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I would apologize for having not written an entry in so long, but it would be wrong for me to do so, since I am doing all that is humanly capable right now after being hit by the train of ‘THIS IS WHAT UNIVERSITY REALLY IS’ and the caboose ‘POOR TIME MANAGEMENT’. I have been really sick though, lately, and found a bit of time to write this… I have been getting loads, loooads of questions that are always the same ‘What’s going on? How’s UBC?’ etc… Rather than address these all personally, I decided I would write a big entry of all the details in my life. But then it turned into an autobiography (which I truly do intend on completing). Without further ado, here is.. ‘part 1’… Copied and pasted directly from my Facebook…

My name on Facebook is Ant Won (a play on the name Antwon) … feel free to add me. http://www.facebook.com/djpartybag

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR (ME):
Hey guys, whatsup? Looking at this note you probably think… wow! That’s pretty long… and I have a new notification, I’d rather not read all of this. And that’s cool. The fact is, this note reads less like an ‘Omg LOTR is sew good’ note, and more like a little autobiographical excerpt on a part of my life. So, of course, I can’t make you read it… but I’m just going to offer the question… Have you ever read a note of mine and regretted it after? So enjoy, this is part one of my departure to Vancouver!

EDMONTON:
Here I was. All my shit was packed away, my family was ready to move out. The crew came to say their final goodbye and after all hugs were exchanged I turned away from them for the last time and hopped in the truck. The heavy weight of finally leaving, mixed with the swirling excitement of new opportunity was a very.. potent feeling, and a theme that would be reoccur daily, to the very moment I write this now.

This was the set-up. My mom and my two sisters took off in the Yaris, with our dog. My dad and I were in my uncle’s gigantic pick-up truck which hauled our trailer, and inside that, my life’s possessions. Most of the boxes I had packed away read ‘Clothes’, ‘Clothes’, ‘Clothes, ‘Clothes, or ‘Books’, ‘Books’, ‘Books’, ‘Books’. But there was, of course, ‘Kinda Fragile Shit’ and ‘Electronics’. I had only moved twice in my life that I could actually remember and had been living in my last house since for around 10 years, so packing was a little tough. That being said, the physical act of putting my shit in boxes wasn’t tough, but living in a barren, lifeless room was kinda tough as I counted down my final days in Edmonton.

The road-trip was I’m sure like many you yourself have had. Music. Fast food. Long highways. Hotels. The one difference you might expect between my road trip was the discussion of topics with my dad. We talked exclusively about my aspirations in sports, school, my life’s dreams…. and… hip-hop. The only things we will ever know how to talk about.

We arrived in Vancouver. My sister, Isabel, had switched vehicles and now rode with me and my dad down the final frontier… navigating busy, narrow Vancouver streets… with a half-ton truck and a trailer hitched on the back. It was a beautiful and I was harsh neglecting my co-pilot duties with my eyes glued on the window, announcing everytime I saw a hot girl. I ended up seeing FIVE on the way from East Van to West Van. That was a landmark. I even saw a chick with good style riding a bike… and looking sexy while doing it. My sister and I remarked at all the amazing things we saw… all the busy streets full of clothing stores and bustling people carrying around waaaay too many bags. ‘Weird’ looking people, people doing ‘weird’ things, all of which I eventually learned is just part of living in Vancouver: being your weird-ass self.

We arrived on my Uncle’s street (aka my new street) and got out to greet them. They showed me my room (I already knew which one I was getting, I had stayed in it when I went to UBC’s Spring Camp) and then we all proceeded to sit down and get wasted off Jager. My aunt/uncle are German, and so is my mom, and I dunno what it is.. but Germans love their Jager. Get this though, they poured their drinks in shot glasses… and then sipped out of them… and still got wasted. People get funny when they get old. 😛

Although I was finally here in Van, with my boxes unloaded in my room, it was short-lived. My whole family jumped in the truck and the new, now empty trailer rode behind us as we went to the ferry terminal. We were going to have one last family hoora on the Island before ‘getting rid of me’ as my parents would call it. This was said out of good humour, but as with all humour, there is a definite seed of truth. My parents were young when I was born (24) and by the time they had three kids (29) they definitely had a lot on their hands. I am still a little amazed at how my parents managed to raise us all, and do such a good job (yes I have told them this myself). As soon as I was old enough to realize the difficulties they were having with handling three kids and still working to support us, I immediately began to try and take care of myself. I became, even living at home, very autonomous. My goal was to completely take myself out of the equation so my parents could use their energy to help my sisters, or maybe, even have time to relax. I always knew I would move out as soon as I possibly could, if for nothing else but to make their life easier. My moving out was the final part of the process.

