This week I was extremely lucky to experience a workshop put on by software carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org/). It was an intense two day workshop that exposes you to “useful” computing.

Back in January or February I was wandering around on the internet looking for information on bash and stumbled across their website which is a goldmine for information on how to use the unix shell, python basics and pretty much every fundamental topic in programming. After watching a couple of videos I saw that they were offering a free bootcamp at UBC and immediately signed up.

When I walked into Hugh Dempster two days ago I was surprised. I thought that the bootcamp was going to be in one of the large lecture halls, but it was in a classroom! Not only that, but it was a classroom full of graduate students and faculty members, not a single undergraduate in sight! Feeling slightly awkward I sat down in the back of the room and attended one of the coolest workshops I have ever been to in my life!

The workshop was very interactive with everyone typing away at their computers, trying things out. It went by at a really fast pace which was nice because it kept things interesting.  Greg Wilson was an awesome instructor. I thought he was pretty hilarious and he had so many cool things to talk about!  I was looking his bio up on the internet after the first day and found out that I have actually read one of the books that he edited, crazy!

We started off with learning about the shell, then did a little bit of python which I was familiar with, second day we learnt about databases e.t.c. but I missed most of it because I had a math midterm =P, then we went on to sort of higher level concepts like abstraction, testing and debugging. It does not sound like all that much, but you get blown away by the sheer amount of new commands, processes, and ideas that you are learning!

Anyways, it was an awesome workshop! I encourage you to check out their website or go to one of their workshops! I was really lucky in that I signed up right when the registration opened, apparently it was full within two days! It was only advertised to departments, but I just happened to stumble upon it at exactly the right time. Now I have some tools that are handy and ideas that I will carry with me into the future … it was a really inspiring two days! In addition to all the “free knowledge” that I was receiving, I got to meet people who are doing research in all sorts of different fields and hear about the technologies they use and the things they do. =)

So, if you are interested in learning useful information that can help you with your research or studies check out their lectures section: http://software-carpentry.org/

I am so lucky. Sometimes I cannot believe my luck! So far I am in love with my new residence. The best part is the view: From my window I can see all the cargo ships, cruise ships and ferries going in and out of Vancouver. This morning I even saw a sea plane. Up here with the hawks and the seagulls I have a birds eye view of everything going on below (including the construction, while it is noisy, it is really interesting to watch). I can  from my living room I can see Bowen Island, the mountains up to Squamish, Mount Baker, and I think I can see Vancouver Island too on a clear day. It is amazing.

Besides the view I also have really great roommates .

I have also started to enjoy cooking for myself. Last night I made my first proper meal (i.e. something other than cereal, yoghurt or salad). I still don’t have much in the way of seasonings and basics kitchen needs (actually all I have is an onion, butter and curry powder…) so making salmon required a little creativity.

I had a large bag of individually packaged salmon filets from costco (really worth it) and decided to make salmon I cut up half an onion, and draped the slices over the salmon, added some butter and sealed all of it in tinfoil. In the oven for 15 minutes, it was delicious!

I also had some rather stale, tasteless pita bread that I had bought and decided to make pita chips! I spread butter on those too, added chopped up onion and put them in the oven for 10 minutes. They were delicious too.

I ate my food at our dining room table looking out at a beautful sunset!

Anyway I’ll be off to my Math class now!

Literally the day after I finally stopped procrastinating, poured all of my clothes, textbooks, papers and electronics out of my suitcases onto my floor and started putting away all my bits and pieces I got an email from UBC housing saying:

“UBC Student Housing and Hospitality Services is offering you a room in residence.

Marine Drive

Offer date: May 4^th
Expiry date: May 5^th”

I don’t know how it happened, last time I checked I was 590 on the waitlist for housing. Marine Drive was my dream place to live in and although I didn’t really want to take it in May the only other choice was to hope that I would get offered Winter term housing with the possibility of living at home for the rest of the year if I didn’t get housing. I really, really love living on campus. Although it is a little isolated from Vancouver I love being able to wake up and walk (or bike) to class. For five years I took the bus almost every single day, by now I am a little sick of it. Although Housing does not tell you what building or what floor you will be living on I took a gamble. A room on campus was much better than no room, and if I liked it I could stay there for as many years as I wanted to, so I pressed accept.

That day I recieved my room assignment and I picked up my keys yesterday. I haven’t moved in, but I took a look at the flat (I am living with 3 other people) and am so excited to live there! It is beautiful, my bedroom and the living room have one of the most beautiful views of Vancouver. I can wake up and look right out at the ocean, the mountains and all of UBC. One of my new flatmates said that we get beautiful sunsets, so I can’t wait to experience my first one of those. The room itself is pretty much the same as I had in q’elexen, a little smaller, no bike rack, but I get a living room and a kitchen so that’s pretty nice!

