domingo, 20 de diciembre de 2009

Favorites of 2009

well its that time of the year again, music fans are making theyre best ofs lists , the same goes with music media, sometimes everyone agrees on and album sometimes they dont, depending on how broad your music taste is, or what type of music you like this could have been a good or bad year for you musically.

at least in my case it was a good year not only did i found out about a lot of new bands and releases but i also revisited some of the classics or forgotten bands of different genres, it was fun and it helped me appreciate music much more.

i had to narrow it down to 20 or 15 albums since a lot of good music was released this year.
ill post the list tomorrow

20)the adorkables- she loves me not


well this is mainly on this list because i enjoyed the album a lot, yes there were a few good pop-punk records this years but this is the one i enjoyed the most


19)rooftops – a forest of polarity

a late entry i discovered this band in these recent months and after hearing the album for numerous times, it clicked with me, its a good math rock record from a new band
18)mountains-etching

pretty much the album that introduced me into ambient music, it may be just one track but its actually very good

17)japandroids-post-nothing
actually a very good noise rock or garage rock album, and good debut


16)lucero- 1372 overton park


good major label debut from this band, lacked something to be truely great

15)westbound train-come and get it
one of the few ska bands that still pay homage to the traditional ska













14)the mercury program-chez viking


another late entry since it was released at the end of this year, all the records ive heard from this band so far have been great and this is no exception, dont know in what genre to put them so its just great music that you can relax to.

13)cult ritual-1st lp
one of the few hardcore records i enjoyed this year, and like i saw in another list i agree doesnt have enough lasting value.

12)touche amore- to the beat of a dead horse
this was kind of a surprise for me since ive never been a fan of screamo or however you want to call it, its a very powerful and raw record thats great



11)obits-i blame you
its actually kind of coincidental that the same year i finally get into drive like jehu, its singer rick froberg releases new material with this new band called obits, another good record that tryes to capture the spirit of his other bands














so now the top 10
10)balmorhea- All is Wild, All is Silent
great album from one of the most enjoyable post-rock bands of the present



9)kylesa-static tensions
one of the best heavy albums of the year, one of the frontrunners in sludge since they combined various influences to create and original and different sound.


8)so many dynamos- the loud wars
though i listened to this album very few times, it hooked me from the start and will continue to be one of the few the math rock albums i enjoyed the most this year

7)dinosaur jr-farm
after a two year absence this band came back with a very good album, not as great as beyond but still good


6)caspian-tertia
what grabbed about this was how the band sometimes tryes to do something different, in a genre thats been recently oversaturated with a lot of bands that sound the same sometimes

5)the mountain goats- the life of the world to come
the mountain goats after releasing one of their best albums last year comes back with and album based on biblical passages, its a good album whether youre religious or not


4)rx bandits-mandala
fans of the old ska sound of this band wont like this album a whole lot, since is more experimental than the others have been, while the horns maybe missed its still a great album and one of the years best

3)thrice-beggars
after releasing the elemental eps that some liked and others didnt, to be honest this album has great music and lyrics and its a band moving on from their old sound and exploring new things

2)baroness – blue record
two facts i got into this band like a year ago, and second it seems like the band raised the bar for this record in its songwriting and music, releasing one of the most interesting records of this year

1)future of the left- travels with myself and another
some people gave this band a chance since some of the members of mcklusky were in it, i gave it a chance out of curiosity and it hooked me , great sophomore album from a band i expect to hear great things about in the coming years.


albums that could have made the list if i listen to them more
mount eerie-winds poem
converge-axe to fall
brand new- daisy
house boat-the delaware octopus
dear landlord-dream homes
russian circles- geneva
the marked men-ghosts
mono-hymn to the inmortal wind
the thermals- now we can see

and honorable mentions
william elliot whitmore-animals in the dark
banner pilot-collapser
empire (empire) i was a lonely state- what it takes to move forward
isis- wavering radiant
mi ami-watersports
we were promised jetpacks- these four walls
castevet- summer fences
bill callahan- sometimes i wish we were and eagle
the cute lepers- smart accesories
the appleseed cast-sagarmatha
Yo la tengo-popular songs

miércoles, 16 de diciembre de 2009

the past and its stories

well to continue a look through the past and various topics, i finished the last post talking about music ill end this one with something of the sort, so my last blog was talking about the celebration of the 40 years of existence of my high school, guess what pretty much no one showed up, just like 4 people from my old classroom went there so yep it seemed like it was and ok event.

