SLC 2009 in Review

Posted on 11 January 2009 | 2 comments

The Student Leadership Conference was yesterday and I’m happy to say that I’m once again glad I went. A part of me was afraid I’d be disappointed after how much I adored Stephen Lewis’s speech last year, but Dr. Roberta Bondar was very good and I still enjoyed her speech immensely. I adore people who love learning anything and everything or, as Dr. Bondar said, “Learn about Life.” I hope it was videoed and will be put online somewhere. Did anyone ever think of taping Stephen Lewis and putting that up as well?

Other highlights of the Conference include:

  • A workshop I attended presented by the President and Vice-President of the UBC Improv Club. We played some genuinely fun and effective team-building and attitude-changing games.
  • I went to a featured presenter who was a lawyer on prisoners’ human rights. It was, for all it opened my knowledge, heart-renderingly depressing at times. All the same, it was good, and taught me more about the Canadian legal system than I would have otherwise learned because law isn’t an undergraduate program at UBC.
  • LUNCH. It seems like such a trivial thing but seriously, I was looking forward to the lunch at the SLC after my experience last year. Instead of having pizza, we had proper sandwiches, a cookie, and a piece of fruit each. This year I also got to try the coloured mineral water that you see standing around in the SUB these days: I tried dragonfruit, and it was pretty good. Good food keeps students happy = still happy for the rest of the SLC!

In other news, I’m still in denial about being back at school despite the fact that I’ve gone to all of my classes and bought all of my books. Quite bad, since it means I haven’t done my readings or prepared for my dictation tomorrow…

Oh Homesickness, I stab thee in the heart.

2 Comments

Posted in Involvement / Leadership

Don’t Take My Money Away from Me :(

Posted on 7 January 2009 | 3 comments

I was running through my awards and financial assistance account when I found that a scholarship I received last term is currently highlighted with some notice saying that restrictions have failed.

Restrictions? What restrictions?

I’ve since been searching for what possible restrictions there might be (after directing an email to the Awards Office), wishing that such restrictions had been told to me before I accepted anything. There’s something a tad miserable in the prospect of suddenly returning all the money you’d been counting on paying the majority of your tuition for you this year. I thought perhaps it might be that I’m taking too few credits now, having dropped courses — but no, I’m doing the minimum requirement. And I’ve looked at everything else in complete bemusement, since nothing else applies.

Right now I’m hoping for a quick response from the Awards Office and that maybe it’s something I can rectify (or better yet, it’s all one big mistake). Unfortunately, the beginning of term is always a super-busy time of year for them and I’m afraid that by the time I get a response, I won’t be able to do anything to fix the situation (i.e. if I’m told to take another course, that the time for registration will have long passed).

Fingers crossed.

Edit: Well, I called the office after finally finding their phone number, and the gentleman on the other end of the line also doesn’t understand it. The Plan of Action is: Ignore it until you receive an email about it.

Hopefully I never will!

Fingers crossed.

3 Comments

Posted in Academic, Financial

Shovelling Snow

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 3 comments

Yesterday I came home to find one of my neighbours’ sidewalk shovelled beautifully clean of snow. Determined not to be outbeat, I tried my hand at shovelling for the first time.

While my technique probably leaves something to be desired (having never seen anyone shovel snow before, I’m just making this up as I go along), I still managed to clear a path from the door to the garden stairs. A friend slipped on the stairs recently; I cleared that up as well, worked on clearing some parking space in front of our house, and chipped away a square metre of ice from the pavement before it started to get dark and I got tired.

I was planning on working on the rest of the pavement today, but thank goodness it’s raining and I don’t want to get soaked (my excuse) — my body is aching all over from shovelling for over an hour yesterday while running on two hours’ of sleep. I slept like a babe last night and could’ve slept for way, way more than nine hours if I didn’t have a morning meeting to consider…

3 Comments

Posted in Off-Campus Life, Wellness

Jetlag

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 2 comments

Is the worst. I’ve been up since 1 am (after sleeping for two hours) because I just can’t fall back to sleep even though my head is throbbing and sleep is all I want right now.

Once upon a time, when I was not living in Vancouver, I could fly over here and switch timezones on the way so that I had absolutely no jetlag when I arrived. This lasted until September of 2008 when I came back for my second year of study and ended up being awake at 2 am, unable to sleep until 5 when I got hungry and got up. I did, however, have a week to adjust. I absolutely refuse to come back to Vancouver more than two days early during the winter break, though — winter break is short enough as it is so I guess I’ll live with the jetlag.

I am going to go discover food. And then I am going to try and go back to bed, before getting back up at 6 am. Last night, when my brother was trying to send my friend back to UBC, we circled around the same ten blocks or so because Translink busses and many cars were either crashing or getting stuck in snow. No idea when the bus will come tomorrow morning and I’ve got to be on campus by 9. My my.

Lesson learned? Please don’t scrimp on snow tyres if you plan on driving through the snow — a car is never meant to be a “saving” or “investment” anyway, so you might as well invest in your own life and safety.

2 Comments

Posted in Commuting, International

Term 2, Year 2

Posted on 3 January 2009 | 2 comments

Many hours and much flirting of the Korean air host with the Korean female passengers next to me, I am back in a flurry of snow, most of which I seem to have missed over the winter break. No regrets there though. The weather in HK was 20’C most of my holiday through, sunshine and blue skies. Good stuff.

And school starts in two days! I’m going to buy my books on Monday when I suppose most of UBC will also be there. Fortunately, my reading list this term isn’t long — I dropped two courses so I’m down to just three. This suits me fine since it’ll give me time to concentrate on finding a co-op placement for the summer. As long as I don’t change my mind, and as long as I find co-op placements, I’ll be working this summer and the next autumn term, so this will be the least amount of schooling I’ve ever had since I was… two. Two is clearly a very symbolic number in this post.

More things to do with two!

It’s going to be the Year of the Ox in a few weeks, and the Ox is the second animal in the Chinese zodiac.

There are going to be two conferences on January 10th: the Student Leadership Conference and Model United Nations. Pick one to go to!

I have two suitcases to unpack. This is not counting my carry-on luggage. I go.

2 Comments

Posted in Academic, Careers / Work, Off-Campus Life