Here is a look out of my window:

I feel like the luckiest person in the world! So back to packing and unpacking all of my stuff =P It seems like the process will never end!

I was really lucky to live in Totem Park this term. I applied for first year housing pretty late (I think it was in March or something) and was offered a place in q’elexen one of the two newest residences at UBC. It was absolutely amazing living there. My floormates were all really nice and my RA (residence advisor) was amazing. The whole building was really clean and was kept up really well during the year. Despite Totem’s reputation for being a rowdy place, our floor was pretty quiet, and you were more likely to find people studying in the floor lounge than partying on any given night.

If you are moving into either q’elexen (pronounced Kullahun) or humelsum (I don’t know how to spell this one properly), the two brand new sister houses you are probably curious to what a room looks like, how much storage you will have e.t.c. These rooms are much bigger than the ones in the older Totem residences (and a lot nicer), but most of the residneces have the same furniture. Here we go:

So here is my room from the entrance, the bed’s height is adjustable which is nice because you can keep things underneath it if you wish. My room was nice and bright with adequate storage (however I did bring that little chest of drawer with me). I also brough the mirror on the left at the dollar store in the village for $10. Not the best mirror but useful for days when my roommate was in the bathroom and I needed to get ready.

This is a view of my room from the window, I bought the door hanger at the UBC bookstore and was very happy with it (you don’t want to be hanging up your wet jacket or lab coat with all of your nice clothes).

Storage, yes that is a bike hanging up on the right. All rooms in q’elexen have a bike hook. I would really recommend bringing a bike to residence or buying one here as they are very handy for going to and from back to back classes, getting home from the library late at night and getting groceries. Also bought the hanging organizer from IKEA, years ago (I am sure they still sell them now). At the beginning of the year in residence, there is an IKEA trip, so you can buy room decorations, extra hangers, baskets e.t.c there if you need to.

Dest area, wow, it looks pretty messy. Enough space to store most of your textbooks. I brought two desk lamps because the provided lights were kindof dim and I fell sleepy without enough light. Also brought a printer/scanner which was very handy, they are extremely cheap ($30-$50) and a far better option than going to the library everytime you need to print something.

A view of the chest of drawers. Make sure that most of your clothing can fit into 3 big drawers!

The end! You can find more information about Totem Park at the UBC housing website. If you have any questions about what you need to pack/ what will fit into a residence room you are welcome to ask me.

I am finally finished my first year at UBC, sorry for my lack of posts in the past few months, as you can see I was quite busy with this schedule:

While not unmanageable I would have really appreciated a lunch break somewhere in there.  My average dropped by about 3% which is not too horrible but a little strange because I did far better on all of my midterms compared to last term, apparently I didn’t do so well on quite a few of my finals. Most of my midterms were in the high 80’s, 90’s and
even high 90’s, so I think I felt pretty comfortable going into the finals and did not stress
all that much about them. I think it is better to do alright on the midterms and then
amazingly on the finals.

My math final was horrible. I was about to leave Totem to bike to it when suddenly I realized that I could not find my bike/room keys. Anywhere! There were 20 minutes to go and I was still in my room looking through bags, through my laundry, drawers, you name it. They were gone! With 15 minutes to go I finally gave up and started to run to the exam. I ran all the way from Totem Park to the SSC… wearing flats.

By the time I got there I was completely stressed out. I sat myself down, looked at the paper and freaked out. I’ve never panicked on an exam like that before. I had studied a good three days straight just for math and looking at the paper I suddenly lost all the common sense I had. I was making tiny mistakes, questions that were relatively straightforward looked like gibberish… It was not fun. Half-way through the exam I started making some progress and returned to my normal brain function, but I kept thinking “Oh my god, I have wasted half this time, oh my god, I am not going to pass this exam, oh my god my average is going to drop like crazy, oh my god, I am not going to get into the program of my choice”…It was not very helpful. I was pretty disappointed with my Math final, I am usually pretty good at Math so I don’t think my final mark really reflected my capabilities, but, you know, it was a learning experience….

The Chemistry final was the strangest. I am not very fond of chemistry, although I really like the labs.  It is just so vague, where in real life am I going to be mixing up a solution containing some random ingredients that I will never find in my house? Ok, maybe some parts like the organic chemistry molecules aren’t that vague, but for the most part I have very little interest in chemistry.
While I was studying for the exam I was making guesses about all the answers and getting almost every single one right, without any idea as to why. It was both reassuring and alarming. I obviously didn’t know what I was doing conciously, but my subconcsious seemed to have figured things out. On the final my random guessing technique did not do so well. The questions were more in depth (a ton of drawing the reaction mechanism questions) and I ended up with my first B at UBC.

The rest of my exams went ok and all in all I think it was a good term at UBC.