Keep calm and read a book!

Since I was a little kid, I have considered myself as a “book worm”. As the year passed, I have deduced that me being a book lover was a direct result from one of the first “big” books that I read: Matilda, from Roald Dahl. If you are not familiar with this tittle (or haven’t watch the movie either), it’s about a little girl who was a book worm and because of that, she was very advanced for his age in the school. But the cool part –maybe what inspired me to read so much- was that she developed sort of a mental power that allowed her to move things at will.

A long the years I have developed a taste for a wide range of literature, reading mostly novels. I would say that my favorite topics are: detective/police/thriller/a-killer-in-on-the-loose-run-for-your-life (like Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Santlofer); historical novels (Pearl S. Buck); travels and adventures (George R.R. Martin); and well, as a girl, romances -but the Jane Austen’s, not the one of Corin Tellado- and girlie comedy (Meg Cabot). Aside of the authors I named above, I should add Alexander Dumas, as one of my favorites with his master piece “The Count of Monte-Cristo”.

With the University and all I have to read for it, I haven’t had too much time to read new novels (even when I keep buying and piling new ones). So now I’m just rereading “Pride and Prejudice”, but this time I’m doing it in English (the first time was in spanish). If you are not familiar with the plot, you are in great danger of get very embarrass in public, ‘cause this novel is a classic (not just in romances, but in English literature). In a few word the story line goes like this: There is the Bennet family, with five daughters and a mother who is desperate to marry all of them. Then, one day comes to the village a rich man, Mr. Bingley, with his even richer friend, the proud Mr. Darcy. While the first one fell for the elder Bennet sister, Darcy meets the second daughter; Elizabeth (Keira Knightley in the 2005 film). Here they begin a game of hate, pride and prejudice, which ends (spoiler alert!) in these two character falling in love. This is a very good book, especially if you are longing for a very well written, but at the same time, sweet love story.

Just as a final word, I must add that books are not just to learn about something, but is a way to lead you imagination fly and travel to places that you just can dream of. For the same reason I support (and invite you to do the same) the campaign “libro sin IVA” (http://www.librossiniva.cl/).

Cheers! :)

"Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray"

Today I wanted to talk about a very interesting article that I found on the internet; "Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray", written by Ian Sample.

The present article tells us how the founding of an ancient Homo Erectus skull forced the scientific community to rethink the theory of the human evolution.

In Georgia -specifically in  Dmanisi- on 2005 was found the oldest remains of a human ancestor; an 2,4 million years old skull. This skull was older than any other Homo Erectus found in Africa (to where presumably the H. Erectus comes from) and did not differ much from it. After different studies and investigation, anthropologist, as David Lordkipanidze -who leads the Dmanisi excavations-, stared to theorize that maybe all the assortment “homo” species could be just one with a wide diversity.
 

What it’s mean? In a few words, that if this latest theory is accepted, all the different “homos” –rudolfensis, ergaster, habilis, etc-  will disappear, and become all part from the same evolutionary  taxonomic line. But this new idea also has detractors, like Chris Stringer, who defends the thought that due to the huge size of Africa, it’s impossible that all of the African species are just the variety of the Homo Erectus. However, he does not deny that  different species could be part of the same lineage.
 

Being this one of the latest anthropology discussion, you can go and read the article through this link: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution

 

Anime! 日本製アニメ !

So, today’s topic is ANIME! In my mum’s words “monos chinos”. Actually anime is the Japanese cartoon, which most of the time –if it’s not always- is based in a manga (Japanese comic book that you read backwards).

I have seen a lot of anime, mostly in my teen’s year. First stated as something that my brother did, watching “Saint Seiya”, then I used to watch “The sailor moon” with a childhood friend and as the years passed, with my brother and sister begin to watch anime together, being our favorites “Dragon Ball”, “Case Closed” (known as “Detective Conan” in Spanish), “Yu-Gi-Oh”, “HunterxHunter”, “Naruto”,  “Hellsing”, “Host Club” and “Death Note”.

