British Student .ca

While Durham University have 5 weeks off (between term 2 and the final term), UBC has a 4-day weekend but will soon be in exam period and all finished at the end of April. I was considering making a trip to Salt Spring Island, camping with Bob (who would be going as part of a Forestry field trip) and seeing Roy’s house, both who live on my floor here. But the weather forcast of rain scared Bob into not going. It’s probably good as it’s been really windy here and I wouldn’t like our tent to fly off into the sea revealing me and Bob holding each other in fear.

I’m getting scared enough with all the noises around me, the elevator clanging more than ever and trees sweeping against the outside of my bedroom wall while the wind howls through any gap it can find. It took me a while to build up enough courage and run to the commons block (under a covered footpath) next door to get some dinner.

I had been thinking about going to Victoria, the most English place in Canada, by myself. It turns out some of the girls on 5th floor, plus Bob, are going for a day trip tomorrow. I might join them, or just go on my own and bump into them. It requires getting up early to make the most of it, as it’s a few busses to the ferry terminal, and then another bus once on Vancouver Island. If I go then I’m sure I’ll take lots of photos for you as usual.

UK summer is two weeks longer than Canada’s West Coast. Both seem about as wet throughout the year, but with time the UK switched from summer time a week earlier in March, and today Pacific Standard Time(PST) switched back to Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) a whole three weeks before the UK will switch from GMT to BST.

Opposite to the effect in October, this makes the awake overlap time an hour shorter. I’ll stay up later to Skype my parents, when I have my computer fixed. A note has been added to my Canada/UK Conversions page.

Talking of time, Durham University have 1 more week before they take a whole 5 weeks off for Easter. I’ll just get a 4-day weekend, which is two half-days of classes off. When Durham students go back on the 26th April, they’ll be two days until my last exam, and I’ll leave Canada a few days later. I might make a visit up to Durham to say hi before starting my long summer till October.

It’s been a tough week. My computer decided to become unusable, my bicycle got a puncture (I now have that fixed), and my websites went down for a bit. Although extremely unhelpful, it’s probably a good detox not having a computer, and I always think it’s important to spend time away from it. I’ve been extremely bored in the evenings, so I created a list of things to do without a computer.

• Watch TV
• Go cycling and map surveying
• Go to Brooks Bar, and chat to someone I know
• Cook biscuits, cakes, or marmite cheese pastries
• Sleep
• Tidy my room
• Make a den in the lounge
• Go chat to a housemate and distract them from work
• Bully Dave, or start a Nerf gun war with his guns and the other housemates
• Listen to music

Watching TV is just another computer screen and so still bad for me, plus it’s only 60% commercials here. It’s either too dark or too wet to go cycling most of the time that I have free. Brooks Bar is one of the cafe/bars of my college in Durham, where I’m sure to always see someone I know. There are only two bars here, they aren’t really day-time places and I won’t see anyone I know. I don’t really have access to an oven, just a microwave and sink.

I’ve been sleeping far too much recently, it saves waking up and remembering all the things I don’t like right now. I went to bed at 10pm one night, crazy. My room is spotless tidy, cleaned, and dusted. It’s pretty much ready for me to leave and go home, not that I’m counting the weeks or anything. It’s a little more strange making a den in the lounge when you share it with 30 people than with 6, and it’s dirty. I did make a castle wall out of some phone books that were delivered to every single room (what a waste!).

I sometimes wonder round the floor for someone to talk to but they all seem to hide or are actually working. I feel bad about distracting people who have something worth working for. Dave was one of my housemates that lived next door, I miss him being in the room next to me.

The only music source I have is my computer. Until last night when I was driven to get out my PDA, which is old enough that it’s only useful as an mp3 player, and charge the battery again. I have a few CDs on there, and it was nice to finally have vibrations from electricity flowing into my head.

The other night I passed by a TV showing the news on CTV (has the Olympic broadcasting rights) of how Britain is really hating on Vancouver and the Winter Olympics. They zoomed in on a small quote from the Guardian “…make these Games the worst in Olympic history“, so I thought it right to find the whole Vancouver Games are a disaster article and sum up the hate points it makes.

• A commemorative coin is being made for Alexandre Bilodeau, the first Canadian to win Olympic gold at home.
• Canadian politicians may be working overtime issuing congratulatory statements about medal-winning performances by home athletes.
• Vanoc (the organising committee) is pumping out tweets of “YAAAAYY! GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD”
• Torrential rain had washed away snow, making it impossible to build spectator viewing areas that would be safe for the snowboarding events at Cypress Mountain.
• The transportation system, which some would call sporadic and others would describe as chaotic.
• The Premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, and the chiefs of the four host First Nations to miss the singing of the Canadian anthem at Friday’s opening ceremony.
• The hydraulics used to construct the torch bowl failed at the climax of the event.
• Questions about the safety of the luge sliding track after qualifying Georgian, Nodar Kumaritashvili, died the day of the Opening ceremonies.

Of all things, I don’t know why they’re complaining about the public transportation. The good old BBC have a much more upbeat article asking if London 2012 transport can succeed like Vancouver 2010 (link via The Buzzer). I’m so impressed, it reminds me of the hussle and bussle of a normal London day, with Vancouverites who are as friendly as a walk in the countryside. The whole set up is different to a UK city though. We don’t have specific ‘downtown’ centres and we don’t drive into them as much. Vancouver was ready for this amount of traffic, there are the lanes that can be used for special traffic. What might work is how large stretches of roads (Robson and Granville) are closed of to all traffic, and I’m constantly seeing Transit information staff/volunteers. London will do well if it encourages foreigners to walk about more to get home, some of our underground stations are much closer overground than by the escalators and station hallways below the streets.

Back to the Guardian article, and the main point Lawrence Donegan makes is that the 4,000 ticket holders for the Cypress snowboarding got turned away. Yeah that sucks, but the rather good UBC student paper, The Ubyssey, reports that it is a standing space area which became unsafe due to a foot of washed away snow. It still sucks, The Ubyssey puts the emphasis on those who bought tickets through friends of scalpers, as they won’t get their money back.

I laugh at the hydraulic failure of the opening ceremony myself. But let’s be fair, the other three supports of the torch worked. The wait built up excitement as I watched it, and all the pain was on one athlete that didn’t get to help light the torch that symbolised the coming together of four people required to light up glowing hearts(Vanoc will sue me for using their trademarked motto, which quotes the national anthem). The show was still pretty cool, with all the visual light effects and projections. The floating Bear made of stars freaked me out a bit, but I’m going to say I liked it now.

Last of all, what’s wrong with Vanoc tweeting excitement? I’m tweeting similar things, and it’s great reading tweets from the venue organisers to hear what’s happening and what’s really busy (sometimes with tips to get around it). I love joining in the cheering and chanting on the streets with my adopted country for this year, CAN-A-DA, CAN-A-DA, CAN-A-DA! Sometimes we chant other countries so everyone can have fun, and I’m learning parts of the anthem (only the English version for now).

My twitter list to follow for the Olympics is currently Team_GB(tweets results and the days upcoming events, with GMT times), richmondozone(I want to go there at least once with some 19+ friends), BC_GottaBeHere(high frequency of tweets but lots of good retweets about most venues inc. Robson Square), thebuzzer(from the eyes of transit/public transport, which you know I love), and GregoryMarler(oh, that’s me). Sadly I don’t have a cool phone here so I only tweet when in my room, but you can still catch where I’m about to leave for, plus I check the #olympics and #olympicfun tags to retweet what’s cool and happening. Who needs a $1000 event ticket to enjoy the two weeks, Eh?!