So here we were, five people loaded into a truck with a dog, going to explore the island. Little did I know, planning had not occurred before departure, which is about a potent recipe for disaster as you can muster. The trip, ultimately, was a failure, and reminded me of others reasons I wanted to get out of my house for. Tempers flared, largely due to my dad flying off the handle. We were in a constant state of trying to figure out something that should have been figured out a long time ago. We managed to salvage a great two days where everyone got along and enjoyed themselves.. out of ten. But we survived. And finally, after waiting 8 hours (no joke) for a ferry, we were back on the mainland and trying to squeeze a 40+ feet monster combination of truck/trailer through bumper to bumper Vancouver rush hour traffic (excuse that very wordy sentence) we arrived back at ‘the house’. Not yet, ‘my house’, nor the least ‘my home’. The house.

My family stayed here in Van for a few more days after we returned. My uncle is a physics professor, so much like the students, he has the summers off, which made for very funny nights of drunken adults passing around Jager and wine and telling hilarious stories. My aunt and uncle, both in their fifties sat around the table with my mom and my dad, both in their fourties, while my two cousins (24) and (28) joined us. We sat on the deck in the delicious Vancouver air with the view of the mountains, the ocean, and the lit-up architecture of downtown. My sisters were inside, smacking eachother and calling eachother bitches for wanting to watch different television channels. Unless you have grown up with 2 younger sisters, you will never be able to appreciate the depth of that last sentence. But the one thing I noticed as all these people sat around, telling stories, myself being oddly quiet, is I, at 18, didn’t really fit in at the table. That was the first time I craved having a friend, and the pain, not a stabbing harsh pain, hit me more as an aloof loneliness. Once again I faced the reality that I was all alone.

Let me interject a bit of what I mean when I say ‘all alone’. We are always all alone. Your mom will always have you on her mind, your friends will always be there for you, but realistically, you are always alone. You alone have your thoughts to deal with. You alone feel what you feel. I”m not saying this cynically, like a little emo bitch, I’m just pointing out reality. If you can face the fact that you are alone in life, then it makes life a lot easier. You can walk alone by yourself down the street without feeling empty. You can face that fact that you are your sole companion on this trip through life. It’s called growing up, and although I openly embrace growth and try to bring it into my life as much as possible, this time in particular, growing up was thrust upon me. I excused myself from the drunken fun and went to grab some sleep, but before I did I once more looked out over the landscape. Vancouver had never felt so big.

(TO BE CONTINUED… STILL TO COME… HITCH-HIKING TO SHAMBHALA.. AND SNEAKING IN ACROSS THE RIVER WITHOUT A TICKET! UBC: THE NUDE BEACH, THE PARTY LIFE AND THE PEOPLE. VANCOUVER: IS EVERY HOUSE REALLY A GROW OP? (SPOILER: YES))

Stay tuned….

I would say one of my greatest weaknesses could be perceived as one of my greatest strengths. Whether or not it’s healthy for the mind, I am not sure, but I always downplay my achievements and am very reluctant to give myself credit for what I’ve accomplished. It has always been a riddle to me, especially when you see very famous, successful artists and athletes (my idols) who are quick to attribute all their success to God. Now I’m not about to open a debate on religion, my idea here is that these are people who work tirelessly, around the clock, constantly training and working to be the best, and when they finally reach their goal they seemingly turn their back on the reality of how they got their. My issue is along those same lines, but different. I am quick to see cause and effect, a skill I am ultimately very grateful for, but it kind of bites me in the ass sometimes. This is how…

