Seeing that "Life is Looking Up"

So, this week has been rather... uneventful perhaps? Apart from many tests we have had and the great success I've been getting on most of my subjects, there's really not a lot of things that have been intresting this week. The one thing that has captured by attention lately has been... art. I know that art may be considered as a shallow thing to speak about, since many people think that art just depends on the person grabbing a pencil and drawing something worthy of being displayed on the National Gallery or something, but it is much more than that. I remember that last year we did an activity with Mrs. Williams on the question "What is art?" (in other words a TOK question). To be truthful, it was really difficult for us to come up with a precise definition to it, because there really isn't only 1 deffinition for it at all. Every single person views art in a different way, just like a person might interpret a song as meaning one thing, while the other person might disagree and say that it could mean another. In other words: there's no fixed meaning to it.

I remember how a few months ago (around the start of July), when Ale and I went on the exchange program to Cheltenham, we were taken to see London and I chose to go to some of the art galleries in there to take advantage of my visit in a good way. We first got to visit the National Gallery, which pretty much has what is thought as "traditional art" (in other words artists such as Van Gogh, Matisse, etc.) However, the second art gallery we visited was the Tate Modern, and quite frankly I can say that this one impressed me more. Even though the quality of the National Gallery's collection was pristine and very detailed and traditional, the Tate Modern's collection contrasted this strongly. For one part, on a side of the building there was literally a room which displayed daily life objects on glass stands with the question we had seen at school: "What is art?" 

That display really got me thinking of what could be thought of as art and on what aspect of an artwork was more important: the message or the technique. Some of the artists there might have seemed as if they had no real technque at all, only meaning to their work. However, these past few weeks I've been studying artists that similarly didn't follow the norm of what was considered as art back then and that were risktakers and innovators in the way that they showed their messages. When I tried to immitate a work of art done by Robert Rauschenberg, even though it seemed like a messy mixture of paints and strokes, I found it really challenging to imitate it. That only showed me that even artists that have really simple or messy artwork do have technique, as all of the brush strokes and colours they use are there for a reason: I even think it takes more skill to do a very chaotic looking piece of artwork and managing to retain its meaning.

Robert Rauschenberg's Lichen AKA the artwork
I tried to imitate, but that I found out that it was
more challenging than what it seemed at first
sight.

So now because all of this, I can say that art really depends on the creator of the piece, but it equally depends on the viewer, as the person who made the work has a different way of thinking than any other person in the world. For one person this work (left) might mean how nature is being destroyed, for others it may be a visual resume of the history of humankind, others could describe it as how the painter feels inside and other people could simply dismiss it as a big array of colours and prints with no meaning at all but only with an aesthetic value. 

Songs currently on: Life Is Looking Up - Forgive Durden, All The Right Moves - One Republic, New Divide - Linkin Park

* Picture of Robert Rauschenberg taken from link - artwork belongs to Robert Raushchenberg, "Lichen", 1972

Can we really believe on what other people say?

This subject we discussed about on the last TOK lesson was really relevant to me personally because of the incidents of the 30th of September, 2010. Almost a year ago, there was a massive protest done by the Ecuadorian police, which almost literally shook the country and that has marked the lives of Ecuadorians that witnessed the events. That may sound a bit too over the top, but it really was a shocking and unforgettable day for all the people of this country - even up to this date. 

What was scarier about that day was that there was a great ammount of uncertainty of what was going to happen that day - literally all the country was badly informed about what was going on with the president in the center of Quito. In this part, the media areas of the country should have stepped in to inform the country on what was going on and the precautions that we had to take to stay safe (as all the police was on "strike" it was the ideal time for delinquents to make their appearance all over the country, taking advantage of what was going on). The tv channels and radio did keep informed the population informed... but just for a while. At around 4 pm all of the tv channel transmissions were cut out and replaced with the government's channel - in other words, that day only the voice and opinion of the government was heard. 

Personally, this caused me to double think if what the government was saying was truthful or not, as they were claiming that the president had been kidnapped and that there was absolutely no chaos on the streets. It was only to be discovered a few days later that they had lied, as many civilians resulted injured from confrontations agains the police and that the president wasn't kidnapped, but that he pretty much "stepped into trouble" himself and ended up trapped between a fight of the police and the military forces. Some people did believe what the government's channel was saying, specially the people that were keen followers of the president and his campaign. On the other hand, there was the people that didn't belive on the channel, as they believed that the information given was biased only to benefit the president.

