong brain, up here inside your head…it’s only a little bigger than your fist and it's divided in four lobes, but it’s making stronger since we born, no matter how we are, we all have thoughts and desires guiding us to a future filled with adventures that only our own brains can see, or maybe this is not an adventure, it’s just a boring and predictable movie, or a chess match against the life itself, all of that is only possible because of our brains working all together at the same time, seeing different realities and perspectives; I’m not very good to understand all the different points of view in a situation, but some people can, their brains are amazing; also we are all able to think and imagine other kind of things maybe extremely different from my thoughts.

As I said, our brains are getting stronger and faster every day, probably just by reading this words your brain is improving itself right now, we are always seeing, listening, touching, smelling and tasting the world around us, and all that experiences improve our brains and after that, improve us,what we do, our decisions and desires, our dreams and hopes, even our deepest secrets, our brain

 keep all of that, and is always ready for some action unexpected for us.  

That’s why we are wonderful machines and capable to solve problems, create cities and even entire continents, and also it can destroy all of that, just because we have a brain working for us, with us, and if you want to, against us. We decide what we can eat, how to study, how we fall in love, but a healthy brain it’s very difficult to me to differentiate. Would you draw the line between an insane and a healthy mind?

The Best Concert Ever

I love music, a good song gives me a lot of fun and makes me feel in a beautiful environment no matter where or how I am in that moment, but a live concert is the same music with the feeling multiplied for one thousand, the adrenaline and dopamine fills all the present public, with an atmosphere of good music and a crowd of music lovers. I try to go to any possible concert, but it’s always difficult, I can’t go to all the concerts I want, until this date, I’ve only been in classical music concerts as a member of an orchestra or as a member of the public, same thing with rock and metal concerts, playing and listening covers and original hard music.

A little photograph I took

The best concert I remember took place this same year, at the O’Higgins Park, on April 1^st, the Lollapalooza; there I heard many kinds of music, but more specifically I heard Metallica’s concert. Metallica is a heavy and thrash metal band raised in Los Angeles, United States; in the concert I was able to saw the four members of the band, on flesh and bones, the place was filled with a huge crowd of people, even four of five hours before the event, with the concert of Rancid, another great band of punk rock, on both of them was an environment just a little suffocating, but with the time and with the moshes the space there grew up a little, but been there was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.

A country I would like to visit

With all the movies I’ve seen and the videogames I’ve played is really difficult to chose a specific place or country to visit to, especially because I’ve never been to another country or traveled on a plane, so that’s a little sad to me, and I want to travel around the world at any simple chance to do it, but if I only had one chance to chose only one place to visit, it would be Venice, Italy.

Venice is a really lovely place to travel in my opinion, and not only for the gondolas and channels, I felt in love with Venice just for the Carnival of Venice, it’s a huge festival with two weeks of many masks, costumes, make up, music, dance, theater and a lot of other public events, it would be an amazing experience for me if I could go there as a tourist only for a day or two…maybe three. Is not my plan to stay there, becuase my home is here, in Chile, I have no reason to live there, for the moment.

But Venice is only a city, and the title says a country, so the entire Italy would be my touristic target, from north to south, Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome, Napoli, Tuscany, and finally Sicilia. All this cities have an interesting history and an amazing architecture, it would be a dream to me just to spend a week in Italy, the language is not very difficult, the gastronomy is perfect even for the most demanding tastes, and the whole country is a boot!!! (Except for Sicilia and Sardegna of course). So even if I’ve never been there I really recommend a travel over there, you will never regret it.

Greetings, and good bye

For an unknown reason it’s a little easy to me to write what I’m thinking (In Spanish), at least it’s easier than talk, but writing this blogs I’ve experimented some interesting things, like some opinions and thoughts that not even me know that I have, also was good for some old memories about me and the things I like to do.

This semester was extremely useful to me because I’ve never wrote things directly from my mind until your mind, because I’ve always wrote what I saw on a whiteboard, so that’s why I thing I’ve improved a lot my writing skills and my vocabulary, and learned why I don’t have to use the Google translator.

