How green am I ?

Learning about environmentally friendly practices starts at school when you're a little kid, for example, doing handcrafts with recycle materials. There was a period at my school there were chosen delegates for every row, his/her responsibility was making sure the floor was always clean and without any kind of trash. In other cases you learn to take care of the planet in your own home, like when your parents tell you to be considerate about the water and light you use, I mean, not leaving the lights or the water on in case you are not using them.

The only recycling habits I have is separate my garbage but I only do it when it's paper or glass bottles, also I don't just through my clothes away, I give it to people who may need it or sell it.

I use the bus or subway to travel around the city and walk a little every day. Sadly, I just use the bicycle to have fun...well, If I used the bicycle for going to college and then return to my house I would have to get out of my house with 2 hours of anticipation!

Although I believe it's necessary and important recycle I have never joined an eco-organisation because I haven't really think about it, besides I haven't had any proposal from a friend for example, and I'm very lazy to do it for myself :P

I haven't done anything else than what I said before...mmm I don't have a car so maybe that's something positive hahaha. Maybe I would like to join an organisation to be more informed about this serious problem, so in that way I could inform others and change some of their habits. Also I would like to travel on bicycle but in this city everything is far, almost all drivers are reckless and there's a lack of bike paths. When it comes to reduce my carbon footprint I try to use the necessary water and light.

I get so angry when industries are irresponsible over exploding our planet or throwing their wastes to the ocean and air. And I get angry too when people throw their garbage on the streets, I mean, It's not that hard to take that garbage with you and deposit it in your house's trash can. I think we need to have a stronger awareness of our relationship with the planet, like really understand that everything we've done and we're doing has consequences for the planet and for our own survival. This can be improved educating society and creating recycling centers. 

Street Performers

Through years I believe they haven't had the enough recognition in our society, recognition of their way to constantly change how we experience the city. In my case I've seen them in Santiago but they exist all over the country and the world!, in this opportunity I'll refer about the ones enrich my bus trips. I mean, travelling in bus can get really boring when you do it twice a day and five days at week, especially if you travel one hour, sometimes standing on your feet, other sitting for a while until the pregnant woman and the old lady appears. 

This type of street performers it's varied, I've bump into clowns, singers, rapers (even freestyle), couples where one sings and the other plays guitar, violinists, saxophonist, duets conformed by an accordionist and a violinist, a flautist who played classic compositions, comedians, two old man who sang and played cueca, bands similar to Illapu and Los Jaivas, and the last one I saw this week and surprised me was a young man who waited for a while pretending to be a "normal passenger" then suddenly started to make a monologue about his life in the mines, then revealed he was an actor student. Those were the great ones! because I've seen this "strange" people who sings like crap or plays a simple bucket like if it was a tambourine. Finally, the ones I hate the most: religious speakers that yell every single word like if that's gonna change people's beliefs.

I think many people like me enjoys street performers, but when it comes to authoryties like the government and police, street performers see how their activities are not being appreciated. Some of them even receive fines! and that's when you realize how messed up the world is!.

Phobias: the rationale behind irrational fears by Dean Burnett.

It's natural to feel fear, like when you're being assaulted in the middle of the night, but when you fear something for no rational reasons you can be sure it's a phobia. There are three types: specific phobias, social phobias and agoraphobias. Specific phobias are an irrational fear of a specific thing or situation and can be subdivided into situational (eg claustrophobia), natural environment (eg acrophobia), animal (eg arachnophobia) or blood-injection-injury types. Social Phobias are related with how people will react to you in a certain situation, for example, fear of rejection. One way to reduce this fear is to read comments on internet so you can see how different are the opinions that people have (so possibly would be the same about you). Finally, Agoraphobia it's more than having fear for open spaces; it is also related to this fear of where escape would be difficult and /or help wouldn't be forthcoming.

Now, where does this fears come from? one explanation is classical conditioning, it says you associate a bad experience with a thing, then you're afraid of the thing. Other explanation is the learning of that fear by observation of others behaviors. Also, if we receive inaccurate information we'll "realize" some things are scary via instructional fear acquisition, for example, via horror films.

What can you do about this? having a phobia means you are aware of the irrational nature of your fear (DSM-IV criteria) but this doesn't mean you can't just make someone confront the thing they're afraid of by telling/showing them it's harmelss because as far a the brain is concerned (insular cortex and amygdala) the fear response is a negative physical consequence so at a subconscious level the phobia is self-fulfilling. Because of this, there are several methods like systematic desensitisation, cognitive behavioural therapy and even antidepressants.

At last but not least, things like homophobia or islamphobia are misleading named prejudices, not phobias! Unfortunately science still doesn't have a cure for being a dick.

(I love that last part jijij)

You can check out this and other news here ----> http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jun/28/phobias-rationale-irrational-fears

Friends

Well...in this opportunity I'm going to write about friendship, how I understand it's about. My conception about friendship has changed several times in my life, I mean, when you are a kid you think that your friends are the ones you do group homeworks with or those who invite you to their birthday parties...most of them because your parents are friends with their parents.

Then you start to realize you don't have so much things in common with those "friends", also can happen that you end up in different courses where you meet new people, new people you start to talk to because you find them interesting, nice or share some tastes. 

If you ask me what I think friends are about...Friends are the ones you can think out loud, they are this kind of brother/sister you choose to share you life. But it's not like you choose them and it's done, It's a relationship you have to take care of, by this I mean to empathize with your friend's thinking, feelings, choices, actions, etc. It's not about always agree with them but to be sincere about what you think and what you have to say to them...also, friends are the ones where silence is not uncomfortable, it's not taken as boredom...'cause it's not necessary to talk all the time to feel they are your friends.

Actually, in the beginning I didn't share too much tastes with most of my friends, but as time passes we've found similar musical tastes so we've been in a couple of concerts together, also we share some hobbies like watching movies, cooking, going out to parks and (of course) partying...not clubbing, just hanging out in someones house, drink something, talk about life and laugh at each others.

Now I'll share something really nice I read some time ago..."You don't need a certain number of friends, only a number of friends you can be certain of" :)