after i graduated from high school which to be honest was a long time ago, i had to decide what career i was going to study so i finally decided on medicine , at first everything was going ok but in third semester i had a big crush on a classmate she was nice, kind etc, and i thought she liked me back , though i did my best to pass every subject i failed at two important of these i was taking so i had to take them again, and after this things turned a turn to the worse and i ended up having to drop out of college.

and after two years of mainly doing a course to how to create websites and two english courses my parents decided to give me another chance, so they told me to pick another career so i picked psychology since i was going to pick computer engineer or something like it but im bad at math, so here i am six years later if everything goes well im graduating next year.

the only positive thing about all this is all the amount of people ive met , very few ive talked to a lot and with the few i had theyre friends of mine, that i can talk to sometimes so thats a past memory related to my academic

viernes, 11 de diciembre de 2009

its that time again it seems

and no im not talking about christmas, im talking about the end of the year and the decade, i didnt knew about this since i dont pay attention to that meaning when a decade ends, so no this is not going to be and entry of how was the decade per se, this is more a blog about some things ive been thinking about lately, in my first post overall in here i was talking about why the need to start putting christmas ornaments in december which has nothing to do with this post i just wanted to mention it.

there have been a lot of repairs and constructions done in the city in the past year that supposedly will help traffic among other things, the thing is these repairs and constructions are causing more traffic than ever which creates more stress from the drivers overall not only that but constant complains from everyone, the solution to replacing the old buses from the city is a mass public transportation buses that have a stupid name to be honest theyre crammed with people almost all the time they pass, and this is what the major of the city wants as the alternative to the old public transportation, not only that but the amount of time it takes for those buses to pass is eternal sometimes hope they fix this.

im thinking of doing my last post of the year a relatively long one , since ive had time to think about a lot of things im going to express my opinion on those topics or things, moving on im kind of worried for my sister she has had a lot of painful headaches lately we dont know why yet, after the lab exams well know for sure, even though my mother has had surgery on both knees she still has pain in them at times, and lately that pain has passed to her feet , that not only hurt but swell a lot, making it difficult for her to walk.

theres a reunion of my high school since theyre celebrating its 40 years of existence, im thinking if i should go or not since my memories from that time werent the best i was a loner even though i sometimes hanged out with some people from my classroom, i had depression all the time , i was always stuck in my own inner world to escape from the real world, i talked very little and with who i did talk to were very few people, i didnt thought of any of the people i hanged out with as friends since i had the idea that they were there because they had pity for me or something like it, i never went to parties since i hated places with a lot of people i prefered to stay at home, the very few times i went out was to a club my parents were members of to swim in the pool, bowl, play pool and that was it after a while i became bored of this.

did i forget to say that the only times my classmates called me was for what i mentioned before, so all this time they were using me and turns out i was right, the only kind of positive memory was since my high school was specialized in art and music, i moderately enjoyed this but the fact was everyone only played traditional folk music from my country; which after a while becomes boring and repetitive.

i thank tv and the interwebs for helping me get into a lot of the music i listen to today, this is going to be a two part entry so this is the end of part one, in part two ill continue talking about a lot of other topics and memories from past times

lunes, 30 de noviembre de 2009

random talk on cities and stress

well after a while of not blogging, finishing a college semester and for the most part doing well im posting again, this time about life in the city and how is that related to stress, and maybe how people who live in cities something for copious amounts of stress which i think doesnt happen a lot to those who live in the country.

ive been living in the same city for the amount of years i have which is a lot i could say , since i wasnt born here things are different and you can see everything from a different perspective , even though this particular city is center to a clash of different types of cultures from all over the country, is most popular because of salsa a type of music thats very tropical and kind of catchy, in the last couple of years that has somewhat change theres a festival called cali underground that displays the different types of music proposals that are in the city.

