LEVEL 4 / POST 2 (WEEK 4): THE BEST CONCERT I´VE HAD.

Hi there! I'm Diego and this is my first post of the year, I'm really sorry I couldn't write anything the last season, I was very sick pharyngitis (it looks and sounds much worse in English lol) and dying in my bed (I wish I was there now).

Today I'm gonna write about the best concert I've ever been to: "Queen + Adam Lambert" at the Athletic Track of the National Stadium (30/09/15).

I was at the Social History of Chile class with my friend and classmate Bastián González, we both are fans of Queen, and we knew that they were going to play at 21:00 that day, really near to the campus Juan Gómez Millas. We didn't buy tickets before because we really didn't have any money at that time (we expended it all in beer and other related stuff), but we didn't really care about it, so we decided to eat some stuff at my house and walk to the stadium hoping we would find some way to get in, or in the worst scenario, listen to the concert on the street.

When we were standing round' there, two weird guys that seemed to be re-sellers approached to us and one of them said "I think you want to get in the concert guys", we said "yes!", so the guy told us "how much money do you have?", we began to count our money and finally said "we only have $15.000", the guy said "that's okay, I can get you two tickets, give me the money and wait here with my friend... i'll come back". We were really happy believing that we would get in, so innocently and patiently we waited at the front of the stadium with this guy friend. We were so naive!, the guy never came back with the tickets or our money and his friend run away. We were so angry!, Bastián began to run trying to chase this guy or his friend, but when he finally reached him, the guy threatened him, so he wisely decided to leave the situation.

Bastián was very, very angry, and some lady saw and ask him what's going on, he told her that we were scammed, and she gave him a vip court ticket valued in $120.000!!!! WE REALLY COULDN'T BELIEVE THIS. So we run and run trying to change this ticket for two regular ones, we talked to a lot of people at the street, with others re-sellers and also with the guys of the production, but we didn't have any luck... The concert started, we heard the beginning "One Vision" the amazing song which opens almost every Queen concert, and we started to lose our hope, there was no people outside anymore and I said to Bastián "please get in and enjoy the concert, you have the ticket!"; Bastián gently refused and stayed with me outside a couple of minutes.

When Queen was playing, what I think it was their fifth song "Killer Queen" we saw some guy coming with his friends, he told us "you guys want to get in?", we said "YES!", he said "how much would you pay me?", we said "we don't have any money, we were scammed", the guy looked at us and keep walking, but after some steps he seemed to regret and pull of his pocket about 6 regular tickets, and gave me one. Again, WE REALLY COULDN'T BELIEVE THIS. We ran to the concert, and finally decided to stay together in the regular court.

We were really, really lucky, the concert was amazing and maybe the happiest moment of my life.  I was so amazed watching Brian May and Roger Taylor, the guys I grew up watching at the cover of the "Greatest Hits" Queen's record in my house, the guys who filled twice the Wembley Stadium at 86', and marked a whole generation with their songs! Adam Lambert's vocal range was maybe the best and most insane thing I've ever listened in my life, I really could feel like I was at the 70's when some of the most amazing rock bands were at their top, and some guys like Ian Gillan, Robert Plant and Glenn Hughes, and even the great Freddie Mercury were screaming their souls out every night.


              

Blog Session 10: Evaluation of blog experience

Hello my friends, I’m going to talk about my blog experience. Sincerely writing in English isn’t so difficult to me, but I didn’t have the chance to do it in my high school, so I enjoyed a lot doing this activity, and now I think it was a great opportunity to improve our vocabulary and writing skills, because when I started to write in my blog, I had a lot of mistakes in my posts, but with practice and the help of the professor, my posts were getting better trough time.  

I always read the comments that the professor and my classmates made in my blog, because some of them were really funny, and I also like to read other posts because I always learned a lot of new things of them and I really love to found out that there is people interested in the same things that I like. I suggest more free posts to improve this activity, and I would like to write about metaphoric stuff, or colloquial language stuff, because I think that writing and speaking in those terms is really important to achieve a good communication with other English speakers.  I really feel that my writing is getting better when I do this kind of exercises, but I think that if I stop doing this my new skills may disappear.    

Blog Session 9: One or the Other "Franz Boas"

Hello! Today I’m going to talk about Franz Boas a German-American anthropologist; he was born on 9th July of 1858 on Germany. Boas studied physic in three german universities, but after an experience with some Canadian natives known as “Inuit” who helped him after he got lost doing a geological field work, he turned to anthropology. He is called “The father of American Anthropology” because his influence and contribution to the construction of modern anthropology.  

