Category Archives: Recreation

snow is falling

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Whistler

Lower Olympic run, Whistler

So I can ski, now.

I skied once before, when I was eleven, and I was truly awful, so when, over reading week, me and a couple of friends decided to head up to Whistler, I assumed I’d be awful again. I actually assumed that I would have forgotten everything, and that I’d fall over ten thousand times over the three days me and my friend Chris got.

Turns out skiing is a bit like riding a bike, and I, though I have never in my life been good at a sport, was pretty good at skiing. I was sort of top of the class. Which is insane. Turned out that I was really good at the parts of skiing that involved being on skies and hurtling down hills (at a very slow speed; I am still learning), but still really really bad at the parts of skiing that didn’t involve being on skies. Like walking in ski boots (which are the worst inventions ever) and not falling over when I was supposed to be standing still.

It was a trade I was willing to take, though. Whistler is such an expensive but wonderful place, and unlike anywhere else I’ve visited so far in North America.

 

six shots two guns

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It’s that time of year when everyone cares about all of the movies, but this isn’t a post about any movie in itself. The Golden Globes are on right now, too, but this isn’t a post about that, either. Mostly because award shows really frustrate me – someone needs to give Leo DiCaprio an award for something, seriously, this is getting ridiculous, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of Things That Make Me Angry About Award Shows.

I went to see Django Unchained last week and it is one seriously wonderful movie. It’s quick and funny and brutal and has the only ending that could ever have worked, and it’s not perfect, there are things to pick at, but man does it ever get close. But this post isn’t about that. I just want to talk about how wonderful the soundtrack to Django is.

The soundtrack moves between period-appropriate country-ish music, some beautiful jazz-y blues tracks, and a whole lot of fantastically anachronistic hip hop. The cutting of the soundtrack with the pictures is perfection, but the soundtrack on it’s own is a seriously perfect piece of work.

I am a soundtrack kind of person; I listen to them a lot when I’m studying.  Django kind of blows all of my favourites out of the water. That’s Tarantino for you, though, right?

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #6

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THING #6: SAW THE UBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

A slightly fuzzy picture of the UBC Symphony Orchestra.

I had no idea that UBC had a Symphony Orchestra, but we do! A friend asked if I wanted to go see them play at the Chan Centre at absolutely none of my own expense and I thought it’d be a pretty great way to spend an evening. It was. I came out feeling incredibly cultured, and me and my friend did a little bit of frat boy spotting in the audience. Who’d have thought, right? We must have been doing the cool thing.

It was an incredible show. I know very little about music, especially classical music, but I enjoyed it a lot. And I came out feeling all kinds of cultural. Their next concert, while not free, is just $15 for students, and features the the UBC Choral Union.

I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if I can go see them again sometime soon. They were incredibly talented.

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #5

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THING #5: HOPPED ON OVER THE BOARDER TO SEATTLE

The Seattle Skyline plus my face. (And my friend’s arm – oops!)

It takes just four hours to get from downtown Vancouver to downtown Seattle, and that’s only if it’s pretty busy at the boarder. And so why not do it? I know that for me, part of the appeal of Vancouver (and it is only a little part) is the opportunity for travel. And Seattle is so very very close! (And so very very cheap! My ticket down on Bolt Bus was only $15, and you can get them cheaper.)

The Original Starbucks (just about) plus my face (again). Look at that line!

Seattle is full of things to do even on a rainy day. Which, statistically, it’s likely to be. But we live in Vancouver, however temporarily. We are used to this, right? Some things I would recommend include checking out Pike Place Market, where you can find all kinds of fresh produce as well as some fantastic gifts and pretty things. It’s where the original Starbucks is located, too, though the lineup outside is insane.

After that, there’s the EMP – a museum for music, sci-fi and pop culture. Love Nirvana? There’s an exhibition on their influence on music. Sci-fi geek? There’s another exhibition on great influences in sci-fi. (Also, they have an awesome sci-fi gift shop. I bought a t-shirt with ‘Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!’ on it – anyone who can tell me what show it’s from is my new best friend.) I would highly recommend the EMP.

