Are you feeling fatigued, lethargic, or just plain old tired? As students, we are often engaged with many activities that leave us little time for enjoying a good meal. Eating habits can influence how we feel every day, and you may even notice positive physical and emotional changes by sustaining a healthier diet.

Nurse on Campus* will be featuring delicious breakfast ideas during the week of March 4-6^th, in the meantime, check out these tips for fueling your body!

1. Enjoy eating: remove yourself from work, laptop, and cellphone use 

• Eating while your mind is focused on other tasks can slow down digestion.
• Noticing the flavours, textures and smells of the food helps you gauge fullness and avoid fatigue due to overeating.

1. Include a variety of grains, vegetables and fruits, meats and alternatives, and dairy and alternatives 

• Vitamins found in these food sources help your body convert food into energy .
• Choose foods that are lower in added sugar and salt and higher in fibre and protein to keep you feeling full for longer. Nut butters, hummus, and yogurt are good sources for protein.

1. Plan ahead to avoid hunger 

• Prepare and pack a healthful lunch the night before and heat it up in the free microwaves in the SUB basement.
• For long days at school, bring fruits, whole grain crackers, or raw vegetable sticks in zip-lock bags as snacks.

Making healthy eating a priority means spending more time (but not necessarily more money) preparing and enjoying food. If you are planning to make a positive change in your diet, give yourself time and patience to adjust to new habits.

*Nurse on Campus brings the expertise of a nursing professional to your door step. Nurses visits Gage commons block Mondays from 3:00 – 6:00 pm, Vanier commons block Tuesdays from 4:30 – 7:00 pm, and Totem commons block Wednesdays from 4:30 – 7:00 pm.

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By: Lionel Jensen

Pop quiz: Which city is described by the following? Home to 2.3 million people. 52% of
its inhabitants do not speak English as their first language. Sister city to Odessa (Ukraine),
Yohohama (Japan), Edinburgh (Scotland), Guangzhou (China), Los Angeles (USA), and Seoul
(South Korea). If you answered Vancouver, you are correct! Since its incorporation on April 6th,
1886, the City of Vancouver has had a rich history. The following is a brief history of Canada’s
third largest city.

The Great Vancouver Fire – June 13, 1886. Only a few months after the incorporation of
the City of Vancouver, the Great Vancouver Fire destroyed nearly all of the cities structures.
It began as a brush fire meant to clear land between Main and Cambie, and would give rise to
Vancouver’s first firefighting equipment and police force.

Komagata maru Incident – 1914. A dark mark on the cities history. A Japanese steamship
carrying 376 passengers from Punjab, India, was denied docking. Only 20 passengers would
be allowed to immigrate, the rest were forced to return to India. A plaque commemorating the
80th anniversary of the arrival of the Komagata Maru was placed in the Vancouver harbor in
1994. The federal of government of Canada, and the British Columbia provincial governments
officially apologized in 2008.

Tuum Est – 1915. The first day of lectures take place at the University of British Columbia.

Stanley Cup Winners – 1915 – While the Vancouver Canucks have never managed to win
the Cup, the Vancouver Millionaires of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association defeated the
National Hockey Association’s Ottawa Senators 3 games to 0 in a best of 5 series to bring home
Vancouver’s only Stanley Cup.

Bloody Sunday – 1938. Vancouver was certainly not exempt from the Great Depression. Bloody
Sunday concluded at month long strike that saw the forced eviction of occupiers of Vancouver’s
main post office by the RCMP. Of the 42 hospitalized, 5 were police officers.

Gastown Riots – August 7, 1971. A two-story-high mural in Woodward Building (126 West
Cordova St) commemorates the event to this day. 79 were arrested and 38 charged following a
“Smoke-In” protest of drug laws and drug law enforcement.

Expo 86 – 1986. Vancouver’s SkyTrain system, Science World, BC Place Stadium, and
Canada Place all owe their origins in part to the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and
Communication. 22 million people attended the Expo, putting Vancouver on the map as a major
tourist destination.

Stanley Cup Run – June 14, 1994. Losing in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals to the
New York Rangers spurred Vancouver’s first Stanley Cup riot.

Winter Olympics – 2010. 82 nations converged on Vancouver to compete in a Winter Olympics
which saw Canada win its first Olympic medal on home soil. Canada would go on to win the
overall gold medal count with 14 gold medals.

Stanley Cup Winners – 2013. Anything is possible right?

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By: Erica Jelley

“Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one

Except the second month alone,

To which we twenty-eight assign,

Till Leap Year gives it twenty-nine.”

Given that my birthday is in February, I have often wondered why it is so distinctly different from the rest of the months of the year. Why this month? Why the second month of the year? So, as it turns out there are several myths surrounding the origins of February, of which I will share two.