Looking backwards, I think that the anime “Case Closed” could be the one that most influenced me, because even if now I don’t watch as much anime as I used to, I still love a good detective story, especially if it is one written by Agatha Christie. It’s funny that the main character, Conan, was not a Christie’s fan, but a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’ fan, while his opponent/friend Heiji was devoted to Christie’s work.

As a final word, I think that there is a huge differences between the Anime and the USA’s cartoon, not just in the drawing itself, but also in the topics that they address, being the anime much deeper that the North American cartoon. 

Cheers! :)

Next destination? :)

As I said in an earlier post, I love travelling, so when I got asked to write about a country I would like to visit is quite difficult to pick. Three years ago I was very lucky because I got the opportunity to do an exchange year. So, for 10 months I lived in Germany. There, I traveled as much as I could, visiting many of countries that I have dreamt about since I was a kid; England, Italy, France, Hungary, etc. However, as ambitious as I am, now I really wish to visit New Zealand. Why so far? Maybe that is one of the reason, is quite far. But mostly, there lives a very dear friend of mine. Her name is Anita and she was hosted by my family during her exchange year in Chile on 2009. We became very close and we still write and send e-mails to each other. Before her I didn’t know too much about her country, but after her I learnt a lot of it.

The landscapes and weather are very similar to the center-south of Chile (you can easily see that if you watch The Lord of the Rings movie), but being New Zealand two island so far away from the continent resulted in a wide spectrum of species that you can only found there. Also I found very interesting that the country is geographically divided in two islands.

Because New Zealand was a British colony, they have a lot of british culture; scones, driving on the left side, “good saves the Queen”, and so on. But before the brits, the Maories used to inhabit these two islands, what resulted in a “cultural blend”, that is still going in our days.

I need to find an excuse to go there and finally meet Anita’s family, visit Wellington, Auckland, the south island. Do some trekking around the many valley and volcanoes that they have. Take me pictures with Kiwis (the bird) while eating a kiwi (the fruit), etc. I think that mi ideal would be going there to work for a couple of months, and then, travel around for a few more months. And not just travel in NZ, because I would be already quite far from Chile so I should make the most of it and go to Australia, Papua New Guinea, Bali, Taiwan, etc., where ever the wind would take me :)

Telly!

The revolution that television meant is totally undeniable.  As all in life, the television brought many good things as well as bad ones. On one hand the TV became very quickly the most important mass media of all, transmitting messages and news on a much faster way than before and bringing the family and neighbours together –or that is what I have been told by my mom- . Nevertheless, nowadays the TV (and also computers and videogames) keep the children inside the house, they don’t go to play outside.  That I found it very shocking ‘cause I spent a big part of my childhood playing in the mud with friends and not as much  enclosed with a box.

At present I don’t watch that big deal of telly either, usually to get me some company while eating lunch. In fact, if I watch it, I mostly tune the cable TV, ‘cause I like to watch series and not so much of soap operas and reallitys shows. The Chilean television is plagued with the last two. About our national telly I find that is mostly show gosip programs –I know that also there is news, but I prefer to read it online- and not much of cultural programme. I thing that programs like “Maravillozoo” and “31 minutos” should come back.

Early I wrote that I like watching tv series, but I must confess that I do not watch it on the tv, but online. This is because most of the series I like are foreign, mainly UK and USA. Actually I do watch a lot of series, all from very different genre, and it would be kind of difficult to make a top 5 list, so I’m just going to write what have been my favourites:

 Doctor Who, 31 minutos, Friends, Doctor House, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Criminal Minds, New Girl, North and South, Castle, The big bang Theory, Once Upon a Time, True Blood, Downtown Abbey, Community…

I thing that with this list should be enough  to schedule a lazy weekend at home :)

pd: "Telly" is the informal way the British call the TV... there is a hole Doctor Who episode about it ...nerd fact of the day