News: "'Ice cream' murder woman gets life sentence in Austria"

Estibaliz Carranza, nowadays known as "the ice killer", buried in concrete her ex-husband and her lover after killing them. When discovered, she tried to flee, but was caught and judged. Psychiatrist agree that she suffered from a personality disorder as well as serious mental abnormalities.

Well, maybe these horrific things can be avoided if people with this kind of serious mental disorders are treated at time, but I'm not sure if "the sick ones" realize they're are not healthy... Even if someone tells them that, I think they won't take it seriously and will just negate to be treated. These things doesn't  affect me at the moment, but maybe I'll encounter some people with this while working and, if I can do it, I'll try to "fix" these disorders.


New words
Concrete: Formigó
Trial: Judici
To plead: Suplicar
Guilty: Culpabilitat

News & image source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20453491
"New words meaning" source: http://www.wordreference.com/es/

News: "Gaza and Israel begin to resume normal life after truce"

After a lot of military attacks between Gaza and Israel, they begin to resume normal life. Israel launched a final offensive against Gaza, with the killing of a Hamas military leader. Also, the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement came into force. Finally, Israel has agreed to end hostilities, same as Palestinians.

It's true that if someone attacks they'll shatter in conflict again... Well, it's good to see war end - even if temporally -. This doesn't affect me directly, but seeing that people can still agree with things when religion or economical issues "come into the show" it's enough to give me some kind of "hope" about a future without those things, specifically the conflicts they provoke.


New words
Truce: Suspendre les hostilitats (castellà = tregua)
Resume: Reprendre
Ceasefire: Alto al foc
Overnight: Durant la nit
Under the deal: "Sota" el problema (dilema)
Staging: "Posada en escena"
Sheltering: Refugiant-se
Shelling: Protegint-se (?)

News & image source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20444499
"New words meaning" source: http://www.wordreference.com/es/

Trying to improve mental skills

I've been searching a lot of information about improving "mental skills", such as concentration, memory, and stuff. Then I started to apply it.
First of all, I searched for "meditation's psychological and biological effects", as I believed that there was a connection between the obviously high concentration rate of Buddhist monks and the time they spend meditating every day. I was right: focusing your attention on one thing - acting as "meditation base" - improves your capacity for concentrating on other things. Once mastered, this "actualized" skill can be applied on mostly whatever.
I'm giving it a try, and I can focus more on reading books, for example. I don't know if I'm doing it right or it's just placebo effects, but I'm happy with the results.

Choosing a topic for an oral presentation

Although there are a lot of ideas to talk about, it's really easy to choose what kind of stuff you want to talk about. The topics given by the teacher focus on projects that we've done in class (dreams and youth), adding "informatics" as a general idea.

Talking with my partner, it easily turned out that the idea we like more it's the dreams one. We've shared some opinions about the things that we like to talk about, but they weren't focus enough, so our ideas turned... "too general".

Then, we decided to talk about our personal dreams, the challenges we'll face to reach them and the solutions.

Dialogue - Eva & José

Scenario: Two friends talking about their mum’s mechanisms to keep young

Characters: José, Eva

J: Oh, did I tell you that my mum got an appointment in Corporación Dermoestética?

E: Wow, really? Why?

J: She is upset about her wrinkles.

E: Is she confident with her decision, isn't she?

J: Yep, she is.

E: Did she try any cosmetics?

J: Well, I think she never thought about that. My mum believes (that) they can be harmful.

E: Oh, come on. It’s known (that) operations are dangerous, aren’t they?

J: I knew you wouldn’t like that…I don’t disagree with her at all, though.

E: But why she wants to spent money on operations? She may feel bad with wrinkles, it’s so…unnatural!

J: Yeah, I think you’re right. Oh gosh, you always preferred to avoid this kind of things, didn’t you?

NOTE: The format went completely mad. I'll rewrite this entry to try to fix this.

"Youth is the most important thing in the world"

On one hand, this can easily turn into obsession; you know, it's nearly imposible to keep young all your life, and the desperation of seeing you getting older will be a nightmare.

But on the other hand, old people usually desire to be young again. Maybe they suffer to much from physical aches, so there we have a possible argument to defend that youth is the most important thing in the world.

“We can't live without humor”

Is this really true? If we interpret this sentence in a literally, absolutely non-metaphoric way, it's easy to talk nonsense: Humor is completely vital for life and without it, we will die. Obviously, to discuss this phrase we need to understand it as a metaphorical one.

On one hand, having a favorite topic for jokes doesn't mean the others would find comfortable with it, and you can easily offend or make someone feel bad; otherwise we would all have the same type of humor. The same occurs if we are jokers; we may see it funny, but it can be painful for the person who “suffered” the joke. So, humor can make your life and other's ones tough.

However, on the other hand humour affects positively to your relations and behaviour, greatly increasing your sense of self-fulfillment and making you engage your life happier. Well, life can be really deceptive, and it's absolutely true that if the bad things aren't faced with positiveness, they can make you suffer a lot.

In conclusion, humor is kinda “useful” if we want to avoid suffering, but on an adequate measure; in other words, having no humor at all doesn't help you much, but having an “uncontrolled” one have similar consequences.