living in a city can be stressful specially if you like near shopping malls, main streets, dowtown, etc, and even if you dont like in this parts there are other ways that living in  a city can become stressful, like driving in rushour traffic that can leave anyone with a headache, or riding in public transportation that seems like a can of sardines from the amount of people riding them, the smog , etc, if you have a neighbor that loves a type of music you hate and puts it at full volume and doesnt care about it, or a noisy neighbor that wants to know everything about anyone.

thats someways the city can stress you, so its good to once in a while get out of the city and go to different place maybe other cities but that are smaller than the one you live in, or a small quiet town, thats your decition not mine, right now theres a construction in the house beside mine and it kind of stresses me but i dont pay attention to it.

ill finish this post later on the day

lunes, 9 de noviembre de 2009

so heres a random thought

well first time i think im going to mention social networking sites and blogs, ok i started using the internet like 10 years ago , didnt know a lot about it but i managed, i past time on chats , music sites, launch , etc, in that time i dont know if social networking sites existed then, i think since friendster is commented as one of the first type of this type of websites, it might be one of the first, i didt know anything about this until i joined hi5 sure its not that great, and there isnt a lot to do on the site, they used to have a decent music section that disappeared and no one knew why, as it has become a common in these types of sites a lot of spam enters your mailbox, or the amount of random comments some people get i think makes this anoying.

so after a while of being there i got bored of the site, and started visiting forums mainly about music or a specific band, it was a different experience and i like it, anyone could express their opinion freely related to a specific topic without any prejudice it seemed, ill get to blogging later on this post, so yeah after a while of talking with a friend i made on a forum i decided to enter the myspace zone , there i decided to not stay there to find friends but instead look for any type of band that had a different or unique sound so i could expand my music taste and library, the groups there are random i could say, the post are too, but i could sat that thanks to this site ive heard bands that i now love, i started posting random thoughts there too, which i guess helped since i dont talk much and writing became kind of terapeutical.

then i heard about the big f you know what site im talking about , theres also a semi-catchy and moronic song that a person from my country composed, that im starting to hate, the song not the person just to clarify, one of the few things i like about the site are the music and movie apps, and and app about famous quotes, and i agree with a post i saw earlier the status that people post on facebook are rather random sometimes, i guess theyre even more in twitter a site that i actually doesnt any purpose to exist, why would you want to tell the world what youre doing every hour of the day, thats stupid and youre just looking for attention, no more no less, maybe im wrong, not everyone is there for that , there is a supernews video about it thats very funny.

finally blogging, i never wrote about anything before that wasnt for school or college, and i started doing that like three years ago, the more random thought i posted were in lj and xanga, about music, movies , daily routine and random stuff, now that i have this blog i decided to not be as random at times, because it can get boring, question to anyone that visits this blog, what have you learn from blogging or social networking sites and what do you hate or enjoy about both

domingo, 1 de noviembre de 2009

of families and college

yeah i didnt know what to put as a title so i went with the one mentioned above, i dont post as rarely as id like to but its ok, so october passed rather quickly and with it halloween a holiday that many love and some hate where we see little kids in various types of costumes, i dont hate or like this holiday its just ok, at least i can watch cheesy horror movies every day before and in halloween so thats a plus.

i dont know what is it with modern families , where it seems everyone is on their respective rooms doing theyre own stuff, or with their friends but rarely with its parents or sons and daughters, i dont know if it can be said that the concept of family nowadays, its different than how it used to be before, theyre called modern families, where a video game, a tv show or a computer takes the place of the parents some might call this bad parenting , i dont know since my family seems very traditional though some of us argue a lot sometimes, about little things.

no family can be truely consider normal, since everyone whether they admit it or not have problems, changing topic for a moment ive been thinking of what to do after i graduate from college, the usual path is get a job and thats it i guess, i dont know it seems at times that the life of a person or any person in general becomes sooner or later like a big giant revolving routine thats done every day, while some may get used to this, i dont like that at all, life shouldnt be routinary , but it is sometimes, so im thinking of creative ways to vary my routine, so yep.

lunes, 5 de octubre de 2009

living on background music

the title may seem pretty obvious is not, as you see not only is this entry music related is about the constant relations between music and life, what could be the first music anyone has ever heard well mainly in my case , it was the music my parents listened to at the time which was colombian folk music it was ok, and apart from that i was studying in a school that teached it so yeah.