Myth 1:

As our modern calendar is loosely based off of the old Roman calendar, the myths surrounding February come from the time of the Romans. As legend has it, Romulus, the first king of Rome, devised a 10-month lunar calendar, which began at the spring equinox in March and ended in December. This explains why October (Oct=8) and December (Dec=10) are so named. There were no “official” months after December because winter was considered “un-important” in terms of harvesting reasons.

The second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, set out to make the calendar more accurate by syncing it up with the actual lunar year, which is approximately 354 days long. Thus, Numa added on two months-January and February-after December to account for the extension of days to the existing calendar. Both of these new months were given 28 days each. Even numbers were considered bad luck at the time, so this did not sit well with Numa. Thus, he added a day to January, giving the year an odd-numbered 355 days. February remained with 28 days, and “unlucky”, because the Romans honored the dead and performed rites of purification in February (the word februare means “to purify”).

Around 45 B.C., Julius Caesar commissioned an expert to make a sun-based calendar, just like the Egyptian one. Caesar added an extra 10 days to the calendar and an extra day in February every four years. Now, the year averaged out to be 365.25 days, which is extremely close to the actual average of 365.2425 days.

Myth 2:

Again, back in the days of Julius Caesar, the months alternated 31 days, 30 days, etc, for a total of 366 days. Caesar then decided he wanted a month named after him. Therefore, he took the seventh month, named it July, and shoved the rest of the other months a notch down with the last month dropping off the end. At the time, the seventh month only had 30 days, but Caesar thought his month should be one of the largest months. So, he took a day from February and added it to July, giving February 29 days.

Then, when Augustus came along, he also wanted a month. Due to the fact that he could be “ahead” of Caesar, he chose the month following him. Again a month dropped off the end of the year, and he took another day from February to make his month have 31 days long, leaving February with only 28.

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By: Jo-Hannah Yeo

Being a student has its difficulties, one of which being a tight wallet. However, there are plenty of good eats in Vancouver to go to on a budget. As a multi-cultural city, Vancouver brings a variety of cultural cuisine to enjoy. Eating out at quality places should not be compromised because of a limited budget!

Here is a list of some of my favourite places to go out for food with some friends. These places are casual but full of character and of course, delicious food.

1. Sun Sushi – The best bang for your buck near campus, there’s nothing fishy about that! Just one 99 B-line away, the sushi special of $5.99 comes with three rolls and a miso soup. Service isn’t the best, but food is great so no complaining, just tip less.

2. Jethro’s – Big portions at a reasonable price defines this small corner restaurant on Dunbar. Double stacked pancakes the size of your entire plate or eggs benny, there is every breakfast/brunch item you could ever want. The catch: be prepared to wait for over an hour to get a seat in the store.

3. Save on Meats –This old school butcher shop located in Gastown comes with a killer diner next door. Expect filling sandwiches on the cheap and daily specials!

4. Pho Tan – Any pho in Vancouver is cheap. I happen to like this place, located in the hip Kerrisdale neighbourhood, because it serves bubble tea as well (cross-country offerings: Vietnam and Taiwan, interesting…). Go for the classic soup and noodle pho and the Vietnamese salad rolls!

5. Kintaro—Haven’t been to this West End ramen shop yet? Go now, and hurry before the line forms. Steaming bowls of rich broth, heaps of noodles, slices of braised pork and lots of extras. I recommend the Shoyu broth. Way better than the Ichiban sitting in your pantry.

6. Meat and Bread—Probably the best interior you’ll find at a sandwich shop offering only 4 options: Porchetta, Corned Beef, and two daily specials. Sit down for a bite, then go for a stroll through Gastown or Chinatown.

7. Hawker’s Delight—A delightful place to hawk on some food. Southeast Asian cuisine at it’s finest. Hainanese chicken rice and Laksa are must haves. Don’t forget a side of veggie fritters and guava juice for refreshment!

8. La Taqueria—Throw out your Old El Paso and plan an outing to La Taqueria for some truly tasty tacos. Stay classic with the Asada, or branch out for the pork confit, braised beef cheeks, and beef tongue. Margaritas not provided.

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By: Dawei Ji

This is when it all starts to falls apart. Midterms start. You start to realize that you haven’t been paying attention in class for the last month. You realize that Valentine’s day is coming up and you haven’t made any plans yet.. And all the commitments you set for yourself up in January all come back haunt you. Worst of all, you realize you may not have enough time go to the Gage events that your great RAs and fantastic GRA have planned for you.

Suddenly… you come to obvious conclusion that reading break will be your salvation. But this isn’t true, because nobody actually reads over reading break right?  So what can we do?

