Factual Account

Fact- Tim Horton's closes at 4:30
and react- What, has capitalism not caught on? How do they expect to make money if they're always closed? What are we supposed to do for caffeine after 4:30 PM? 

Fact- Law schools in Canada generally accept no more than 200 students.
and react- there's probably a reason I was the only first year at the pre-law society's law school admissions seminar, and that reason is because it freaks you out to know all this is waiting for you. 

Fact- While it was warm enough to wear shorts in the morning, the weather can change so that in the afternoon, shorts are a stupid choice.
and react- I'm still pretty proud of myself for wearing shorts at all and not being cold. I had Canadian friends who were cold- hah!

Two Very Exciting Things

A couple incredibly exciting things have happened:
1) I went to Tim Horton's. Their hot chocolate is to die for. And they have a size that's really small and the cup is adorable. Pictures to follow soemday
2) I'm going to join the pre-law society! They have an event tomorrow where law school admission officers from UBC and Toronto and wherever else come and talk.

That was all very exciting.

Why My Psych Book Rocks

"If Jaden Agassi, son of tennis stars Andre Agassi and Stephanie Graf, grows up to be a tennis star, should we attribute his superior talent to his Grand Slam genes? To his growing up in a tennis-rich environment? To high expectations? Such questions intrigue behaviour geneticists, who study our differences and weigh the effects and interplay of heredity and environment"

Seriously. Awesome.

Our Contest Winner!

Last time, the special feature question asked who my calculus professor looks like, based on these clues:

1) His name is Hikaru
2) The numbers "1966" and "2009" are important
3) "Uh, I'm not sure what's wrong here...."

Dad guessed it- the answer is Sulu!

In case you're wondering, "1966" is when the Star Trek show first aired, and "2009" is when the new movie came out. The quote is from the movie, as Prof. Chau looks more like the movie Sulu.

Sadly, there is no prize. Unless someone would like to donate one. However, I cannot promise than any donated prizes would actually make it to the winner. (Particularly if those prizes are edible).

The Week In Review And Preview

REVIEW

Sunday:
"What exactly is a lemon cucumber?"
(Went to the farmer's market in Coquitlam)

Monday:
"What do you mean, I don't need the class I'm signed up for? I'm already enrolled!"
(Was informed that AP English already fulfilled requirements I thought ASTU would fulfill)

Tuesday:
"Well, you're certainly......ambitious."
(I was one credit over the limit and had to pick a different class instead)

 Wednesday:"No, seriously. I emailed my high school economics teacher to get notes from her. Seriously! Stop laughing!.... yeah, you can see them too."
(The Econ 101 teacher spends more time on examples and Chinese architecture and America-bashing than teaching econ)

Thursday:
"So you draw the graph for the function- don't be worried about how to get the graph right now. Just be content that it is a graph."
(My Calc professor is pretty interesting)

Friday:
"I have good news and bad news. Bad news is, your homework isn't graded yet. Good news is....it's Friday...."
(I think my Calc professor made up that good news stuff on the spot. But it was good good news).

Saturday:
"You're staying at Gage? You told me you lived in Vanier!!.....oh. Never mind."
(My friend thought I'd moved to Gage, but I was just staying at the West Coast Suites overnight).

***********************************
Monday:
-Finish online calc homework
-re-print hand-in calc homework, because the professor just had to revise it the one time I printed it a week ahead
-Read psychology
-Copy over math notes so they're legible

Tuesday:
-possibly see the Canucks practice
-do laundry
-also, maybe go to the gym


Wednesday:
-Start calc homework


Thursday:
-Creative Writing for three hours...


Friday:
-work on the calc and econ labs. Seriously fun, I know.


Saturday:
-possibly adventure to the used hockey store in Langley


Sunday:
-hockey practice!

*****************************
SPECIAL FEATURE:

Quiz question for you- first person to give the right answer gets...called a geek....but a good one!

My math professor looks like a certain guy. Here are the clues to who the guy is:
1) His name is Hikaru
2) The numbers "1966" and "2009" are important
3) "Uh, I'm not sure what's wrong here...."

Anyone know?

Here are the little things I miss:
1. Sourdough
2. Wearing shorts
3. Hockey practice at Iceland
4. Toast
5. One dollar bills
6. DVD players
7. Not having to schedule printing based on the weather
8. Big refrigerators
9. Open toed shoes
10. Not needing an umbrella

:)
Otherwise, it's very nice here and I love it.

Things That Aren't As Bad As You Might Think They Are

The Rain
You get used to it. I carry an umbrella pretty much every day. And today, it rained, but it was still sunny-ish!

The Food
So variety isn't big for me, but whatever. The few options I have are quite good.

The Showers
Think hockey locker room, but cleaner. And without that post-practice exhaustion.

Learning A New Transit System
It makes way more sense than the one at home, and it's very straightforward. And everyone is so willing to help you!

Not Having Wifi In The Dorms
At least the commonsblock has it. Although the internet went out at the dorms for hours yesterday, and everyone was hanging out in the commonsblock with their laptops.

