Sightseeing in Oslo

Last week I went to Norway with other mates from my school because we joined an exchange with another school there, so each one of us had to live with a Norwegian family.

Briefly, I think it has been the best week of my life. But for me the highlight was the visit to Oslo. We went two times, once all Spanish students and our Norwegian partners and another one just Spanish students. I had a lot of fun both times. 

In the first one, we visited two Viking museums and then we went to a famous park in Oslo. I really enjoyed the museums; they had inside them ancient Viking ships and a lot of interesting things related to the Vikings and Norwegian history in general. Anyway, the best moment of the day took place in the park. Fortunately, this year has been one of the most snow-covered ones, so they were snow anywhere. Especially in that park there were big amounts of snow, about three meters tall. The combination between friends and snow resulted in a snow fight that is actually one of my best memories from the trip.  I felt as a kid playing with snow for the first time in his life (and in fact for me it was).

The second day was more touristic than the other: we saw the Royal Palace, the City Hall of Oslo, the Nobel Peace Centre and the Opera. I loved all those places because they were like unique and different from the others; each one had something characteristic and pretty. I also notice two things while sightseeing in the city. In first place, I was surprised because of the cleanliness of the streets: I never saw a paper on the floor. Another thing was the silence: thanks to that I felt more relaxed and calmed.

The only thing than in fact I didn’t enjoy so much from the trip to Oslo was the expensiveness of all the products in shops or restaurants: it’s one of the most expensive cities that I have never visited. 

Anyway, I enjoyed the whole experience and I had a really good time. I fall in love with that marvellous city and I hope that I will be able to go back at any time in the future.

DECIDING WHO TO KILL

It was one of those summer days, when nothing was to be done, that my brother suggested seeing the film “I robot”. Not that I expected much from it, but I just decided to give it a try. I remember seeing all those human robots, self-driving cars and high-tech instruments with that feeling of: “at least we are not like that”.

The thing is that lately I’ve been realizing how close we actually are to this kind of mechanized society. I’ll bet you’ve all heard about the self-driving cars that are already in the market. Those cars are not only there so that people don’t have to drive but indeed they are suppose to decide, better than humans, what to do in the road. These cars are making decisions for us.

As I looked more deeply into the topic, I came across what seems to be the biggest problem when talking about self-driving cars: the ethical issue. As I said before, these cars have to decide what’s better for us, and that’s not an easy task. Imagine your car is driving down a very narrow road by a cliff and suddenly a bunch of kinds appear in the middle of the road. With no time to stop, your options are basically two: kill the kids and safe yourself or, on the other hand, do a left turn and fall off the cliff. Kind of a hard decision there. If you were the one driving you would probably go for the second option, more of a reflex than for the moral issue. Anyway, if the car is driving itself, the decision made would be the one implemented by the programmer, so it has nothing to do with reflexes. Between the two options, killing the kids might seem to be the wrong choice. But if the car decided to do a left  turn, it would mean killing yourself. And who would buy a car that would rather safe others than you? These self-driving cars are supposed to be safer and avoid accidents but, at what cost?

Obviously this situation mentioned is not very likely to happen, but programmers have to prepare these cars for everything. I found this ethical problem quite interesting. When I first heard about it, it struck me how these cars are actually deciding who to kill. We, then, would be putting our lives in a robot’s hands.

Google's self-driving car

Do you know how to win?

Some weeks ago I had a swimming competition. Here in Madrid at world of swimming,this competición is almost the most important one that you have in each year. Why I have said "almost "each year? Because you have 2 competitions like that in the whole year. But, you can only go to one of them or maybe, if you are lucky you can go to both.

 This is difficult to explain, but, if your swimming club is in the top 8 of your división your club can participate in the next competition, in summer.

In this competition what you look for is, either getting in the top 8 and go to the summer competition or being the second or the first club and then move to the next división that it's over yours. The punctuation it's easy to understand:

Each club decides the best swimmer for each swimming trial to compete on. Only one swimmer from each club that can win more or maybe less points depending on his final position. From the first to the 18th place.

So this is the only way each club can compite with others, because this is not a team sport.

Normally all clubs are really interested in this competition, and there are people shouting and cheering their club mates.

