Expand your music horizons

Recently I've feel in the urge to evolve my music taste in every direction, meaning I'm constantly searching for new music styles and songs because at some point I realized I'm listening the same music for years. I really hate when I go to a place where the DJ is the only person who seems to be enjoying the music. People gives up and leaves the dance floor and throws away the dance momentum. In such cases I take care of the playlist, more often recently than before people demands my services as a DJ and I really enjoy it. Getting people to the dance floor and getting crazy with the music you provide is create a direct connection under the same language.
There are some free options there in the internet to allow you to access a whole new world of music.
This website provides for free the opportunity to listen to music and organize an online playlist (perfect for parties) http://listen.grooveshark.com
If you want to listen to a tune with the given option of download http://www.tagoo.ru
There are also search engines that finds the music file using Google search, case of http://www.beemp3.com and http://g2p.org

Note: I don't promote piracy, if you like a tune, buy it, support the artist to keep doing more music and think about all the work that is behind the production of it.

Which generation are you?

Normally I don't participate in facebook quizes (specially about personality), but tonight I found one interesting tittled: "What Decade Fits Your Personality Best?". After answering few multiple selection questions, I got I'm in the 80's generation!
I have read the description and found it actually somewhat pretty accurate to my personality and therefore I'd like to share it:

Everybody's doing a brand new dance now, and you are ready to jump on the party train! You are anything ut dull. In fact, you are wild, spontaneous, quirky, flirtatious, flashy, and spunky. Life is a wild ride for you, and you take downfalls with a grain of salt. Your motto is "the bigger, the better." You might be a little indulgent, but it gets you far in life. You work hard so you can play even harder. You are one of the rare combination of conservative ideologies and cutting-edge attitude. You know when to take life seriously, but overall you just wanna have fun and live your life to it's fullest, most radical potential. You use any and every thing to express your creativity and individuality-- your clothing style, hair, the music you listen to, the way you decorate, the kind of car you drive, and the way you can turn something boring into a statement-piece. Your vivaciousness is what people love about you and is what will make your life wonderful..

This is why you're fat

Stumbling around websites on a lazy Sunday, I found this pearl:

The Sandwich of Knowledge

The bottom tier contains eight strips of bacon, six sausages and four burger paddies; followed by a second tier of black pudding; topped by a third tier comprised of two diced chicken breasts and six fried eggs.

I couldn't believe there are such a gross combinations of food for satisfying the enormous demand of calories for a big person. This is why you're fat! Check it out.

Habanero

Last weekend I had the opportunity to try what is considered one of the most spicy chili's on the face of earth. The famous Habanero. It happened during the party of a friend who had the chance to know forehand that he finally approved all his university courses and he will finally graduate eventually as an adult educator. This event was perfect excuse to gather at his place and mix tequila with beers and wine and vodka. Being there a couple of Finnish guys invited me to try a chili. I didn't have problems to recognize the specific one because coincidentally I happened to get curious, some days earlier, over a video I saw on Internet of a guy eating a freaking Habanero and describing the experience in the meanwhile, among another related videos of teenagers making competitions about eating the chili. So, it was a fearsome moment, but it was a challenge I had to take, and very soon regret.

Despite it name means "From the Habana (Cuba)" they can come from different places and countries as Mexico, Belize, Panama, Costa Rica, and some U.S. states. It scores from 100,000 to 350,000 heat units. Heat units are actually determined by how many parts of sugar water it takes to dilute a sample so that the heat of a chili can no longer be detected. The chili sample is provided in the form of an extract. The more sugar, the higher the spice, the greater measurement in Scoville units.
As my nature of a non believer, I asked the guys to eat it first. The guys happened to eat it and chew it very well, to later make grin faces and go along the painful process for about 5 minutes and right after that, they had a beer and kept the party going on. It was my turn. To the hell with it, I have to find out what eating a Habanero is. I mean, I've lost my fear for spices in Turkey. This couldn't be so bad. Oh boy, I was so wrong.
I put the chili in my mouth and started chewing it for about 10 seconds. Briefly after that, I could feel the rush of pain going from the back of my throat to my ears. I started sweating and some tears came out of my eyes. I opened my mouth but the air wasn't helping. It was real pain! The time stopped and seconds were passing really slowly. Again my ears and the back side of my head were hurting. The pain was going just to return stronger. It took me 10 long minutes to go along with it. I had to drink some yogurt afterwards to help out the spicy sensation. But the worst wasn't really there yet.
When I was new to Turkey my friend told me a very wise phrase "Bad thing about spices, my friend, is that they burn coming in... and going out. You should always remember that." Hell I did remember.

