Calgary Exchange
Gord's Exchange to the University of Calgary
Friday, February 24, 2006
Kicking Horse
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Just came back from Kicking Horse! Skiing is damn fun! Woo I had so much fun! Even though I still could not control the skis very well (I think i ski quite uglyly), I am able to tackle the green and blue runs and could make jumps. Time to learn snowboarding! Too bad we (Singaporeans) cannot really click with the Canadians. They are very nice, but well, we just couldn't connect. Doesn't help that I am anti-social, SY is even more AS, and MZ prefers to speak in Mandarin. But very fun to be with them, they have bong parties at night! One girl injured her ankle while skiing, and she took weed to relieve the pain, damn pro. We met up for a final ski down, where they skied with their snow pants down, and some even stripped to their underwear. One girl snowboarded in her undies and fell on her butt, haha. However, we shy Singaporeans didn't take off our pants. I did not because my legs tend to go wide apart while I ski, so I would trip if I had my snowpants over my knees, not because I attitude ok, haha. Even with their pants down, the Canadians still skied much faster than me. They can simply go straight down the green runs, while I still need to check my speed occasionally. Anyway, no photos yet, lazy to upload and I want to get the photos the others had taken first before posting them all at once. Just came back, and will be going to Banff tomorrow morning. Damn tired. |
Monday, February 20, 2006
Poisonous Gas!
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MZ just gave me a call, asking me if I can smell any funny gas. I couldn't, so I went out of my apartment. Still no smell. I then walked towards MZ's room. Along the way, theres a ventilation vent. Immediately after walking pass the vent, the smell hit me, and I can't stop coughing! OMG, theres some poisonous gas in my building! If I disappear from this world, you know what hit me. |
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Marriage of Figaro
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Watched a play by UofC students in the Drama faculty, Marriage of Figaro. Damn nice, especially when compared to the opera we saw recently, Dead Man Walking. Goes to show that production cost is less important than the script. The skills of the actors are probably not as good also. (Probably because I am not pro enough to criticise). Sometimes, their voices are not projected very well and their singing is not exactly top notch. However, thats a minor blimp in an otherwise wonderful production. It can even be excused for they perform every day and each performance is 3.5 hours! Horrifying. The deal is especially sweetened with the super cheap price, 5 bucks. Even my lunch is more expensive. 3.5 hours includes 20 min of intermission, but even during that time, they continue to entertain the audience. The stage setters banter and joke around when they are setting up the stage. They even had a fight with the musicians! It all seemed very impromptu, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of it were. One of the stage setters cum actor appeared as if he had a broken leg and walked around in crutches, both while acting and while setting up the stage. At the end of the show, he suddenly threw away his crutches and walked normally, very boliao but entertaining nonetheless. Later going to Coyotesbar, cos we had some free tickets there, given out during the Dinos hockey game. They are celebrating Mardi Gras now, so I expect to see lots of colours in the pub, hopefully even nudity! haha. The big problem is that their dress code says no running shoes, which is the only pair I brought. Don't care, go there then see how. [ADD] stupid me. Never bring IC/passport cannot enter. I thought that the isic card is good enough, haha. Anyway only MZ brought his ID, and that is because he was once checked at the Den. Sian, all the way there then cannot enter. |
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Canada Olympic Park
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Went skiing at COP today. Turns out MZ and SY both dun like skiing. Super sian. Its so fun! Lucky we managed to find an instructor today, I will be super pek cek if I were to teach them how to ski. In the end, the instructor, Tomo, just taught them how to stop, which they are still not good at, and he apologised to me for not teaching me anything. Haha. COP is a good place for beginners to ski. The downhill slope is just right, with lots of open space and smooth snow. Very good to train in, not dangerous like in the mountains, where if you lose control, you might just drop down some ravine. With no more ski kaki, I wonder who I can find to learn snow boarding with me... |
Friday, February 17, 2006
bibibabibu
| Damn bibibabibu lor. Last night, the fire alarm rang AGAIN! This time, theres not even a hint of smoke. 530am, during the coldest night of Calgary since I got here, I have to get out of the building. Stupid fire alarm system. See la, make me so tired I skipped today's lessons again. |