in my childhood that was the only type of music i listened to, after that when i was a teenager, i started to listen to the radio and discovered rock in spanish it was different from what my parents listened to and i liked it, the years passed with boring situations and depressing times, in the 90s i discovered nirvana thanks to mtv, my music taste wasnt towards a specific band or genre , then my first true favorite band was discovered the offspring, on a vacation to the u.s i bought ixnay on the hombre out of curiosity since i liked some of the singles ive heard, its still one of my favorite albums, this band and the foo fighters helped shaped my music taste in part.

the years passed and i went through a really awful time in my life that was when i entered college among the pressure from my parents to choose a career, and my nervousness i started to listen to some of the flavor of the mont bands specifically every numetal band i could find not going to list names since almost everyone knows about this bands mainly linkin park and papa roach ,i know .

i was drowned in my study until i had to choose another career, since i wasnt doing so well in the one i chose before which was medicine, after this thanks to a mp3 cd my dad bought for me and random mp3s i listened to on the web, i discovered punk and other music genres that i still listen to today, i still have some of the cds from my numetal phase but i never listen to them .

music has become and integral part of my life, i listen to it every day to get away from the world and to try to relax , im always curious to listen to different musical proposals and bands, i started reading our band could be your life to see if i can learn how was the music scene in the 80s and how was the camaradery inside the bands, and what they thought about the music and how it affected them

i pretty much almost finished the book and im liking it a lot, theres some stories about bands like black flag, the minutemen, fugazi, minor threat, the replacements and big black that in my opinion are very good.

so i recommend the book to anyone whos interested in knowing about the indie underground of the end of the 80s to the beginning of the 90s.

lunes, 7 de septiembre de 2009

vacation part 2

so after a while of not writing and having a disastrous birthday , im here to finish my short vacation entry.
as i was saying the day after the whole family went to downtown cartagena, my father decided to go to rosario islands, theyre like 24 islands one next to the other in some cases but in others theyre quite separated.
so every travel agency that sells trips to these islands, have their own private islands where tourists can relax and have lunch for a while, after these everyones brought to another island called white beach its called like this because the sands very clear and it has crystal clear waters, it was and ok trip i didnt really wanted to go there, after spending all the entire day on this we came back by boat to cartagena and that was the day.
the two final days were spent buying stuff likie souvenirs and things like that, and that was the whole vacation not good or bad just ok, the only thing that helped for this trip to not suck was music specially the music i brought and my discman it helped me calm down or distract myself from what was going around me if i was bored or kind of depressed.

miércoles, 19 de agosto de 2009

improvize a vacation part 1

well last week i wasnt in the city where i live, i was with my family in cartagena a city thats famous for history and old buildings i could say it was and improvized vacation since the one who plan it didnt asked anyone specially me if they could go in that date or anything, he just make the reservation for the whole family and left it at that.

i was kind of nervous thinking i was going to lose a week of classes, though i only go to the university twice a week, wednesday for a class on educational psychology and thursday a meeting with my thesis director to correct my thesis.

the trip started ok, though we had to wait in bogota for a while and ate lunch there, finally when we arrived in cartagena the weather was very hot and humid which was a little exasperating to be honest, after that we checked in into my dads friend apartment which was and ok place not the best but not the worst either, since there was only three beds, we had to inflate a mattress that had a pump to inflate it, we didnt go out anywhere the first day thank god, but i didnt slept too well while the others slept great.

the next day was the familys first trip to the beach i wasnt ecstatic about this to be honest, but the rest of the family was so whatever, i brought my discman and a crossword puzzle magazine to kill some time while they swam in the ocean, then it happened those anoying beach venders started coming to where me and my family were offering massages, t-shirts, sunglasses among other things.

so whenever you go to cartagena be careful of these beach venders theyre anoying and sometimes insist too much on someone to buy their product which stresses the person out, after this we had lunch in a restaurant near the place where we were staying i admit the lunch was great though as always my father was looking closely at the prices of everything everyone ate, contrary to popular belief not everyone that goes to cartagena only eats fish every freaking day at least i didnt did that.

