Harb Johal is an Enrolment Services (ES) Advisor with Student Support and Advising (SSA). His role is to support 1000+ undergraduate students that are part of his cohort, work with prospective and current students at various service points on campus, and work with colleagues on various project teams mostly surrounding student awards and scholarships.
What Harb likes most about ES and his role is the ability to make a positive impact on the lives of students. Harb also says: “I really like the cohort model which allows me and my colleagues to work with the same students throughout their time at UBC!” Harb also enjoys the great working environment and extremely supportive colleagues!
Where did you travel to recently?
We had a family wedding in England in late June, and decided to spend a week in Spain prior. We were thinking about going somewhere in Europe where we had not been before, and we had a few family and friends who went to Spain within the last year, and they highly recommended it. We spent three nights in Madrid then four nights in Barcelona.
Tell us about some of your most memorable moments!
The Basilica de La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona was amazing! This is an architectural marvel and definitely recommended as a highlight while visiting Barcelona.
You are able to go up one of the two towers and you get a great view of the city. Going down, you have to descend a steep spiral staircase – it is a great photo opportunity and admittedly kind of scary! The other memorable moment was taking the speed train from Madrid to Barcelona. It gave us a great view of the Spanish countryside, travelled at speeds of 300 km/hr, and was a super smooth ride.
What was your favourite Spanish meal?
One of our favorite meals was paella. This is a very popular rice-based dish in Spain and a lot of times the portions were large enough for us to share. The interesting meal which I saw, but did not get a chance to try was specifically the seafood. This paella is made with the whole clams, shrimp, and a ton of other seafood all cooked and placed on top of the rice. Although I love seafood, I stuck to the chicken and vegetarian versions!
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to travel to these big cities in Spain?
I would recommend booking tourist attractions you would like to visit in advance online. We did this, and it saved us a lot of time not having to wait in long lineups. The one tip we learned is there are different prices for menu items depending on if you sit inside (cheaper) or outside. Some restaurants clearly identified this in their menu, while others had small print at the bottom of the menu! We learned that at one restaurant the hard way!
