British Student .ca

I went shopping downtown with Roy, Max and Jenna on Saturday afternoon, oh I hate clothes shopping. The subway/underground train station is in the basement of the Pacific Center Shopping Mall, which itself is mainly basement levels. So you can go shopping without seeing daylight (not that there is much of it now Winter has come). In the Pacific Center we went straight to The Bay department store and spent a lot of time in there. They had a sale on some Levis jeans. The jeans here don’t just have waist size, also the length, so I found some that actually fitted me. £30 is far better than the £80+ that would be paid back home.

We spent so long in there, and it wass so big, that I thought we might never get out. Maybe that’s because I had the Father Ted scene in my mind, the Canadians didn’t even known the show, or Father Jack (who they leave in the kids playpen). The mall is so big that it has another underground train station on the other side of where we came in.

Finally we escaped into the food court for ssome food. Mountain Dew came up in conversation and I immediately realised I didn’t have this on my mental “North American brands and icons to visit/see/eat/drink” list, despite references as a popular (energy?) drink for programmers. Later on we found the food court again and so it was deemed the moment for me to have my first mountain dew. It’s not an energy drink but a fizzy non-caffinated but sugary drink, perhaps similar to sprite or lemonade but it’s own distinct taste. From the first sip I was in love. If only I had a laptop on me in the store, I wanted to type and program solidly for the next 48 hours straight. Maybe this is why the week hasn’t been productive enough and I’ve been feeling pinned down by my small load of 3 assignments to work on. I think I’ll cycle to Save on Foods down the road to pick up some Mountan Dew, and then back to programming the next Deep Blue.

Last Friday, my morning lecture seemed normal. Except, was there a banana sitting a few spaces along from me, and was the grim reaper in the row in front? Is Software Engineering in Canada that boring that I’m half asleep in a dream lecture? The lecture finished and I went to my Human Computer Interaction (HCI) tutorial/lab. One of the project groups are dicussing their work around a table, but Louise really looks like a turtle. I can’t be dreaming in all my classes of the day.

Ah, it was Halloween Friday, and a few people go to their classes dressed up. In the UK Halloween has always been a poor excuse for teenagers to throw eggs at houses. Nobody has ‘candy’ or sweets ready for children, and you don’t see anyone dressed up as scary disney princesses wondering the streets. In the UK you could sit in a university bar most nights and see various theme-dressed groups pass by on a bar crawl and guess what the title of their social event is.

That hasn’t happened here so I was excited to see everyone dress up. I haven’t yet found good places to buy cheap clothes to mess up (although I made a trip to British Columbia’s biggest shopping mall, the contents not so impressive and size smaller than in Newcastle). On Friday I shaved my lack of facial hair, except my moustache, and put on my one smart (button and collar) shirt. I was a generic John Cleese character. At moments of the night I was either part of the Ministry of Silly Walks, flailing my legs everywhere, or I would yell for Manuel as Basil Fawlty.

On Saturday I went Trick or Eat-ing. A change from Trick or Treating, small groups of university students were assigned two blocks or so and at each door asked for non-perishable food (tins & cans) for the Vancouver Food Bank. Not only good for those who stuggle to afford food, it was great fun and I got to know some people of the other Haida House floors. Everybody was really friendly, especially the one person who said he didn’t want to, and we got quite a few chocolate bars for ourselves. It seemed like a big operation to cover Vancouver from this university, but 362 volunteers turned up and collected 9488 lbs of food, which is about 7590 meals.

I’m now told that it’s Movember, Moustache-November, and I’m not allowed to shave until December. This is the scary part the post title refers to, not Louise dressed up as a turtle. The girls in Haida think I’ll have a massive moustache, but I think they’re going to be greatly disapointed. Let’s see how it goes and I’ll try and get someone to take photos so we can all track progress, my attempts at mirror photography were terrible.

Long before I got to Canada I knew I would want to get a cheap bicycle while I’m here. I’ve been looking on Craig’s List, which is very popular here, but it’s been ttaking a while. You have to search the bicycle board for something resonable annd cheap, look at the photo as this may be all you have, and then contact the seller. You then might never work out a time to meet them, discover the bicycle isn’t suitable (one was far to small for me), or it’s really far away and the seller’s car is at the garage. So you repeat the process from searching the lists again. This gets disheartening, especially when you got your hopes up about a 70s Raleigh bicycle made in Nottingham, UK.

I went along to the student run Bike Kitchen but they had less than 10 bikes for sale, all priced $300 or more. It got to Friday last week and I really wanted to buy a bicycle. I didn’t know what shop to go to but I had seen loads along Broadway on the 99 bus route. My Friday should have finished at 1pm, but I was interviewing students for research until 4pm. Despite the shops probably closing soon I headed for the bus at 4:30pm to at least confirm where the shops were.

First stop was West Point Cycles who were extremley helpful in the 2 minutes I was there. I would highly recommend them even though I didn’t buy a bike there. Apart from new bicycles.accessories they only sell ex-rental which start at $250. They suggested Cheapskates, apparently Vancouver’s best used bike shop, but confirmed with collegues that it had closed down a week ago. The only other option they gave was Craigslist and a shop named Ride It, which everyone knows by the massive “Cheap Student Bikes” sign above the store front. I got on a slow bus to go the 10 blocks to Vine Street. On the bus I met Andy, one of my floor mates, who had also been searching around for a bicycle and was heading to Cheap Student Bikes. This shop, now Vancouver’s only second hand bicycle store, also had friendly and helpful staff. They have a full range of bicycles new and old, from less than $80 to $400 and probably beyond. I left with a nice black Rocky Mountain (Canadian brand) bike for under $200, and Andy and his friends bought a small well made folding bike for someone’s birthday present. The shop gave each of our bikes a 10min check after we bought them, and then it was so dark outside I took my bike back on the bus. On Saturday I went for a cycle and on Sunday, after some annoying fire alarms, finally got to cycle to church. Check the photos for more details.

18 photos

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.

12 photos

On my second day, and first proper day, at UBC I went and had lunch outside the SUB (Student Union Building) and then took my camera for a walk around the campus. Later on in the day I had lunch downtown with Steven, an American student I shared a cab from the Airport with. The last ttask of the day was to go shopping. I arrived on Tuesday and the dinning hall didn’t open for term until Saturday, so I had to find food that could be cooked/prepared using my residences limited facilities. Clicking one of the images below will pop-up the photo over the page and the captions should allow you insight into how this day went. Click left and right to flick throught all of them.

33 images in slideshow