in the third day of the trip we went to the center of the city, that day was extremely hot and humid , we walked in downtown cartagena and in the old city for a while my father bought cholados for everyone this is chopped ice with a specific flavor, everyone sat on a park bench for a while and after that we took a taxi to a supermarket to buy some grosseries for the breakfast of the next day, and finally we came back to the apartment we were staying in.

end of part 1

domingo, 24 de mayo de 2009

about colleges , lifes and decisions

well its been a while since ive writeen anything here to be honest, ive been stressed out doing my thesis thats a research about the elderly which hasnt been easy to say the least, and this past friday i got the worst news ever the place where im doing the research is moving to another city , and now i have to find another place to continue it , since the thesis is vital to graduate hopefully next year.

suffice to say my college life and journey so far hasnt been easy, its been filled with ups and downs, and sudden decisions that affect life in a way i think, maybe im wrong but its just and opinion , i started studying medicine like 11 years ago things were going well until i hit a bump in the road and had to repeat a whole semester, after that things werent the same and at the end my father took me out of that career, and asked me to choose another one quickly.
i chose psychology which im still doing right now, ive had some problems because i tend to be a loner and hang out alone, but apart from that its been ok, im thinking what will happen after i graduate, since things in the world right now arent ok, who knows, just finish what i have left and dont let myself get stressed out .
and try to to relax once in a while i guess, music helps on that a lot , thats all for now

viernes, 13 de febrero de 2009

a crossroads and life

it seems that there are times in life when we are faced with hard decisions that could help us or not, it happens all the time one could say thats life in a nutshell i guess, obviously lifes more complicated than that sometimes but other times no.

i guess when i had to choose a career after i got out of high school was a difficult moment in my life, i became anxious and started eating a lot and drinking a lot of water, after i calmed down i was able to come up with a good decision i thought at that moment, years later i think i might had been wrong.

atfer some years i started to not do as well as before in the career i chose, and my father suspicious of this went to my university and found out and gave me a long lecture on responsability and why did i lief to him about it.

after this i had to choose another career i chose psichology the one im in right now, at first i was depressed and didnt do too well then i recovered and now im one step away from graduating, if one step is another year because the university didnt let me do my professional practice this year because they thought i wasnt ready.

my thesis will be about elderly people but i wont say what specifically about them , ill do my best to do it well and great and finish this career without any worry, and yes we find crossroads and obstacles in our lifes everyday but its our job to find and choose the best path for our respective lives.

sábado, 17 de enero de 2009

umm, here we go again

well the year started a while ago and it has been ok, for the most part like always there will be ups and downs not everything will be easy, there will always be obstacles to surpass, mistakes, problems that we learn from everyday of this path some call life.

i have been a little depressed lately thinking of all that has happened for me to be where i am right now, ive fough and struggled a bit to be able to show myself and the world that i can do anything i put my mind into , in this case graduate from my career, who knew college and life per se could seem so hard sometimes.

its been 11 years since i graduated from high school, i kind of feel bad and guilty that me being the oldest sibling i havent graduated yet, like society and family standards seem to say its the older siblings job to be and example for the rest of the siblings, this may seem easy at times but there are moments when this doesnt happen, to make things worse if you have a parent that is constantly pressuring you to advance faster than you can; you can end depressed or stressed out like it seems to happen sometimes.

ive been thinking lately that life seems routinary or planned for some people, there are exceptions to the rule that seem obvious at times, the normal path is to study a lot in your first years, then graduate first from high school then college, then get a job, and then what? some people take sabatical years to decide what theyre going to do with their life in the near future while others end up in dead end jobs and fall into stress and depression, and a small percentage of people end up doing something they love and can help others ; in todays modern world everyone seems to go at a fast pace and sometimes they dont think before they do something in general, we see people stressed out and depressed, among other social problems like poverty and violence , we see goverments try to help their country and the world, or tear their country apart from the inside.

maybe in the near future us and the future generations will help make this world a better place, if we have a good plan and work as a team so things will get done without any problem, ill try not to fall into a rut, and apart from studying doing activities that can spark my creativity and that can inspire others, ill continue writing in this blog, mainly cause i like writing it helps a lot when you need to express something and you dont know how to say it.

like i said one day lifes a hard road to walk