A couple months ago I tried out for a high-school allstar football team, it was to be the best seniors of Northern Alberta versus the best seniors of Southern Alberta. I tried out, gave it my all, and subsequently made the team. We practiced hard and when we took on the South we won the game. All gravy, right? I don’t know if it’s my ego, or what it is, but the way I perceived the events taking place were: I was put in a great position to make the team because my school’s coach was making the selection for my position. Am I, myself, the sole and true reason why I made the team? We won but I didn’t play particularly well, was my contribution that significant to the win? The reason I wonder if it’s my ego is that I’m not a very neurotic person, at all. I don’t second guess myself, I have very few to no personal issues, or feelings of inadequacy. My theory for why I have a tendency to do this is that I want everything to go through me. If we won, I want it to be because of me. I want to have it all placed on me, so when we do come out victorious, it’s clear to everybody that it was my doing.

And how does this method of thinking manifest in my consciousness? It’s harder to FULLY enjoy things, to FULLY appreciate things. As I walk down a beautiful street in neighborhood in Vancouver, in the back of my mind there is a little ounce of thought that says “you yourself did not earn this”. And it’s true. I got into UBC by a series of flukes, mind you I did put in a good amount of effort, but a multitude of lucky events landed me here. I talked my math teacher into letting me retake a Logarithims test the day before my marks were sent out to UBC. I did pretty well on the test and bumped my mark up to an admittedly inflated 83. I think I finished the course with a 71 (I am not good at math). Knowing that, what ends up happening is me thinking that my math teacher is the reason for me getting here just as much as me, and again, I feel a sense of DISCOURAGEMENT, a little drop in my spirits at that thought.

But I have a new way of thinking. And if this blog entry seems a little uncoordinated and random, what can I say, it is truly right off the top of my head. I didn’t even realize any of this stuff was happening in my head until I did a little introspection on the bus today, coincidentally I thought of all this stuff on the 25 on my way home. Anyways, back to my baby epiphany.

Quite simply I have to face the fact that things occur out of my control, and the things I think I have a handle on may well be out of my control, too. Now rather than feel discouraged that I, myself, am not the sole reason for this great life I have been given, I should just APPRECIATE. Rather than try and analyze all the reasons I am at a certain place at a certain time, I should just be happy I am there at all. If it’s true that my math teacher helped get my ass down here, then I should just giggle to myself that I am so lucky to have been bailed out like that.

I don’t know if this is an issue with other people’s thoughts, everybody talks to themselves differently, but hopefully if it is then I’ve helped ail you with a new way of thinking. And even if that specific kind of negative self-feeling is foreign to you, I think everybody can APPRECIATE when someone opens up and just lets their thoughts pour. So with that, I end this very philosophical blog entry and will now direct my focus back to the less enticing world of economics. Take care!

Yes, I know it is a little early in our relationship to start throwing around the ‘L’ word, but I really think I mean it this time. UBC and I had our first introductions weeks ago when I first moved to Vancouver and started to explore the campus, but it wasn’t until the first day Rez students moved in that I can say I definitely got to know this new friend of mine.

I’m just going to preface this by admitting that I don’t really like following the path set out for me, I just can’t stand following a structure or a system. I know you’re probably thinking “well, you’re in university now, what about classes and homework?”, to which I would simply reply “trust me, I know how to be a nerd, how do you think I got into this school in the first place?” No matter how much I like the buck the trend and do my own thing, there is always a little special place in my heart reserved for loner hours where I preread my upcoming texts and slap away on my keyboard making sure I’ve met the requirements for my next lecture. I’m good with that much, but following the rules and the guidelines people set out for me? Never really had an affinity for that. So now that I have that much off my chest, let’s start with the night Rez moved in…

