Growing up Amongst Bullets

Teenagers get bored... that's their natural condition. Boredom. but, growing up in Bogotá is a pretty different stuff. You can never get bored. But it is not because of nice reasons. We must be allert so we can survive. Not only survive war or rapists. We must survive the fact that we don't give a damn about what's happening. We don't watch national channels, we avoid journals, we close our eyes when things are just too close.
It is amazing to realize how far are we from bullets and from a conflict that grows parallel to us.

Music Is The Soundtrack Of Your Life

I haven't used my ipod since I bought it. Today, however, I thought it would be a nice day to make my experiment. I went out, I made a short playlist, I put the headphones and I started walking along the 7th avenue in Bogotá. Suddenly, the anger I used to feel, disappeared. I walked slowly and nothing seemed to attack me anymore. The hundreds of cars were just a flow on my right side. The noise was replaced by the music I like the most. I realise that not only art can make reality more beautiful or more horrible than it is, also inside reality, some hints can wipe out agressions from the environment.

Breakup With No Makeup Sex

Let's get toghether! Used to say a song. Always getting together and making babies! I hate the idea, but only because I am almost sure of my unability of raising another human being. People around me, started to have kids. Last night, I was out for dinner with a friend... "craziest than a goat" we say. He was showing me some pics from his new cell phone. A baby girl started to appear... "Oh, she's a friend's daugther" he said. "I am crazy for a baby". I couldn't beleive his words. For men it must be easier. They just plant the seed and they can leave whenever they want. That's what I though, and that's what I told him. He answered back inmediately: "Well, my friend lives with his daughter because he asked his wife the divorce. If that would happen to me, I would do exactely the same". Well, I must be mistaken. Maybe men are not such a pain in the ass, after all.

Sai Hi To The Camera

Long relationships can go through withoud real contact. There's only need of a computer and a camera. Yes, it's happened for years, but not decades. So, it seems like this new thing would become part of our daily life. We wouldn't notice the time when it would be easier to talk to a camera rather than facing another person in the "real" life.
It is, certanely, a matter of time. Sometimes we can't even tell the difference between going out and hanging out on the net.
I guess computers are an excuse to avoid fisical contact... but, could it replace humans?

A Walk On The Real Side

I went last week to the center of Bogotá. I knew I was gonna be scared. I knew I had to face a horrible feeling, a mixture of fear and anger. That would be the forgotten society of A Brand New World, and I was there, praying for getting out of there as soon as possible. But, on the other hand, I couldn't stop feeling like crap for being part of a society based on a pyramid. Some must carry all the weight, so that others can lie down and rest. People down there rather don't look up. People up there (should I say "up here"?) don't look down, cause they are aware of everything but, after a while, that present becomes a forgotten past.
There are so many, so hungry and mad. They're right, they shouldn't be dead alive just because they were born in a society that still concieve men as animals: only the strongest survive.
I say a movie yesterday, El Colombian dream. The last sentence is horrible: "In Colombia, is better to be born than to be dead". It is horrible because, sometimes, it seems like it's otherwise.

How To Deal With Your Handicaps

It's awsome... how people can leave their own culture, start living in a foreign country, and, still, keep their prejudices intact. This happens in Colombia with sirians and jews. They feel attacked the whole time, so they feel they have the right to strike back. Men hit their women, and even hurt themselves as a late response to an agression they made up.
In the carribean zone of Colombia, there's a strong arab influence, not only for their gastronomical heritage, but for poligamy.
Most of women got used to it, not it's normal to know about a man who has five different homes. All his wives struggle to be "wife 1", inside a crazy dynamic that doesn't seem to end.

Movie Makeups

Today I saw a friend I haven't seen for a year. We talked about the last Scorsese's movie, he said it's been a mistake of a great director, I said that I haven't even seen it, but, if it sucks it might be because he wanted a couple of additional zeros in his bank account. After my answer, he gave me that sad look of a boy that stops beleiving in Santa. He couldn't even imagine that a real artist could sell his art in such a "cheap" way. He said that it was just sad about that and he kept asking me the same question "why did HE do it?". Well, I guess it is hard to stop beleiving in Santa after an entire childhood of unstopped devotion.

War Media

The last two days, I went to a seminar about the coverage of news related to education from the mass media(Organised by the Fnpi). I heard journalists from all over Latin America. They all argued that there was not enough space for such subjects and they had to struggle with their editors to get a small space to publish their news about research, universities and stuff. Colombia has a particular reality, where you can find a space for massacres, bombs, kidnappings... It's understandable the imperative of journals for those spots. But, if someone takes a look at the local newspapers and magazines, could have the wrong idea of Colombia as a country with no colleges, with no scientists. There would only be guerrilla, civil war, an unstoppable mess.