Monthly Archives: April 2013

Living With a Room Mate

Having successfully survived the year without killing my room mate (or being killed by her :P), I feel like now would be a good time to reflect upon what it’s like to live with a room mate.

I think it’s important to say that Christie and I don’t share a room, so I can’t comment on what it’s like to have that kind of room mate, but we do share a kitchen, living room, and bathroom.

Christie and I have gotten along very well over the past eight months, which I attribute to two main factors: a) we were good friends before moving in together, and b) we have similar personalities.

Both of us are pretty quiet people, so noise has never been an issue. She likes to shower in the morning, I like to shower at night. We’re both good at having open lines of communication so that things which could potentially turn into problems are dealt with before it gets to that point.

Living with another person has also made me learn about myself: I never new how neat I was until I was sharing a space with another person. Christie is… not as neat as I am, but she’s been doing a really good job of being as neat as she can manage, and I’m doing a good job of letting it go if things aren’t always as pristine as they could be. Originally, we had a cleaning policy of “clean up the mess right after you make it,” but that didn’t always happen, so we made up a simple cleaning schedule, which meant one of us cleaned the counters and the other cleaned the floors on alternating weeks. We both found that a schedule was a good motivator for cleaning.

One thing I loved about having a good friend for a room mate was that if I ever wanted to talk to someone, I could just stick my head out my bedroom door, and then I could go back to studying. I loved the impromptu trips to Menchie’s or outings for Mexican food, evenings spent baking, and afternoons spent lying around and talking. I loved having a place that actually felt like home (the dorms never quite did that for me), and I loved having someone who was waiting for me to get home and caring where I was.

Overall, it’s been a great year and I’m very excited for the next one!

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A Year of Cooking

After successfully not starving for a year, I thought I’d talk a little bit about my experience with cooking during my first year with a kitchen of my own.

Item number one: startup. I don’t have exact numbers of how much I spent or the exact items I bought, but I can give you a few ballparks. You’re probably going to spend a couple hundred dollars in “startup cost,” filling up your cupboards with staples like flour, sugar, butter, rice, pasta, salt, cooking oils (things you’ll use in a lot of recipes), and some ingredients for your first few weeks of cooking.

Item number two: maintenance cost, aka how much you’ll spend continuously throughout the year. I mean, food doesn’t last forever, so you gotta keep spending. I’ll be honest: my first term was pretty cheap for me because my parents bought me a LOT of food before they left me here. However, here are a few things I’ve noted:

  • Lots of things might seem expensive when you buy them, but if they last a long time then it’s money you’ll be saving later.
  • Sales are the greatest things! Save On Foods even has an app so you can hunt through their flyers. Expensive items such as cheese become a lot more affordable when sale time rolls around.
  • Eating out/buying coffee or snacks is not an all-the-time thing. Sure, it’s convenient, but spending $4 on a latte every day is gonna kill you (financially). A lesson learned the hard way by many. Pack a lunch and save your dollars.
  • Buying brand name is not necessary. Every little bit adds up on grocery bills, so if the no-name is cheaper and the quality is practically the same, save yourself a few bucks and get the store brand. Do this on a lot of items, and the savings add up.

Item number three: actually cooking. There are a basically four ways which I acquire food: easy/instant meal, frozen food, more involved cooking meal, and eating out. As I said before, eating out is a once-in-a-while thing, as it’s very expensive and usually not very healthy. Stuff you can put together really fast without much thought is really great, you just have to make sure you’re eating healthy as well. Quesadillas, hot dogs, scrambled eggs, frozen pizza, and pasta with tomato sauce are all yummy and fast, but it’s important to get some kind of green in there as well. (Canada’s Food Guide recommends you eat at least one dark green and one orange vegetable per day, plus two more other fruits or vegetables.) I also find that easy and fast meals can get pretty old pretty fast.

This brings me to more involved cooking and frozen food. The two go hand in hand. Pre-cooking, one of my favourite things to do, involves putting aside an hour or two on a weekend to make a bigger meal which will last all week. Usually this results in healthier meals, more variety, saves time during the week when you’re busy, and a lot of the time costs less than buying individual meals. Or if you don’t want to eat all of it in the same week (or if it won’t keep in the fridge), you freeze that bad boy and it’s ready to go.

Some of my favourite pre-cooked meals include: risotto, tacos, casseroles of many varieties, and stir fries. Next year I plan to venture into more cooking adventures; I meant to try pulled pork this year but I bought so much frozen food that I’m trying to eat it all before I leave Vancouver for the summer!

Do you have any cooking ideas? Leave a comment!

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Gamelan Ensemble – Part 2

If you didn’t walk by the Music Building last Wednesday, you missed out on a real treat. The Balinese Gamelan Ensemble (of which I am a member) gave its end-of-year concert outside by the tuning fork sculpture. We all got dressed up in our Balinese costumes (sorry, I have no picture!) and sent all the music we learned over the year into the sky.

I had so much fun playing in that last concert, and being a part of the ensemble throughout the year was a fulfilling experience. I am so grateful that I get to go to a university where I can experience and learn about another culture first hand from some of the best in the world. I have a new appreciation for world music and honestly I really want to go to Bali and hear a legitimate Balinese gamelan ensemble! I feel like it would be mind-blowingly amazing.

Experiencing Balinese music has given me a new perspective on my own music making. In Gamelan Ensemble, the main thing is to have a good time and share your energy with your fellow music-makers and audience members. Sometimes I feel like that can be lost a bit in Western music; we get a bit too caught up in trying to achieve perfection in every aspect of our playing that it all gets a bit too serious for my liking. I’m going to try to incorporate more of that fun-loving attitude into my own playing, and get back to why I decided on music in the first place.

That’s not to say that I’m not going to do my best in terms of technique, but I think that for my music to be the best it can be, and also for it to be the most fulfilling for me, it has to come from a place of just loving making the music.

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Pet Snuggles

Want to know something great about UBC? Before exam time, to help you de-stress, UBC Healthy Minds organizes a pet visitation day where you can sign up for a slot to hang out with some adorable dogs and just snuggle your stress away.

I managed to sign up in time this year (slots fill up fast! Last year I found out about it too late) so I was very excited today to go pet some puppies. Okay, they were actually full grown dogs but I wanted the alliteration. It was pretty busy, but if you’re a dog lover with no means of having your own pet at home, this day would be really great! There’s something about stroking a dog’s soft fur that makes stress just melt away…

If you missed it this year, make sure to follow @UBChealthy on Twitter to find out when they’ll be doing it next year!

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Performances This Week

I was just going to tweet about it, but I just couldn’t squeeze everything into 140 characters.

 

Tuesday, April 2, 7 pm: String Divisional Concert. (Roy Barnett Recital Hall)

Chamber groups in the string department will be performing; I’m tenth on the program, performing with my harp trio. We’ll be playing a medley of ballet music, and Great Fairy’s Fountain from The Legend of Zelda (arranged by yours truly!) I am so psyched to be allowed to play Zelda music for a school performance, and it is going to sound AMAZING in the hall! Come check it out!

Wednesday, April 3, 12 pm: Balinese Gamelan Concert. (Plaza/Recital Hall)

The student Gamelan Ensemble will be performing the pieces we’ve been learning all year, including a piece by a UBC student composer, and one by our teacher. It’s very different from music you’re used to hearing, and very interesting and full of energy! If it’s nice out, we’ll be playing on the plaza outside the Music Building, and if not we’ll be inside in the Roy Barnett Recital Hall. If it is outside, come drop by for a few minutes! It will be a treat!

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