Category Archives: Vancouver

How I’m finding life on The West Coast in the BBC. (That’s Beautful British Columbia)

The internet > real life?

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Perhaps, that title is a slight exaggeration. Scenario: I’m studying with one of my friends at UBC. We’re sitting on the floor with our laptops and taking turns back and forth picking a song to listen to. We have very similar taste in music and our usual 11:30pm playlist consists of mostly Coldplay, Jack Johnson and The Fray. We’re listening to a track when my friend decides to add a little twist to the mix and play Rainy Mood.

Yeah, . HELLO? This is Vancouver. Why in the world do we need to listen to a webiste that makes artificial rain sounds when it’s 68 degrees and there’s a….30% chance it’s already raining. Not actually. More like 87.9% chance.

I just found it funny and confusing. Is it our need and demand for things to be instantaneous or our infinite dependence on the internet (we go to it for everything) that makes us not able to wait for it to just rain anymore? Is the rain better on the internet?

Isn’t it a tad depressing? I just want to crawl up in a ball and cuddle, maybe with some sort of stuffed animal pet lamb and cry. The worst? Crying to Adele. But this SNL skit is quite funny.

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Riding a bus = swimming an ocean?

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In my world – yes.

The very first song my friend taught me how to play on the ukelele was Kelsey by Metrostation. The lyrics go something like “I’d swim the ocean for you x3”. But lately I’ve been spending more time on buses than I did for months during the school year. I wonder how long it’d take me to travel the width of the ocean via bus? Let’s have a minute to ponder…

I’ve firmly established my hate/love relationship with BC Translink. But all it takes is one bus driver to change all of that. I remember doing groceries earlier in the year. (Cheapest groceries? 10 minute bus ride on the #4 to Alma @ Paul’s No Frills) I had two huge bags in my arms and saw the bus coming so I started running. It could’ve left, the bus was absolutely packed with people but instead the friendly bus driver waited for me and grinned when I stepped aboard.

The transit system is fabulous don’t get me wrong. I can’t imagine not having my UPass and thank heavens I intend on staying in school forever until I get my Ph.D which means I’ll have one for a while (assuming I stay at YOU BE by the SEA). But it’s really fabulous in Zone 3. Zone 2 gets a little iffy and by the outskirts of Zone 1. Ford help you. Guess where I am, folks? Yup, the land of no buses.

I’ve made many voyages so far, twice gotten close to the brink of tears, daily venting on how unpredictable public transport is, many apologies later for tardiness I always seem to make it so let’s hope that BC Transit don’t fail me now!

Point is, I have a new appreciation for commuter students and am so please I won’t be one of them yet! I’m quite pumped to be living at Totem again next year. Already started designing what my door decorations are going to look like. How am I going to top last year? Crossing my fingers my friends are still willing to help me decorate by rasterbate photos of themselves onto my ceiling.

In other news, I’ve been keeping busy at the museum. This week spent lots of time in the museum archives with my cute little cotton gloves on going through sepia coloured newspapers from 1950. Even though I’m looking for advertisements and clippings on agriculture my favourite snippets to read include the many many many wedding annoucements and “Dear Doris” advice columns. Sixty years ago girls still had boy troubles and wrote in. What a surprise!

Volunteered at the UBC Alumni Weekend, which was a lot of fun. I’m not Arts One alumni. When did that happen? But really cool to meet some alumni who read just as many books as I did in first year. I can also proudly annouce the opening of the Buchanan Courtyard. It’s really great what they’ve done with the space considering that during the whole year I had no idea what kind of fountain water garden they were building away. But it’s here with light-up purple seats and a river! Arts kiddies, get excited.

Speaking of getting excited… get your towels ready, it’s about to go down. Everybody hit the deck and stay on your toes because it’s game #2 tomorrow! I’ll be hitting up downtown with the other thousands of Canucks fans (or as my oblivious Ontario mother likes to call the “Chunucks”) to share in the excitement of the Stanley Cup Finals. When I shrieked during Game #5 against San Jose, that’s when I knew I was a Vancouverite. Conversion complete.

Lastly, fresh fruit, zucchini/pepper sandwiches, veggie tacos and humungous salads for breakfast, lunch and dinner are making me feel like this healthy stereotype has also caught on. Oh, British Columbia, what have you done to me?! Hockey, healthy and happy? Now I have to recall what they say about too much of a good thing…

Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts! Go Canucks go!

Enormous mobs are kind of my new thing.

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If you thought Carmen San Diego was hard to track down, or thought Waldo was difficult to find then you wouldn’t think some first year blog squader would be so tricky to follow now would you?

If there’s one thing about me you should know is that I love giant crowds of people. I literally feed off of other people’s energy and I can’t get enough of other people’s excitement.

I always wondered what it would be like to dance with thousands of people. I got my first taste in this park on Granville Island with the Vancouver MOB. Then at WE Day doing the WE Day dance. But dancing with close to 1,000 UBC students. That’s pretty impressive. I got to do that at the UBC Lip Dub. Curious to find me? Try and spot the girl in the white blouse dress, gold chain necklace and olive sweater around 4:30 doing a little Irish jig. Filming the helicopter scene was totally epic and Barney Stinson legen-wait for it I hope you’re not allergic to milk-dary.

Speaking of thousands of people, have you ever tried running with 50,000 people?

Just this weekend I ran the Vancouver Sun Run for the first time with three of the coolest out of province kids around. The 10Km Club at Totem got together and signed up a few months ago. It was a gorgeous day and as I was running over the Burrard Street bridge I literally felt on top of the world. Nothing like a runner’s high. The route was beautiful, one of the best ways to see Vancouver. If I ran past any kid shorter than my elbow I had to bend over and give the a high five. My respect level is just sky high for these kids.

I made my goal which was to run the 10km in less than an hour. Originally, I would’ve loved to have “Phoebe” ran the entire course. But that takes an insane amount of energy. For those of you who are like “Um, who’s Phoebe?”. Well my F.R.I.E.N.D.S. allow me to explain…

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My running buddy stayed with every step of the way, which makes me realize how lucky I am to have such supportive friends. You know you get along, when you can sweat like a pig in front of them and still high five and non-awkwardly hug it out afterwards. The run was one of the endless cherries of this year as things are winding down. I say endless because I’ve had way too many “This is a great way to end the year” experiences.

The last month has just been a bunch of craziness from organizing my summer plans (which involved deciding between going back home, to staying out in BC, to going back home, to staying in Vancouver to… oh the suspense – exciting news TBA later!), applying for internships and jobs, writing papers, studying for finals, going to interviews.

But enough about work (Hah! Because who wants to hear about that? Durrh.) There’s been so much going on from the Tote Bowl Charity Football Tournament, Storm the Wall, Three Course Connection Dinner, Rez Spring Formal.

I promise to keep blogging over the summer. There’s four pieces of exciting news I need to share though! I got three promotions in three of the activities I’ve been involved with over the year:

1. I’m going to be on the Arts Tri-Mentoring Planning Committee next year!
2. I’m now officially part of the Anthropology Student Association executive!
3. I’m going to be an RA at Totem Park next year!

But most exciting of all…

4. I’m staying in Vancouver for the summer for a UBC Arts Internship!

Vancouver, you’ve stolen my heart. Looks like I’m here to stay.