Another good reference:
http://www.mojavefarm.com/pepper_scale.htm

About Relationships

A good friend of mine asked me to do and interesting exercise: to write something about men and women relationships. Believe me, this is truly a daunting task, but I feel this time I really have something to talk about.

Knowing from my own experience a relationship is a process in which two individuals shape each other into gears that fits well in a common engine. Same engine that, if runs well, can take you really far and smoothly to your dreamed destination. This shaping process is not easy, especially if you’re more up to the shaping than getting shaped, and the other way around. Some people are really scared to the shaping and submit themselves to the other persons will. Most likely because of the fear and insecurity that the other person won’t like the shape they’re getting. I put an example. Say you meet somebody and there is the chemistry and after some really shared moments you finally get together. Incredible feeling, unbelievable emotions and you don’t want to screw up, right? The tiger is dead and now you start feeling fear for its skin. You start feeling like this person will lose interest on you, so you turn down whatever your life plans, including your truly self, in order to keep the other person happy. What happened to that person that they used to know? That funny person, open, sociable and happy suddenly turns into a submissive character into mortal fear to be left alone. Now dependency has been created: you become a ballast for the other person and most likely your happiness depends on the mood swings of your beloved.
Do you remember how you learned to ride a bicycle, do you? You fell, several times; you woke up and kept trying until you learned how to ride a bicycle properly. Do you remember how did you learn to cook a good pasta? That’s right: don’t be afraid to screw it up, you should risk and turn down the curtain and find out whether the person behind is who likes you the way you are and who deserves to shape you as well.
There is the other extreme, when it’s you who is demanding the other person to fit whatever the shape is: a triangle, a circle, a square… it doesn’t matter it should fit perfectly or nothing. Take a break, think of a relationship as a partnership where everybody wins if the project goes fine. Let the other person feel like its part of something important where the effort is worthy and the reward at the end of the journey is great.
Those were the extremes. What is in between is what gives spicy to the relationship: to find those critical points in which the boundaries are drawn. There are personal spaces, convictions and whatsoever that has a line that certainly shouldn’t be crossed. Think of it as a matter of personal respect and space. Some days the boundaries are different, both for male and female. Battlefield has been set and then comes the common sense and lots of patience to sort things out as soon as possible. It’s not worthy to move the little differences to other areas and let them grow as a snowball. Face them, solve them and be happy. After each little fight comes the sweet taste of the reconciliation and a lesson has been learned. Remember: it’s all about shaping.
I wouldn't talk about a perfect relationship because it is an utopia. But think of somebody with whom you can speak for hours and hours as if it were just few minutes; somebody who understands you and have lots of thing in common and most important that you can build a future together. For me that's good enough to describe a good relationship.
People comes and goes, you never know what is beyond the sea if you don’t dare to swim all the way to the other shore. Some day you will feel that this is the right person, and you will have the experience to sort things in a better way. Experience makes the master. It is better if you carry no pressures at all, even life is short but still it’s a ride that deserves to explore the terrain and figure it out whether or not is the area you want to settle.