 My club it's not the best you are going to see but, the first day of the competition we were in the eight place with 80 points, and we were really excited because it was the first time we were in that position. Unfortunately there are two days when your club is going to compete, and also unfortunately the best swimmers competed the first day.

 I was really excited, because that day I had achived the time in 200 metres breastroke to go to the Nacional Competition in Spain, and we could go to the second competition too. But I didn't expect how horrible was going to be the second day. Almost every swimmer in our club got the last or even the 17th position. I was getting nervous, two boys and me could get better positions but it was imposible to keep the eight place. What really annoyed me was that almost all our swimmers where really desmotivated, they came to the competition that way. And if you add that with the thing that almost all the swimmers that came the second day were the laziest ones, you can imagine why I was so frustrated. We finished being the 12th and the two boys and me were really annoyed. We talked about that with our trainer, but he told us that all the people in our club had to compete, something that I desagree with, because if you are lazy and you are not going to train for winning, and helping this club to succeed, why are you going to compete?

 Anyway I got really frustrated and I forgot that I had achived going to the Nacional Competition only because some people lost their trials and not going to one competition.

Also I was really surprised about these because when I went home I was really desmotivated and frustrated and also up to now I think my trainer could have chosen other people to compete.

But, what do you think?

Do you think I was exaggerating? Do you think you would agree with my trainer? Think about being one of those lazy boys, do you think it would be fair for them if only compete the best swimmers?

What a day...

A few days ago I was cleaning up my closet, and found one of the most special dresses for me: the one that my host family gave me, the very first day of my exchange year in Malaysia. Suddenly, all the memories about that day, came to my head.

It was a very hot day (i would soon realize that a "hot day" for me, was an average day in Malaysia), and I was feeling like a kid that just woke up to open Christmas presents. All the exchange students and me, were staying in a hotel, while waiting for our families from all the country to come. The volunteers of the organization, encorage us to prepare a performance of something tipical of our country for the presentation ceremony. With other Spanish girl (that actually felt  more Catalan than Spanish), danced the closest thing to Sevillana dance that we could. After that, we did what  were waiting for all the morning. Meet our new family. 

The first minutes were a bit awkward, and when I got into the huge van with my five siblings and parents I had the first suprise. They were bringing me to my first Malay wedding. My sister gave my a dress that i'd keep forever, and we got ready to the occasion. I could write pages and pages of twhat happened after that, but to summeriez it, I'll just focus on the most memorable moments. First shock: "salam", an arabic word used in the Malay language by muslims that means 'peace'. Is what you must say when you meet new people, specially for the elders. You have to sincronize that  word with the hands movements: hold the person's hand, and head it to your foredhead and, after that, three kisses. Second shock: "makan", eat. It might not sound like something special but, do you imagne yourself  having dinner when your only cutlery is your own hand? It was very funny when the rice spilled between my fingers, and very embarrasing at the same time. The third and last shock was also related with food: "pedas", spicy. All the food there, was very very very very very spicy. At the point that I felt my toung like burning. 

All those exciting moments, were just the begining of what would be a year full of stories, wonderfull moments and not that good moments as well. I'ts hard to describe my feelings during that day, but definitly, i'd love to experience that again. 

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A TRIP TO A NORWEGIAN SUPERMARKET


