Category Archives: Recreation

The end is only another beginning

Posted on 3 May 2009 | 1 comment

I lucked out this term and had all my finals and papers due the first week of exam season. It didn’t feel particularly lucky at the time, but it was really good afterwards to have two weeks’ holiday before my co-op term starts. I begin my position as a customer service representative tomorrow and am a mix of nervous and excited for that. I think I’m mostly nervous about the differences between Hong Kong and Vancouver work culture — there are differences, but I don’t even know what yet or where to expect them to pop up. Kind of like an adventure!

The song “Just Around the Riverbend” from Pocahontas just passed through my head.

The last couple of weeks have been spent doing important things like watching the clouds go by, baking chocolate chip cookies and having dinner with friends before they leave, as well as the more mundane, but somewhat necessary, tasks of getting my learner’s licence to drive, renewing my passport and collecting new glasses. Oh, and I’ve begun Italian classes with UBC Continuing Ed. My teacher, Claudia, is absolutely wonderful and speaks in Italian almost all the time so we are left guessing what she means. This isn’t so hard, thanks to having learned French before! Of course, this is only the beginning…

Did You Know?
Ciao, which is used to indicate either “hello” or “goodbye”, derives from the Venetian dialect for schiavo, which literally means “slave” or “I am your servant”.
— Taken from one of my worksheets.

I think the phrase “I am your servant” is used in the loosest sense, similar to older forms of English when someone was being particularly obliging. Oh, for a resurrection of such etiquette! 🙁

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Posted in Careers / Work, Recreation

Terry talks: Good for Breaks

Posted on 19 April 2009 | 1 comment

I missed the Terry talks last year but have just spent the last several hours watching them online here. I can honestly say, without a doubt, that UBC is producing some absolutely amazing students and should be rightfully proud of them. Whoever thought to video them and put them online is brilliant, just to let you know. Thank you, O Brilliant One.

Quite seriously, every one of these talks is well worth taking a break for: they are informative, insightful and thoughtful speeches that will leave you asking questions and considering all the new stuff you’ve just heard of. Can’t pick a favourite, I like them all that much. What a way to take a twenty-minute break without feeling like you’ve just wasted time!

Unless, like me, you have no self-control in the presence of inspiration, and end up watching all of them in one go, in which case it may be better to save them for after exams.

And now I really should think about getting dinner…

P.S. If you scroll down to the very bottom of the Terry talks page, you’ll see a little smiley face at the bottom. It is very cute.

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Posted in International, Involvement / Leadership, Recreation

My Kelloggs Child

Posted on 11 April 2009 | 4 comments

In the midst of exam preparation, I just received one of the most bewildering emails to date and I don’t think it’s spam…

Subject: Parent/Guardian Permission Needed for Kellogg Online Registration

Double-take. Just for the record, I would know if I were a parent or guardian, and I am neither.

I opened it out of plain curiousity, and as far as I can tell, it’s a legitimate email from Kellogg’s telling me how my child (who I guess is twelve, judging by the choice of username), who opened an email account she never told me about, is seeking to enter some Pop-Tarts® Insider program. Being under 13, however, she needs parental permission before Kelloggs will activate her account.

My supposition is that this sneaky child of mine thought she would insert some random email in the blind belief that this is sufficient to open her account… only to find that an email gets sent to the parental account for confirmation. Good on Kelloggs for having more security than that. Not that that would stop me — if I were her, I’d be opening a fake parental email right about now. Oh, the slyness of the internet generation.

What puzzles me is how she came up with my email in the first place; it’s really not the most common combination of letters you’d put together when first inserting a random email. Or maybe she did make a fake parental account and promptly misspelled it to give mine. One can only guess — I’ll never know, because I went and rejected her application to Pop-Tarts® Insider. I’ve no doubt she’ll manage to find a way in if she’s determined, or perhaps she’ll check with her real mother and type in the correct email address this time. It was, however, very surreal to find my only options were to accept, reject, or delete my child’s account. Not a line about “if this email was sent to you by mistake, please click here”. I actually felt responsible for her.

At least now she’s been rejected, she’ll know that something went wrong if it was a genuine mistake and she needs to learn Mummy’s email address better.

Goodness, that’s enough parenting for one day. I think I can pass up motherhood for another five to ten years. Is it even possible to categorize this post? No, it isn’t.

4 Comments

Posted in Recreation

Learning a Language. Just Because.

Posted on 4 March 2009 | 5 comments

While taking three courses this term is doing wonders in helping me recuperate after burning out last term, I’m beginning to itch for more.

Now, weekday summer courses and distance education courses don’t really fit in with my plans for this year, and I was wondering what I could possibly entertain my brain with over the summer when I hit upon UBC’s Continuing Education language courses. Bingo! They have 17 languages for me to choose from and best of all, none of them are for credit. Try as I might not to make grades the focus of my academic career, it’s pretty hard not to worry at all when midterms, papers and finals roll around. A non-credit course will let me learn something new, just for fun, and without any stress. Can we say “deal”?

Learning a new language just for fun. Haha, I’m excited just thinking about it.

People are always learning languages because they’re useful, because of globalization, et cetera. Me too. I learned English by default (useful move on my parents’ part, it being the international language of communication and all), and I’m currently working on my Chinese because I’m conditioned to feel I should, being Chinese and all. I took French for four years in secondary school because I thought it was more useful than Spanish or German (my other options), being Canadian and all. Not that I’d lived in Canada at any point that I could remember back then — nor can I remember any of my French. Oh, wasted years.

So this is the first time that I’m going to be learning a language just for the heck of it. It’s got nothing to do with my cultural identity, I don’t know anyone who speaks the language (but I will!!), I’ve never been to the country, I can’t foresee how this is going to be of any practical use to me in the future — and I am completely and utterly pumped for it.

5 Comments

Posted in International, Recreation

Toronto Travels

Posted on 19 February 2009 | 1 comment

The end of Reading Week is drawing nigh and I can happily say that I’ve been having a blast. Since I originally had no midterms or too many major presentations due after Reading Week, I decided to visit some of my closest friends from Hong Kong who are staying at UofT. It’s been fun, it really has been a break, and I’ve even finished off some work assignments while I’m at it.

And I got a co-op placement for the summer as a customer service representative which I am pretty pumped about. No more applications for a while!

A few of my Toronto highlights include discovering the easier, cheaper access to dining out that my friends have. I’ve tried Korean, Indian, Thai and Taiwanese so far, and am just delighted that there is K(orean)town, Greektown, Little India, and Little Italy besides Chinatown.

I also did the touristy thing of going to the CN Tower and getting a good view of Toronto from above… It really is quite huge when you see it sprawling out in every direction. Everything was very flat though — I’d miss Vancouver’s mountains if I were away for any long period of time. There was ice on the lake, which was quite lovely.

We’ve also been watching good things: we saw the musical of Dirty Dancing yesterday and it was so much fun. The first half didn’t have as much singing as I was expecting for a musical — I suppose they focus on the dancing there — but the second one was very energetic. I’ve been YouTubing the finale song and kind of want to see the movie version of it now.

I now really like Slumdog Millionaire too, and rank it as one of my favourite movies.

The people, though, are the best and the real reason why I came. Quite a few people from my year came to UofT to study so we had a high school reunion yesterday and it was so much fun. In fact, I’ve enjoyed myself just as much as I hoped I would when I first thought of the idea, all thanks to my best friends who have been housing and feeding and spending on me for the last few days. All props to them. I really have had a holiday. <3

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Posted in Careers / Work, International, Recreation