Now that many years have gone past, the goverment has been getting into trouble with a lot of independent newpapers on Ecuador, such as El Universo. With cases such as this one, the government has been repeatedly arguing and sueing all of the independent media types of the country that have spoken about something related to the 30-S. To date no one is really sure of what did happen that day, so the general population is still unsure if these newspapers are saying the truth or not, as these have been very trusted medias for the past 100 years.

This is why people can be led to believe on things depending on whom it was written by rather than by analyzing the facts and trying to dig deeper onto to the story to discover if the truth is being said or not.

Sometimes it really seems like...

...someone up there wants to make things tougher for you no matter what. It really is something that happens to me quite often, when I am really content and satisfied of where I am at in life and all. Unfortunately some of these things don't last long (then again, not many things last too long *except for radiation and the universe itself perhaps*). Anyways, this week was rather intresting to me, as I got to realize for the second time how difficult it is to keep on talking with someone that lives in a completely different country to yours and that has different expectations of how you should behave as a friend and such.

It can be argued that "pen pals" or in this case "online friends" (in other words, just friends, despite the distance and all) can get really well along when they first write to each other - its very rewarding to find someone that is similar to you in some ways, but totally different in others. When this happens, you find that you can actually talk with this person for like what seems ages - you just can't stop flooding the conversation with a lot of inside jokes only you and your "pen pal" know, random thoughts, critisicm on things you both don't like, etc. And when you do find this type of person after having no friends in highschool, it really feels amazing because you both know that you can rely on each other no matter what and that in some way or another you'll always will be there for each other despite the distance and cultural differences between both.

In my case, she was the first real friend I ever had since my "so called best friend" left school and pretty much forgot about me. She cheered me up when I was feeling down, and I did the same for her. She gave me her full on support, I did too. She genuinely worried about me, so did I. We both came up with a lot of nonesensical talk whenever we got to write to each other, but it never seemed to me as if we were loosing time on it - it was the opposite: it felt so surreal to be speaking with another person overseas about similar things. Looking back to those conversations I can still smile and think of how great it was for both of us as it helped us build up more confidence, get goals for the future and become better people in general - so in a sense we healed each other. It got that strong that we even considered each other as sisters, there were so many similarities in our likes and way of thinking that it was almost scary xD

However, it seems like in other countries people have different expectations on how you should be as a friend. One of these expectations is writing/calling/speaking to this person often and overall keeping in contact with them as often as possible. But what if there was a whole ocean separating both people? Wouldn't it be more difficult to fullfill this expectation with such a big breach in between, plus the fact that you are both now really busy with your studies and your own friends? In my opinion it would, but I wouldn't judge the other person if they suddently became slower at replying back because of all of this. In fact, I wouldn't be resentful about it. My common reaction to silence coming from the other person is fear that i might have said or done something wrong (I always blame myself for things) or that something bad might have happened to the other person. 

Nevertheless, this time around evidence was enough to prove to me that it was all over and that there is probably no fix to this anymore. The worst part of it is: 1. Again, it could have been a figment of my imagination and blamed myself for something that didn't happen 2. I don't even know what I did wrong 3. I have no way to fix this unless I get the confidence to stand up and make her speak about it for once and for all. 

Where I'm trying to get to with this is, that people do have different expectations of you no matter your age, birthcountry, gender, culture, religious belief, etc. It always happens that even close friends will fall into disagreements and issues as there is always different ways of thinking between both despite the million similarities that you seem to share. However, in my case my only expectation would be that she takes the situation with a little bit more maturity and speaks openly about it to me rather than subtly hinting the problem in a short tweet (Twitter). If we get to that point then things could possibly be fixed, but at this stage it seems far from possible that she wants to speak to me about it.

Songs currently on: Toba the Tuhra - Forgive Durden, Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day, Summertime - My Chemical Romance

What is considered as learning and what isn't?