There’s really only one solution: If the time doesn’t exist to do all the things you want to do, you need to add more time to your day. But how do we do this without breaking the space-time continuum?

It terms of temporal physics, this is probably impossible. But it terms of your life, this is VERY POSSIBLE. If you stop spending 1 hour of  your day doing something that you doesn’t need to be done, you’ve just added 1 hour to your day. For example: if you stop going on Facebook for 1 hour in a day, you added 1 hour to the day where you can do things that are actually fulfilling, or important.

A cool thing to try is to literally track what you do every hour of every day (like on a spreadsheet or agenda) or if you’re really serious, every minute. You’ll notice that you spend a lot of time doing things are actually pointless and entirely unenjoyable. Every time I’ve done this it’s felt like hours of time have literally be added to my day.

Checking emails or surfing the internet endlessly, going to class but not paying 100% attention (resulting in needing to relearn material), reading internet articles that are temporarily fun but don’t add actual value to your life… these are widespread problems that can be quickly remedied by a conscious awareness that time is added to your day whenever you cut out the unnecessary and inefficient.

After time tracking, you’ll notice that we spend a lot of time procrastinating or thinking about things instead of actually doing them. Stop thinking about your problems and just DO what you need to do. Time passively thinking and passively avoiding a problem is often time that can be added to your day.

About 30 minutes ago I decided to write a blog post about something. I had NO IDEA what I wanted to write about. I was going to passively read some blogs for inspiration BUT knowing the wisdom of what is now this article, I instead just started to actively write. I started with the sentence “this is how it all falls apart”, and now I have an entire article about temporal physics and time management. That’s like 45 minutes saved right there! How amazing is that?

Seriously. It’s so easy. And it works!

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5 Things on your computer to bring cheer to your spirits during this rainy season.

1. New Girl

Have you met Jess? In its second season, New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel (that cute female from 500 Days of Summer you had a crush on once) as Jess has become my favourite thing to watch while eating dinner. Episodes are only 22 minutes long and in that short amount of time they are firmly packed with enough funny jokes to turn my frown upside down. In addition, Hannah Simone who plays Zooey Deschanel’s bff went to UBC, fun fact!

2. Jessi Cruikshank’s Twitter account

Step one: go to twitter.com/jessimtv

Step two: look at all the funny pictures and messages she tweets regular

Step three: laugh out loud

Samples:

 “@JESSIMTV Where do ‘BEFORE’ pictures come from? At what point do you decide to take a picture of yourself fat and frowning in your underpants?”

“@JESSIMTV Uma Thurman’s baby’s name is ‘Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson’. Still better than Cruickshank.”

Another fun fact, Jessi is from Vancouver. Holla.

3. TED Talks

Watching a TED Talk always seems to brighten my rainy day. Here are some of my favourites:

This guy made a toaster from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw

The $8 billion iPod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0

Sarah Kay’s “If I should have a daughter” slam poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0snNB1yS3IE&feature=relmfu

4. The Daily What

Enough to keep you distracted for the rest of your life. Link: http://thedailywhat.tumblr.com/

5. The Onion

Basically, a bunch of really clever comedians get together and mock the world as a fake news source and call it The Onion. Here are some of my favourite tweets from their account recently (@TheOnion)

“@TheOnion Girl In Airport Wearing Warm-Up Pants And High School Volleyball Team Hoodie | For More Local News: http://onion.com/W4qXlB “

 “@TheOnion Kids Menu Just Appetizers | For More Local News:http://onion.com/W4qXlB “

“@TheOnion Romney Pitches In To Repair Millions Of Downed Romney/Ryan Lawn Signs http://onion.com/RxFwtz “

You can get more, including video and full news articles, on their website: theonion.com

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I think everyone knows how it feels when you have so much work and you don’t know how you’ll get it done.

You don’t know where to start. You feel like you’ll never be able to get all the work done. So what’s the point of trying? Then, to try to retrieve a glimmer of hope, you look at your schedule for the next couple of weeks and you realize those helpless feelings aren’t going to go away (anytime soon) because the next couple of weeks are just as hectic as this one.

The wet, dark, gloomy weather doesn’t help either. It just makes you feel more grumpy and unproductive.

What’s worst? This pain is self-inflicted. You choose to go to school. You’re actually paying money for this misery you feel.

I was questioning why I choose to go to university in the first place. Then I realized: This as much as any class I’m taking in university is a life lesson. Where would I be if I quit? I would have wasted 4 years in school, a lot of money, and be no better off. Yeah, maybe I wouldn’t be stuck in the library. But what would I be doing instead? Not the career I’m currently striving for. I’m in school because hopefully one day I will be able to benefit from the education and life experiences gained from university.

