Blog de Cami Flores del Río

 I have to be honest and to start talking about this i will explain that i’m currently writing this out of time and that my problems with some classes are overwhelming. To be true i have never been good with English, but one of my dreams is to learn to speak it and do it well so i can live sometime in the future in another country. Regarding my troubles, they are many, first, i haven’t had an English class for eleven years, since i graduated from high school to be precise, also then English wasn’t that strong as it is now. At times i hear my classmates and think, they know so much more than i do, i tend to feel at a disadvantage and i’m embarrassed by it because it is so essential. I have needed to understand things in English so many times, from news to memes, it really is frustrating not knowing how. Even as i understand that English is part of the curriculum, it still is hard for me, though i can appreciate its importance, and that i9s something positive that all universities ...

 Well, this has been a recurrent topic of discussion for me these last couple of years, especially with the global pandemic the differences inside my major came to light. Knowing we are talking about Universidad de Chile, we must admit that not all that glitter is gold, and as such, it has its fair share of flaws. Regarding the teacher side of things, I must say that there are some excellent professionals in the design major, and also on campus. Nevertheless, there are some base problems that prevent teachers from doing what they would like to. Although the new study program came on to solve some of the old one’s flaws, it seems to be running short on multiple ends, with gaping holes on some occasions, like the lack of a structures class on the industrial side, and it’s also missing a lot of semiotics on the graphic front. Because of that, I think that it is paramount to have a robust set of elective classes to pick from so to fill up those missing spots. On the other hand, is real...

 If I’m being honest I never thought if I would travel to the future and when to, as a matter of fact, the only possibility I had thought of was traveling to the past. I find the idea of traveling to the future somewhat frightening, I’m not sure if I want to know what will happen, and I think that I’m more comfortable not dwelling too much on it. Just because of this post I will venture onto the realm of imagination and say that if I were to travel in time, I would only go forward a couple of decades, not more. I would like to go to that future and check on the planet and how it is doing, were we able to revert the effects of climate change? I would like to check the technological advancements of cities but also the state of nature. I want to know if we have advanced as humans, or if we remained in stagnation, maybe we even disappeared. I need to know the future of animals, forests, and seas. I’d love to know about the medical advances of humankind, what kind of wonders have s...

 Thinking about my future work is something that has always given me lots of anxiety because I have not a clue of what is concretely what I am going to do, and being honest I can’t even imagine it. Nothing ever goes according to plan, so normally I try to not think about it and don’t get my hopes up high either. If you ask me about what specific job I want, the answer would be a resounding “I don’t know”. Even so, there are things I would like my job to have, for example, I would love it to be related to my major, industrial design, or working on something relevant for society, I have always wished for my work to contribute in any way to the betterment of this world. I would also really like a dynamic and enjoyable job, routines that are to be repeated endlessly suck the soul out of me. It would add to my enjoyment the possibility of traveling abroad to specialize and maybe find a job over there. I would prefer it to be a versatile job, with the possibility of getting to know n...

 2020’s global pandemic is a whole big story to tell, but certainly not a good one since it has meant a lot of difficulties for me to overcome. Before COVID I worked and studied here in Santiago independently, regrettably one of the first things to happen was that I got fired from the one job that helped me to pay for my everyday life and studies. Since I had no job and no way of surviving in the city I was forced to go back south, to my parents’ house, in Villarrica, while I sorted my personal problems. The next thing I know, I spent two whole years over there. Difficulties were mounting, since I was far from everything, in the countryside, without a space to call my own (i had left the family home years ago). Telephone and internet signals were intermittent at best, and sometimes I couldn’t connect to my online classes, or the sound and video were stuttery, which prevented me from understanding my teachers or classmates. That way I missed a lot of knowledge, and I was only ...

If I am to choose one kind of music that I’m really fond of it gets a little tough, that is because I could say I don’t have just one, I’m used to listening to all kinds of music, it just depends on my mood at the time. For this blog though, I’m going to talk about Silvio Rodriguez, who is undoubtedly one of my all-time favorite singers songwriters, and the most frequent on my playlists. He is a Cuban composer, singer, and poet from the popular genre called “trova”. Trova is a Cuban musical movement born after de 1959 revolution, it was known for writing songs in the way one would write a poem, and also carries deep political content in them. Even though I like a lot of Silvio’s songs, I will cover one that is called “La familia, la propiedad privada y el amor” or “Family, private property, and love” in English- This song makes an overt criticism to certain bourgeoise and catholic traditions. In it, I can recognize parts of my upbringing and the society I and many of us live in. ...

 I have been on several holiday trips that I would consider memorable, this is because when I was a kid we used to travel a lot with my family, a lot of those trips were with friends also. I have traveled to lots of places here in Chile, and some others abroad. Even so, I think there is one holiday I remember more fondly than the rest, and that is the time we went to Foz do Iguazú, Brazil, for a week with my parents,  grandparents, my sister, and uncle. We flew together and stayed at a really big Hotel in the area. A thing I remember vividly is that we took a lot of tours to different places. We visited the gauchos, ate out at restaurants, watched the samba dancers, swam at a water park among other things. But the best thing by far was the day we visited the Iguazú waterfalls, first, we had to venture into the Amazon jungle aboard those safari trucks where the guide told us about anacondas and piranhas, it was both scary and fun at the same time. Then we had to continue th...