Apocalypse now

I was just a kid when my father revealed me that the sun is an incredibly big star burning out in space and that someday will turn off ceasing with itself all life in our planet. At this very point, I felt sad in my childhood innocence. So, life has an end; this planet will someday will exist no more. He added: “but don’t worry, it will happen million of years from now”. Later that evening, I felt pity for the people that would live in earth for that time… millions of years later from that very day the life will be wiped from earth surface for the simple reason of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Several years have passed since then and with the accelerated revolution of technology and industry, exponential growth of human stupidity along with all the consequences also known as global warming, atomic war menaces and pollution seems like the apocalypse isn’t million of years from that day but could be just around the corner. I feel pity of myself now. I should clarify that I’m not being alarmist; I won’t hang out in the streets with a two-month beard and holding a paper in my hands saying “apocalypse is coming, regret your sins”, but in the way we are going, things in Earth will change irreversibly. Earth is getting more and hotter; predictions say that in 5 years all the ice in the North Pole will completely melt! Imagine that, what are we doing?
So, the question is: what would you do if the end of the human race comes to an end while you’re still here? Yes, this very moment when we will give step to a new kind of race that will consume our remains as petrol and expose our buildings as prehistoric relics.
My imagination consumes entire hours by trying to solve such kind of questions for no particular reason but maybe just to be prepared for what could happen. Imagine to bag pack few supplies and wander in a battle for survival through inclement weather conditions for safe lands to extend your life at least. Then failure is not an option, and to live to survive another day is a must quest.
Are we really prepared to face the future we would create for ourselves?

Amazing

For some reason I've been always afraid of thunders: while crossing open fields in the country side while a little rain drops are falling; in the beach when is cloudy, when I'm home in the middle of the night under my blankets, and some other common situations: the sky is trying to touch you.
Discovery channel on their wisdom have revealed that there is not a rule for which you wouldn't get one of those in the top of your head and the get the electric shock to make your blood boil and destroy all sort of tissues and get 3rd grade burnings: it can be in a perfect sunny day, when the thunder just crosses the mountain from the dark clouds some kilometers away and then chooses you, riding a bike, as the best pole to get in touch with the ground. In a matter of a probabilities is really rare you get as the chosen one. Like a Balotto, you can get extremely lucky to either one of those, or even worst, to get both at the same day.
At the moment I just let myself get amused with such a great spectacle, I wanted to share with you this video.

She

She
She screams in silence.
A sulley roit penetrating through her mind.
Waiting for a sign to smash the silence with the brick of self control.

Are you locked up in a world that's been planned out for you?
Are you feeling like a social tool without a use?
Scream at me until my ears bleed.
I'm taking heed in just for you.

Green Day - She

Tricking publicity?

For some days I was pending with excitement for the release of a movie named 10,000 B.C. why? Well, the trailers showed a promising movie full of action and prehistorical animals! There was even a guy facing a saber teeth tiger in the edge of a cliff with solely a white bone spiked spear! I saw some short trailers on tv about a guy (maybe the same one in the poster) trapped in some sort of cave with the huge cat! a win win movie!

In the other hand I really like movies to surprise me by not documenting myself previously so I can enjoy them at the cinema, with pop corn and cola. After the movie I digest them outside while getting a drink. Thinking and discussing key scenes, speculating about actors destiny, director's hand, and this amateur observations we make ourselves. I'm one of these.
C'mon, this is 2008 we have hollywood movies with enough technology and budget as to display in front of our eyes, whatever ( I really mean whatever) story, flawlessly, full of details, sounds, great actors, impossible camera angles and all that sort of stuff that makes the 2 hours of a movie feel like just a couple of minutes! Ok, enough preamble, let's get to the point: 10,000 B.C.
The movie started with a great story about hunters and the mammoths that weren't returning to their valley, the starving tribe was worried. Then a cheesy prophesy came along with a little blue eyed girl that came suddenly after her tribe was owned by some sort of demons ( I thought, the tigers! maybe a horned t-Rex! I couldn't wait to find out who/what was a demon) even I managed to forget that the girl would be the true love of the hero (damn, a pinky taste). The mammoths chase scene was ok, but something wasn't ok... there wasn't blood, broken bones, smashed people, so I deduced it was clearly a 12+ rated movie. Later one the movie got quickly more cheesy and pink! The story was a bad remaking of the far better movie apocalypto of Mel Gibson. The worst is maybe that there is not such a scene of the guy in the edge of the cliff!!! what the hell? The demons were, finally, some guys with masks that takes people from tribes and sell them as slaves (as apocalypto) in an area with a sacrifice pyramid (as in apocalypto). I don't want to spoil you the story but there are plenty and plenty of clichés in this movie and at the end the guy became an Independence day's style hero (everybody cheering up, and reunited to face evil and war yelling and world is safe an stuff like that).
Ok, I have to recognize, maybe I'm too old to enjoy such a movies. If I had 13 to 15 years less I would have enjoyed it to the bone, but to the sake of my money, at least I found it a bit entertaining.