It was the night of September the 4th, the Saturday most students in Res had moved in and were just getting situated. My one good friend who got into UBC had just moved in, and called me to come ‘check things out’. It wasn’t long before I arrived by bus to UBC and stepped out onto campus. I walked amongst crowds of particuarly loud groups of students and it was impossible not to feel the energy of the night–we had finally made it. Even though I was all alone, I felt perfectly at home and very welcome at my new campus. I arrived, somehow, at Place Vanier, standing in between groups of weird looking buildings with excited students buzzing around. I kept trying to call my friend, and when he finally answered he whispered that he was in a Residence meeting. I leaned on him a bit and he told me he would sneak out at the first opportunity.So there I was, staring eye to eye with a couple of raccoons, waiting for my friend to find me, and it wasn’t long before I heard someone holler, quite loud and confident, “AANNTTHHOOONNNYYY”. I should have taken my friend’s apparent immunity to the social pressures of the first night on Res as an indication of how the night was going to go, but I didn’t catch the clues. Good thing, too!

Now I’m only 18, so I would never drink, but hypothetically if I was drinking I would have gotten drunk and headed down to the frats. When I hypothetically arrived there (after a long hunt) I couldn’t believe that this was an actual place, houses all in a big row with inebriated students teeming about. Everyone was making friends (and a fool of themself) left, right and centre. It was a great night which included taking some pictures with a 5th year Honors physics students working in a labratory building which resembled a nuclear warhead assembly garage. He was working with pulp though, still cool in my books haha. I also founded a new base of friends which I think is a fundamental part of moving to a new place. I had been a loner for nearly a month in Vancouver, a social being reduced to Facebook, UBC Blogging and pick-up beach basketball, but now I was back to true social butterfly form, meeting intelligent young people much like myself. A great relief and a hell of a way to kick off the new year.

The weekend passed and UBC Imagine soon approached. I spent the day of Monday hanging out around UBC campus with friends, checking things out and having fun. The urge to party was still strong inside me and I should have taken it as a bad sign when at 11.30 PM we were some of the last students still hanging out at Wreck Beach. How many students went to UBC again? Is there something everybody else knows that I don’t? How about the fact that I had to be at a meeting place at 8.30 AM to meet my UBC Imagine group. I told everybody I had to go, it was already late, besides the fact that I had to still commute home and go to sleep, and then commute back in the morning. I was set back even further when I bumped into some people I had met the first night on my lonesome trek to the bus-stop and ended up talking to them, too. I kind of knew I was screwed when after arriving home I looked at my alarm clock which quietly screamed the numbers 1:30 at me. Hey, to some people this would look like a stupid move, but to me making mistakes is a great method of learning, even better than study notes and lectures. I knew I was going to be tired, but I hoped my ally coffee would be able to bail me out.

Well it didn’t quite work out like that. I was pedalling my ass off on my road-bike but I still arrived late. I was rolling up at UBC at about 9 am, which was a minor greivance, besides getting lost and not finding my group whatsoever. Haha! What a way to start the year! I couldn’t find the energy within myself to panic, though, I was simply too tired. Luckily, after a bit of haphazard exploration, I found a group doing the ‘Student Success Workshop’ and I stuck a name sticker on my chest and joined the group. They explained to me how everybody in this group had a class together, and for the group I was in, it was theatre. Perfect, now I’m stuck with a bunch of drama kids! This is why I need a bed-time!
(Aside: I love theatre kids and have lots of friends who were in Drama in high-school. They are just a little weird, I think everyone can appreciate that).

Everything worked out fine, though. I ended up leaving my group, meeting a friend and doing our own tour of UBC. Even though we had both disbanded our groups, we talked our way into pizza, found all our classes, and participated in the Pep Rally. I have to admit though, as an arts students, I was wearing blue all day and sat with and cheered for the faculty of science at the pep rally. All in all, it was a perfect day, and even though I went my own way and did my own thing, it all worked out. And now that I had the party bug out of my system (relatively) I have been able to focus on the real reason I am here: schooling. I’m not going to be like the girl sitting three spots over in my psych class, checking Facebook photos all lecture, I am here to put in work with what I am arguably best at: being a smart-ass.

I wish I could write more but the Bird-coop closes at 6, and I have to handle some business first and then go for a work out. At this point I will hope you enjoyed this entry, and tell you to keep posted because my next blog is on… Working out! And sports and general fitness!

