Meet the González family

Family is, surely, an essential element to everybody. It's the core of society. In fact, the rest of the social elements wouldn't exist without family.

My family is a very typical one, I mean, as most of the families, it's composed by my mother, my father, my older brother, my little sister and me. As you can see, I'm the middle sister, and that's not actually easy, believe me.

My mother is called just like me, Mabel. She's a secretary, but is not working nowadays. She left her job when my brother was born. My mom engages in housework now.

My father is called Víctor, just like my older brother (by the way, I hate the fact my parents named us just like them). My dad has an electronic business, which is our main source of income. He has spent the last twenty years on it, with almost no vacations.

My older brother is called, as I just told you, Víctor, but we all call him Danny (because of his middle name, Daniel). He's 23 years old and was studying Laws, but he left it when he met his current girlfriend. What a shame, isn't it? Anyway, he's working now and living with his girlfriend.

Mi little sister is called Rosa. She graduated from high school last year, and is taking a year's sabbatical now, while she thinks about what to study next year.

Generally, I have a very good relationship with my family, because my parents are very understanding, my sister is a friend of mine as well, and my brother is a nice guy. However, we all have a very hard and strong personality, and that causes little fights or big discussions into the family.

Regarding my sister, we have a beautiful friendship. I wouldn't say she's my best friend, but we use to have very nice and fun moments together. We have very different tastes, but that makes our relationship a very interesting one. OK, we tend not to respect our personal tastes (such as music, food, hobbies, etc.), but I like discussing with her about I don't like or what she disagrees.

Honestly, I couldn't live without my family. Although all their faults and things I don't like about them, they're essential to me. They play a role of learning in my life, especially my parents. Perhaps I'm a little more indepent since I started to study here in Santiago and live with a cousin and an aunt of mine, but my family is still an indispensable factor to me and to things I decide to do and decide to avoid.

In the other hand, I don't have many friends, but they're really good friends and I'm happy with them. My best friend is called Dánida. She's 21 (just like me) and I met her in school. We studied together since primary and became friends instantly. She's now studying in San Felipe, so we don't meet frequently each other, but every time we do, we like to get out with other friends to dance or simply drink and talk.

My friends mean what my family doesn't mean to me. They can give me advices when I'm a little lost or confused about something or when I'm in trouble. They're probably a little more reliable than my parents, because they know how important are them to me. We also share many things in common, such as tastes, thinkings, ideas and even have a very simmilar forward-looking approach. Those things make my friends very special and important to me.

About influence, it's very difficult to find who has influenced my life more, but I think my family is more influential in the opinions I adopt and the way I think and act. However, my friends play an important role too in the decisions I take. It's like fifty-fifty.

Radiohead: A misunderstood band (sometimes)

I think the first time I listened to Radiohead was in 2003, when I was about 15 and I was on school. The person who "introduced" to me was my brother and I instantly became a fan of them. This band is now my favorite one.

Radiohead is a band from Oxford, England, composed by Thom Yorke (voice), Phil Selway (drums), Ed O'Brien (guitar) and the Greenwood brothers, Colin (bass) and Jonny (guitar and keyboards). I couldn't put them in an only music genre, because they can play rock and electronic music as well. However, press has tagged them as a alternative rock band or even an "indie" band, although I don't like that term.

Radiohead is currently my favorite band because they never stop surprising me, mainly because their albums are very different each other. For example, if you listen to their first album (Pablo Honey, 1993) and then their most recent album (In Rainbows, 2007), you couldn't notice they're from the same band, because Pablo Honey is a kind of a punk-rock album, with very distorted guitars, but In Rainbows is an album full of synthesizers and electronic sounds, although some guitars stay in their place.

I couldn't choose just one song as my favorite. Or, in other words, my favorite Radiohead song changes every time and depends on my frame of mind. But if you ask me now, I would say that it's "How to disappear completely". I guess many people must think that this is a very "sad" song, but maybe they think so because they don't understand it at all. This song inspires me a kind of strange peaceful, so when I want to get relaxed, I just put it on. It creates a very special sorround in any place, and its lyrics are really beautiful. This song talks about how you can, just for a pair of minutes (or even a second), forget about everything worries you, not cowardly, but fairly.

Music is for me a very important thing because it is with me anytime I need it. It's like an implicit partner. I listen to music most of the time, especially when I borely move through the city. I don't know what world would be without music. Life probably would be boring, so I hope it stays forever.

The best concert I have been is the one Radiohead played in march 27th. It was simply awesome, I sang every song along and had a very good time. It was a perfect evening. I just couldn't believe I was in a concert of RADIOHEAD! I remember I went to the airport to welcome them, with other (groupie) Radiohead fans. I was very excited and happy. Such an unforgettable week.

Tabloids lured by celebrity plastic surgery hoax

The Sunday Mirror, News of the World and People have been secretly filmed at meetings they thought were concerned with the possible purchase of private medical information about public figures who had undergone cosmetic surgery.

They were caught in the sting after they were approached by an undercover documentary-maker. He claimed to have a contact working as an administrative nurse in a cosmetic surgery clinic.

