British Student .ca

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?!

Yesterday I woke up early (10:30am) and decided to try video blogging by showing you just how close I live to Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

There were more road blocks around the venue than I thought and was to lazy to see if I could cycle down them. So I went Downtown briefly and on the busy (underground) Sky Train I made conversation with some other Vancouverites about the various routes that all get reffered to as Sky Train, even though most of my usual line (The Canada Line which opened one week before I arrived) is underground. After they left I realised I didn’t think about the simple way to date how old each line is. The Expo Line: 1986 when the World Expo was in Vancouver (Sky Train built 1985?). The Millennium Line, built in time to start the second millennium(actually late by 2 years). The Canada Line, well that must be the year Canada won the Winter Olympics in Vancouver? The Wikipedia Sky Train article has lots more interesting information.

Overall Vancouver transit (public transport) impresses me, it’s good to see it finally being used as much as it can handle, and still Vancouver staff and passengers are over friendly and polite. The busy stations and packed buses remind me of a normal day in London, so I really wonder how it will cope with hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics.

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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Midterm exams and classes are over for two weeks (I have my midterms after the break), we no longer talk about marks but medals! On Thursday the Olympic flame made it’s way across the UBC campus, which was covered in police and campus security.

I went out on my bicycle so if boredom struck I could just cycle on somewhere else. I don’t see what’s so exciting about the torch, with all the crowds most of us could just see a flame as it went past the Forestry and Computer Science buildings. Yet everyone ran to try and catch up with it, how many of them even knew who was holding it? I casually cycled on, using some roads parallel to Main Mall to get ahead of it.

The Old Bus Loop demolition/construction/turfing finished just last week and formed a centre for celebrations. Some student clubs lined the pedestrianised street and to the side a stage was set up with some bands playing. I saw the torch go down the car park before the bus loop and then tried to cross the crowd. I knew I wouldn’t see it at all down the bus loop, but I caught glimpse of 4 cycling police officers and wondered where they were heading. They went the other side of The Knoll (a grassy construction heap that had expected to have protesters on) and around the SUB. There are lots of steps around here, but I know some cunning little step-free gaps and paths that clearly the police didn’t know. Turns out they were only getting to the traffic lights to see the torch leave the campus. I missed the UBC Torch Flash Mob but I’m not really bothered, it had so much organising and choreographing while pigging backing on another event, it was more ambush marketing than flash mobbing.

Last night (Friday) was the opening ceremony and torch cauldron lighting. I didn’t really think ahead for this and so didn’t arrange with anyone to go anywhere. I kind of suck at getting people together and going out anyway, I should be part of a group of people that can do that. So I ended up watching it in the floor lounge on TV with a few other people. I sat with my laptop to be able to research teams on Wikipedia despite the network port not working and a weak wifi signal. I wanted to watch the BBC coverage but their iPlayer stream of BBC2 wasn’t working.

After seeing most of the ceremony I actually missed Great Britain walk round the stadium. This was soon forgotten when we saw the mess up of part of the indoor cauldron not lifting up, so one of the 4 sport stars didn’t get to light it with their flame.

Later in the night, about 1am, the fire alarm in the building went off. Those that weren’t out partying, or staying in bed, went next door to the Commons Block. In the TV room they were watching a repeat of the ceremony, and I got to see Great Britain this time.

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.

I almost forgot to upload the photoos from Sunday 6th December when I went and watched the Santa Claus Parade downtown. I didn’t see any Santa Claus, but I did see some Father Christmas looking Russians.

Twice a guy quickly walked in front of us filming the whole parade with his compact digital camera. His t-shirt told me it was ButchNews of YouTube fame, but he was too fast for me to take a photo. I focused on still images so if you want to hear the music we had, watch Butch’s view of the parade.

I took 171 photos, but managed to cut it down to 66 for you. I’ve just spent two days fixing some of the problems people had viewing photos, please let me know if there are more issues.

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