Cya next time

I remember when Napster quite abruptly kicked down the peer-to-peer door and busted onto the scene back when I was in elementary. Quite nostalgically I can recall the plain old fun I had with my cousin, tracking down new songs of our favorite artists. If you can believe it, I have a clear memory of us searching for Eminem songs, kind of funny to think about when I compare it to my little sister replaying ‘I’m Not Afraid’ time and time again from the computer room (She is 12). Those were the greatest days of my filesharing life, and nothing made me happier than observing my upload speeds as someone took interest to something I had already downloaded. All good things must come to an end, however, and Napster was no exception. Metallica , upon hearing a song had been leaked to Napster before it’s relase, chose to go the American way and sue Napster, ultimately bringing the file-sharing giant to a closure. The model for an efficient P2P (peer-to-peer) filesharing program had lived on, springing life to popular names such as Limewire, Imeem, Kazaa and a lot of other spyware ridden file-sharing programs.

Sadly, these programs were, and continue to be, essentially a load of crap. You really have to comb through to find a safe, working download and I have seen many a computer of gullible friends victimized by these programs. Nowadays it is too easy to make a spyware program that looks like a legitimate song or video and for the layman it’s hard to tell the difference until it’s too late. It would seem the world would have to find new music, song-by-song, amongst fakes, wrong versions, spyware and viruses. That was, until the .torrent .

Now let’s look at our beautiful iPods for one second. The iPod classic we all grew up on now comes in either 80, 120 or 160 gigs. Why is it that virtually everybody has tons of extra storage just kicking around? Because they haven’t read this blog post.

Enter BitTorrent, the modern day standard for internet file sharing. There is a lot I could say about this, but I will be brief and first just underline how it works. First you must download a .torrent file, this item is what you are about to download and will have a name such as ‘Beatles – Discography.torrent’. Then you will open this file with a BitTorrent client, where it will show you all the downloads you have going, and the rate by which you are downloading or uploading a file. From there, you wait, and then promptly upon the completion of the download, you enjoy.

The general consensus amongst us who are torrent-enabled is that uTorrent is the best program to use to download your media. It won’t hog up your computer power and it gets the job done. It can be download from it’s website, here:

Now all you need are torrents, which is the easy part. There are great websites all over the internet, the most prominent being the highly-touted, often-in-the-news, The Pirate Bay but my favorite is BTJunkie . Both of these sites, and most other torrent sites, virus scan torrents before allowing them to be downloaded, so unlike the era of Limewire, you no longer have to worry about sketchy files. Also these sites have a good community of peers who will comment on a torrent, so it is always a good idea to read up on find what others are saying about the quality etc.

And while we’re on the topic of iPods, iTunes is only compatible with .mp4 files. Nowadays most videos come in .avi file (unless you download a torrent specifically for iPods, there are those too), which would present a problem if not for a beautiful piece of freeware, Videorea iPod Converter. With this program you can turn those pesky .avi and most other video programs to the iTunes friendly .mp4. This program can be downloaded here.

And finally, depending on how a lot of videos are ripped (turned into a viewable file) they require a lot of different codecs which Windows Media Player isn’t going to offer much help. For this you need the ever versatile VLC Media Player.

All these programs are free, which is always nice for a starving student (such as myself). Happy downloading! There’s a lot of cool things you can find through torrents so I hope you unearth something awesome!

DISCLAIMER: This blogger fully endorses BitTorrent as a legitimate way of sharing files over the internet. It is indeed quite LEGAL to use torrents as a means of getting files. There are an infinite number of ways to use torrents (record studios use torrents to promote artists, Facebook uses BitTorrent for site updates, World of Warcraft uses Bittorrent to distribute not only updates, but the actual game itself). It is, however, illegal to download the new Brittney Spears album. But if you really want to fill that iPod up (why else would it come with 160,000 MBS of space?) then please, if you find an artist you like, buy an album. Or even better, buy a t-shirt and flaunt it down Robson St., what a better way to pay your respect than to turn yourself into a walking billboard? 🙂

That concludes my informative blog post. If you have any questions I will definitely help you out. Or refer you to google. Either way you’re gunna be knee deep in media goodies in no time.

