Tag Archives: Thunderbirds

How to find places at UBC

So I’m going to a training session at UBC today (more on the session later), and it’s at UBC’s football field.

I’m going to massively (and possibly wrongly) generalize here, but I’d say the average student hasn’t gone out to Thunderbird Stadium (the football field). Part of the reason is that it’s far—too far for me to even know where it is.

Thus, I turned to the internet for help!

UBC has an online service called Wayfinding that makes finding things on campus simpler. There’s a search bar to enter the address/building name, or there are QuickLinks on the right-hand side that contain the more popular places on UBC (and by popular, I mean elusive).

Alternatively, you can just type “wayfinding” and “[the building/location]” into Google to bring up a map of UBC with an arrow pointing to your destination. Easy.

Off to the training session now!

More FlexPass woes

Even though I bought my FlexPass to the Thunderbird parkade ages ago, I’ve only tried using it about three times. All three times, the pass failed to register with the receiving antennae and I’ve had to take a spitter ticket instead. It was frustrating, though; from what I knew about the FlexPass, I should have been saving money and paying only around $8 per use instead of $14.

Flex Pass: Your parking solution

The solution that turned out not to be the right solution after all.

So yesterday I went to UBC Parking Services and inquired about my FlexPass, which had seen no use. They were all like hunnnnnnnh? and said that the pass should have been working.

Then the lady who was helping me told me that at Thunderbird Parkade there’s a flat rate of $7 all day. So to park there for a day it is actually cheaper to take a spitter ticket than to use the FlexPass.

Oh.

Luckily, the lady said I could refund my pass although apparently that’s not allowed and I am now FlexPass free. And FlexPass-woe free. I even returned the actual pass thingy, because I’m pretty sure I won’t be driving to UBC enough to warrant a pass in the future. Watch me eat my words. Huffah!

Bieksa’s Buddies vs. UBC T-Birds

I’M BACK.  I’ve never been so glad to see the weekend in my life.  This week was awful, from an academic point of view.

On Wednesday night, I took a long (and not quite deserved) break from Hell Week and went to a charity game organized by Kevin Bieksa of the Vancouver Canucks. They played against UBC’s own Thunderbird hockey team at the Thunderbird arena.

I sat up in the nosebleed seats, but it wasn’t too bad because the arena is relatively small so I wasn’t actually too far away.  And in the break between the second and third period I went down to beside the ice and took close-up pictures of the Canucks players!

Yay! One of my best pictures of the night.  Both Kevin Bieksa and his brother, Marty Bieksa, were there! 

The event was pretty good!  I’d never been to a hockey game before, so it was actually sort of weird to watch without commentary. I do know that it was a clean game (because it was for charity!), and in some ways that made it a little boring to watch, especially in the beginning when there were no goals.  Later on, though, they picked up the pace and the final score was 8-7 for Bieksa.  Obviously, Bieksa’s Buddies were going easy on the T-Birds, but it was still great hockey!

I was especially happy to see Michael Buble there, even if he backed out of playing on Bieksa’s team (jersey number? 88). Buble also matched all the donation contributions to a generous 6 figure sum!  The donations went to The Canucks Autism Network, Canucks Family Education Centre and Canuck Place hospice.

Upsetting, though, were  the scalpers outside the area looking to sell tickets at steep, Canuck-level prices.  The tickets were cheap—I paid $25—so that UBC students could enjoy the game whilst contributing to charity.  Making a profit on those tickets was very, very wrong.

But anyways, guess who I was cheering for?

If you guessed the T-Birds, you would be correct! Sunshine and rainbows for you 🙂  I have a tendency to root for the underdogs, especially when they’re the home team.  Of course, this doesn’t apply in regular NHL games (always for the Canucks!), but because of the dratted lockout…

So even though I stayed up waaaaaaay past my bedtime on Wednesday night (or should I say Thursday morning?), I’m glad I went.  I had a good time, gave to charity, and checked “watch a hockey game live” off my bucket list!