Me and some friends travelled to Norway for a school trip. We were in Hokksund for a week, and because of an exchange we were living with a norwegian family. We visited the city, discovered new places and met new and nice kind people and we went to the Norwegian high school too.
One of that days, we were supposed to have a break after English classes. When the class had finished, my friends and I wanted to go to the supermarket to buy some chocolate for our families. In Norway, everything is really expensive, so we were looking for the cheapest shop. First, we looked at a small supermarket called Rema but we decided to continue the search.
We walked through the cold and white snow, and after five minutes we were in other supermarket called Kiwi, but the chocolate was even more expensive. After considering the options we had, we saw other friends walking across the frozen street and we decided to join them. They were looking for chocolate too and knew a shop which had a big discount. One of them was guiding us with the telephone, because he had asked it for the direction of the place. It took 25 minutes walking through the snowy city until we arrived at an enormous shopping center. In the way, we saw an old woman mounted in a type of sledge. We got surprised to see an elderly person skating in the street. We thought that it was the typical  Norwegian shopping basket, prepared for the snow places.
In the shopping center, we entered into the first food shop we met. And the chocolate was at double prize! So we asked the cashier about the discount we had heard and he directed us to a small shop next to that one. Then, we could buy four chocolate bars for one hundred crowns (like ten euros). After that, we could leave the mall with our bags full of tasty sweets.
Then, we realized that we had to meet the teachers in fifteen minutes and it took twenty five for arriving there! Some of us started running to be on time at the school. We saw the old woman with lots of bags in her sledge again and we laughed at that situation. One boy wanted to arrive earlier and decided to take a shortcut, so he started walking in the snow. But he didn't know that under that white layer, there was one metre of snow hidden so, in two seconds he had sank his body in the snow. We were all laughing at him because of the cold and the -8ºC of the place.
After that curius jorney, we achieved the goal we wanted. We arrived on time and could join the rest of the class with our trophies made of sweet and tasty chocolate.
Visiting new places can be really interesting and satisfactory for everyone. It also helps you to get on better in an unknown city. That can be not only a situation to be brave, but also it makes you feel comfortable with your way and especially, when you are with other people, so you pass fun times and enjoy all together those adventures of your life.

Taking Care Of Enviroment

This week I have been in Norway, that very cold country full of snow and money. I was enjoying this trip when I realised that there, on Norway, they take a lot of care with their cities and villages. There are almost no papers on the streets, the high school was totally clean and the woods were perfectly carefulled. This differences wtih Spain, forced me to think about our world, and how are we treating it.
At first, I think we have to clear that taking care of the enviroment is as important as taking care of ourselfs. Nowadays, the climate change it's a fact, we can see it perfectly, so this Blog want to make this world better, from that point we cleared before.
Now, how can we improve our system?
The first thing we can do it's about our hands. Recycling it's not as popular as we think. There are, even now, families were they don't have diferent places to throw the trash. This is very important, because is a small but symbolic act, that affects everyone. Everything similar to this would be essential to ensure our future.
Other things we need to do is demanding to our goverments to make something. Lots of people argue that they cant do anything really important. But that is false. Our goverments can, and we are suposed to choose them. So, lets go, lets make this worrld a better place. Just to go to a demonstration or just sign a petition would be helping a lot.
To conclude, our future is dificult, but with a litlle bit of effort we can make it better. Also don't forget to talk with your families and friends about this, all the people must be aware of this problem. Norway is an example to follow, is a proof that we can make it better, and I hope we'll do it.
Any thoughts about this topic?

Warming up for the season

Last saturday, I played my first chess tournament of the year. I hadn´t really practised that much during Christmas and I wanted to see where my level  actually was.

It was held on Chamartin´s train station and is celebrated once every year.. This tournamnet is well renowned among the chess community and strong players tend to participate as there are some juicy rewards. This was the third time I attended the tournament. I hadn´t won any considerable prize before, but this year I had the feeling it was going to be different.

The tournament consisted of seven rounds at a rapid pace, this meant we had only ten minutes on the clock. The first three rounds were relatively easy. I faced younger opponents that played great chess. On the other hand, they lacked a little bit of experience playing this kind of tournaments and that gave me the edge.

However, everything changed in the fourth round as I was matched up against, arguably, the best player in the tournament. In addition, we had to play in the first table where all the attention was mainly focused. I was a little bit nervous as this was, probably, the most important match of the tournament for me. The game stayed quite calmly among the opening. But in the middle game, I missed a tactic and he obtained one pawn of advantage. At this level, that was all my opponent needed in order to carry the game defeat me.

In spite of this loss, I didn´t give up. I continued playing at my highest level and ended up winning the other three matches, some of them against really strong opponents. 

After seven rounds, I obtained six out of seven points and finished sixth overall in the tournament. This was the best result I had ever had in this tournament. I also won fifty euros in prizes, the icing of the cake for a great performance.

