There is a time in every blogger’s life when you simply don’t have much interesting material to post about, so you decide to create a post about the last few things that have been going on. Unfortunately this is not the first time I do this, so feel free to drop some hate comments and show me your love and appreciation.
Last weekend it was Claudia Lorente’s 30th birthday which she celebrated at her place with a fabulous cricket game. A lot of friends were there and I had a great time. The day after was Gabriel’s bday and we celebrated it in my house. I hadn’t had a party in my house in a while and I figured I could have one. The party was really fun, lots of friends, alcohol and dancing until 5am. The next morning I had to play soccer with the NI Eagles and we beated team Black Star 2-0. There are only two games left this season and it looks like we have a chance to finish 4th or 5th place if we win the last two games. Right now we are in 7th place.
I already did my taxes which I still need to send, including a big fat check that I wish I didn’t have to pay. I was surprised how quickly I did my taxes. Either after 6 years doing taxes you get better at it, or TurboTax has became much better, or I just don’t care much about them anymore that I don’t triple check everything. I think it is the combination of those three.
I’m jealous of two friends (Eva Noyola and Natalia Uribe) who are going to Portishead concerts in London and Munich. So far I haven’t seen anything about them coming to the US.
La Leche League (LLL) o Liga de la Leche es una organización sin ánimo de lucro que ofrece información, apoyo y respaldo a las madres que desean amamantar a sus bebes.
Dos meses antes de yo nacer, mi mamá conoció y se unió a la Liga de la Leche y desde entonces por muchos años ha recomendado amamantar al bebe, a cuanta mujer embarazada ha conocido. Recientemente mi familia estuvo de visita en Austin, y mi madre se enteró que dos amigas (Daniela y Pilar) estaban embarazadas, así que me envió un paquete con diversos arículos relacionados con el tema de la lactancia. Como los articulos estaban impresos, le pedí el favor de que tambien me los enviara en formato digital y con la ayuda de mi hermana los escaneé y compilé en un pdf que anexo a continuación:
English version La Leche League (LLL) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promote breastfeeding as the most natural and effective way of understanding and satisfying the needs of the baby.
Two months before I was born my mother heard and joined this group and for many years she has been promoting breastfeeding to every pregnant woman she meets. Recently my family came to Austin and my mother found out that two close friends of mine were pregnant (Daniela and Pilar) so she sent me a package with different breastfeeding articles in spanish but I also asked her to send me the articles in digital form.
If you can’t read spanish I highly recommend you check the official LLL site.
I have seen better Molotov concerts in Austin, but none the less this one at ‘La Zona Rosa’ was really good too. They played many songs from the first album specially the ones with XXX lyrics. They also did some jamming and played snippets from a few covers like Eye of the tiger (survivor), Smells like teen spirit (nirvana), Enter Sadman (metallica) and Higher ground (rhcp stevie wonder).
Salt loves to play with its favorite orange ball, not because it reminds it of its ING bank account or its previous job at Arthur Andersen. Salt simply loves the orange ball. So when I saw those stupid condiments taking the orange ball from salt, I felt really sad.
The president of the colombian political party Polo Democrático Carlos Gaviria was one of the speakers invited to the XXVIII Annual ILASSA Student Conference. His speech was basically a critique of the current government because it claims that Colombia has a strong democracy while he considers that many aspects of Colombia’s situation (like the high percentage of poverty) are clear signals that Colombia doesn’t have a democracy but instead what he refers to as a sudo-democracy.
I think Colombia does have a democracy, but it has many flaws. As he recognizes, there is not a country in this planet with a perfect democracy and Colombia by no means is close to have that.
Even recognizing that Uribe has many flaws I sincerely think Colombia is better today than how it was 6 years ago. And after hearing Gaviria today, it gives you the impression that this is not the case and that Uribe is the devil itself following a master plan to be a dictator. I honestly believe that this is not the case, and I definitely don’t want Uribe to be reelected again.