Imagine That

Imagine that you weren’t stuck inside taking notes sitting in lecture halls all day after day.

Imagine that all year-round the sun shined as if it were May.

Perhaps you’re bored in class right now,

but you’re considering the future anyhow.

For once you get your degree

you are granted creditability.

To peruse a career in what you desire

whether it is art, law, science or fire;

For you see, school helps you to grow like a tree,

then afterwards you are able to be free;

Learn as much as you can

then you’ll have more fun with work you land! 

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So are you an international student who isn’t going home for Winter Break, a fellow Canuck who doesn’t have enough money to get all the way home and back at the peak of Winter prices, or maybe just someone who’s hanging around Gage for no good reason? You have to find something to do over the break, well thank your lucky stars because Vancouver is one of those cities where you can find things to do no matter what type of activities you enjoy. Here are my top 3 picks for things to do over Winter Break!

1. Peak of Christmas – They call us the city that goes from sea to sky, so why not start with the sky. Grouse Mountain during the summer is a place I avoid like the plague, because it involves this dreadful thing called the grind. For those who are lucky enough to have not experienced the pain of walking up those stairs, for your own sake keep it that way. However, the winter brings a new and fresh look. The easily accessible mountain boasts an outdoor ice-skating area, sleigh rides, breakfast with Santa, live entertainment and of course hot cocoa and some delicious bites. See.. no exercise involved.
2. Bright Nights at Stanley Park – They create a beautiful lit area in Stanley Park, with various scenes like Santa Claus in the North Pole, or elves working on the presents. It is delightful and marvelous experience, so grab a warm coat, some hot cocoa and head down to an annual Vancouver Tradition.
3. Polar Bear Swim on New’s Years – “Want to chill out while bringing in the New Year? Meet up with the other crazies at the foot of Denman and Davie on the Beach around 1pm New Year’s Day”. Vancouver has one of the oldest Annual Polar Bear Swim in the world, the once a year event attracts a large crowd. Go down, and jump in, or just stand on the side and watch these outrageous people nearly get frozen to the core.

So no matter what you choose to do over your break, if you are in Vancouver with nothing to do, maybe try something new, and enjoy the variety of options that this fine city has to offer.

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Direct URL: http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/surveys

UBC is dedicated to fostering a campus-wide culture of sustainability. The vision is for sustainability and resource conservation to become a normative behaviour across the campus community.

In 2012/13, Campus Sustainability is asking campus community members (students, staff, faculty and residents) to contribute their feedback and ideas to a campus-wide Engagement and Social Marketing Strategy that will assist UBC in further achieving its reduction targets for energy, greenhouse gases, water and waste. Once completed, the Strategy will be implemented over several years and will provide implementation details for programs designed to reach UBC’s ambitious sustainability targets.

The Strategy phases include surveys, focus group sessions, and a pilot program. As a first phase, we are conducting surveys regarding current sustainability practices of campus community members in specific campus locations. These surveys take approximately 5 minutes to complete and prizes will be drawn for those who submit completed surveys. Prizes include a $100 prepaid VISA and four $25 iTunes gift cards.

Please click on the link below to complete the survey:

Student Residents of Walter Gage Towers. Click here to take the survey. Survey Deadline: November 16, 2012

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There seems to be not enough time to do anything when you’re a busy student; however, the truth remains that you need a certain level of sustenance when you’re staying up for late hour study sessions. Of course, the common pitfall to satisfying a hungry stomach amidst a busy schedule is resorting to instant meals, which are often unhealthy and quite mediocre in taste.

Spare some time to make a decent and well-deserved meal for yourself! Here are some links of some websites online that offer quick, tasty and healthy recipes:

Studentrecipes.com
This website is a great resource for busy students like you. I am particularly a big fan of how they categorize their meals by main ingredient (e.g. type of meat or vegetable) and by purpose (e.g. cooking for one, for busy people, for a party, etc.). Check out their blog entry on kitchen essentials, which features a must-have kitchen appliances and supplies checklist.

Minnesota University’s Student Health Services
“Beyond Mac and Cheese” is the title of this page, and they could not have expressed it any better! Scrolling through the list made me drool (Tomato and Basil Pasta Bake!). They also have a Nutrition Information page, which gives you healthy eating tips and nutrition information for the usual snacks such as candies and fast food. After reading this, you might think twice before opening that bag of M&Ms.

BBC Good Food
What was once my reputable news source is now my source of great recipes. You can sign up for an account and start a binder, where you can collect all your favorite recipes. If you’re still not convinced, check out their food photos and if that does not get you, then I don’t know what will.

Happy cooking and eating! 🙂

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