Wednesday Morning Blog

 Hi FAU Bloggers, As you might have guessed by now, I'm what's known in good Chilean as "pati-peri." However, aside from having been lucky enough to visit some amazing countries in my long life, I have also visited some amazing places in Chile. I travelled Chile from Arica to Aysen so I still have a third of the teritory left to discover. Today I'm going to write about a place in Chile I really enjoyed visiting and that I'd like to visit again: Malalcahuello.  I visited Malalcahuello in 2007 when one of my sisters was visiting from the UK. My sister arrive towards the end of February.  A few days after she arrived, and along with my wife, we decided to embark on a spontaneous road trip south. We packed up a tent and all our camping gear and headed South. We spent a night in Chanco, a couple of nights in Cobquecura and a night in Curacautin before arriving in Malalcuhuello. By this time my wife was tired of driving and wanted a holiday so we decided to stay a f...

Good Morning FAU Bloggers: Today I'd like you to write about someone from your family. It could be a brother or sister, one of your parents or another relative (uncle, aunt, cousin, etc). I'm going to write about my brother Adrian. Well Adrian, or Ady (AD?) as we like to call him, currently lives in New Zealand with his wife and 2 kids - Ella and Freya (although both have left home now). He was a happy child, always joking and trying to make people laugh. He had a good temperament and rarely got angry. He learnt carpentry when he was a teenager and now works repairing violins and chelos and making groovy furniture. Ady is 18 months younger than me and we've always had a great relationship. He is someone you can depend on and is always ready to help out if things are complicated or you have a problem. The rest of the time he loves fooling about and playing music. He is a very good guitar player and an excellent violin player. He taught himself both instruments when he was yo...

Hi FAU Bloggers, Let's talk language:) So, I speak English as a first language even though I'm technically Welsh (I was born in Wales). However, my Grandparents on my mother's side were Irish and on my Dad's side with a connection to the Campbell clan in Scotland. I don't speak Welsh, which is a Celtic language, and I tend to describe myself as a British "kiltro." As a child I went to a Catholic School. I had Latin lessons but learnt no Latin and French lessons and learnt no French. My next attempt at learning a foreign language was Spanish almost 15 years after leaving school. At age 29, I went to live in Spain in search of a new life (after 6 years trying to be a musician). I knew about 10 Spanish words when I arrived in Spain and it took me about 6 months before I began to speak any Spanish. People were happy that I only spoke English because they had the chance to practice with me but I became curious about Spanish and I really wanted to learn it. Now,...

Hi FAU Bloggers I noticed that one or two of you mentioned that you like reading so, today I'd like you to talk about a book you can recommend. Actually, I started reading at a very young age and reading has always been one of my hobbies. However, I think there are lots of books that I love that maybe aren't so easy to read or that many people wouldn't find interesting. For example, a couple of years ago I read 2066 by Chilean author Roberto Bollaño in Spanish. It's a long novel (sort of 5 novels in one) and it took me about 3 months to read. It was very rewarding though as he is an amazing writer. One of my favourite books in recent years is a book by a Japanese author called Haruki Murakami. The book is called  Kafka on the Shore  and I read it in 2005. I discovered it because a British author I like called David Mitchell reviewed it in a magazine and said it was great. Then, a few weeks late The New York Times printed the first chapter. I read it and then bought the ...

 Hi FAU Bloggers, This week we will also split our blog session into 2 sections: In section 1 you need to write about your ALL TIME TOP 5, and in Section 2, evaluate a classmate's blog. ALL TIME TOP 5 Choose one of the following themes and create an ALL TIME TOP 5: books, films, animes/mangas, songs, albums, TV series. For each of the 5 items on your list write a text that includes: - the genre - the creator (director, author, musician) - the year it came out - the main characters or themes - a very brief summary of why you like it. Here are 2 of my ALL TIME TOP 5 FILMS as an example. One of my favourite films is the science fiction film Bladerunner which was released in 1982. It was made by British director Ridley Scott. The main characters are Deckard, an ex-police officer trained to capture and "terminate" runaway robots called Replicants. Roy Batty is the leader of a group of escaped replicants who Deckard has to capture and kill. I loved this movie because of it'...

Having a week off mid-term is a great idea. Being able to do other things apart from work or study can have a positive impact on motivation and wellbeing.  Today I'd like to write about the top 5 activities I did during the past week. 1. Sleep I guess this will be high on most people's list:) I normally get up at 6.45 - 7.00 am every week-day, so being able to sleep in until 9 or 10 am was great. I think I enjoyed it more because of the time of the year. There have been a lot of grey, sun-less days recently, and being able to stay in bed when its cold outside is wonderful. 2. Hobby Time Extra time off always means having a little more time to dedicate to doing hobbies. As you may know by now, my main hobby is making music. I combine electronic instruments and rhythms with live guitar and, occasionally, vocals randomly. This past week I fine tuned a couple of songs I'm working on and started a couple of new projects. I had hoped to get more done this week but I guess the tra...

 My cultural snapshot at the moment contains the following items: Music: Actually, the songs I have stuck in my head at the moment are all the demo songs I´m working on for a solo album I hope to release next month. It´s the first time I´ve worked on a collection of songs with lyrics for about 20 years. My favourite tracks are ¨Can U Lift Me Up¨ & a duet I sing with my wife called ¨Hope¨. I guess they are sort of electronic with elements of Pop & Soul. My artistic name is Experiment SH1310 (you can follow on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/artist/08XQBuGhFGeu0SXOfpwLmz?si=Gmei-psGQuORP8FxEGmrWg). Book The book I´m reading at the moment is called ¨Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow ¨ by Gabrielle Zevin. I think it´s a modern love story (but I´m not quite sure). It´s about 2 friends who worker together creating video games. It´s very easy to read and the story is compelling. I´m about half-way through so far and I´m really enjoying the story, Film: The film on my cu...