A job, the research for a cure

Did you know that the blue scorpion venom has properties that can fight against cancer? This is one of the millions of chemical substances that we can extract from animals to help people using them in the treatment of a lot of different diseases.

I always feel quite interested in animals, especially in all kinds of insects, arachnids, and arthropods so I would like to investigate about the thousands of unknown substances at the present that we can get from them and see the characteristics of the active principles involved to study their effects in response to different diseases.

To expand my opportunities in the investigation I would like to get a PhD in Pharmacy in this same university or in another country like USA or England and then study Entomology to be pretty qualified in the field. This job, by the way, forces me to travel to a lot of different countries to study endemic species from all the continents, so in part, I could work outside traveling and taking samples of this animal substances and then in laboratories analyze them, i don't know but sounds pretty interesting and exciting to me.

I always feel that work with animals has a deep ethical discussion, but assuming that my work is centered on a special kind of animals like insects... maybe it's not a big problem. That's because there are 10'000 millions of bugs by square kilometer, imagine that they are a plague! lucky me haha.

And to be truth, if I could work in something so cool for me, I don't know if the payment would be a problem because I don't mind about it, actually, the research for the cure of a disease is a really huge work so maybe I could work for a scientific institution collaborating with them, I'm not so sure... but certainly I'm not made to be a businessman but a scientist;)

Hobbies: Bugs, sax and carnivorous plants

Tell me to what you pay attention and i will tell you who you are.

-José Ortega y Gasset.

For some people are totally disgusting, but when i was a kid I used to play a lot with all kind of insects like woodlice, dragon-flies, caterpillars and my favourite ones: the ants. I spent the whole day just watching them, learning how they worked in a "society", i always admire their altruism, helping each other when they were injured, amazing creatures are the ants.

Well, i started listening to Jazz when i was like 10 or 11 years old, i had this neighbour who had a band, and he used to play the bass, one of my favourites instruments together with saxophone and piano. When i heard the music, he put on the radio: i was listening Coltrane for the first time, and i just travelled to a peaceful place, it left me speechless, and it was indescribable. So, then, when i was 15, my family bought me an alto saxophone, it was hard to learn, but it truly worth it.

If you want to play the sax, you must learn how to control your breathing with your mouth in a correct position with the tongue bellow the entrance and play the keys at the same time with your two hands, it was totally different from flute, but it really helps to know how to play it, after all they are wind instruments.

And recently i start to gardening, a friend gave me some carnivorous plant seeds and i planned to have a lot of them, then buy an artificial anthill to have an ant civilization and make them live with the plants, so they can establish a symbiotic relationship, pretty cool to me! i will feel like the kid i was once... just admiring their altruism.

The fascinating human brain

"Cogito ergo sum: i think, therefore i exist"-Descartes.

 
It's philosophical, but this is what makes our brain different than the other species, we know that we're existing, most of them, can't even recognize themselves in front of a mirror. It's the most complex organ in our body, the result of thousands of years of evolution and is all what you are as a person, everything that you feel through you senses, it's you: your human brain. The brain is the central organ of the nervous system, receptor, processor and response generator of all the information that we perceive. The human brain is divided in two hemispheres communicated through the corpus callosum, the left one is related to reasoning, communication and mathematical and scientific abilities, while the right one is related to creativity, imagination and artistic and music sense, and each hemisphere has the control of the hand in the other side, so when you write with you left hand you are using your right hemisphere.

Each hemisphere is divided in four lobes: in the frontal we can find the Broca's area, is where all the words you say come from, also, in this area is where your personality is contained. The parietal lobe is where all your moves come from, yes, the motor-response area. The temporal lobe is where is located your sense of audition and balance. Finally, in the occipital lobe is where your brain capture images from your eyes to process them so you can see them. It's amazing the things that an organ of 1300g can do, with millions of nerves cells doing the synapsis constantly, but, I’ve always think about the dark part of it: psychiatric diseases, the power of our brain over us is infinite, schizophrenia, depression, psychosis or psychopathy... it makes me wonder how do you know you're mad? Maybe it's nothing real, maybe it's your brain making all the work for you, I don't know, and just in case I don't want to know.

The Best Holiday

It was on 2015, me and a group of four friends went to La Serena in summer vacations, it was the first time that we go out all together in a trip for a whole week. We stayed in the house of one of my friend's aunt, I remembered it was a really comfortable place, with two big bedrooms to rest with a giant TV where we played some videogames in Jorge's PlayStation some nights after hanging out for the whole day.

We planned this trip for months, so we had a lot of money to spend on everything we wanted, we went out to the beach in Coquimbo, I remembered me, Felipe and Jorge swimming in the sea joking around about how Allison and Marissel just wet their feet (cowards!), then we usually played Cariocas lying in the sand, gambling with "dares" for the losers, very creative and prankish dares. And after the swim the hungry was intense: the best "Pastel de Choclo" I ever taste was in a restaurant there in La Serena, actually, we ate a lot, especially in the afternoons, well, I have a superpower, you know, I can eat everything and don't get fat... lucky me, sadly not them:(

We spent a lot of time walking around and taking photographs on the lighthouse  (i have one of Jorge kissing a starfish, iug) and sitting in the sand just to drink a couple of beers talking about everything with a beautiful view of the sunset in front of us, I think that kind of moments are priceless and unforgettable.

But the most fun parts were the nights, hanging around all together, walking by the sea or sitting around a campfire, having fun, laughing and relaxing, it feels like another world, far away from the stressful Santiago... the last day, while we're getting back to our home i remembered me watching the photos that we take, thinking about the great vacations of that summer, hoping to get back there someday to eat another yummy Pastel de Choclo.