Category Archives: At UBC

Now that I’m here.

Veni, vidi, vici y’all.

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And somehow we came in tied for second?

But it’s okay because this war was not just out of two teams. This was COLOUR WARS at Totem Park.

Fast forward. Ned here on Sunday night and I can safely say I survived the non-stop weekend of activity.

The weeks here at UBC are falling into routine as are the leaves on the few deciduous trees around TePee (Totem Park – Haha I make myself laugh sometimes). Hence, I am focusing more on the weekend activity on campus. Besides the fact that campus looks completely dead [insert another stupid lame joke about crumpled dried dead leaves on the ground here] on Saturday and Sunday between the hours of 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Before, you know, the booze comes out…

So this weekend was the famous Colour Wars event at Totem. Sure, you Vanier kids can have the Olympics and do whatever you want but Totem was where it was at Saturday morning. I’m in Haida [hi-dah] House and I think we were getting pretty intense with our black warrior face paint. We were playing dodgeball on the tennis courts. Tug-of-War on the field. Oh yeah – shout out to all the Haida ladies because we owned the girls only Tug-of-War match. Just saying. Won’t say against who. And also the wacko shaving cream relay.

But as my friend mentioned the morning was all about house bonding and Totem pride. All these events just make me feel like First Week all over again. I kind of wonder how long this feeling lasts, because just when you think “Alright I’m settled in now, the school year is starting, like my Prof actually mentioned something about mid-term today, all the crazy events are over…” They pull out something like this and we’re back at summer camp.

Has any one felt that? The summer camp syndrome? That we’re all stuck in this (slightly dreary because it rains) summer camp. That soon we’re all going to be packing up our stuff, hug each other good bye and lie to ourselves saying stuff like we’ll write and keep in touch. Sorry this is the twenty-first century now. Saying stuff like we’ll Skype and text.

But Colour Wars was so much fun. You really have to get into it and just go out and be hardcore and show your pride. If you don’t try and get pumped up, you’re not going to get pumped up. Which goes back to the whole idea of uni is what you make of it. So come on and carpe diem guys! I feel a little bad for all the commuter students I meet in class because I feel as though being in rez has been incredible and I don’t know what to say to people who don’t live on campus.

So, yeah Haida came in second. YES, that’s right. Second. There was so mix up, but I assure you these results are totally legit. We tied with our long rival Shuswap.

There’s lots more to come on this but right after the Colour Wars I literally raced off to Granville Island to something very cool and not secret but I know a future post is coming about it in the near future so I will expand upon this there…

Next was the G.L.O.W. Dance. Unfortunately, I didn’t buy a ticket soon enough so I got a little left out of the dance. BUT, I totally enjoyed Saturday night with some awesome dorm-baked cinnamon buns a la toaster oven. If only I could bottle that smell and keep it with me. Seriously, tips on how to attract girls into your dorm: bake cookies. It’s that simple. Screw the stomach being the way to a man‘s heart. Us women (and my fellow floormates agree) are all about the digestive track too! Food is good. End of story.

Continuing with the play-by-play of my weekend, Day of the Longboat Clinic was this morning. Totally pumped for next week. Day of the Longboat = Largest Longboat event in North America. Longboat = (in layman’s terms) glorified canoe. As well, more information to come. What makes things even more super is that I get to be our team’s runner and hit the gong. Yeah! A gong? A gong! I mean any event that has a gong ranks ten times higher on any scale/league of awesomeness. I mean – it’s going to be a flipping gong show!

Then this afternoon, I took a ride on the SkyTrain to visit my relatives and while I was on the train there was this moment where I thought to myself “Hey, my Mom has no idea where I am right now.” Right at that instant. And it just felt a little strange to me thinking about where I am. Like where the heck was I? I was moving on a train. Sure, Sheldon Cooper could’ve given me a long explanation about frames of reference. Then, part of me wants to get all deep and philosophical and say this whole train was some metaphor for my life, moving at 90 km/h (albeit no where close 340.29 m/s).

But still, how has it already been a month? Time’s a flying.

Sheesh y’all feels like it’s a dream.

“Hey Papa! Whut choo looking fo? You lookin foor some flowarhs?”

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This quote is probably the reason why you should, again, probably not spend longer than 50 seconds on the same street corner debating where to go next with your friend at East Hastings, if it is your first time in Vancouver and you are unsure of your bearings.