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Cold weather hockey game
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Wah liew, the weather suddenly turned soo bad, now its freaking -27 degrees!! Went to support Dinos Ice hockey vs University of Alberta Golden Bears. Its a derby match, as UofC was once a part of UofA. And its damn exciting. The crowd was on, the match was fast and furious and damn violent! Everytime someone was knocked down, the crowd will "oooooo" together. Haha In the end Dinos won 4-2! They also gave out free t shirts and pass to a local pub in Calgary. Its Mardi Gras weekend! There's supposedly a lingerie pillow fight going on in Coyote's, which they gave out the pass for during the game. This Sunday. Helped MZ to take a pass, Im sure he will want to go knowing how horny he is. No time for hockey game, but sure got time to see lingerie pillow fight. ****************************************** Yesterday, I went to watch a documentary, War Hospital, which was being shown in an LT. Its produced by a local director, and its about a War Hospital in Sudan. When I went there, I was very surprised to see soo many people. The whole LT is packed. This will never happen in Singapore man. I remember I once went to see a documentary, "German Girl" shot by a Singaporean director, about a shrine in Pulau Ubin for a German girl. There is at most 20 people there? Maybe 30. Very different from the situation here. Furthermore, I feel that German girl is a much more interesting documentary, probably because War Hospital did not really show anything I did not know/expected beforehand, while German Girl was about a totally strange phenomenal. Perhaps the free popcorn helped? However, even that failed to attract typical Singaporeans like MZ and SY. Sometimes I feel quite anti-social, doing so many things by myself. |
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Fire Alarm Part 2
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Just came back from watching a Dinos ice hockey match and some gymnastics competition, and the fire alarm sounded. Damn sway, 3rd fire alarm in the 1 month I have stayed here. Saw SY's Mexican roommate, Maite, and jokingly asked her if its her room that caused the fire alarm. Guess what, it really IS her room!! OMG, super foot in mouth incident. I dunno what to do now. She has to pay $500 I think. Sigh, me and my big mouth. Anyway today was supposed to go West Edmonton Mall, organised by the ISC. However, the tickets were filled fast, and we were unable to go. Our back up plan was to go skiing in the Olympic Park, but as usual, SY and MZ decided the day before that they were too tired and just want to rest at home.... So in the end, I just stayed in school and watched ice hockey and gymnastics. MZ was too tired and stayed in his room. SY went with me initially, but as usual again, went back at 8pm to talk to her bf. Yup, my exciting Yuan Xiao. Maybe I should have gone to the Taiwanese Society's gathering with Yoichi. Yoichi was a Japanese student I know. He was in the Taiwanese Society cause he's learning mandarin. At first, the gathering was supposed to be in school and I didn't mind joining them for a while, and then go watch hockey. In the end, it was changed to someone's house, and I don't know the Taiwanese Society people at all PLUS Yoichi had to leave early, so I decided to reject them and go watch hockey. Next weekend is the start of the mid term break. Planned to go Banff during the weekend, but now still waiting for ME to find a suitable lobang to go there. Sigh.... Later in the end they feel tired and pang seh again... |
Friday, February 10, 2006
Student Union
| Know why people keep saying that people are more involved in activities overseas compared to Singapore? This is because they get paid! Bloody hell the people in the Student Union here gets paid 32k CAD a year! Thats more than what most new graduates get in Singapore. And still there weren't many candidates, with a few positions having walkovers. |
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Comrades, Almost a Love Story
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Looks like the comrade spirit among the prcs here are also strong. Just came back from econ quiz, and a group of OLD prcs were discussing and copying answers. 10 simple MCQs only also want to copy, and copy so obviously some more. And when I say OLD, I mean OLD, they are uncles and aunties, most likely here for masters. tsk tsk But cannot criticise this school too much, cause Stephen Harper comes from here! Stephen Harper, the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada, has a masters in Economics from the University of Calgary. I guess the old people copying were not from the Econs department.. haha |
Testss
