My movie!

It is so hard to realize this! Woody Allen wants me to help him to make the film of my life! When he called to tell me the idea I felt like in a dream. How could this happened? My life is not interesting for other people, I think, and I told him, but that is the most amazing part of the situation. My biographic movie is not going to be about what I have done. It will be based in future events! At the beginning, I didn’t understand him at all, but then, slowly, I realized it was a genial idea. What can be more visionary and risky tan doing the movie of a life that isn’t lived already?

FWP José Ángel

Losing a bet is always a bad notice. Even if you usually go to the sportsbook just for fun and not for the money, it is terrible anyway wen the “ticket charm” is gone. Now, I’ll write about one of the ugliest experiences a bettor can have: to lose a sports ticket in the last game.

It is known by almost everyone that in sports bet you need to it all the matches you have chosen for a ticket if you want to win. Is predictions are called “picks”. For each single ticket, if you have one mistaken pick you bite the dust. The unfortunately moment I’m talking about is when you lose by failing the last pick (chronologically)

The disaster is mainly caused by the internal desire of winning money. Furthermore, the more money is in game, the bigger is the disappointment you feel when everything is over, because, in final instance, you always play for money. When you put more picks in a ticket the probability decreases but the amount to win rises a lot. So every single correct pick makes you feel the double better. It is like climbing a mountain, so when you are very close to the top, the pain when you fell down is enormous.

The worst consequences of this horrible circle of ambition are mental, because you hope to win and except receiving the money, so you may start thinking what you could do when you earn the money. Tis visions are fantastic but very unrealistic and the result is a deep depression when you lose the ticket at the last moment.

If you are thinking about sports betting, I recommend you to control your emotions and those winning scenarios in order to avoid the impact of the tragic losing moment. Never forgive the Murphy Law: “Everything that can turn bad would be bad”. 

Well Done!

Thanks for your participation and enthusiasm!  I am very happy for the ones who dare to write and express yourselves in English. When you start using the language to communicate your thoughts, ideas, feelings, you start living the language! Enjoy the experience and benefit from it!

Mérid's fast and unsustainable urban growth

Traditionally the city of Mérida has been associated with characteristics as calm, human scale, ordered urbanization and a strong presence of cultural elements that creates a well defined local identity. However in the last decades an accelerated and disordered process of urban expansion started to act against the preservation of this characteristics and the good quality of life of the majority of the population of the city.

We can infer the gravity of this phenomenon by checking the numbers related to the expansion of the urban area in the last decades: the area occupied by the city in 1960 was of 3,631 has., by 1980 it had increased to 8,321 has., and by 2000 it had grown to 17,280 has. In the past the slower rate of growth of the city had been accompanied with the gradual appearance of the services that the population required, nevertheless in the last decades, characterized by this fast urban growth, the new neighborhoods lack some facilities as schools, libraries, etc. Also the quality and the quantity of public and green spaces have diminished in most of the new urban areas.

As this fast growth of the city continues, the lack of proper services in some urban areas has become more evident, and the differences between the north and the south of Mérida have increased. In addition, there are a growing number of residential zones occupied by the upper classes of population that are nowadays isolated of the rest of the city by great walls, contributing to highlight the social exclusion.

In terms of ecology and urban mobility, which are two of the main problems of today’s cities, this disordered urban growth worsen both, by making the trips longer and promoting the growth of the number of cars that saturates our streets. As more space gets occupied by automobiles the city becomes less green and friendly for the people.

We need to realize that the biggest issue of our time is to guarantee the sustainability of our ways of living, and because of that we need to act with a more rational approach to all things related with the growth of our city. Is essential to face this problem and understand that the consequences generated by the turmoil in the growth of our city lead to the erosion of our quality of life in near future. The time to act is now!.

All data obtained from the book “Huellas de Mérida. Transcursos y patrones urbanos”, by Ileana Beatriz Lara Navarrete (Biblioteca Básica de Yucatán, Gobierno del Estado, 2011).

I choose to be Mozart!

 Writing pg 126

What if you could be Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein or Mozart for one day?, Who would you be?