[Edited note: I’d like to make it clear that this post in no way reflects my views towards the homeless. In fact, I feel quite strongly about domestic poverty and have volunteered with innercity underprivileged youth before. My only intention was to describe my first impressions during my first trip to the downtown core. Continuing on…]

How did we get to E.Hastings?

Well, my friend and I decided to be adventurous and take our first trip downtown a few days ago. After spending some time on the Translink website (Oh, Translink trip planner, how my heart beats for you) we figured out a route to get to Chinatown.

So, we’re in Chinatown, passing all these typical asian markets, some small restaurants, lots of red signs. Of course it smells like roast duck, which I hope isn’t too gross since it seems everybody out here on the West Coast is uber health and/or environmentally-friendly conscious and eating roast duck contributes to my eco-foot print. Dammit. Okay, I try to help out in other ways… I’ll get back to that later.

Anyways, we decided to wander a little bit more and find ourselves on the aforementioned street. As my friend stops to take a picture of… a picture on the ground. This man begins to talk to us. That will definitely stay on my list of priceless Vancouver moments. But this post isn’t just about this infamous rue (I know you love my random french words that just slip in. For those of you that don’t “rue” = “street”.) This post is about Vancouver! Or as my french prof likes to say “Van-coo-vere”. Vancity. Whatever you like to call it.

Like I mentioned though, that incident was a few days ago. I’ve been downtown now three times and funny enough, each of these times I’ve mainly been eating.

What have I been eating, you may ask? Welll…

Anyone heard of Japadog!

Japadog [jap–uh-dawg]: A glorified hot dog stand located at the corner of Smithe and Burrad St. in Vancouver that sells “Japanese” hot dogs, which consists of your basic hot dog with Japanese flavouring, spices and/or sauces. Wasabi!

P.S. I’m totally adding this definition to urbandictionary.com because Japadog is apparently NOT defined there. I was kind of surprised and yes I looked it up then made my own definition.

My friend told me to get the #6 which includes onions, mayo and dried seaweed. It was good. But I was really hungry at the time, so I was totally bias. Definitely one of those things you have to try. Even though it was a little pricey for the poor-broke-student budget. I mean $7.65 for a hot dog? C’mon here. But I tried it. Would probably eat again. But why is this place so famous? I’m not too sure. I’m guessing it’s a real one of the kind but a whole load of sort of famous celebrities have been there. The only one coming to mind right now is Chris Columbus, the director of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. So yeah. Try it if you’re brave enough. That’s to all you folk who think seaweed is spicy. (Seriously? I don’t understand you people. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Just don’t understand you.)

The Old Spaghetti Factory! Brother-sister floor dinner in Gastown. Wooot. We’re so cool we play broken telephone and bond. I think the best part was when our table started pulling the books off the wall. Yeah that’s right. The OSF has really nice vintage decor with all these old books and stuff, like you’re in a library. And well being the curious bunch we are, we wanted to see if there was actually real books. Now that sounds kind of stupid, but these books could totally sell on EBay! At least they looked old enough (hence why they’re in an old spaghetti factory) to have some kind of monetary value. Back to the food, the spaghetti with clam sauce was what I ordered and I quite enjoyed it. I’m not really a food critic, I just love to eat good food. Honestly, like which culture doesn’t? But the OSF is a chain that I’ve been to before so although it was nice. Nothing real one of a kind. However, going to Gastown at night was really pretty because it’s the touristy section and they have all these lights in the trees.

Tomato! Brunch place at Broadway & Bayswater with The blogsquad met up and it was deeee-lish. It was nice having something other than Vector and a banana for breakfast (which has become my typical morning meal these days). The hot chocolate was really nice since it was such a miserable raining day too. Belgian waffles were quite tasty and most things (if not everything) is local, homemade and fresh! Definitely recommend this place for a nice brunch if you’re feeling to go out for a semi-special occassion in the morning.

So those have been my food adventures so far. If you find any good eats, be sure to let me know! Next time downtown, I’m definitely hitting the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Mmmmm candy apples here I come!

How did we get here?

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How the hell? Christmas. Christmas Eve last year.

No? Nobody else likes to break out into songs from Rent. (Rent: kind of amazing Broadway rock musical from 1996 about Bohemians living in NYC). Alrighty then. Check it out later.