This coming February 4th: join us in the mobilization against FARC.
It is really sad to see how the “Colombianos en UT” group have changed the main objective for the mobilization. Here is the text they sent through the “Asociación de Colombianos en Austin”:
Please join us Monday, February 4 2008 10:30 am at South First and Barton Springs: we will march to City Hall.
Position of “Colombianos en UT” in reference to the “Un Millón de Voces Contra las FARC” March February 4 2008
We march against, and manifest our rejection of all crimes against humanity committed in Colombia over the last five decades by all of the different parties involved in the internal conflict of Colombia .
We march to say:
NO MORE Guerrillas (FARC, ELN, EPL…)
NO MORE Paramilitaries (AUC, ACCU, CONVIVIR, Aguilas Negras,….)
NO MORE complicity of government officials with illegal armed forces
NO MORE abuse by elements of the armed forces
NO MORE massacres
NO MORE kidnappings
NO MORE forced displacement
NO MORE targeted assassinations
NO MORE extrajudicial killings
NO MORE forced disappearances
NO MORE arbitrary detentions
NO MORE impunity for military and paramilitary officials
NO MORE death squads
NO MORE state sponsored terror
We march for PEACE as long as it is dignified and just. We march for LIBERTY and JUSTICE for all Colombians.
Please join us Monday, February 4 2008 10:30 am at South First and Barton Springs: we will march to City Hall.
http://www.colombiasoyyo.org/
Please distribute widely
This is clearly a mistake. It causes the mobilization to lose its focus. It causes that people identifies them selves with some of the points of the protest but not with others. It dilutes the clear message that started it all: NO MORE FARC. .
Update
I’m glad to inform that the original objective of the mobilization has been reestablish.
Sweeny Todd
I like Tim Burton’s movies and this movie is amazing from many aspects, but some how I didn’t enjoyed the movie a whole lot. I can appreciate how well done the movie is, but it didn’t entertain me.
No country for old man
Great movie with a magnificent performance by Javier Bardem. Too bad that even after 6 years living in Texas I still had a hard time following the dialogs in the thickest texan accent.
Atonement
Beautiful british movie. Amazing picture. And contains one of the best war scenes I have ever seen. I loved the music and how it blends with the movie.
Juno
Very refreshing independent movie. I really enjoyed this movie. Made me laugh and had a great time watching it.
Last night I finished reading the book Skin Tight from Carl Hiassen. I must say that I really enjoyed the book and I have to blame it for a few nights I went to bed later than I should had. The main character is a retired detective Mick Stranahan and someone wants to kill him because of an unresolved crime he investigated years ago.
I have to blame my sister Ana Maria for putting this book on my night stand. She told me: “You should read this book, I’m sure you are going to like it”. I was supposed to finish the book in December before she returned back to MedellÃn on new years day, but it took me longer than that to finish it.
I’m definitely going to look for other books from Hiassen at Half Price Books.
If you enjoy this kind of light reading you should give it a try.
It is 8:52pm on a monday of 2008 and I just challenged myself to write a post for my blog using a trial version of the application WriteRoom. I read about this application last night on Slashdot when some people were complaining that text editors like Microsoft Word are cluttered with so many user interface (UI) elements that you get really distracted when it comes to write something. On the other hand, this WriteRoom application presents you with the simpler interface on earth: just the text you are writing.
These people also argued that when you open Microsoft Word, you feel like you are going to write a school paper and not the next bestseller novel. I think there is some true behind those arguments, but I wanted to try it myself and write a post using this simple application which happens to have a not-so-simple price of U$24.95.
I must say that besides the cool factor of writing with a screen that looks like a terminal from the 80’s I don’t really feel a huge difference using it. In fact it is now 9:02pm and these 3 paragraphs is my great contribution to the literature world. Maybe someone who is actually writing a novel and spends hours in front of the screen could really appreciate this tool.
