A golden moment

Posted on 3 October 2008 | 4 comments

Grey days.

I’m going to record an earlier time.

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When the sun was casting its drawn-out summer beams on our campus, I was striding up Main Mall beside Buchanan one day to get to somewhere or another. The autumn leaves were thickly strewn about like a giant carpet and crunched beneath my feet. A toddler — a babe? — stood in the middle green grass with its parents. (I shall call it a him because it looked like a him, but really, one can’t tell properly with small children.) His parents were making magic for him: his father was gathering handfuls of the dry leaves and tossing them into the air, letting them fall or float along on an occasional wind. The child knew exactly what was going to happen every time his father threw the leaves up — but that was part of the wonder of it all, that you knew and that it happened the way you knew it would. Every time the father threw the leaves, the baby laughed. I couldn’t help but smile at the scene and his mother smiled at me too.

…

…

…

Here are some of the snippets of life I wish could have been captured with a camera when they happened:

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A black-and-white feather drifting down in the middle of my vision against a background of green and gold and grey.

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A helium-filled blue balloon caught by the glass ceiling of 99 Chairs, trying still to fulfil its calling to fly.

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A Marbelous cookie from Blue Chip Cookies and trying to work out just what makes it taste so good.

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It’s the smallest details that remind me it doesn’t matter if it’s a grey or golden day.

4 Comments

Posted in Wellness

Oh yes, a reason to celebrate

Posted on 30 September 2008 | 1 comment

I almost forgot to mention: my English class on Thursday is cancelled!

Now I have more time to work on my applications! 😀

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Careers / Work

The Wealth of Minors

Posted on 30 September 2008 | 4 comments

No, I am not making a comment about the financial status of those under so-and-so age. I’ve been prancing about the UBC Calendar while toying with the idea of a Minor and have gone through almost every possible Arts department now. I am now smacking and berating myself with, “Where have I been?”

Where, indeed? In less than half an hour, I have discovered that there is indeed an International Relations minor, and that there exists such minors as Health and Society and Migration and Globalization Studies. Once again, I am in awe of all the possibilities that exist out there, and am in very great danger of never minoring in anything at all because I want too much.

Oh, if I had found out about these before and tried to plan some of those lower-level requirements into my degree accordingly. But I never was interested before — I had very specific questions — “Should I try Psychology, Sociology or Anthropology?”; “Can I do something with all this Chinese or Anthropology that I’m taking?” And so I looked for answers to those questions. What I should have done, I now see, is to ask, “What is there?” and just look and look and look, and hopefully that wealth of variety would come hammering down on me and open my eyes.

Now I am contemplating if it’s possible to shove two years’ worth of requirements into a summer or some other ridiculously compact amount of time. For I am almost certain to do more than 120 credits at the rate I’m going.

Dreadful thought. If I do more than 120 credits and fulfil the requirements for an Honours degree and a second Major/Minor, they’ll actually count all those credits, right? They won’t say, “Pick 120 of the 360 credits you did”, right? Double-counting is only going to go so far, after all…

4 Comments

Posted in Academic

VP Emerging Leaders Program 2008-09

Posted on 28 September 2008 | 3 comments

Training for VP Peer Leaders was yesterday and I am so pumped for the rest of the year. The VP Emerging Leaders Program was one of my most favourite things to do last year and I am so glad I joined it — it really exposed me to a whole lot of leadership opportunities as well as connect with older student leaders who showed me what they were doing and got me excited enough that I’m following in some of their footsteps this year (as well as looking for my own). This year looks set to be just as fantastic, if not better, than last year, so go ahead and join it. What’s to lose? The worst thing that happens is that you find it’s not for you and you leave — but the best thing is that it will be one of the most valuable experiences you can ask for.

3 Comments

Posted in Involvement / Leadership

Grocery Shopping On Campus

Posted on 26 September 2008 | 2 comments

The days of making a trip down to the Sasamat Safeway for my fortnightly four-litre jug of milk are over; having moved off-campus, it seems I’m going to be doing most of my shopping on it.

This is for several reasons:

(a) Getting from home to place-that-sells-food without a car requires me to take two buses (or one bus and walk quite far). I believe in direct routes. And minimal walking when burdened with a week’s worth of groceries, i.e. the jug of milk + other items.

(b) I’ve discovered that Canadian vegetables are like their cookies: Very Big. I can only consume one vegetable per week since I only dine on it. (I eat toast for breakfast and lunch at the SUB with my leftover money from last year’s meal plan.) I prefer not to take a special half-hour trip to buy a single vegetable those weeks I don’t need milk and eggs.

(c) My vegetable tends to die halfway through the week. (Correction: My vegetable tends to wither and stop being fresh halfway through the week. I realize it’s already quite dead.) And I only have time to go grocery-shopping over the weekends.

So instead, I have found places on-campus where I can buy my beloved groceries while I’m in school, thus killing two birds with one stone (what a brutal metaphor):

Sprouts in the SUB Basement is a student volunteer-run fresh-produce store that also offers baked goods, freshly-made soup and other interesting organic items, including one of my favourite chocolates ever. They sell vegetables from the UBC Farm, a place I love and support, and have the added advantage of being organic. Not being a varsity athlete, I figure I can afford to spend the extra dosh on organic food. To be honest, I’m not sure how much more expensive it is compared to conventional foods from Safeway, but my budget isn’t hurting yet. Plus since the portions aren’t quite as insanely huge, I can buy something fresh and different mid-week. Yay variety!

The Specialty Food Store in the Village whose name I don’t actually know is a gem of a place. It has the oddest variety of fruits, vegetables, organic substances, packaged items, Asian foods and seasonings… I’ll admit the Asian foods and seasonings have me. This will save me a trip to T&T whenever I’m looking for something the least bit homey.

The UBC Farm runs Saturday markets which, alas, I have not yet gone to or am likely to this year. The Farm is unfortunately less easy to access without a car, and no longer living on campus, it becomes even more difficult to get from here to there. I believe there’s another farm market nearer me right now than UBC. But I highly encourage any food-lovers to go check it out, tell me what you think of it and whether it’s as good as I always hope it will be. Perhaps next year I shall be able to make it out there — unless UBC does the cruel thing of selling the land and turning it into property housing, thus bringing an end to the last working farm in Vancouver and forevermore removing all chances of there ever being a farm again.

2 Comments

Posted in Off-Campus Life, Wellness