Our Faculty status.

I think our faculty has come a long way since I was a freshmen. Back then we didn't even had enough computers and the ones that we had were as good as a pocket calculator. At least, in that subject I believe we have improved a lot. Nevertheless there are things that need solution and aparenttly aren't as simple as one might think. such is the subject of not having a real study room. Recently named Faculty Director thought it will be a good idea to use the cafeteria as a quiet place to study and read. Of course, everybody were laughing about it; some others were really mad with what they think is disrespectful. Library has become small for the amount of students and we desperatly need another place to quietly study. It's suppossed that with "bicentenary project" a huge building will have rooms for every faculty in this campus. If that comes to happen, that could be a solution.

this leads us to a very important subject. this alleged project it's suppossed to introduce a lot of modifications to the campus, not only in terms of infrastructure but also rearranging way labor and work inside the faculties, afecting people who works here (important part of our comunity) and also probably affecting price of our carreers. . therefore, as students, we need to be very active to try to influence in decisions so when things are already done we won't be crying about how things were done and we weren't even ask for our opinion.

Election day

I'm not registered to vote. At first, when I was 18 years old, it was a decission made on the grounds of teenage disconformity with politics in general. Now that I'm older it has more to do with the fact that I don't trust in political campaign. I know that campaigns must have a certain lenguage in order to convince people so they are full with promises and cliche phrases. But that's exactly the reason why politicians discourse doesn't convince me at all. Regardless, I was supposed to register this year to vote in the upcoming election, but in the end, lack of motivation and long long lines of people waiting to do the process end up with me still not registered.

I don't think a politician should have any particular qualities. I mean, in the end, people it's not voting over their qualities as they vote for the party they belong to or according to how they were able to place the candidate as a realiable one.

Personally, I think elections and campaigns are more about propaganda and media workout than about proposals and ideas. Considering that, it's pretty difficult for me imagine as a politician. Although I did run for elections inside University and actually won it. I suppose as soon as I abandon my, still "idealistic" ideas, there's a chance that in the future I get involved in some minor party, in which I could have the possibility to influence politic line and strategy.

Crisis and profitability in UK companies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/07/uk-firms-low-profitability

Economic crisis has affected companies all around the world and UK isn't an exception. But apparently what's going on is even worst for industrial activity; namely, manufacturing companies. Acording to the ONS (office for national statistics), companies outside the financial sector fell their profitability to the level they were 8 years ago. Only in 2009, the number has decreased over a 12%.

Nevertheless, services sector seems to be recovering and has incresead it profitability increasing to 15.6% in the second quarter of 2009. If that number is compared with 13,6% obtained previous quarter, signs seem to be clear.

Howard Archer, important UK economist explain this situation blaming the deep recession that hit's companies' sales hard and limited their pricing power. Moreover, situation becomes more complex because economy has returned to growth in this third quarter, but recovery doesn't seem to appear to a lot of companies of the manufacturing sector, which is, by the way, the sector which offers the biggest amount of employments. So, it's recovery would increase consumption power to a lot of people, recovering that way a healthy economy. If this is not to happen, relapses could well occur.

Another important subjetc related to this is that fall in profitability means tax receipts will be lower aswell. consequently, public finances will be affected (in fact, they already are) and an important budget deficit is going to stay as a remain of this crisis, even when it's over.

Criminal Laws

I don't think capital punishment is a good solution to reduce criminality. There's no evidence that killing criminals will actually reduce crime rate. In fact, general tendency is going on to remove capital punishment as an actual corrective way to enforce the law. Moreover, I think that crime, as many other social issues, has more to do with prevention rather than repression. Therefore, I really don't see any pro's in capitol punishment. On the contrary, I think authorities should work on improve our actual jail system, driving initiatives to educate and reform criminals and therefore give a strong strike to criminal behavior and anti-social conduct.

Following the same argument, in order to reduce criminality there's no discussion about the role that police plays; but the problem can't be limited to that. I think civic education and a more equal society must have a main role in crime fighting strategy.