The Crab Pot, plus my friends’ faces and my own.

If you’re looking for somewhere to eat some fantastic Seattle seafood, I cannot recommend The Crab Pot highly enough. Man vs. Food went there once! It’s incredible. They dump a bucket of seafood in front of you, give you a small mallet, and let you have at it. (Or you can get a nice, safe salmon burger or a plate of ribs, but the seafood! Man!)

A rainy view from the Space Needle, plus my friends’ and my faces. Getting a bit pose-y, there.

Then there’s the Space Needle. It’s the icon of Seattle, and it’s such an oddly futuristic and yet stuck back in time kind of place. It’s very odd, but definitely must be experienced. You can go up it at night, too.

Seattle is an incredible place, and I am proud to say that I got myself across the American boarder without accidentally doing something wrong! All by myself! I am very proud, and I had a fantastic time.

nanowrimo: writing a novel in thirty days

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National Novel Writing Month

November is a month for a lot of different challenges. There’s Movember, Goalvember, and the challenge of getting through the last four weeks of term. It’s a mad month. I already feel all over the place.

So guess what I did? I signed up for NaNoWriMo! Because I am in possession of a rational mind and I thought that would be a great idea in the (second) hardest month of the accademic year! You know what, though? I am gonna win this thing.

For everyone who hasn’t heard of it, NaNoWriMo stands for the National Novel Writing Month, which is a worldwide challenge held over the web by a charitable organisation called the Office of Letters and Light. The idea is to write a 50000 word novel in thirty days. It’s not easy. That amounts to about 1667 words per day, and that is every single day for the month of November. It is not for the faint of heart. (Says me, as though I’m doing some epic quest.)

In my experience, though, once you’ve tried it, it’s not something you give up trying until you win. This year will be my fourth attempt at it, and I’m hoping to last out the first week this time. But there are lots of reasons why someone might chose to put themselves through this. Maybe they want to cross writing a novel off their bucket list, or maybe they want to learn how to write without having time to second guess themselves. Maybe they want to finish a creative project for the first time. Maybe they’ve been doing it for so many years that a November is no longer a real month to them without writing an odd 50k.

In Totem we’ve got a group, run by the Totem Times, who are participating in NaNo. You’ll be able to see our weekly tallies in the commons block, too. And if you want to join in, well, you’re only a day behind! Why not try it? (I am currently a day behind, too, and I promise that it is possible to catch up.)

If you’re interested and you want more info, I’d recomend having a poke around the NaNo website. And, if you decide to participate, or you already are, there’s a special section of the site just for student NaNo participants and our very special issues.

So, wish me luck!

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #4

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THING #4: SAW THE SUN RISE FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF NIGHT

Sunrise from my window.

Let me preface this by saying that all-nighters are evil. Sometimes they’re a necessary evil, but evil. All-nighters leave you feeling awful the next day. They are not worth being able to say you’ve pulled one. It’s really not that great.

However, this was not an all-nighter. Not a studying so hard you don’t sleep all-nighter, anyway, and it was pretty brilliant. It being a Sunday when I went to sleep helped.

The night started with drinks in the floor lounge with floormates. I was supposed to be going out, but we made a large sort-of bed with all the couches in the room and I was way too comfy, so I got left behind and ended up crashing a movie night instead! Best decision I think I’ve ever made? Why trek across Vancouver to stand in a line, and then pay $20 to then wait half an hour, to spend another $7 on a drink, when you can laze around with friends and watch a really great movie? (I did say this’d show how lame I can be, didn’t I? I have definitely said that before.)

“I saved Latin, what did you ever do?” – Jason Schwartzman in Wes Anderson’s ‘Rushmore’, 1998.

We watched Rushmore, which is a fantastic movie. Would recommend. Then – and it was about 1am at this point – we heard a rumour of a movie marathon in one of the other Totem houses. We crashed it. It was a Harry Potter marathon. Another best decision ever.

After watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, we headed back to the floor lounge and hung out with the guys who had just got back from Downtown Van. There was pizza and weirdly philosophical meandering talk, and three of us stayed up until five. None of us were tired, and we just talked a load of rubbish (sorry: trash – but, wait, does that even have the same meaning here? Still working on my Canadianisms…) and it was really great.

Then watched the sun rise from my bedroom window before finally sleeping. Sometimes all-nighters are worth it all.

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #3

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THING #3: TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE LONG THANKSGIVING WEEKEND

Polite reminder that turkeys are the most hilarious looking animal ever.

The midterms are rolling on in, the work is getting harder, and the free time you get is just getting less and less free. Must be October.

But then, as though called by a collective moaning of students, magically, a long weekend appears! There is pie to be eaten and turkey to be cooked (and hopefully not burnt) and lazing around to do! It’s fantastic.

This Thanksgiving weekend was my first (and possibly only ever) Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, and I am not alone. In my res there were plenty of people for whom the same was true. Maybe it was their first Thanksgiving, or maybe it was their first Canadian Thanksgiving. For some people it was the first Thanksgiving away from home, or the first Thanksgiving where they’d had to go home to get to it. For a lot of people it was their first Thanksgiving since they became college students. There’s a lot of firsts, is what I’m saying. And I think that’s kinda cool.

Everything is better when there is pie.

There’s also a ton of different things you can do for Thanksgiving. A lot of people on my floor went home for the weekend. I traveled to Vancouver Island and stayed with some relatives I’ve got there – I was spoiled pretty thoroughly and it was wonderful. Other friends took advantage of the extra day off by traveling somewhere for a hike or for some shopping over the border. And a fair few people on my floor stayed at UBC and had a turkey dinner together.

What I’m trying to say is that, well… you don’t get a lot of breaks in the school year, and Thanksgiving weekend is one to really take advantage of. If it’s anything like this year, the weather might even still be good!

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #2

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THING #2: DAY OF THE LONGBOAT

A longboat on Jericho Beach, on the clinic day the Sunday before Day of the Longboat.

There are things I foresaw myself doing while in Canada. Skiing; seeing a bear; going whale watching; eating a whole lot of pancakes. I didn’t foresee myself taking part in a longboat race. It just… it wasn’t something that it occurred to me to imagine. Longboats, I thought, were a Viking thing, maybe. Me, I love How To Train Your Dragon, but I ain’t no Viking.

I signed up anyway. I thought, hey, it’s nice weather we’re having. It could be pretty cool. I hoped I would, at least, manage to not be a dead weight in the boat.

It was the best. thing. ever.

Learning how to Longboat on clinic day.

I’m not lying now. It was so much fun. It was hard, and it was competitive, and my team screamed probably more than we paddled, but wow was it a good day. And my team came third, which was not only respectable but also a total shock to all of us.

My back, my arms, and my right hand still ache, two days later, but it was so much more than worth it. We did good, we paddled hard, and we definitely felt just a little bit like Vikings. It was an epic day. If you didn’t get to do it this year and you’re going to be at UBC again next year, I cannot recommend taking part in Day of the Longboat enough. It’s the best day I’ve had since getting here, and I’ve had some pretty freaking fantastic days.

(Should you come across yourself in one of my pictures and want it taken down, please just say so and I’ll do it ASAP. Cheers.)

32 things i did at ubc that you can totally do too : thing #1

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Here marks the beginning of a thing I’m trying, in that I’m going to try to pick out something I’ve done each week (and I have 32 left before the end of exam period in April) and talk about how brilliant it was. Very probably this will showcase how lame I am, but that’s okay. I live for other people to laugh at. I have come to terms with that.

So, without further ado:

THING #1: WATCHING THE SUNSET AT WRECK BEACH

Wreck Beach at sunset.

If you don’t know, Wreck Beach is right at the west edge of campus. Follow University Boulevard all the way down (if at any point you hit the Village, you’re going the wrong way; turn around and start again) until you hit Marine Drive. Then turn right and you should see the top of the stairs down to the beach. You’re there! And we have just discovered that I should never give directions! Hooray for learning new things!