In a future I would like to keep writing about everything, if you can think it, you can write it so I’d like to never let my sloth winning me and just see how the time goes on without give my opinion to this world, I don’t care if nobody reads me, or even if everyone reads me, I’ve learned to share my thoughts and it felt very good, it was very relaxing, including the opportunity to read my classmates posts.

Thanks to everyone.

A nearly far future

I have no the enough creativity or imagination to think in a future in 20 years, and I have no the optimism to create an utopic world, but if someone ask me about the future I can think in the song ‘’imagine’’ from John Lennon, it’s a beautiful song specially because it gives me some expectations for a good future, no matter the difficulties.

Returning to the real world, I can only think about a future where everyone are trying to don’t hate the world we’re living on, not much different from now, a difficult life immersed in selling and buying stuff to survive this world, attempting to accept the different people no matter how we are in general, because we are filled with many kinds of people and every year we have more and more people, and not everyone are going to accept this fact, but if we want to improve this world we just have to work together, and if we don’t do that, I’m not sure, maybe we fall in another big war, the resources are going to disappear and the life are going to extinct.

It’s a little sad to think about the last things, but I was just trying to think all the possible points of view.

A course I enjoy

This is my first year in the university, and I chose my career, chemistry, because I love science and how the Mother Nature works, so I think my favorite course is general chemistry I, because it’s the course where I’ve most improved my knowledge about chemistry, even more than laboratory or the introductive course. This is a course totally theoretical, I just have to hear the words of my teacher and write in my notebook the most important parts, I have to be very concentrated in the class or I just get lost and misunderstand all the class. I don’t think I chose this course because the teacher, and as a first year student, I can’t create my schedule, so I just like it because the contents, for example, now I’m studying stoichiometry, that means, calculating the mass or the percentage of a reactive or product on a reaction, I’ve seen this content before but now I’m learning new methods to solve problems of that kind and new forms to see the reactions, so that is very exciting for me, to know even more points of view to solve simple and complicated problems related with chemistry.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

If I talk about movies, I can say that my favorite genre is Sci-Fi, so my favorite movies are all the things related with spaceships, other planets, laser spades and ‘’may the force be with you’’… if you don’t guess what movie or movies I’m talking about, don’t worry, it’s the Star Wars saga. I love those movies, all of them, they have a good story, good scenes and extremely epic moments in my opinion. I saw them in the chronological order when I was a child, so that made me enjoy the entire story without having a knowledge about the characters in the ‘’future’’ present in the first movies at the end of the 70’s. Now I have all the original movies, posters and even action figures of the characters.

About series, I have no a favorite genre, or any favorite specific TV shows or series, so I’m going to make a top 5, but the first one is not going to be my favorite and the fifth one is not going to be my least favorite.

Spartacus, Breaking bad, Game of thrones, Da Vinci’s demons and American Horror Story.

And I think that’s it, I have no much more to say about series. The only thing I would like to include in the post is that I watch anime, but currently with the university I have no time for that.

Who is the person that I admire?

That is a really difficult question to me, because I don’t have a person that I admire at all, I think that the people I saw in books of history or even chemistry are people who made a great difference in the world we are living in, but if someone asks me who I admire over all the people…I wouldn’t have a very good answer to that.

Now that I’m thinking (and after a long time thinking), I can say that my favorite person in human history is Leonardo da Vinci, he was a scientist, so I think I can talk about him in my post. He was born in April 15^th 1452...And I have to say…my birthday is on April 16^th, so I think that’s awesome.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian biologist, mathematic, engineer, painter, sculptor, and many other things, he was a very complete person, he could make a lot of contributions to the modern science, with a lot of inventions and models to create in a future. The life of da Vinci was a little complicated considering the world context he was, he was the son of a banker in the last years of the middle ages, so the expectations for him was really high, but he didn’t choose that path, he preferred to dedicate himself to the observation method and learning all the possible things around him.