I left the tournament with great sensations. Not only I stayed at the top positions during the whole tournament , but I aslo defeated some players I hadn ´t ever beaten before. In the end, I felt really satisfied with my performance in the tournament which has given me a great boost of confidence that will definately help me to start the season in the best possible way

Airport afternoon

I’m going to talk about my last experience in the airport. It’s about the last activity of CAS of creativity that I had done, the past twenty-seven of December. I went to a specific location, near to Barajas Airport. It’s a typical location to do a spotting of the planes who arrives and all of this things. If you don’t know about that I’m a freak of commercial aeroplanes, I like them so much. And I went to the airport to take some pictures of the live traffic aeroplanes.  I had really hype about that because this was the first time that I went to the airport to take pictures with my camera and I look before some webs about spotting in Barajas Airport. The fantastic results of the session of pictures that perfectly conveys the feeling I have when I go to the airport, it’s a very difficult sensation, it’s a mix of euphoria and nerves. That sensation is transmitted in the photos that I took the pas twenty-five of December. I know that not everybody likes this type of practising because sometimes is so boring, especially when you are waiting for the next flight arrival.

When I take a picture of a rare plane I feel very happy, as if I had managed to find something very complicated, as if I had done something very special that not everyone can get.

And what’s about you, do you like to do the same as me?

Postscript: here I leave one of the photos of the last session

Carpe Diem nowadays

A week ago, after having had lunch with my family I spent a while watching a french comedy which title I don't remember. The film was  about a man that was only concerned about enjoying life and having fun. He didn't payed so much attention to his job or his phisical appearance. He just did what he needed to survive and have fun.

It made me remember of the topic Carpe Diem, which basically means this, seize the day. And this thought took me to one of the best adaptations (in my opinion) of this topic: the film "Dead Poets Society". It is about a group of students from a high level high school that come across a literature teacher that shows them a completeley new world where they can enjoy their lifes not being focused only on their subjects or on their parents.

This may all seem meaningless but I think it's much more complex than what we tend to think. Nowadays, it's quite difficult to reach the Carpe Diem, that status where the only thing you care about is enjoying what you do. There are so many obligations and problems we could spend all day thinking about that drive us away from enjoying our lifes.

Furthermore, those obligations may not be imposed by someone else but they are usually self-made. We create a model of ourselves that represents all what we want to do and all what we want to be and the only thing we try is to be like this model of ours. In consequence, we tend to get obsessed about this and we don't pay enough attention to what's really important.

To conclude, I just want to say that of course I don't have any solution for this as I keep working on it myself. My only target was to share this thought with you as I think some of us may have experienced it as well.

How to reduce pollution

Since the school year started, my days have gone through subway trips —or “underground” as they call it at this side of the world—. I make a quite long journey; about an hour and a half trying to breathe inside that ocean of people. I usually take a pair of headphones or a book to make the trip less boring, but there are somedays I leave home in a rush and I forget those things. I've realized those days are the most interesting.

One day, I was on my way to school early in the morning, by line 6 —the grey one—, when a gypsy man entered into the same car I was in. He was wearing a brown corduroy vest showing a cigar on one of its pockets. He stood next to the door and said something I considered very truthful:

—For god's sake! They should have some music on these trains!

After that he started humming a song from Camarón de la Isla until his stop arrived and he left the train.

I couldn't disagree with him. I know there already exist some people who occasionally play an instrument or sing asking for money, but what if we gave them a permanent job?

It would be amazing if silent mornings turned into smooth jazzy mornings, so we all life-term passengers could arrive with better humor or at least motivated to nail the day we've got ahead.

Afternoons after school would be kinda messy depending on the metro line you take. Some rock at line 9, some pop at line 2, and why not? some reggaeton at line 6. Boring trips would be dancing parties all across Madrid —so you wouldn't need to go to Kapi—.

And electronic nights instead of being an after-party would be a before-party, so you would get to your destiny in the mood.

How many people you think would prefer to take the metro instead of driving?

Iker K. Muñoz 

An excessive use of mobile phones

Yesterday I was returning home from school by bus like any other day when I noticed something that caught my attention. In front of me there were two girls chatting on their phone. You could think that it is something really normal that everybody does- and that’s true-, but what surprised me was that they didn´t look away from their phones even once, like they were hypnotized. Then, I looked at the other people who were on the bus and I shocked myself finding that everybody was with their phone, anyone was talking face to face like people used to.