So, yes, it is a nudist beach. Yes, that meant there were bits out in the open that, regressing to school kid age, I kind of wanted to laugh at. But, whatever, you know why it’s a nudist beach? Probably it’s got something to do with the cliff you have to climb down (via stairs, but that’s not as much help as you’d hope) that keeps the naughty nude people away from the innocent eyes of the students who live up top. But, also, more importantly, Wreck Beach is genuinely a place of beauty in that actually breathtaking way that seems to happen a lot more often around Vancouver than I, deprived traveler that I am, am used to. It’s inspiring. It inspired the group of friends I was with to whip out a ukulele and sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Likewise, it inspires a lot of other people to take their clothes off. Each to his own.

Wreck Beach, post-sunset.

Wreck Beach is a beautiful place to be, and, if you can handle the stairs back up, watching the sunset down there, maybe singing a little, and, maybe, if you’re really brave or stupid, going for a quick swim, is the loveliest way to chill out after a packed day of classes. It was warm, the sky was clear, and the sun took its sweet time setting. It totally cured me of homesickness for that day, too. Go try it.

(A note on the stairs: I thought I was going to die. It was so horrible, and there is a reason the UBC Fun Run Club holds a Wreck Beach stairs challenge. Don’t think you are better than the stairs. You aren’t, and they will beat you. Bring water and someone to collapse on who you can dramatically grip by the collar and make promise to carry your body and last words back to civilisation. When you get to the top, have a sit down. Grab an ice cream. Celebrate having survived.)

i’ll be spelling realize with an s

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UBC Campus.

Let’s skip the introductions and go straight into talking about how absolutely beautiful British Columbia is, shall we? Because it is beautiful. I’ve been here for a week, and so far not a day has passed where I haven’t been knocked breathless and stunned by beauty. You Canadians ain’t so bad, either. *cheezy wink*. (I mean that in a spiritual sense. Mostly.)

You may have gathered that I am not from around these parts. Perhaps, for some of you, the stunning beauty of Vancouver is something you barely notice anymore, but I know some of you’ll be like me; new to this area and feeling a little overwhelmed by the picture-perfect-ness of it all. I come from a very picturesque part of the world, as it happens, but dang, Canada. Woah.

View from Comox, Vancouver Island, across to the mainland.

I’ve moved here for just the year on exchange from the UK and being here for just the year is already feeling like not enough time. How do I go back to Norwich (famous for precisely nothing, though maybe you’ll know who Stephen Fry is – he’s a national treasure to us Brits) after a year at UBC? Amongst the most beautiful sights you could wish for, in one of the most exciting and interesting universities in the world?

Fountain opposite Irving K Barber Learning Centre, UBC Campus.

I am a worrier, and this is a genuine worry for me. But, okay, I’m going to try to do the grown up thing and ignore that for now. I’m going to try to do all those things you get in annoying motivational emails like live for the moment and seize the day. I will endeavour to suspend my British cynicism and leap before I look a little. Not too much. I’ll be the one flailing in mid-air and screaming. It will not be graceful.

I come from a tiny little place in the north of England and I go to uni in a city that is, when compared to Vancouver, minuscule. Suddenly, I’m half way across the world. Time zones are the worst thing – when I wake up it’s already evening meal time at home, and my friends are waking up for class or work as I’m heading for bed. But I’m in Vancouver. I’m at UBC. I’m mid-way into spending my first night in res and this exchange thing is something I’ve been talking about doing since 2010.

I’m finally here. That feels amazing. You can throw anything you like at me, UBC. I’m in it for the experience – for the free-fall after opening out my parachute. And I promise to wave to you all – Queen-style – on the way down. Because this is going to be a fantastic year.

Sunset from Canada Place, downtown Vancouver.

(Note: Incidentally, I have no plans to parachute off of a very high thing this year. Partly because I’m terrified of heights.  Also because metaphors are awful and deplorable things and I am not going to encourage myself to use more by realising any of them. Everything I actually do, I’ll blog about.)