The newspapers were offered the chance to obtain confidential medical information about famous clients of the clinic. The filmaker, Chris Atkins, said he came up with the hoax to test "how far tabloid journalists are prepared to go" in pursuit of intrusive information.

The response of three tabloids ranged from cautious expressions of interest to an offer of £3,000 for every story printed.

A fourth Sunday tabloid, the Sunday Express, refused to meet Atkins, telling him his proposal could be deemed illegal and constituted "a gross breach of ethics".

The obtaining of private medical records without a person's consent is usually considered a breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA). Some breaches of the DPA could be justified by media organisations if they can prove obtaining the data was in the public interest.

Atkins said: "We wanted to do a survey of the newspapers to see if they would rise to the bait."

Atkins stopped communicating with the journalists after the first meeting and no money was exchanged.

You can read full article here.

Santiago and 5 places you must go to

I think the very first place a foreign turist should visit in Santiago is the Plaza de Armas. This square is always full of people, and that makes it a really special place to go, because you can observe the real population diversity, from businessmen to homeless. As being the "0 km" of Chile, the Plaza de Armas constitutes one of the most typical and interesting places in Santiago, mainly because there're many important buildings around it, including the Metropolitan Cathedral, the National Historical Museum, the Central Post office and the Santiago town hall.

The San Cristobal hill would be the second place to go. Once you are on the top, you can see almost the entire city, at least the downtown. There're many interesting things to see in the hill, for example, the Metropolitan Zoo, which has always scheming animals to see. This could be a perfect family panorama, and a nice way to do exercise, because the San Cristobal is a really tall hill, so you would need an entire afternoon to go to every spot of it.

If you want some culture life, you should visit the several museums in Santiago. One the most important in the city (if not the most important one) is the Bellas Artes Museum. Located in the middle of the Parque Forestal (one of the main and largest "green lungs" of the city), the museum has always very interesting works of art to see, including the painting "El huaso y la lavandera" by Mauricio Rugendas, a very prominent Chilean painter of the before last century.

If you have more time, you can go to Cajón del Maipo, a very green and quiet zone located in the south of the Metropolitan Region. There're many restaurants where you can eat the most typical and tasty food of Chile. Also, you can practice some sports like trekking, mountain bike and kayak. The Cajón del Maipo is a really good place to get relaxed on a sunny Saturday or Sunday.

Would you like to go to the safest place in Chile? Well, then go to La Moneda Palace. Located in Santiago downtown and surrounded of other well-known places (like the Plaza de la Ciudadanía and the Plaza de la Constitución), La Moneda is the most representative political building in the country and where you can visit historic spots, such as Los Naranjos courtyard, and also visit the Cultural Centre Palacio de La Moneda, where there're always (or almost) free exhibitions of Chilean artists.

By going to the places above, you can tell your friends you really visited Santiago and knew its most traditional and popular places.

"¿Dónde está Elisa?": you can't miss it!

First of all, I'm not a big TV fan and that may be explained by the fact that I don't have cable television at home. So, as you can imagine, my television taste is very limited and I almost don't have one.

If you ask me about my favorite television series, I would have to think a lot of it. And now, the only TV series I can think of is "¿Dónde está Elisa?" A television series or a soap opera instead? It could be both, but I don't really mind. The only thing I could say about "¿Dónde está Elisa?" is that it's a national television phenomenon, and very successful, by the way.

"¿Dónde está Elisa?" is a series about a girl (Elisa) who gets lost after a party with some of her cousins. There're many suspects (even Elisa's father, Raimundo, were one of them), but police can't find the real responsible yet. However, everybody in the audience knows that Bruno (Elisa's uncle) is who kidnapped her. Now, the only thing Elisa's family knows is that she's dead and the guilty is closer than they ever imagined.

This series is starred by Elisa Domínguez (a very rich girl who is about 16 years old and had some strange attitudes), Raimundo Domínguez (Elisa's dad, a very important and sucessful businessman who will do anything to find the guilty of his daughter's death), Francisca Correa (Elisa's mom, a housewife very kind and dedicated to her daughters) and Camilo Rivas (one of the detectives in charge of the investigation and who gets sentimentally involved with Francisca).

"¿Dónde está Elisa?" is currently my favorite television series because its story can keep me in front of the television for 45 minutes with no interruptions (well, except for the tv advertisements, haha). Why? Simply because the series is full of little but powerful stories with very particular characters, and the main story couldn't be more schemer. Mistery is one of its more important elements and another reason why I like it.

Technically, I think that in "¿Dónde está Elisa?" there's a good acting, except for some younger and "new" actors who can't really interpret deep feelings and strong scenes. But, in general, there's a very talented cast. In the other hand, production is one of the best ones I've seen in Chilean television series. There're good sets and right locations, which can reflex almost perfectly different situations. But one of the things I like the most of this TV series is the script. Pablo Illanes is who wrote the story and who, I must say it, has very much experience in television work. Although there're other international series or films very simmilar to this one, the special feature of Illanes' work is that he had the skill to bring this story to a very Chilean reality and context.

In resume, "¿Dónde está Elisa?" is a must-to-see television series. Once you watch it for the first time, you can't help following it!