 There’s no way I would consider to be Einstein, because I’m not a scientific-oriented person. I would consider choosing Leonardo, because of the many interesting activities he was involved with. But in the end I prefer to be Mozart, because I like his music a lot, and also because he was a little bit mad and a very funny person.

There was a biopic on him called ‘Amadeus’ that shows different sides of his character: he was very passionate about his music but at the same time he used to act like a child almost all time. His life had some difficult aspects, like his relationship with his father, his debts and his premature death, so I would choose to be him in one of his happy days, maybe in the opening night of one of his operas (Don Giovanni’s look specially fun in the movie!).

Essay “Cause and Effect “

Issue: “STRAY DOGS”

In recent days I have listened in the news that amount of stray dogs is increasing, and it has become in a health problem because have sprouted new cases of rabies.

I think some causes of this problem are:

• ·         Lack of responsibility from the owner of dogs, while the dogs are babies they take care of them but as sooner they grow up, all wants throw off them.
• ·         People thinks the pets are a toy for children, so when this toy leave of like them, is easy throwing them in the street.
• ·         When your dog is not from good bread, it do not have economic value to you nor other people, that one reason for nobody take, care, vaccinate stray dogs.
• ·         New laws to protect animal forbidden kill dogs or give a bad treat, then there is not anything to do with them, they should be vague on the streets.
• ·         And we can take like a joke but, the fact of our culture see bad that we feed us from dogs is one reason that abounds free.

Consequence

• ·         Between the bigger consequences of this problem we can found the increase of rabies in some zone of the city.
• ·         I can drive bicycle without feel fear, because stray dogs feel attract from these, and they run after, bark or bite when see one bicycle.
• ·         The lack of sexual education and care of pets from owners has increased the number of babies’ dogs without home.
• ·         Is easy find waste of animals in the street and this dried and fly on your street food.

Solutions  

• ·         The government should be more emphasis in the promotion of sterilization program.
• ·          Should exist some regulations to get pets, only responsible people could buy or sell dogs.
• ·         Realize sensitization campaigns about the life of a stray dog.
• ·         Give more promotion to adopt dogs from shelters.

Can you give some ideas?

World Problems

In recent days I was searching about human rights, to be specific “rights of person with disabilities”, It because is the topic of my thesis and because I have had bad experience in this rubric.

In a law level all go well, the countries and its high officials have good ideas even they have include people with disabilities in their take of decisions, now we have a lot of documents to protect these “poor” people, these “necessity” people. But in the facts and actions all is equal. We do not know what feel, expect, think and did when we interact with them, even the same people with disabilities do not know what are their rights, what they can demand regarding health, sexual life, architecture, public politics, sports and entertainment between other topics.

While I was making my social service in a community of Yucatan I could watch how uninformed is the people and how injustice they live day at day in their work, in the school in the hospital, that people do not think that deserve respect.

And sadly in my way between institutions like CREE (Centro de Rehabilitación y Education Especial), y la SSY (Servicios de Salud de Yucatan), I have received a lot of criticism, your topic is not important, is obvious that people do not know their rights but you can change it, the system is bad and we cannot do anything. People in a position of power are not interested in this, but they do not understand that disability is just around the corner, with the aging or the accidents, and more that do something for them we should be something for us.

I think is no as hard, if we open our minds, the key is one simple word “equity”, is a reality we are no equals but is also true that all are humans.

Gifted Children

As I mentioned to you, here is the link to the video about a gifted child who can play anything on the piano since he was 6 years old...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQC3L4OY1Jg

Remember you have to write a 30-word summary on the most important ideas. It would be great if you post your work here in the blog.

I hope you enjoy this.

What would you rather be? a photographer? a travel writer?

Remember it is very important that you post your writings on the pictures you selected. To help those who do not know where to start, I am posting the sample description of a photo, written by the photographer who took the picture:

"About 7:00am I was down by the river. Walked around took a few shots and wasn't really pleased with what I shot. So I packed up and started to leave when I came across the falls and thought to myself while the sun is still low why not try to open my shutter up and see what this looks like, I took about 6 shots but this one was the first one and my favorite I knew when I took it, it was special."

