British Student .ca

Last Wednesday was eventful, being a lecturer, using my medical cover/insurance, some geography fun, and ending the night with some chain metal dancing girls.

I’ve mentioned that in my geography GIS class we’ve been ending the year on OpenStreetMap and Neogeography. My lecturer has become aware that I’m really obsessed with OpenStreetMap and so asked me the take half of the Wednesday lecture showing my stuff. I showed how to edit OSM and why it’s cool and got a little bit of feedback on how it went. There are mixed opinions on if I was too complicated or not, but it seems it was interesting either way and hopefully my passion came out.

From about Monday night my little finger had been a bit swollen. After the lecture I took of a plaster that I slept with to at least keep it clean and it looked like it might explode with puss. So I went to the pharmacist in the village to ask what cream I should put on it. He said it had got to the point I needed to see a doctor for antibiotics. So I went above Staples stationary shop to a walk in medical clinic. I never wanted to be in medical trouble abroad, but at least I now have my (required) medical insurance paid to date I just had to show my Care Card and not worry about it. The doctor stabbed my finger and pushed the goo out. A little bit of squirming (I would have been fine doing it myself) and a plaster, then I was on my way. He didn’t even give my jip for biting my hang nails. When I got back to my room, Steph was there to be house mum and hug it better.

Later that day I was lying on my bed thinking I should go out and enjoy the sun and grass in some summery way. Oh, it was the GSA(Geography Students’ Association) last Bzzr Garden and BBQ. I went to that, the burgers were delicious, as was the beer. Chatting to folks was fun (you could call it networking practice), and OpenStreetMap is really known these days. I even spoke to someone in my class who said she did an assignment on my Living With Dragons blog, apparently it’s the top search result for GIS neogeography blog or some set of terms.

Later that evening I went downtown to The Media Club for the CD release of Scythia. They had a cage with some dancing ladies wearing (not much) chain metal, but more importantly the music was great and a good end to the day. Me and my sensitive injured finger decided to avoid the mosh pit, despite one guy repeatedly trying to get me to start it with him. I’ve done enough anger-release moshing in my younger years.

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?!

I’ll now admit, I wasn’t in the highest of spirits when I blogged about the opening ceremonies. But Saturday night I went downtown with just a few people to see one of the many free concerts taking place around the city. Leaving is rarely prompt and we got down there 15mins before the start so assumed we would line up not to get in. Instead we wondered around Granville Street, Robson Street, Robson Square, and the Waterfront.

What a night it turned out to be. We saw a guy and 3 people get inside a blown up balloon [youtube]. We found a massive rave on the steps down to the free ice rink powered by about 20-30 boombox style old stereos (most had duck tape keeping them in one piece), and found out we were in the perfect spot when fireworks and a laser show started. Later we met a gaggle of people in all-body one-piece lycra morphsuits. Everybody on the streets (most of them closed to traffic) were giving high fives, hugs, or general cheers. We saw the outdoor olympic flame, from a distance. It was amazing, we all love the olympics now. Click those links for some videos I took, and view the photos (with more of the story) below.

Sorry it took so long to post this. Editing and uploading my first video to youtube took more than a day, and the photo display failed to work until I found a mistake as I was converting my captions to the old display method. I’ll try and get the rest of the videos up soon and let you know about them.

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Forget classes, the Winter Olympics are coming to town and we have a two week reading break because of it. Actually the break doesn’t start until the weekend and will include an assignment deadline, but lately I’ve not been caring about listening to the lectures (which I still go to). Moving on…

Some events will be at the UBC Thunderbird Arena, that’s literally 2 small blocks directly down the road from me. But I’d like to brave the congested transport and get off campus to see if I can afford anything. There are a load of free music events, top of my list is Dan Mangan who I have loved ever since he played to us UBC Internationals on one of my first ever days in Canada. He’s amazing, the show is on the 19th, for all ages (let’s go floor mates), but is in ‘dangerous Surrey’ which I have yet to venture out to. Let’s go, cause robots need love too!

