Mugging When I was a teenager I suffered my first and only mugging in my life. We were visiting Santiago de Compostela which is a really beautiful city in the North of Spain. It’s also the end of the famous Santiago way. Dozens of thousands of pilgrims walk this way every year and they come from everywhere of the World. Generally speaking Spain is quite safe concerning crime and comparing other countries. However criminals tend to concentrate around touristic locations. Pickpockets, burglars, and thefts find a good opportunity with tourist. We were three young people and we were having lunch in an isolated park. Years after I realize that in certain hours people who do nothing usually are in the Parks. I also notice that the best way to show you are a foreign person in a city is having lunch on the street. I know many people in USA eat a sandwich or something else on the street or a bank in a park but this is not very common in Spain (excepting tourist). As a consequence we were honey surrounded by bees. Immediately two people came to us to ask for money. They were nothing nearby to help us. I suppose we considered giving money was the best option. The problem is that you don’t know how violent are people in front of you and a confrontation could be worst. We were a bit shocked an extremely frustrated and upset. To be honest they didn’t take a big amount of money but we felt absolutely angry.

Bad weather As a climber in High Mountain I experienced bad weather many times. Probably one of the most extreme weather conditions I never suffered in terms of duration has been ten years ago. We had been arranged an ordinary weekend in Sierra Nevada just for walking. In that occasion some of us weren’t climbers and we wanted to get some peak walking and enjoying the landscape. The forecast was acceptable even though it wasn’t the best weekend. The Saturday got light like a sunny day. It was the day we were waiting for. However, after midnight the wind started blowing more and more. The more the wind sounded outside the hut the more we were sure the Sunday would be an awful day. We woke up to see the sky and it was impossible to distinguish any shape of something else due to the thick fog. In addition it was a storm of snow and we hardly could stand up because of the strength of the wind. I remember we took the wrong decision of leaving the hut and we continued walking through the middle of the storm when we were able to be oriented. Of course we got lost after two hours. We were walking three days more under the snow and beaten by the wind. Fortunately we get a cottage after going down all the time. We could have died because one of us had to work early in the morning!

Nuclear energy Nuclear energy is always a hot issue to argue, however the same as other important issues many people give an opinion without having enough information. Quite frankly, I tend to think that, at least in Spain, the politicians use this issue for electoral purposes. To begin with anybody can deny that nuclear power plants are so far the most efficient in terms of production of energy. As a consequence the electricity bill can be cheaper and we enjoy the benefits. Another point is the pollution in the short term. Any type of efficient energy immediately have a direct impact on the environment excepts the nuclear energy. Environment is polluted by fumes (thermal power plants), floods of valleys (hydroelectric power plants) while the nuclear energy just increase a few grades the water nearby (is used to refrigerate the reactor). As we can imagine there are also a number of disadvantages that not can be overlooked. The first obvious disadvantage is the risk of an accident. This can be illustrated perfectly with Chernobyl’s accident. The experts say that with the proper revision and safety measures, the risk is almost nothing. However, the resolutions about these measures can be broken by certain countries for different reasons. Of course the nuclear power plant produces your own problem, the radioactive waste, which must be confined in disposal facilities that people don’t want nearby. Now there is a controversy in Spain about the building of a nuclear cemetery (dry cash storage) for high –level radioactivity waste. It’s a delayed project in spite of the fact that it’s a matter of urgency. Now Spain is paying France 40.000 euros a day (from 1994 to present!) because France temporarily keeps all the Spanish high-level waste. Unfortunately renewable sources of energy are not enough to maintain the current demand of energy. Despite this, there are interesting projects such as the first commercial solar power plant in the world, which produce energy all day (24 hours). I’m proud because it’s Spanish technology and I had the chance of visiting it.