Location: Jeffersonville, IN United States

Author: Dante Cooper

Here are also a couple of videos that will give you an idea of what it takes to be a professional photographer and a travel writer. If you could choose any of them, which one would you choose? Why? Think in terms of your actual skills and lifestyle to support your ideas and choose a point of view for your photo description. Remember you need to use a rubrics and make sure your work covers the criteria detailed in the one you are using. Check your Grammar and Spelling before posting your work!!!

The typical day of a photographer....

Portrait of a travel writer...

I hope this material enhances your motivation to write!

As for the reading exercise you had for homework last week, it would be great if you posted your answers to the questions here so everybody could read them and check their own answers so we'd save a lot of time!

Logical Deduction Puzzle

Do you want to test your detective abilities? Read the puzzle below and if you find the solution, post a comment with it:
(Taken from the book "Logical Deduction Puzzles" by George J. Summers)

Malice and Alice

Alice, Alice's husband, their son, their daughter, and Alice's brother were involved in a murder. One of the five killed one of the other four. The following facts refer to the five people mentioned:

1. A man and a woman were together in a bar at the time of the murder.

2. The victim and the killer were together on a beach at the time of the murder.

3. One of Alice's two children was alone at the time of the murder.

4. Alice and her husband were not together at the time of the murder.

5. The victim's twin was not the killer.

6. The killer was younger than the victim.

Which one of the five was the victim?

Puzzle Project Instructions

As I mentioned to you last class, you are working on a Vocabulary Review Project which you will bring to class on April 27th.

1. You need to choose 10 vocabulary words of pharasal verbs from all the book's units (6-10). If you do this on a Word sheet you will be able to copy and paste all of your words in the puzzle maker program.

2. Write the word or words, if it is a phrasal verb or an idiom use hyphens in the place of spaces, then insert a space a write the definition:

 example: "out-of-focus describes a photo that is not clear"

3. When your list with all the definitions is done get in the web page:

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/?CFID=11158818&CFTOKEN=80448979

and choose CRISS-CROSS from the list.

4. Follow the steps. In fact you will only need to add a title so you know it was done by you. Leave the same default values and then proceed to write the words and definitions or copy and paste them in the corresponding box from your Word document.

5. Once this is done, click on "Create my Puzzle". You can either print it from there or copy it in a Word page and save it. 

6. Of course you will need to bring your list of words because that will be the answer key for your puzzle.

7. You will exchange puzzles and try to solve the one you get as a vocabulary review.

Feel free to send me a message or write a comment if you have any problems or doubts on how to do it.

Enjoy it!

 

PREPOSITIONS

Hello everyone,
here you have the links we talked about last class.
If you want to brush up on prepositions and practice with the dependent ones, here you have two options.
I hope you can really take the time to check them out.

Lists and a quiz:
http://englishwithjames.wordpress.com/prepositions/

Click below if you´d like to download the:
English Prepostions E-book and List

Steve Jobs' Stanford University Commencement Speech and more....

Hello everyone!

I hope you are having a wonderful time and are ready to get back to class work next Saturday.  Better late than never, here I am with the links I mentioned during our last class which I highly recommend you listen. 

The first link takes you to the video of Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford University. Listen and make a list of the key events Jobs mentions and describe in a few lines your own point of view about what he says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

Now, let's talk about writing a cause-effect essay. Having a clear idea of what a cause-effect essay is and how it should be organized are basic steps to get your work started. Besides providing you with the links to videos with information about this process, here are a couple of links with explanations that you might find helpful, try:

http://www.writeawriting.com/essay/cause-and-effect-essay/   and

http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/lgarret/organiz1.htm

http://www.hqessays.com/info/cause-and-effect-essay/

I am also e-mailing a couple of diagrams and other useful information.

The links to the tutorial videos are:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i8o_mWSwjE

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcUg4ACQEao

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ7ZI2NmJfQ

Finally, the link to the film "Educating Rita" I really hope you have a chance to watch it and enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smKTxgQp8S0&list=PL4342CDA84D093566

See you on Saturday!