Telling a story

I have found a song related to the title telling stories. The punk-rock band BLINK182 tells us the story of a lonely guy who cannot talk to the girl he loves. This made him feel depressed and tries to hide his sadness drinking a high amount of alcohol. It is not what sometimes happen in the real life?

Apart from what it tells I think that it is a quite good song and here you have a video of a concert of this band singing this song.

Enjoy it!

Telling stories

Watch the video clip of the Tracy Chapman song Telling stories.

Read though some of the ratings on the same youtube page.
Then look through the lyrics of the song and check out if you want the alternative video.
Write a comment on this posting saying what rating you would give to the song and video clip.

Find another song related to storytelling. Write a posting about it.

What a record!!!

I've been searching information about amazing or curious Guinenes worl records and I have found one which for me is really stupid. I know that this type of records could be really stupid, but why will somebody make the largest collection of aeroplane's sick bags? Yeah, as you listen, amazing, no? No, it is only the real life.
Niek Vermeulen of the Netherlands has collected 5,034 airline sickness bags from 1,000 different airlines since 1970. In the place where I have read the article about him doesn't put why he started this collection, but I think that he was just bored. Could anybody think an other reason for collecting sikness bags?
I'm completelly sure that the world is going crazy or at least very bored. It is true that a lot of people collect stamps or postcards, however, that's completelly different from collecting those type of bags.
All right, everybody has the right of having their own hobby; but does people really collet so many things, like the man in the example, because of a hobby or because they wanted to appear in the Guinnes world records book.

Blood donations.

In my opinion, the most interesting firsts are those that can help the society in any aspect that affects all of us, as, for example, the health.

Recently, we have been talking at school about blood donations. I have learned that we haven´t got enough blood for all the people who, after having suffered an accident or an illness, need it.
This is why Spain often needs to import blood from other countries, nowadays from the United States of America.

However, reaching the necessary blood account wouldn´t be a problem if people was more conscious about the big importance and the meaning that their donations have. I mean, an adult human body replaces the half litre of blood that is taken in each donation in the previous two hours. So, it isn´t unhealthy for nobody.

I have found on the internet a record guiness related to this that I consider quite interesting (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records/human_body/body_parts/largest_blood_donation.aspx).
In this case, this blood donation has attracted 17921 donors. I think we must do the same and colaborate with this problem.

World Cup records-football

While i was thinking in any interesting first, i decided to find a sport record, so i enter in a lot of sportwebpages. I enter in one webpage where it appear a lot of goal records in the football world cup,in fact i like very much the football world cups, the best football players from all over the world playing against, i think that is very exciting, maybe is because i have played football since i was a child.

To start with,watching to the ages,the youngest player to have scored a goal in the World Cup is Pelé of Brazil. He was only 17 years and 239 days old when he scored against Wales in 1958.On the other side,the oldest player to score a goal in the World Cup Finals is Roger Milla of Cameroon. When he scored against Russia in the 1994 tournament in USA, he was 42 years old and 39 days.

Then, looking to the velocity of scoring a goal.Turkey's Hakan Sükür scored the fastest ever goal in world cup history. Officially timed at just 11 seconds, it occurred in Turkey's third place playoff win against South Korea in the 2002 tournament in Japan/South Korea.
On the other hand,after it was appearing that the match was going to penalties, David Platt scored the latest goal in World Cup history (not including golden goals). He scored after 119 minutes in England's, second round match against Belgium in Italia 1990.

To finish with this especial goals, the first player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup match was United State's Bert Patenaude, who scored three against Paraguay in the first round of the 1930 World Cup.

Levels

This chirstmas I have made some exercises in order to improve my english such as watching MTV in english or reading a book.

While I was watching MTV programmes I realised that they were quite good for improving listening skills. As it was an international channel I could see either english programmes or amarican ones. That was a good point as I could try to understand both type of english and make my comprehesion much better.
By the end of the holidays I saw myself much more confident in listening skills since in this programmes they used colaoquial language and chatted between them faster than I use to hear.

During christmas I also read a book releted with the adventure. It wasn't areally good book but as a friend told me to read it,...
Not enjoying it doesn't mean that I have waste my time, it was a good way to try to improve my reading skills and to prove myself how good I was at it. I got a good surprise when I realized that I could understand nearby most of the book.

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)

Guillermo del toro (the director of the film) fires up a classic cinematic fantasy in Pan's Labyrinth, a film for all ages.
The film is located in the Madrid countryside in 1944 after the Spanish Civil War, when Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his repressive fascist guard attempted to quell rebel uprisings, the film makes no attempt to hide or soften the brutality of the period.

As the film opens, Ofelia(the protagonist who is a little girl) and her mother, Carmen have arrived at a militar quarter commanded by Captain Vidal. Vidal is vey sadic, Mercdes who is a worker of the house helps the guerrillas(the enemies of vidal).Ofelia hates Vidal, which is too bad, since he is her new stepfather and her beloved mother is carrying his baby.