Clearly my friend (and fellow blogger!) KrystalV like sneezed on me or something because her blogger’s block caught a hold of me too recently. But there isn’t enough room here for apologies for why I haven’t written something in the past seven days. The truth is I’ve gone from super-uber-dee-duper-excited, to holy-crap-information-overload-it’s-nice-to-meet-you, to pchyeahh-I’m-a-university-student, to omg-omg-omg-what-am-I-doing-in-a-second-year-french-course, and finally to Wow-I’m-here.

The long awaited here.

So let me explain. It’s almost like the five stages of grieving. Just completely not the grieving part.

Stage One: Move In Adrenaline

Move in day was crazy and now that I think of it the most exciting 24 hours on campus. In one day I went from packing up my Uncle’s trunk with piles of stuff. And then 15 hours later I was making a team pyramid with 8 people in some random guy’s dorm room. What? I was pumped up like A-Rod on steroids.

That first day sure seemed to last forever.

Stage Two: Meeting people like you’ll die if don’t introduce yourself to somebody new in the next 40 seconds .
This lasts for the first 48 hours of move-in. I’ve been incredible lucky that just after the first day at Totem, I met two really cool people I’d even go as far as already calling my friends now. (Considering the fact that I’ve only really known them for a week). I just say that because it’s strange how you spend a week hanging out with people and you can feel like you’ve been BFF’s since gr. 2 and you start reminding them about stuff from their hometown.
But living on rez, there’s a thousand and one things designed for first years to get to know each other. Such as the ice cream House social. This promotes mix ‘n’ mingling by literally luring down students with the promise of free ice cream, then forcing them to talk to people because everyone can only fit in the room if they are standing 3 inches apart.

As if being in a room that you can hardly breathe in wasn’t enough, students can easily get over any self-esteem issues by going to the pool party at the UBC Aquatic Centre. It is hil-LARH-rious watching kids trying to race on banana boats (aka. Yellow Styrofoam canoes) in a pool. Okay, that was me and my new found friends and anyone else we could gather around.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast at these events worthy enough to make a rocketship jealous. But it was like an A.D. D. kids dream since it’s impossible to focus on one thing.

Stage Three: IMAGINE.

I’m not going to lie, my expectation for Imagine Day were quite high after hearing about it from friends. Can I say it exceeded them? Not really. Although, I really did enjoy it because it was a positive motivational day where you could meet people that you were actually going to see again. Once we arrived at the Pep Rally it really does hit you that you are here.The figurative student that the President keeps talking about is really you. You’ve been chosen to be here. You deserve to be here. And now you are here. I realize now that it was amazing being surrounded by my entire incoming class of 2010 and that that will probably never happen ever again. But for that moment, we were all here together.

Stage Four: The anxiety and nervousness of classes actually starting.

When you live at Totem you have to schedule in and extra thirty minutes of walking time if you want to get anywhere. Some people say less. But I’ve come to realize people’s sense of time is not universal. If you have a class on the third floor (or higher) – goodluck. The phrase I find running through my head is “Oh jeeze, uni is going to make me fit.”

Another sentence I find myself commonly thinking is “Dammit, I should’ve worn pants today.” When you wake up at 6:40 a.m. for your class at 8 o’clock, don’t be fooled by that little crack of light shining through your window, which you are keeping closed because you’re trying to be as quiet as possible and not wake your roommate. It lies. It will be overcast, cloudy and have a percentage of precipitation higher than 70 once you walk out the door. This is your warning and future reminder to myself because I know this will happen to me again… tomorrow.

Overall, I get the impression that people are nervous about classes. In general, my profs don’t seem that bad. None have a crazy foreign accent, à la exception de mon prof du français. My goal is just to breathe, hopefully participate and not get overwhelmed. Let’s be honest. Right before my first class, I was kind of freaking out, thinking to myself “What am I doing? I’m not ready for this!”. If this is happening to you, my advice is to sit down, take a deep breath. Everybody’s a little nervous and that’s a good thing.

Stage Five: Finally starting to catch on to the phrase “I am UBC.”

I really can’t believe it’s only been a week. Already I have stayed up ‘til 4:00 a.m. eating Dominoes, watching Star Wars and randomly meeting drunken fellows fiercely debating over the best movies they’ve seen, shouted the loudest I could on the echo rock and walked lingeringly through the Rose Garden.

I’m figuring out that the campus is just made up of Malls and my keen Girl Guide intuition really does come in handy, considering I find myself without a map many a time.

Moral of the story: we’re all here and we’re all going to survive.

Originally I wrote this last night and wanted to sign off with “I’m off to dinner and a movie.” But now I’m off to brunch. So cheers!