Volver

Some kilometers above the earth I was facing one of the greatest blend of feelings I have had in my life: To return home after a long journey that took me living in 3 different countries, visit more than 30 cities in 3 years and 3 months.
As the plane approached the Caribbean coast on a splendid sunny Wednesday, In the distance, I could recognize the tropical surface of my home land. This has been a long awaited moment and finally it was becoming true. I would definitely need some support. I asked for another whiskey.

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Dear reader, let me embrace you in a wonderful tale of a fascinating lifetime before I put my story back to Earth. Probably the best thing I can offer you for this unexpected twist of my post is this song in the background. The song is "La Noyée" from the movie "Amelie" from Yann Tiersen. No soundtrack can fit better this enchantment of poor literature. Listen to it twice and continue reading while it plays. It works good for me.
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Its been 3 years full of experiences, some of them sad, some of them amazing, some of them of an euphoric moments of victory, great tastes of an exquisite world, a perfume of places, a blur of faces turning and going up and down like in a Waltz dance; a bubble filled of human voices and trains moving on the railway. The smell of airports and a recently opened suitcase.
I picture myself running behind a train going to a sunny field, each wagon carry a lot of people: all the people I've met in this journey. They wave their hands to me. I run faster. On the train sides there is colors, there is music, there is a feeling in my soul of an unbreakable silent of gratitude. This train stops in an old station where the walls are high and there is plenty of mosaics and the windows are decorated with great micro sculptures of angels of the Roman Empire time. I can see the great design of the floor while I move towards the exit of the station. There are kids selling newspapers and candies. The people walks so graceful in all directions. I can hear the sound of the footsteps and the fresh air of the sea ventilating the big hall. The door is just in front of me. The fresh air fills my lungs, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Slowly I can feel how a warm energy is filling me. The Waltz continues; the melody is inside of me now. The big halls turns transparent each time. I keep the air in my lungs and then I let it go by exhaling slowly. I open my eyes, put my tie in place, hold harder my luggage case and put my feet together. It is time to go.
There is a song of Carlos Gardel named "volver" (to return) and comes like:

Tengo miedo del encuentro con el pasado que vuelve a enfrentarse con mi vida.
Tengo miedo de las noches que pobladas de recuerdos encadenen mi soñar.
Pero el viajero que huye, tarde o temprano detiene su andar;
Y aunque el olvido que todo lo destruye, haya matado mi vieja ilusión,
Guardo escondida una esperanza humilde que es toda la fortuna de mi corazón.

Which translates:

I'm afraid of the meeting with the past that comes back to face my life.
I'm afraid of the nights that full of memories enchains my dreams.
But the traveler that flees, soon or later stops its march;
And even though the forgetfulness that everything destroys, had killed my old illusion,
I hold hidden a humble hope that is all the fortune of my heart.

At this very moment in the airplane I was having and invisible hand holding my heart that pulled out a couple of tears. There was, in front of my eyes, the precious land I can finally call "home". The life has finally brought me in one piece back home. Back to my family and friends. Back to these feelings that has been worned out after many recalls from the most remote corners I've been in this world.
Home. Such a meaningful and important word. There was no fit for its meaning on me for the very moment in which the plane landed. My bag didn't arrive with me, and due to a big damage to the highway that leads to the airport my parents didn't arrive on time to pick me up. I went out of the airport with merely my hand luggage and a empty reception hall. The tropical weather was just too hot, I forgot how hard it was. The whiskey was finally having an effect on me. I made the report for the lost luggage and after a fair moment of distress I looked towards the clean sky I just came from; I smiled silently and went upstairs where in few minutes I would meet my parents. At last!