When her mother falls ill, Ofelia retreats into a fantasy world that mirrors the ferocity outside. She finds a garden labyrinth ruled by Pan a tall, goatish creature with menacing horns who sets her a series of tasks that have direct consequences if she can't complete them.

what would it pass with the little Ofelia? i recommend to see it , it is a very interesting film

The perfume

The perfume, directed by Tom Tykwer, tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a boy who, after being born in a repugnant market of Paris in te 18th century, developes the most sensitive sense of smell in the world.

Trying to capture the wonderful smell of a girl he has seen in the street, he decides to learn perfumery. This is why he discovers the way of creating a different perfume to control each of the feelings that the rest of the human beings have for him. Between them, he also does, by killing the most beautiful women, the maximum perfume, the one that controls the human love.

Although, since the point of view of the critics, The perfume is quite a good film, In my opinion it is a bit slow and, moreover, when the main character kills his victim, the scenes are very unpleasant.

This exercise pretends us to discover by our own how good our English level is in two different skills.

Firstly, trying to test my reading, I have realised the best way could be searching on the Internet a newspaper's web so that I can find an interesting current new.
I have visited www.timesonline.co.uk . There, in the "women section", I have seen an article whose title has caught my attention "Divorce better than arguing, say children" (http://women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,27869-2536077,00.html). I have read it and I have found I'm able to do the B2, I mean, although there is some vocabulary in the text that I don't understand, I can read this article concerned with temporary problems and understand it.

After that, I have looked for a video to check my listening in www.youtube.com . Searching something related to "radio programme", I have found this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWl4Z5pd0_s and I have discovered that I can do the A1, A2 and B1. So, I can understand the main points of what the people say but not everything because, depending also on the person who talks, there are some things I don't understand.

THE BuTTeRFLy EFFeCT

IT WILL ALL END IN THE BEGGINNING

"¿How can you change something without changing everything?"


Well known Ashton Kutcher stars in this film as Evan, a guy that's obsessed with the memory lapsuses he had during his childhood. At the age of 7, Evan starts writing some diaries, until college. Then, he realizes something strange happens when he reads them. Is he able to go back to the past? Can he change it?

This film is an original thriller that combines in just one story, different situations and consecuences. You must pay atention because every second something important happens. You won't find the answer until the end of the film and, even then, you'll have to think about the conclusion. Well job of the cast, starring Ashton Kutcher an Amy Smart. Commendable film.

my reading

Trying to test my English level in relation to reading, I have visited www.hellomagazine.com. There, I have looked for an interesting new (http://www.hellomagazine.com/film/2007/01/02/julia-roberts-baby/), and I have proved I´m able to do correctly the A1, A2 and A3.

practise english in a interesting way

I have been looking for interesting webpages where i can practise english in a enjoyable form. while i was looking for, i found a webpage where there were a lot of different activities or links to other pages were you can practise reading,listening...i think that is a very interesting page because yo have links to all type of webpages: pages where you can see funny videos, where you can listen to the radio, where you can see film reviews... The link of the page is www.bored.com

For instance, i enter in one site of the webpage where you can see a lof of videofilms:http://www.bored.com/watchfilms/index.html there you have documentals, cartoons so you can practise your listening without be bored.

i think that my level of english listening it would be between b1 and b2, because i understand the mainpoints of the conversations in the films and i can understand the majority of films in standard dialect, but sometimes i get lost.

to sum up, i recommend this webpage i think that you have a lot of activities to do, enter the link and you will see!

CAN or CAN'T

Most of the sites I usually visit are in English, but I'd never realized wether I understand them completely or not. Until now.
For this exercise, we had to choose two of the "can do" statements and test ourselves according to them.
Well, I chose the "reading" and "listening" statements:

There's an American music band I love, Lifehouse, so I inmediately selected the topic I was going to read about. After that, my good friend Google took me to the American MTV website, where I read this group's biography. this is the link for the information: http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/lifehouse/bio.jhtml
I can do A1, A2 and B1. in fact, the text was too short to try the rest of the staments, so I goy into the "news" section ( http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/lifehouse/bio.jhtml#/music/artist/lifehouse/news.jhtml ) and clicked on the third one. Reading this article and some of the band's lyrics, I think I'm able to say I also can do B2.

Then, I tried the listenig. Before I started I knew I could do A1. But I had to test myself at the others, so I went to youtube.com and search some videos of and about Lifehouse as an interview...



...a music video...


...and a piece of an episode of a tv show (instead of a film).


Watching this videos, I think I can do A1, A2, B1 and B2. In fact, I realized that I can understand scripted dialogues, some songs and the interviewed, but I will never understand the interviewer... Too difficult for me.