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Wah, today I was so damn late for the mid term exam, almost an hour late. Lucky for me the exam was during a lecture and the lecture is supposed to last for 1 and a half hours. Still got 30 min to do. Managed to finish it, but never check. Thanks to MZ for calling me! Even though he's calling me for some other reason, it woke me up and my first response is "SHIT". For some reason, I was holding on to my handphone when he called me, most probably meaning my phone alarm rang, and I reached out to switch it off and went back to sleep, without me realising! Damn scary, next time I'm going to put my phone on the table so that I need to get off the bed to switch it off. Anyway, was an hour late and I ran for my lesson without washing up, dirty and smelly, running in the cold. Super sian, now got another quiz, gtg. |
World View
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Canadians, in my opinion, are similar to the Americans in that they do not have a good idea of the world. For example, in the few weeks of studying here, most courses I took tend to take a Canadian view point. "The Canadian labour force is growing more diverse", "Canada's population is aging" etc In Singapore, probably cause we are a small and "insignificant" country, we tend to talk more about global phenomenons, and we will say the population of developed countries such as Japan and Canada are aging, for example. Also, watched a crappy reality gameshow called Beauty and the Geeks. The geeks are geeky and ugly, the beauties are stupid. In one segment, the host asked the beauties questions on science/politics etc, the brainy questions. One question goes like this, "What is the Capital of Iraq?". Its still probably ok to not know the capital of Iraq, but she asked the host to repeat Iraq, and after he repeated, she asked him to spell it out! In the end, she answered Afganistan. Credits to the Bush administration for successfully brainwashing the masses to lump Afgan and Iraq together, even though they may not know what's Iraq. |
Monday, February 06, 2006
Ski and Super Bowl
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Skiing was fun! Even though I was lousy and kept falling and couldn't get up after I fall, its still fun! Lucky there's an instructor to teach, or else will be even harder to learn. Sunshine Village is beautiful! Snow everywhere, there's even a frozen waterfall! The weather is also quite moderate and comfortable, not cold even though I'm wearing jeans while everyone else wore snow pants. The only terrible time is when I was on the ski chair and it started to snow. The chair was moving against the wind and the snow was hard. Jialat, can't even open my eyes, still have to keep a lookout for the end. Was going to the very top of the mountain, where there's bearly a tree in sight. The blizzard plus the lack of trees made the terrain look flat when it actually isn't (I think its called white blindness or something). Quite hard to ski there, especially for a lousy newb like me. Heard from my instructor that Kicking Horse has much more difficult terrain than Sunshine Village to ski in. Dunno how I'm going to survive there during the term break. This afternoon was the Superbowl. Seattle vs Steelers, this was my first NFL game. Quite boring, there are too damn many breaks and advertisements. The advertisements though, are quite funny and interesting, and there are a lot of different advertisements. However, these adverts are Canadian adverts. I heard that the adverts from USA are much more interesting and many companies spend millions to produce their adverts just for the Super Bowl. The halftime show for the Superbowl was boring too. The Rolling Stones, a bunch of old fogeys prancing around, actually quite comical. Don't understand why there's a whole big crazy crowd cheering for them. |
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Fire Alarm
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The fire alarms here (and I think in most homes) are very sensitive. Recently had a fire drill, where we were woken up at 6am and had to evacuate in the freezing cold. An hour ago, I was woken up by the fire alarm, again! Thats around 3 plus pm. Turns out someone's cooking created too much smoke, triggering the fire alarm in the corridor. Now, the system is that the fire alarm in the room will sound first when theres a fire. And the fire detector is extremely sensitive, it sounds even when I am boiling water. However, that detector does not trigger the building fire alarm, which is in the corridors. Therefore, when cooking, the door cannot be opened, in case the smoke gets out into the corridors and triggers those detectors. When triggered, the building fire alarm will activate the fire brigade automatically. When most residents cook, they will turn off the power for the room fire alarm, since its too sensitive and irritating. This kinds of defeats the purpose of having an internal fire alarm. Anyway, my guess is that this resident decided to cook and switched off his fire alarm. However, probably so much smoke was created that even the corridor alarms are set off, waking me up from my beauty sleep. And he stays a few rooms away from me only. Don't know what will happen to him, most likely will be fined $500 for negligence. Not sure though. Half an hour's time I will be having a quiz.. Sigh.. |