Now, about increasing crime rates, I think that's more a TV fiction than a reality. I mean, it's true, there's crime in Chile...but there's no evidence to support the general insecurity picture that mass-media often try to present. Comparing Chile with other latinamerican countries, serious crimes such as kidnapping, mass murderers, rapes, etc. doesn't appear to be the main issue. Probably crime rates increase during high unemployment cicles (there are a few studies supporting this) but, as I said before, there's no evidence to affirm that that is the general tendency. I tend to think that we live in a pretty safe country...and that's what most of european and north-american tourists travelling chile say about it.

Things to see and do on Santiago.

For a person that's currently livin' on Santiago, it's difficult to find interesting things to do. I mean, with the smog, the noise, the aparrently stressed living way that we constantly see in people I would definitely recommend a tourist tha leave Santiago right away and go travelling every other interesting place that Chile has. But if I must, I would start for telling them that they must go downtown and visit historical Santiago. There you can still find remnants of spanish period of conquest over Latinamerica. Then I would go for Bellavista neighborhood; almost every tourist that come's to chile want's to party and get to meet people. There's no better place to do such things as Bellavista.
Then, in Santiago you should go to metropolitan park and walk around it; you can get a beautiful view of polluted Santiago from it's heights. Moreover, you can go to the zoo and I don't know, get to see the animals they have there.
Another thing that I like a lot here in Santiago is to go to higher zones of the city such as La reina or Peñalolen during night time and find a nice place to see Santiago over night. In many ways, is like to be watching the ocean, only in this case it's a million lights ocean. Anyway it's feels very similar.
Last but not least, I would recommend a tourist to visit Colorado Sky park. I've never been there -not much of a snowsports guy- but I always hear about how great it is and how Chile it's known over the world for it's wonderful places to skiing and snowboarding, so it would be a mistake to not point Snowpark as a place to visit when you are a tourist and decided to come down to Santiago.

High School Experience

First of all I must say that I did high schools on two differents cities. Therefore I was able to experience two totally differents educational systems. The first one, on Chillan, was the classical school, very strict and severe. They made us to cut our hair very short and if we refuse then we were suspended for a week or so. In fact, it was a mason school, maybe that explains this behavior in teachers and autorithies. In the opposite side, here in Santiago I went to "francisco de miranda" school which it's known for it's "alternative" way of teaching and actually raising, that is in fact what a school should do. It's interesting how two completely different educational system can affect you. Here in Santiago I was always told that what's more important over every other thing is that you must be an "integral" beeing. It's not about just getting high grades and beeing best on your class. There's no point on beeing best in maths if you can't be the best person you can be. furthermore, here they teach me how to express my self freely, without feeling guilty or embarraced for my feelings and beliefs. In the other hand, this school always lacked of discipline. I mean, not that I was expecting a cop on my back to tell me what I should do or what I shouldn't do, but when you're -as I said before- raising childs or teenagers or whatever, it's necessary to show some discipline from time to time, because world often works in ways that we can't always deal with it if we're aren't properly prepared for it. Anyway, it's interesting how I was able to experience this two differents ways of teaching, I think it helped me a lot to grow and learn things that you don't usually learn in a class room.

Transantiago, now and then.

The new public transport system has brought a lot of trouble. Nevermind political ones, the main issue is the fact that making such an important modification should be gradual and not in the way that it was made; this is, with alot of "inside" planing, making sure of everything works in "paper" but not realizing that things in the "real life" are a lot more complicated than engineers think. This sort of things requieres that people who design the program go out and experience how is to travel in a public bus at pick hours and when you're late for work. Anyway, things have come a long way since the first day of transantiago. Slowly we're starting to see a modern public transportation system. City ways have been adapted and travel time is going down comparing it with what it was in the beggining. I think things will begin to get more organized as politics realize public money should be invested in public transport, so we can demand for better service, and also because it's very unlikely that only private investment would make this sort of things work.
An interesting thing about transantiago, is that we are starting to see busses all night long. This is very helpful to people who want's to go out and have fun and want's to go back home late at night. Things like this never happened with the old system, so that's a good thing that can be atributted to transantiago.