Calgary Exchange
Gord's Exchange to the University of Calgary
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Of Ice Skating and Basketball
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On Friday night, went ice skating at the Olympic Oval in campus. Wow, its not the usual skating rink, it’s a skating TRACK! Inside the track is 2 rinks, which are for ice hockey trainings. Rented speed skates accidentally, instead of the usual hockey skates. Speed skates are longer, and supposedly makes one skate faster. However, I am not used to it at all. The first 1 or 2 rounds is for getting used to the skates (and for falling). After that however, managed to get the hang of it. Hopefully at the end of my exchange, I will return to Singapore a pro skater! After skating, went to see a basketball match, University of Calgary, “Dinos” vs University of Alberta, “Golden Bears”. Missed the female match and the first half of the male match. The atmosphere was great! The university basketball team is like the city’s team, with sooo many outsiders coming to support. Plus they have to pay to get in! Nice culture. There are commentators, mascots, popcorns etc, very cool! In Singapore, nobody cares about IVP matches. Even though there are many supporters during IHG, the standard of the competition is not as professional as here. Lots of freebies are given away during the time outs. The Dinos mascot will run out during such timeouts and throw various freebies to the spectators. Some freebies include pizzas, basketballs(mini), t shirts and Dino soft toys. The audience (mostly kids) is more excited during time outs than during the match itself! Haha Only gripe I have with the basketball match is that there are no cheerleaders! During halftime, they just have some lame guy dancing to the gay YMCA song. There should be some significance about this, cause the spectators were cheering quite wildly for that guy. Next day, went on a tour organized by ISC (international Student Centre). Tae Kwon Do lesson, followed by a talk/dance/story telling by a First Nation Native, Chinatown tour and finally Salsa lesson. Sounds rather boring, but its actually quite fun and informative. I even learnt a few things about geomancy from the Chinatown tour! At night, MZ and I went for round 2 of the basketball match. This time, we went early and got some pop corns. Saw the halftime show, and nope, still no cheerleaders. Instead, they had a 3-point shooting competition. After that, there was a primary school basketball exhibition match during the break! Quite interesting, even the referee is a kid. After the match though, the lame YMCA guy came back on and did his dance. What kind of tradition is this?! In the end, Dinos lost their first game, and won the second. I do not know where their current standing is. [ something wrong with Blogger's uploading of pictures... for pics, please go to www.gordee.myphotoalbum.com ] |
posted by Gordee @ 1:16 PM