So that’s my answer, that is the person I admire more than every other. 

These are some pictures of him and some sketches.

A common photograph

This is not a simple photo for me, I took it, and the people you see in that photo are my best friends, well…the guy on the left is my best friend since we was starting secondary and the girl is his girlfriend, but we are really good friends and we make a lot of things together.

The story  of this photo is not long, interesting or unbelievable at all, but for me it means a lot of things, the last summer we spend a week in Isla Negra just for relax after the PSU, so that’s it, but I never have done something like that before, been a whole week out of my home, away of my family just for fun and relax was something that I really didn’t expected, but it was an amazing experience for me, to be in a campfire, spend the whole night with friends in a long really long conversation, eat some fries every day...I’m losing the words to describe that kind of feelings.

When comes the moment to be really comfortable with yourself and the others around you? That was my moment.

About technology

Well, the first thing I would say is that i love technology, I’m a geek in that way, and that’s because I always think that a piece of technology could be extremely useful for humanity, even if we use it just for fun. For example me, I love videogames, that’s why my favorite piece of technology is my computer, but I don’t use it only for that, I can watch videos, movies, study, make my homework and all kind of things, also I have a Xbox to play even more games.

But when I was a child, I didn’t had any of this things, and in summers, I like to travel to the beach and leave my geek stuff at home, just to escape the routine, and that is why if I would move to an island without any kind of technology I think that would not be the world’s end, I can live without technology but my life is easier with it.

Some hobbies I have

If someone ask me about my main hobby, that would be a very difficult question to answer, because I like to do a lot of things, but I never have enough time to dedicate mysellf to other activities.

I like music, listen and play music are hobbies that I do often. I would like to compose new music, but is really difficult to me, so I can just play music how other person does.

Also I like to dedicate time to videogames; I have a computer which I can play a lot of single player and multiplayer games. This kind of things relax me a lot and make me forget some problems when I think in the possibility of travel to ‘‘other worlds’’.

In some of my free times I enjoy to cook, especially sweet food, like cakes, cupcakes and lemon pies, because it’s funny to me be able to create new things and beneficiate to myself and others with that.

These are some of my hobbies that I do, I have others, but…I’m going to leave here this post.

Why did I choose this career

What are you going to study?

When I was a child my parents, teachers and friends make me this simple question, but many years later I was sure about what is my decision for my career. First I was thinking to be a teacher, years later a musician, but I think music is just a hobby, I play music when I want to, but if I’m tired or bored I just don’t play music, so I had to make a choice that I knew I would be passionate for, no matter how sad, frustrated or tired I was; so I choose science.

Before of chemistry,  I liked all the sciences, but I knew I couldn’t study all of that, so my goal was study chemistry in University of Chile, chemistry because I thing is a science extremly interesting, chemistry explains a lot of things about the world we are living. So here I am…This is what I like and is my own choice, so I’m very happy with that and I hope to have a nice time here in the faculty.

Who am I?

I'm Matías Andres Rojas Hormazabal, I was born on Friday 16th 1999 at 2:00 a.m. in Independencia, Santiago. I’m son of Jose and Mary, and brother of Jose Manuel and Ignacio. I lived my whole life in Quilicura, and I studied in Santa Maria school, my whole primary and secondary education.

Since 2011, I started to take piano classes, that make me to be interested in music, and my dream was to become a very talented pianist, but that dream couldn't come true because two years later a tendinitis in both hands until now makes me uncomfortable to play piano. But now I am still playing music with other instruments like cello, bass and a little bit of keyboard.

Many years ago I've been very interested in chemistry, I got good marks and helped my classmates with their homework on high school. That's the reason I'm now studying Chemistry in university of Chile. Nowadays I’m still living with my family in Quilicura, were my hobbies are play video games, cooking and play music with friends.

I want to share now pictures of my instruments and me playing a cello...thanks for reading.
(Sorry for the quality)