Apparently most(all?) countries have their own ‘house’ where supporters of their team can drink and eat together, watch their medal winning, and the team/press/sponsors can have meetings. I’d like to go visit a load to check them out. Most of all I’ve heard that Switzerland House is already open and getting wild on Granville Island (art gallery island near down town). This is set in an existing restaurant/bar that looks a bit pricey for me, maybe I’ll just hang outside with people on the veranda. They also have a house in Whistler for fun at the bottom of the slopes.

Secondly I’ve heard the sponsor of Holland Heineken House makes it a fun place to be with cheap drinks and a big warehouse full of bars and large projector screens. This should be a cool house to go to, especially when any game is taking place. I’ll need to round up people with IDs if I’m not to go to this one on my own. Sadly their website fails, I click the UK/English button (which doesn’t change the jjjj to yyyy for year, and from there the Dutch button is a broken link), enter my date of birth, and get a black screen. Thankfully “Tinkerblue” gives me an exciting cgi video of the Holland Heineken House and opening details in simple, standard, text.

After some research I found out that there is even a Canada House. In Whistler which takes too much, time, money, and probably an Olympic ticket/pass to get there (the highway there is heavily patrolled by police & security). But where oh where is the Great Britain House? If anybody knows of one existing and the details then please let me know. If any other countries have a house (and perhaps want to buy the first drink for a poor BritishStudent.ca) then let me know!

Photo pinched from Richmond O Zone.

This is my one class this year outside of the Computer Science department. I was egar to take it as I’m already a ‘neogeographer’ meaning I go out surveying roads adding them to a copyright-free map database, OpenStreetMap.org, as a hobby using volunteer created programs and systems. Now I’ve joined a class to learn how the professional geographers do it.

Immeditetly I noticed a difference in the people in the room and being a Computer Science student I only have the ability to interact with other Computer Scientists. The first lecturer the instructor, Jose Aparicio, asked a number of hand-up questions which included “Who’s used GIS before?”. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who raised my hand. In the first lab a shocking number of students struggled with following the instructions to zoom in and out of the map in ArcGIS (click the plus magnafying glass icon, click the map with it). Points to me for being ahead of the class already.

I finished the first assignment in that 2 hour lab, although we had been given next week’s lab and our own time until the 3rd lab to complete it. Since then I’ve always tried to complete the assignments in the lab time. The 3rd assignment I needed an extra half hour. Currently I’m on the 4th assignment and I didn’t finish the last page, but then I did turn up about 25 minutes late because I was decorating a dinning hall. Perhaps I should be using some of the time to make friends in my lab class, as apparently there will be a group project.

Two weeks ago I went to a Geography Students Association(GSA) social with Sam the 5th floor RA and final year geography student. I had a good evening out of Totem Park for a change, sang a little bit of karaoke, and my team did terrible in the quiz. This night also came with the discovery that geography students are known for being the ones that know how to party/drink! I may or may not have been drinking beer in a lecture hall.

The lectures are interesting, especially as I relate most topics to discussions (and arguments) I’ve had amongst OpenStreetMappers. As I don’t need to fully concentrate on the lectures, I now make use of the time by editing OpenStreetMap and uploading the data I collected at the weekend. Switching between my neogeographer’s GIS program (called JOSM) and note typing. I’ll have to be ready to pay more attention at the end of term when there will be a lecture(s?) on data sources and I can make sure OpenStreetMap is accurately represented.

Yesterday I sat down close to someone I briefly met at the GSA social, and she remembered me enough to say hi. Yay I have a friend, I think she’s even in my lab class, which could prove nice come project time!

My road trip has now finished and I’m staying in a place Downtown for three nights before I can go back to Totem Park. I’m not to far from the public library, where I will be able to get wifi and send this post before 4pm which is midnight in the UK. My midnight will be at 8am UK time.

For the past three years or so my New Year’s celebration has been with a my group of friends in Sunbury. It would probably be at the Haywood’s house this year and most people’s parents would be at another house together. Since we all started going to different universities, a subset of about 6 of us started a traddition called “The Year According To… [insert name]“. In the hours before the countdown we sit together in the house and answer one thing that happened to us for each month of the last year. We take it in turns either to give our full answers or one month at a time, the later helps jog memories and get closer to finished before midnight, I don’t think we’ve ever made it to midnight.