I don’t know why, but looking at that scene made me feel very uncomfortable and very hopeless about the actual society, I just felt like I was living in a ‘Black mirror’ episode and I hadn’t even realized. It is something that we see every day, everywhere we go we see someone with his mobile phone, not looking around, not paying attention to the real world. It is a scene so much common nowadays that we don’t usually think about what it really means. But in that moment, I wondered what was going on, how did we get to this, when did we lose the connection to the real world to be always abstracted in our mobile phones. Because truly, when we just pay attention to what someone is telling us on WhatsApp or what photo has someone uploaded to Instagram, we are losing everything the world is giving us, we are just stuck in an unreal world.

Nowadays, people spend so much time on their phones and they are such an important part in their lives that I can’t even believe it. I bet that if a hundred years ago someone would have said that everyone’s lives will revolve around little gadgets, people would have thought he was insane. And today we can’t even figure a life without our mobile phone.

I don’t mean that you shouldn’t use your mobile phone anymore, I will continue using mine. I just want you to know that there’s a whole world outside, there are plenty of things you can do and see, just don’t miss them for being abstracted all the time on your phone, because in the end it is just a fictional world.

What we see but don't notice

Sometimes, you don't see something that is in front of your face, even if that something is constantly there, hanging around. You just get used to it and don't bother questioning it, but when someone points it out you think "It was there all the time, it was so obvious! How could I have not noticed it?" What I didn't notice at first, and is so obvious to me now, was a lack of something, rather than it's presence. That something is representation.

When I was little, I used to watch the TV. White, cis and straight people was all I saw. There were little to none POCs, much more men than women (who usually got an important role because they were the romantic interest of the male protagonist) and absolutely no trans or non-binary people. I only saw two lesbian characters when they were presented in a very sexualized way to the male protagonist. Now, things hadn't changed that much: if I want to consume progressive content, I have to search for it actively, and avoid the toxic one even harder. Censorship is a thing, and a very explicit one.

But, what are the consequences of this? The main problem, I think, is the obliviousness to the topic that many people have. Things like sexism are being normalized and assimilated by many. People who identify with groups like LGBT+ are left years, or even their whole lives, without knowing an important part of themselves because they don't even know it exists. And the people who realize it end up feeling that they are strange and wrong. If I had noticed this discrimination when I was younger, I would have known some basic things about myself and about the world much earlier. If this discrimination didn't exists, I probably wouldn't have to.

Family dinner with strangers

Last Christmas, my family and I decided to spend the holidays with part of our family who live in Miami, USA. We left on December 24, at 10 in the morning, from the Barajas Airport to the Philadelphia airport wher we would take another flight to the Miami airport. But our flight was delayed, so when we arrived in Philadelphia, we ran around the airport with our hand luggage trying to get to our flight. 

We had to wait a tail of an hour at customs. When we got through, they told us that the lost flights would be distributed on the next ones. We went to the information point to get our new ticktes, but my father was put on a different flight from ours, so we went back and they gave us a new flight that was leaving in 30 minutes to Orlando. 

When my mother gave us the news, after having spent a whole day flying and going around the airport, i was so happy to be able to fly and spend the night with our family. Nevertheless when we were going down the gangway, suddenly, two meters from entering, the plane began to walk and went, in front of us. I started crying, my sister started crying. 

We were shocked, we didn´t know what to do anymore, we were tired of going from one side to the other. We returned for the third time to the information point and there, they gave us some tickets for the 25th, at 7 in the morning. At the end, we were accommodated in a hotel near the airport.

Finally we spent the good night with ten other people from different cities of Spain who had also lost their flights. We all had dinner in the dining room of the hotel, like a big family, telling us about our lives and what had brought us there.

Despite all the inconveniences we experienced that day, the downturns, the moments of stress, of crying, of impotence; I forgot all the bad times and spent a great night that I will remember for the rest of my life. So, when bad times come, do not give up. There are wonderful things that come to your life by chance and unexpected. You will never live that moment again, so seize it.