Professional sport causes more pain than pleasure. Professional sport causes more pain than pleasure. Frequently the mass media tell us about the benefits of sport in health. However rarely people talk about the risks of sport. Sport can be harmful for body under some circumstances. I strongly believe that professional sport is one of these cases. One argument is regarding the dose of training that these people must do. For example, we only need to reflect on the amount of time that a gymnast practices before a competition It is more than eight or nine hours a day of intensive work. The same could be said about other sport like running, cycling or whatever. Such intensive training provokes an incredible suffering in bones, muscles, joints and tendons. All of them work until the limit of human body during the training and of course the competition. In addition, we have to take into account the aggressive medical treatments, which are gjven to a athletes in order to a quick recovery. The clubs or sponsors pressure to participate in competition again as soon as possible. All the factors joined lead to a serious injures which going with athletes for all their life. It’s not necessary to remember that moderate sport is very beneficial so long and professional athletes encourage people to do exercise. Nevertheless, despite the glory of the goals in their careers, the athletes pay a huge price in terms of health and suffering.

"get knocked out of the..." Could somebody explain me this expression and give me some examples?. Thanks in advance!.

How can I say: "me lo llevo puesto" in English? I believe it could be "I'm going to wear now" but I'm not sure. This is the typical sentence you tell the shop assistant when you buy a piece of clothing or an accessory and you wear immediately.

The beach Today I would like to write about the last Sunday. We had been planned a trip to a certain beach in the southwest of Ireland and we were really excited. We had chosen the Inch beach because it was in a list of the best Irish beaches. The journey was as usual in Ireland, that is, by narrow routes and suffering the rain from time to time. My children don’t like this kind of journey and they usually make dizzy. Curiously this time they didn’t make sick which is good for the car upholstery. We needed two hours to cover barely one hundred kilometres. Once there we were delighted with the place. The background was amazing, the sand fine and the beach huge. All seemed perfect if it weren’t for the wind and the temperature. We were freezing and we couldn’t believe that some people were swimming in such cold water. We know the beaches of the north of Spain but that was too much for us. We were inside de car looking at the landscape for more than one hour. Then I suggested going to a closed village to take a coffee. Before that we were playing football to keep warm. Fortunately the village was very nice and plenty of shop to glance at souvenirs and so one. We were thinking to come back home when I wrote in a panel that there were a climbing area over there. It was a pity! I would have liked to see it.

The driver license I’m going to try to explain my last anecdote regarding car hiring. I had been solving some papers before coming to Ireland because my wallet had been stolen in Spain. Because of that, I hadn’t my driver license. I always hire a car when I come here in spite of the fact that they drive by left, therefore I needed a new license. According to my experience bureaucracy is horrible in any country and Spain is not an exception. I tried to get the driver license but after the logical procedures the time passed and they didn’t send me the driver permission. Meanwhile I only had a temporary paper to drive, however this paper is acceptable only for Spain. I was desperate and I asked for a new solution to my problem. They told me that the international driver license it was much faster to get it than the ordinary license but I needed the rest of the papers to justify the international license (and a current picture of me). To me surprise I arrived just to Dublin when people in the car company said that the international driver license is not good at Ireland without the domestic driver license. Can you believe it?. To sum up, if you lost the driver license some days (or weeks) before coming to Ireland It’s completely impossible to drive in this country whatever your situation is.

CCTV_ Nowadays CCTV are part of modern society. It doesn’t matter if you live in Asia, North America or Europe. For this reason, I consider the problem is not the existence of the cameras watching us, so it’s the use of those cameras. Last years police couldn’t have caught so many criminals without help of cameras. At least we have to recognize they are essential in public areas such as airports, train stations, important monuments, etc. Personally, I don’t mind if someone watch me picking my nose on a screen. Even more, I don’t believe anybody spend hours watching trivial scenes. Probably authorities use the images just when a person commits a crime. Apart from that, can you imagine the amount of crimes avoided because the presence of cameras? All in all I understand that surveillance can take inappropriate images by chance. As a consequence any person can having its intimacy violated. However, taking all the consideration in account CCTV have much more advantages than disadvantages.