The Half Hour Walk To Hockey
It's just more exercise.

Although, just a sidenote: it was pretty hard coming up with a list of things that aren't good. And, obviously, they've all got their good points. Pretty sweet set-up, I gotta say.

Pop quiz!

1. Do comments work on this blog?
A) yes, because I am amazing
B) yes, because I am brilliant
C) yes, because I am talented
>D) all of the above

2. How was the math workshop?
A) not many people were in the class
B) we do problems on chalkboards
C) it was confusing but in the Star Trek building
>D) all of the above

3. How was creative writing?
A) 3 hours long
B) all about formatting a screenplay
C) I met 3 people
>D) all of the above

4. How was the weather?
A) cold
B) rainy
C) getting used to it
>D) all of the above

5. Anything particularly interesting happen?
A) a fire alarm went off really, really this morning in another building, not like we even heard it at mine though
B) we won the house scavenger hunt
C) I'm starting to get uses to Celsius
>D) all of the above

Answers: D
:)

Grafitti downtown

At Granville Island

At Stanley Park

At Stanley Park

My incredible math notes

My bedside table

The view from my window



Sometimes, you just have to ask yourself:

1: Do I really have to get up at 7:40 for a 9AM class?
2: Did I really think hitting the snooze button would really help?
3: Is it weird that I always have the same thing for breakfast?
4: Why don't I have a better eraser?
5: Will the calc professor mind all these eraser marks?
6: Will I get to class on time?
7: Have I got great timing, or what?
8: How cool is it that the professor started class with a song I love?
9: Why did she make us bring 50 pages of articles if we only refer to one?
10: How many times can we review what "citation" is?
11: Why is the French classroom so cold?
12: Are we really doing the present tense again?
13: Why can't French grammar just make sense?
14: Why isn't there a cafe at this study spot?
15: Why can't I have such an awesome chair in my room?
16: What are those girls doing with all that purple fabric?
17: Why don't they have smartboards in math class?
18: Why didn't calculus make this much sense before?
19: How many people are in this class?
20: Is my econ class also 300 people?
21: What should I have for lunch?
22: What'll I do when I get tired of the vegetable wrap bread here?
23: Why are there so many people in the lecture hall?
24: Why is this professor so boring?
25: How can he manage to say nothing while talking so long?
26: How cool is it that my econ workshop is cancelled?
27: Why did we even waste our time coming to this professor's office hours if he didn't even help?
28: Who else will show up in the commonsblock?
29: Isn't it a little early for dinner?
30: Why can't they have burritos every day?
31: Should I start working again?
32: Why won't comments work on my blog still?
33: What should I do for my storyboard?

Speaking of that thing, I should go do it... :)

I just wanted to share a few geeky things:

1) While I was walking to hockey (it's a lovely half hour trek each way), I came to a parking lot. Wondered if it was faster to go diagonally across the grass around the lot, or to just take the corner. And then I literally did the pythagorean theorum in my head. (Simplified it down to a+b=c, so theoretically, taking c, the diagonal, would be as equally efficient as taking the corner, a+b). Eventually, politeness won out, given the fact that walking across the grass wouldn't be nice, but still. The thought was there. And it was proved with a mathematical theory.

2) In my economics textbook, it talks about errors to be avoided when modelling economic relationships, one of which being the fallacy of composition. This basically says that what may be good for one is not necessarily good for all. (They used the example of how if one farmer harvests a large crop, it's good for him, but if they all do, then prices decrease by an amount that would more than offset the benefit of a larger harvest). But what other theory does this remind you of? Yeah. Spock saying that the good of the many outweigh the good of the one.

3) The Enterprise, as everyone knows, is the NCC 1701. My ID has the numbers "7107" and that's freakishly similar. I'm just saying.

Anyways, I really should go back to studying economics now.

There was a movie set on campus...
Also, I scored in a hockey from centre ice. Without even looking. Last shot of the game :)

couple updates

11:00 wake up
12:00 have breakfast
12:30 decide that having no food in the room is inconvenient
12:45 decide that meeting friends at a mexican festival is unwise when this is the only time I have to go to safeway
1:00 walk to bus loop
1:20 walk to other bus loop
2:00 take a bus to Safeway
2:20 get essential-to-live groceries-

• sourdough
• hot chocolate
• chocolate/sugary/frosted (as in all 3, not one of the above) cereal
• grapes (my roommate and I have been trying to figure out what a good price even is)
• popcorn (low-cal and low-salt choices were nonexistant)
• these weird cracker/chocolate things
• latest issue of Cosmo
• bagel

3:30 walk all the way back to the dorms
4:00 actually do homework
4:20 make hot chocolate; it's better with milk
4:45 realize there's no dish soap in the kitchen
5:00 finish French homework
5:20 someone just came in to borrow a can opener
5:21 "no, I know the sign says 'Sara' but it's really not pronounced like that."
5:22 "Yeah, our room is really big"
5:23 "Yeah, it is cold in here."
5:24 "well, we're airing out the room... yeah, go ahead and close the window."
5:25 "No, I'm a Sharks fan, really. Hometeam."
5:26 "I doubt I'll be having much fun, actually, I'm doing homework."
5:27 Go back to what I was doing

6:00 will meet friend to sign up for AMS special-interest one-time class
6:20 will go to the library to print out sign-up forms and turn them in
7:15 Ice skating at the rink on campus

just by the way..