Have fun! 😉

As we all move closer to starting at our school new and ultimately a new chapter in all our lives, I can only imagine the sentiments of all us first year students. I can only speak for myself but I feel pretty safe in saying that we’re all pretty excited, maybe a little nervous (maybe a lot nervous), perhaps a little anxious too. Of course that is all completely normal and healthy, but here are a few ideas that can help tweak your mindset and get you spiritually prepared for the next few weeks.

We all do a lot of thinking, a lot. And with this questions rise up to your mind and cause a bit of discomfort: Am I well prepared? Do I have everything I need? Am I going to fit in, or what if I don’t like my profs or can’t handle my classes? From the seed of doubt grows a little uncertainty and then there you are, second guessing any matter of things.

Of course everybody is self-conscious, some more than others but there is no one who doesn’t have something they feel a little vulnerable about. Usually when you doubt yourself, these mostly self-created issues bubble to the surface and will manifest in your taking the easy way out, staying home when you could have went out, not saying something to that cute girl that passes you, or whatever else your mind will make excuses about and talk your way out of. Speaking for myself here, I was very self-conscious about my age when I first entered high school. I felt like somehow the grade 12s had the upper hand and were wiser, perhaps more intelligent and at the very least, better at socializing than me. Then I reached grade 12 with the same self-doubt I entered highschool in.

It is the age-old trick of the mind, whenever you are younger you think that when you reach a certain age (maybe 18, whichever) that you are going to be all-knowing, you will have this world and yourself figured out totally. Then we reach that age and we realize that we were waiting all this time, living in the shadow waiting for a coming-of-age that just simply never came. One day you woke up on your eighteenth birthday and realized “Shit! I’m the exact same person”. That’s why I’m offering a new way of thinking for this year…

Yes, we are new. Yes, we will be the youngest on campus. But there is always something to be said for that new kid who comes in and takes everybody by surprise. Something I’ve realized in life is that people who become the best at life get started on day 1. The best football player on the team doesn’t come in and grow into the role, he assumes it the very second he steps onto the field. That’s the state of mind I’m offering for all of us to take.

Sure someone who is in their second or third year has been at UBC longer, and been on this Earth longer, but they are no different than us. When we walk onto that campus we have a completely fresh slate, the ability to create a brand new identity and become whoever we want to be. Second and third years, they don’t have that ability. They are who they were the year before, and maybe they were the person who let their chances slip by and chose to watch from the sidelines.

If someone who has been at the university for a while, and is maybe one of the more popular students, walks around with confidence and swagger you think, “well he has obviously made a lot of friends here”. But when someone completely new walks up, unfazed, with that same confidence and swagger, you have no idea what they have that makes them so fearless, and that is the confidence that people really notice. Oftentimes the answer to what gives this person such an air of self-content is nothing more than just having the right state of mind.

Will it be hard? Sure. It will always be easier to not say something when you could have, to avoid something because of fear of failure. But if you truly want to take a stake in your reality and make the most of your life, those ‘little’ things can’t be ignored. Nobody is perfect and there will always be opportunities that pass you by but as long as you can be conscious of those opportunities and realize when you could have stepped up and done something better, then that thought alone is better than just accepting something lesser.

‘Stepping up’ is going to be different for everybody, and thank you very much for reading my blog, but I know right now there is at least one thing you have been neglecting to do, even though you know in your heart it’s for the better. For me, it was writing this entry, so I’m off the hook 😛 But if you just take a little time to look within, and don’t let fear be part of the equation, I’m confident you’ll think of something you can do for yourself.

Well that’s it for now, I’m going to watch an episode of Entourage and get a good night’s sleep. If something in my blog helped someone just a little then it’s purpose was served. 🙂

Take care guys, and live life to the fullest.
Sincerely,
Anthony

Napolean Bonaparte once said a picture is worth a thousand words, and since I know a limited number of synonyms for cold, (frigid, chilly, freezing..) I thought I might upload this picture.  As we know, so much of what makes up a person is where they grew up, the nature of their surroundings.  With that being said, rather than divulge into who I am personally, let me first introduce myself through the means of where I grew up: Edmonton