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.

What we are suposed to be

It is obvious that social media has won an essential role in everyday life. Today, almost every one has an account on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp…, and we usually spend at least one hour looking for things that may interest us, watching others profile, or maybe just trying to know if our crush has a new bae😉.

Apart from that, and all the funny and entertaining side of social networking, there is a very big problem (in my opinion) with the impact that social media has sometimes on people. I mean, it is common and understandable to try to look like the people we like, or to try to have more attention and be a little bit more “influencer”, we all do that ! But when it comes to self-confidence, sometimes, it is like a pill of stereotypes which make people feel accomplished.

We all have to look good, wear similar clothes, listen to trending music, be fit… But that’s imposible, because if we were all the same, life would be the most boring thing in the World !

I don’t mean I am against the people who have succeed on social media or people who admire them. I am just trying to say that, sometimes, instead of imagine who would we want to be, we should try to focus on ourselves. We all are humans, we all have two arms and two legs, a nose, two eyes… But we will be always marveously unique, and that’s fantastic !

Why do we have to follow hashtags? We do we have to be obsessed with a like and the other’s approoval? Why can’t we just try to be focused more on real life than on something that isn’t even palpable? Come on, let’s give ourselves a chance !!!!

-Alejandro Sánchez Molina.