Yes I am going to miss the time with my friends this year. I’m never good at remembering the key events of the year or on what month they took place. There is always an obvious theme with my memory and no guesses as to what big event happened this year and the months leading up to it. Here is the year according to Gregory Marler…

January Busy finishing my application, and deciding about a year abroad. Handed it in just before the 31st.
February Waited to hear about my application, Durham’s International Office delayed the result multiple times/weeks, but just after this month they said I had the place.
March I cycled from Durham, almost to York before getting the train home to London. It took most of the day and I want to retry now I’ll be better prepared, I might do another strentch, maybe York to a station near London.
April
May My plan to map Durham was going really well, with the city mapped out to Neville’s Cross and co-organising a weekend long event inviting people to help map Sunderland.
June Finished second year, at long last. I was quite pleased that my group won the prize for best in the year long Software Engineering project. We would have gone to represent Durham in a the IBM university challenge, but they cancelled it, I would have been in Canada anyway. I cycled across the width of England, including over mountains of the Lake District and Peak District, taking 3 days and leading approximatly 30 other people.
July Worked at a small company for just a few weeks doing small web development tasks that made a difference to their website.
August I was the oldest looking after Emmanuel Church youth camping at New Day in Norfolk for a week. I had great fun and I’ll be sad if I can make it this coming year.
September I flew out to Canada. Had to quickly settle in sorting out things going wrong like banks. Met many more people than I can remember, several I still see.
October Thanksgiving in Canada wasn’t as much as I expected it to be, and Halloween just seemed to be another drinking weekend (although I did “Trick or Eat” collecting for the Vancouver Food Bank).
November I blogged lots, so it seems like a busy month of working getting too much and partying to relieve it. I filled a double bedroom with balloons, ate too much at the winter formal, and saw a Christmas tree appear in the lounge.
December The final exams of my classes this semester, waiting for everyone to finish theirs, and my Alberta/Rockies road trip.

Five weeks ago I thought up a great birthday surprise for Tree on 5th floor. She loves xkcd, and wanted to start a student society just to get funding for a playpen ball pit. Because university students are possibly grown-ups now (follow that link if you don’t understand).

Small plastic balls are quite expensive. Ballons aren’t that much cheaper, but they are bigger so can cover more area cheaply. I made several calculations using the ball pit calculator and randomly walking in to Max & avin’s room to measure a double room. The double room sadly requires more ballons, but gives us the possibility of a getting access to make it a surprise.

Three weeks before her birthday, messages and secret conversations started going around. I was worried that Beverly wouldn’t let us in because I always seem to be where people are making noise when she’s trying to sleep or study. But she was so nice then she helped way beyond just letting us in the room. I bought 225 ballons that said 14 inch size, and we blew them up around 7-10 inch diameter (the yellow ones popped easily). The room ended up about 3 times my calculations, so I think they have a packing efficiency much closer to 30-40% rather than 65%.

We blew lots up on Tuesday night, and then the 5th floor girls went to White Spot for a birthday dinner on Wednesday evening. Me and Steph sadly had to make excuses to to join them, but it added to the feeling that this was a low-key, not really bothered, birthday. The surprise was so great, and Tree has been similing ever since, that I had to upload lots of photos. The captions include some more of the story and the trouble we had moving them about lots of locations. They only miss the stage where my bedroom was filled with girls and ballons, because I was having to get work done in the computer lab.

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Happy Thanksgiving Weekend to you! Just to confuse you Canadian thanksgiving is a different date to America, it’s the 2nd Monday in October which is a public holiday. Thanksgiving is totally foreign to me so I had little idea what would take place. The 3 day weekend prompted most people to go home or to relatives, making my residence very quiet. Those that were left managed to make just as much noise on Friday/Saturday and drink lots to keep the can collection growing.