So, about the last debate we had at the TOK class: we talked about what is considered as useful things to be learnt at school and how this varies from person to person according to their social backgrounds and such. This is very true as there are different things that people may consider useful to learn according to how, when and where they are going to apply their knowledge and with what purpose. This is why people that live in the countryside might consider it more useful to learn about agriculture and kand labour techniques rather than learning about subjects such as Physics. If an individual comes out from a background such as this one and comes back with that knowledge, it might or it might not be of use for his or her community depending on what the future aims of this one are. For one part, by applying this knowledge to the community, the person might contribute in the development of the area by constructing or using some idea to boost the communities' needs. However, the person might come back and also find that his adquired knowledge could also be of little use as the community could be more concerned about their own tradtional activities rather than making advancements of these sorts, which is why the person's knowledge could be rendered useless they find another place elsewhere in which they can use this to its full potential.

First week of school D:

Well, I won't say this is the first week at school, because it very obviously isnt, but yeah - these past two-almost-weeks have been pretty hurried and a little bit stressful at times. I remember how I constantly repeated to myself how this year was going to be an epic fail for me, seeing as we're starting our 2-year IB Diploma courses. What worried me more was deffinately art, becuase I didn't feel I was up to it at all. People often say that I can be really "closed" on my ways of thinking - that I don't change my mind on anything at all. Truth is, that is somewhat me (Lets get over the fact that being stubborn is almost in my family genes, it really is!). However, as soon as I got back to school I tried to get a hold of my self and face the facts with a "sense of poise and rationality" (yes, I'm quoting Panic! At The Disco's "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies"). I mean, even if going back to school is somewhat of a "torture" you have to go through, you can't simply overlook the fact that this is for my future. And thats something I've been quite worried about - my future.

If for every worry that I've got circling around in my head I got a scholarship of some sort to go to study abroad, almost all of my worries would be currently non-existent. Anyhow, this week (okay, almost two weeks) have been very... exciting! And in my vocabulary that word doesn't come up a lot, which probably means something quite good indeed! I mean, yes: I might get x3 more homework that I used to, I might have the CAS and IYA upon my back, and I have such a resposibility of my part to get good grades and all - but that doesn't worry me that much as long as I give 200% of what I've got (especially because I really want to hold the Ecuadorian flag in the "Juramento a la Bandera" next year - for that you've got to be top student.) Lots of my friends have constantly told me how I'm overly pushing myself in my school-life (pretty much ruining a social life I don't care all that much about - honest), but that's just me. And of course, I'm not doing this because "I want to be rich and famous in a career in art/any other type of self expression", but because I want to do something that I love doing for the rest of my life. Something that makes me happy everyday and that I could fully enjoy (i.e. Illustrator). So, I do think I've been overdoing all of my efforts in studying a little bit too much, but I'm only doing all of this because I want to follow my dreams - I'm not looking towards pleasing everybody else just for the sake of it (AKA it would be like lying to myself.)

So apart from all of the deep, insightful comments on my education (I'm sure my friends from DeviantART and from my school would be snoring by now), the T.O.K. class we had last week was very intresting. When I went on the exchange programme this summer to the Cheltenham Ladies College we got a taste of what TOK would be for us next year. And I must say that I was pretty excited from what I saw and experienced. I am really wondering what we're going to do next class. In the class of TOK we had at Cheltenham we read a short story that pretty much said how people are forgotten with the pass of time, leaving no trace of them on Earth after their deaths (in other words, it was pretty depressing).

Apart from pretty depressing stories of people being forgotten, seeing all of the guys from my class again after so long (actually, Summer holidays went by in a flash of nothingness) was really nice, especially Vale, Jenny, Iris and Anaflavia. Okay.. not "NICE" - more like "awesome" :D The past... *counts* 18 breaktimes we've had I've been hanging out with Jenny (talking about randomness like always), getting to know Martina and Michelle (Martina not as much because she magically "disappears" during breaktimes when I'm not looking), and having good laughs from time to time xD So so far now I've got to: 1. Do my art and physics homework 2. Check my DevART account and reply to my best friend there (on DevART I mean xD) 3. Practice Maths SATs 4. Update my P!ATDecuador blog (just something I do in my spare time AKA not lately at all) 5. Sleep (hopefully xD)

Songs currently on: Tony The Tiger - Manchester Orchestra, Change - The Young Veins, Camisado - Panic! At The Disco

* Sorry if this is a bit too long - its just the way I write on blogs xD