I just wanted to mention a handful of things.

My math class is in a Harry-Potter like building, but my math workshop is in a building called Leonard S. Klinck. They may as well call it the Star Trek building- hello, Leonard McCoy-Spock-Kirk. How obvious is that.

I found a very cute little study spot where I can go in the hour between French and Math. I have no idea why it's here, but it's a bunch of armchairs and tables and stuff and it's very nice here.

I have hockey on Sunday and I'm cleared to skip roommate bootcamp for it. Our RA rocks.

And I think that's about it.

Although, on a sidenote, my ASTU teacher has the greatest accent...

First day of classes, part 2

1) Math Workshop
So, there was none. Turns out that email was referring to this class. It was just me and this one other guy for 10 minutes and then we both left and walked to the student union. Exciting times. I could have woken up at 1 if I'd known that this class was cancelled...

2) Creative Writing
In a theatre, and we watched short movies. A boring one about a doctor who saves a little girl and his daughter dies, and then one about a girl who works at a train station and almost gets robbed, and a Charlie Chaplin one. Screenplays.

And that's it. One three-hour class, (conveniently during the time I wanted to go ice skating) and that was it. Not too bad alltogether :)

First Day Of Classes, part 1

(Before I go on, in case you're wondering, part 2 is tomorrow, because I have new classes tomorrow, too)
Anyways. I had ASTU, French, Math and 2 Econs today.

1) ASTU.
For anyone who doesn't know, that's a research/writing class. The class is fairly small, mostly girls, and the teacher is very nice. She told us about how she learned to drive a car. And crashed it. The moral was that to learn something, you need instructions, hands-on practice and an overall theme. She, by the way, was practically wearing a suit. Like, a nice jacket and dress slacks and everything. The girl next to me, it turned out, was from my building, so we're going to walk to class together.

2) French
There were only 10 minutes between these two, but it was fine because they're in the same building, just a floor apart. The teacher is, I believe, French. She spoke only French to us, and it was pretty easy to understand. We all had to introduce our neighbours, and there are some people who speak more fluently than others, but I think everyone understood it all.

3) Math
Calculus was an hour after French, so I went to the library and printed up the 50 pages we need for French, it's a workbook for the class. And by the way, math is in this seriously Harry-Potter-esque building (just like the place where I went to print). It's stone with ivy and everything, and inside is all old-fashioned. The class is seriously huge, an entire lecture hall. This is the only class where we actually did stuff, but it was just reviewing functions and all. Not too bad.

4) Econ
This was an hour after math, so first I got lunch with my roommate. Econ was just as big, if not bigger, than math. I think they almost ran out of seats. The professor, it turns out, is the nice econ one. He didn't really know how to use a computer so well. And when giving us the URL, he said "...dot library.com dot h-t-m-L!!! because without the L, you will not find it". He was really funny. And he said to call him by his first name, because his last name was hard to pronounce and anyways, his wife called him by his first name, unless she wanted something, in which case she would say "hey, you" and he said he'd look around and see no one else and realize she meant him. So that prof was nice.

5) Econ Discussion
There was nothing really taught in econ, so there was nothing to discuss. The class waited around, no teacher came, so we all left after 10 minutes.

And that's everything :)

IMAGINE

The freshman orientation, IMAGINE, is over, and it wasn't too bad. It wasn't embarassing like upperclassmen said, just harmlessly boring.
1) Met in groups. and played MORE icebreakers. It's all they ever do. And it's always the same game. Imagine musical chairs- but without chairs, so it's like "honour system" for whether you got the spot or not. Just people standing in a circle, so there's no defined spot. Totally Canadian thing- I can't imagine people cheating. hahaha
2) Had the dean talk. Not too bad, just a little dry.
3) Went on a campus tour. Very useless; tellling us which building is which would be awesome.
4) Pep rally- lots of screaming, etc etc. One cool thing- it was at the Olympic arena, and we sat on the floor at about centre ice. That was sweet.
5) "Main Event" was just a bunch of booths about clubs. Yeah, there's a bigger/better club fair next week. We'll hit that up instead.

And that was IMAGINE.
They had a dr-seussey-sounding speech at IMAGINE. It was.. odd...

Classes start tomorrow and I've got two friends in at least one :)

not much, but...

I would just like to mention that the near-daily Stick and Puck sessions at the UBC rink are 2 dollars for students. *

That's all.






*Take THAT, super expensive Ice Oasis! TWO DOLLARS! That's NOTHING! And the rink is AMAZING, and has GREAT ICE. So THERE.
:)