Life and movies

A lot of water has gone under the river since my last post. I loved to write in this blog but I was “lack of time”. I know that it is the first symptom of killing my dreams so I’m here to fix it :) . So today I’m here to talk about movies. I am a big movies lover, I’ve watched several of them and I can certainly tell you my dear reader that once you have watched a lot of movies there are some will tell, literally or not, some part of your life. Today I want to talk about two of them.

500 days of summer

The first one is the story of “boy meets girl”. This guy thinks that he will be happy when he finds the One, as I think. Once he found her he felt in love so strong that he could not realize how his has lived without her. But she does not love him, just has some relations I have had. After being together for some months, having a nice time and she being there and sharing the kind of things you only share with some really special people she just leaves him. How come do you spend so much time with someone to just quit? Why do you have to fell in love with someone that in the end will just don’t care about it? Trust me I have asked it myself several times some years ago. What I love of this movie is that at the end when the guy is lost he takes the best decision ever: do what you love. I heard once that when you begin to do things you love you will find the love of your life, so when he begins to do it he re-discovers himself and find a new girl. Now I think it is time for me to move on and do things I like, like blogging, so, at some point, and can feel realized again.

Gattaca

The second move is about having gifts that are not enough for society. Gattaca is a near future where most of the people are genetically designed and people who has been conceived based on nature randomness is discriminated. Characteristics such as health, height, eyes colour, skin, sports abilities, among others, are superior and intelligence, fighter, decent, among others, are secondary. If you compare this movie with our reality they are quite similar, and I’ve been living it from the side where you have give the fight to have a decent life. Even when I was a boy at school I always had problems because I did not fit in the rules of society, where being a moron and take the easy path is the rule and not the exception. This reminds me a text a read long time ago about the country of corrupt people (it is in Spanish). When I watched this movie I felt like this guy who has everything to be a great person but as he does not fits in society he cannot fulfil his dreams. Let’s face it: I’m not an Adonis, I’m not good at sports (I admire people who can perform any of them) and I’m shy so it is difficult to start a talk, even if I can speak of any topic with a relative understanding.  These are qualities that are required in society for success and as I don’t have them I feel like the guy in the movie. But he fights hard to gain a position in society, using everything he has in his hands to achieve it. So I guess I have to do it also, face my fears and wake up each day with the idea of do it.

Movies are not someone telling a story of his/her life, for me it is life itself and each one has the opportunity to take it and change his/her way to see and face the world.

34th percentile

Today I presented the GMAT and the result was not as I expected. I needed 600 as minimum but I got 500. That is maybe not the worst of all. The worst was the position among all participants around the world.

To understand it we need to understand means, standard deviations, grouping and box diagrams. But I will explain it simple. The way positions are defined is the with the use of percentiles. A percentile is 1% of all the persons who presented the exam and the first percentile correspond to the lower qualification and the last one to the highest. Between the 25th and 75th percentile is the most of the population.

As an student I have been always on the 90th percentile, and most of the times even above the 95th. As an example when I receive my engineering degree I was at the 100th percentile, that is called outlier data, because is way beyond the average. Today I am at percentile 34th. I know it is just an exam but it is a hard punch from reality. I don't want to excuse myself or find excuses for it. It was my fault and my lack of preparation that least I this. But there are some lessons that need to be listed.

The first lesson is never overestimate your abilities. I thought I knew enough. Second: you are not the best or the worst, so never give up. Third: be less impulsive. When I did the exam's registration I did not think about it, just put the credit cards number and accepted the transaction. I need to think more before acting. And the last one: trying to work on all opportunities you have could lead lose all of them. Now I'm working on 4-5 opportunities I have and the exam was one requirement to one of them. The time I invested studying for it was not enough and it could have been used to work in other things. So instead of working on everything it should be better to work only in few things and make them successful. Fortunately now two things will end soon so I can work better in others.

This must be a lesson I learn instead of an crying moment. Sometimes it is ok to feel this things, so you can wake up next morning with a goal: be better.

Declaration of principles

During the last days I've been worried about the future. Not only my future but mainly the future of our society, specially Colombian society. The revolution (if you read the bold text backwards you will be pretty surprised :) ) that is happening today around the world has began to give me hope. We are all rebels, that is something one can found printed in our DNA, but we need to cultivate it. In this post I want to share with you two things that help me cultivate this rebellion I've running in my veins. The first is a song, maybe the most rebel song of all time, Times are A-Changin' by Bob Dyla. The second is a list called Declaration of Principles, by Paulo Coelho. Hope you enjoy it and help you to cultivate your rebel side :) .

Declaration of Principles by Paulo Coelho