Transantiago

Transantiago is a public transport system which is WF apply on Santiago city by the Government, who thought thought that the last public transport system was very bad, because the infrastructure of the buses was very damaged, there were a lot of traffic jams all the time and because –the most general explanation- the system was very disastrous.
Regarding the previous statement, is that the government decided to change the system and apply a new one which his goal was to overcome the problems I mentioned previously –and other secondary problems too. So, the system contemplate 3 things:
1. Organize Santiago in 10 areas which belong to different towns. Every area has a color and a letter to identify it.
2. Different types of buses:
- Troncal services: these connect the areas delimitated by Transantiago, crossing important sites of Santiago. These are white with a green line.
- Local services: these work into the different areas, and drive the users to specific places of the area. These are of the colour of their area and have a white line.
3. Participation with WW “Metro de Santiago”: Metro operates like troncal services.




According with the last, I think that some objectives are exceeded, but other problems appear now, like the people are always squashed and also that the buses don’t past all the time; you have to wait a lot to take a bus. But I think that the biggest problem is that the authorities SVA don’t accomplished their promises, so the users are very angry with that and feel that their requires are not listened.
Something that I think is a good idea is “Bip! card”, because when you get on the bus, it’s more quickly. The problem is that is very expensive and the people which are not from Santiago, or even Chile, don’t have one, so they have to buy it once and then they don’t use it again.
My experience with Transantiago it’s quite well now, but when it appears I was very angry because I didn’t have a “Student card” –which is cheaper- and I wasn’t determine to pay near $400 to go to my home. So the first year I decided to used my bike and/or walk to everywhere. Now that I have it, I use more “Transantiago” and it’s nos disagree to me, because the place where I live, there are the biggest problems of the system, there are only details… but it’s incredible when I go to Plaza Italia, for example, in the week at night and see the biiiig lines waiting the buses.
To fix Transantiago, I think that the ticket has to be cheaper… I think, if you travel by bus in Santiago 2 times, the cost is near $1000, so you spend like $30000 in a month… it’s too much!
Another thing is that it has to be more buses, and finally, the people which are not from Santiago, need more access to this public transport… or maybe, a good –but crazy- idea is that make that the public transport could operate in whole Chile.

"Almost Famous"

Today, the teacher asks us to talk about any theme, and that it’s so very difficult because there are a lot of topics that we can talk about, so thinking a lot, I decided to talk about my favorite movie, and it is “Almost Famous” (there are more, like “Great Expectation”, “Before Sunset”/”Before Sunrise”, “Virgin Suicides”, “Being John Malkovich” and “High Fidelity”, but talk about everyone it’s so difficult, and it would be ending like a biiiig text)
“Almost Famous” is a movie directed by Cameron Crowe, and it’s based on one of his life experience.
The story is about a boy who loves rock music and likes to write. Because of that “Rolling Stone” magazine calls him to make an article about a rock band call “Stillwater”, which is on his peak. He accepts the challenge, besides his mother’s opinion and his age –he is only a boy, so he lies to “Rolling Stone” magazine to make the article.
William (that’s boy’s name) goes with Stillwater ’73 tour and travel with them around U.S.A. The band received him very well and were very excited with his presence, because they are the typical band which is successful, but started to going down because the money and the excessive fame… they were “living the dream”.
I love this movie because the soundtrack, the characters and the story, because it’s very simple but achieves to touch you in a special way. The first time I saw it, I dreamed to have an experience that William has, but obviously I understand now that it’s impossible.
I think the movie it’s very important in my life because I felt identified with William, because he loves the same bands as me, like Led Zeppelin, The Who, Rolling Stones and all that appear in the movie, and also because I had my sister influence in that taste of music, like him too. Finally, the movie was like a door to know more bands of that type and almost fall in love with them.
Really, It’s a very good movie I recommended to everyone when they ask me “could you recommend me a movie, please?... so don’t lose it if you don’t have seen it!!

Here is the trailer, if you want to see it

Good and bad points

Today I’m going to talk about the good and bad points about the first term of this year, 2009.
First of all, it is very important to consider that the last semester was my first one in university, so during it, I have discovered and learnt a lot of different and interesting things, but at the same time, I have lived a lot of other things that disgust me very much.
According with the last idea I have mentioned, the good things of the first term of 2009 are in relation with my family, my career, my extra activities and with my social life.
About my career, I’m very happy with it, because I have learnt a lot of different themes that I have never heard about. I mean that all my life I’ve learnt ordinary things at school, like math, history or literature, but about anthropology and their topics, never! So that has involved me in a very entertaining atmosphere and also motivated me to study very much.
But nothing is perfect. Obviously I had boring classes, like Biology or Methodology of Social Science, because they touched contents that doesn’t motivated to me, especially Biology. I hate it! But making a general evaluation according with university, it was a very nice semester.

Regarding with my free time, I was very busy because I used it having two extra-activities: sell brownies and participated in the organization of a social project called “Semanas Culturales”. Both spend a lot of time, because with the first one I have to cook almost every day and stay in touch with my clients who put a lot of pressure on me all the weeks, and many times, in a very weird hours of the day, (once, someone called to my cell phone at 8 am!). But all this effort worth, because during the year, I could save all the money that I need to satisfy my necessities. About the second one, “Semanas Culturales”, the time that I have spended also worth because I knew a lot of people, but the most important thing is that everything works perfectly and the beneficiated people was very happy and touched with our work.

To finish with this, now I’m going to talk about my family and my friends, because my relationship with them was better that I spected. I was very scared because I had much activities and maybe it could be difficult to spend time with them… but it doesn’t! I think that my bond with my sisters and parents past to an other level, because I feel that now exist more confidence and we talk more than the last year. Sincerely, I don’t have bad things to talk about this theme, and either about my friends, because they were a support to me… they were almost all the time talking to me and we stay in touch almost every day, and that was great, because I was very scared too to lost my relation with them.

Well, that was a kind of “resume” of the first term of 2009. I hope you like it!

A country I would like to visit

The country I would like to visit the most is Germany, especially because it’s a place with a lot of history and old constructions that has many to tell us about the country and its population.
The things I know about it are the most about history, especially of the World Wars, but I know that's not all about Germany, and festivities like October Fest are very attractive to travel there and share with germans. Other thing that it’s very attractive to want to visit this country is that it has been like the cot of a lot important philosophers, like Nietzsche, Hegel, Heiddeger and many others.
Continuing with these ideas is that I would like to visit important places that commemorate significant dates of history, like Martin Lutero’s Protestant Reformation or Adolf Hitler’s government. With that, it could be very exciting to visit museums with philosophy information, but I think that the most exciting idea related with that, it could be to talk with a german about all these things and have interesting conversations about the last themes I talk about.
Another important thing to me for visiting Germany is that I would like to go on October, because of October Fest and because people says that Germany it’s very beautiful in Winter.
I think it would be very difficult to study there, because I have to learn their language (which is very difficult). After that, I happily study there, because there’s a lot of humanistic things that people learn there and it’s a different school, comparing with Chile in my case.