On Sunday morning I went to church. It was announced that someone couldn’t make it at the last moment so I don’t know if that spurred a change of plan or if the service was different due to thanksgiving. It started with worship and the lead pastor on guitar. Then we had communion together which is a weekly occurance in the Canadian churches I’ve been to (it’s not so frequent in the UK) by dipping the bread in the wine (rather than taking a sip of wine after eating the bread). Usually next would be a sermon but instead a few large rolls of paper had been pinned to the walls with the writing “I’m thankful to God for…“. We could write or draw our responses (the children had made some interesting drawings throughout the service). There was some more worship and then the service finished.

On Sunday evening my building, Haida House, had a semi-formal dinner in the ground floor study lounge. I dug out the one collared shirt I brought here and went down. It was an enjoyable time, actually sitting down and talking to the people I live with. A resonable turn out of roughly 25 (including some from our neighbours Salish House) from the 180 or so who should be living there. After the dinner everybody was to tired to have much of a party, well after a rest the party started up just after midnight.

Side-tracking as I do, along one of the main campus roads sits a large white cain (6ft tall) painted with a red E on all three sides, to quote wikipedia “exists not because it was installed in accordance with UBC’s planning and building process, but because the engineering students simply put it there.“. It is commonly the target of repainting by other faculty’s students to have their letter and colour. On Thanksgiving Sunday night the Haida pranksters were out and painted it fully in our colour of the night, then super glued on coloured featers and a beak to turn the cairn into a turkey.

I made full use of the Monday off and slept in to 1:30pm. In the evening (5pm because they eat so early here) I walked over to Acadia Park, the family houses on the other side of campus. A couple even newer to Point Grey Communtiy Church had invited me to dinner with them and their extended family. In so long I haven’t been in a family house where you can take a second helping without swiping your dinner card, and kids run around fighting and tickling each other.

It’s been a busy weekend and I’m sure to have missed out some blog-worthy stories, but now I need another sleep until my 12:30pm class Tuesday class.

On my floor we decided to collect our beer cans in a big box, to create some big prank like throwing them all at Vanier Place residence, or filling the elevator. Then we learnt how beer cans, soda(pop/fizz) cans, glass and plastic bottles are worth a resonable bit if you return them for recycling. The collection grew, with the aid of all the visitors our famous party floor gets. This was a lot easier work than the homeless people that walk around campus and town, removing bottles/cans from litter bins (most have a large ledge or rack to aid them) and from rubbish bins. We just had to party, let other people party and enjoy the work.

In a month the collection grew to about seven rubbish bags full. The smell was bad, it took up space in the floor lounge, and the cleaners started to get angry. So all we had to do was get about four of us to walk 15 minutes to the BC government liquor store. We discussed what the money could go towards: a new large TV to replace the historic broken CRT one that was lugged up here last year; a present for the residential advisor on our floor who is the best RA in Totem; or something like table football. Whatever we did with the money, we had to get rid of them this weekend, it stank.

I’m going to side-track for a bit. When I was young I was taught a story you may know, it’s called The Little Red Hen and it goes roughly along these lines…

• Hen: Who will help be gather up the cans into double bags (so they don’t leak or rip)?
• Not I said the cat who was busy sleeping. Not I said the mouse who was busy doing homework. Not I said the pig who had, erm, a class to go to.
• Hen: Who will help me carry the cans to the store?
• Not I said the cat. Not I said the mouse. Not I said the pig.
• Hen: Who will help me figure out what everyone agrees to buy so nobody argues the money has been spent unfairly?
• Not I said the cat. Not I said the mouse. Not I said the pig.
• Hen: Who will help me look after the money, spend it, and eat a cake?
• In unison everyone said “I will”.

I don’t remember what the little red hen did with the cake she baked all by her self. I looked up the story on the student’s authoritive source, wikipedia, who gives me an interesting ending. I got $16.27 (about £9.84) for what turned out to be 40 minutes taking 3 bags in the direction I was going anyway. I’m sure I could find something I’d like for that much, for now I will hold onto the money and see what everybody suggests in the comments.

And now, the photos of my exciting day and how to recycle for money in Canada.

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