Boas is very important for the study of social sciences because he proposed the relativist concept of “historical particularism”, which denies the evolutionist current, and establishes that all the societies have a unique form to gain their cultural form depending on their historical processes.
This is the reason because I like Boas, because I think that he is maybe the principal responsible of the change of direction of anthropology, from an evolutionist point of view that based on the reality of Europe, segregated another ways of life and considered them inferior, to a point of view that respect and try to understand why certain society has so many differences with ours, but with no judgment between.  

Blog session 8: A free Post, Halloween

As you can see in my last post I’m a fan of Queen, so when a friend of mine told me that he was organizing a party for Halloween, I decided to start making a costume of Freddie Mercury, it didn’t take too much time, and I was ready one week before the party. But my friend Urbano, didn’t have his costume until the day of the party. So we went to the “Persa Bio-Bio”, and he bought a jacket and a t-shirt to make a costume of vagabond, after that, we went where there was a barricade on Grecia Avenue and dragged the clothes there to make them look deteriorated and dirty, and also we threw them some wine to make my friend look like a drunk guy (Thing that he is obviously not).

The party was really good, I saw a lot of my friends, classmates and ex-classmates there, we danced a lot and we had a really good time, I’m waiting for the next Halloween party.

  This is how a social scientist looks in the future?, I'm scared...

                       Hanging out with Francisco (Matías) aka "The pirate", aka "Failed Dorian Gray"

Blog Session 7: A photograph you like "Queen live at Live Aid"

I really like this picture and I think it’s one of my favorite ones, because it was taken in maybe the biggest rock music festival ever: “Live Aid” in 1985, and it shows us some moments of the performance of Queen, who is remembered by a lot of music magazines as the greatest rock performance ever. “Live Aid” festival was organized by Bob Geldof (Maybe you know him by his role of “Pink” in the Pink Floyd’s movie “The Wall”) to raise money for Eastern Africa, with the participation of a lot of my favorite artists: Sting, Phil Collins, George Michael, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Boy George and of course Queen. I like this picture because it captures one of the greatest moments of Queen’s career playing to big crowds as they used to (this festival sold 78.000 tickets), one year before they made the “Magic tour” (their final one), and it shows us the power of music, that can gather a lot of people to have fun, relax and in some cases to take awareness of poverty and all the others problems of our world.

Blog Session 6: How green are you?

Sincerely I don’t do anything to avoid pollution, I just complain sometimes about it. People can learn about these practices in a lot of places, but I think that the better place to do it is Internet, because there we can be in contact with all the organizations that work with these subjects, and with all the information that they upload. I haven’t tried recycling, but I would like to do it because is good for our planet and our environment. In Santiago I just use my legs because I’m poor and I don’t have a car (I nearly have money for the BIP!), and I really don’t like cars very much, I prefer bikes. I haven’t supported eco-organizations principally because I don’t know their real intentions in terms of their policies, maybe one day I will join some of this organizations, I’m interested at the ones that work in my university. But now, writing this I remember that in High School I supported the committee of environment in their work of planting trees and in the recuperation of a garden that was covered by junk. We worked really hard for about a week, and it was a really good time because I met a lot of people, and we saw how the garden was finally alive again, but now I’m really disappointed because the authorities of school didn’t do anything to take care of the garden, and now is full of junk again. I think that Santiago has a huge lack of policies in this subject, many people want to take care of environment but they really don’t know how, the population needs to be instructed.

This is why I don't support this eco-organizations

I don't have a car

Blog Session 5: My future job

In the future I would like to have a job that impresses and makes me feel happy every day, maybe an outdoors job that allows me to travel and meet a lot of people. I really don’t feel very comfortable with the academic life so I would like to work on applying anthropology to improve public or cultural policies. I would also like to follow another career related to art or humanities (Theory of music, History and Theory of Art or Spanish Literature); because I feel that my vocation is in all the cultural and artistic subjects. I don’t really like the idea of taking a major or a Ph.D. immediately, because I don’t want to give all my life to a certain career, I would like to do a lot of things not necessary related to Anthropology.

My biggest dream is living through music, maybe doing reviews for a music magazine, having a club that promotes local bands and culture or a radio show, and the most unachievable one: joining a band or a big or consolidated artist as a bass player. I think that all of this is really difficult to do but not impossible; it only takes a long time and hard work, and I hope that all the things that I’m learning at university help me to achieve any of my projects.

A pic from my former band Suicide Nation