First Year University

So I dusted off my first year at university...
well more or less, I have a few summer courses but whatever
For all intents and purposes, I have finished first year

As you all probably know (I hope), I've been studying sciences at the University of Victoria.
I learned a whole bunch of things but most importantly now I know how mid-life crises happen because I started out in September, blacked out and then suddenly I'm 8 months older and I can't remember what I was doing 5 minutes ago but I can give an incredibly basic version of quantum theory.
The 8 months spent in class felt like a long time at the time when I was slogging my way through them but now that I'm looking back, it all happened in an incredibly short amount of time.

Don't get me wrong, I had a fantastic time at UVic, met some great people, had some good times and I wouldn't trade it in for anything else (mainly because 'anything else' involves a lot of what if's).
I would've had an even greater time if I wasn't spending a lot of my time worrying about keeping my scholarship (which requires an 'A' average but allows me to pay less to attend UVic than attending Claremont) but whatever #yolo

But let's go over a few things in an interview with myself:

Were there huge parties and did I make millions of friends?
Not quite...
Yeah I did go to a few parties, yeah I made some new friends, but none of that was on the scale of what I told myself it should've been.
I guess I set my expectations too high but it was also due to being introverted and the fact that I was not living on residence and the fact that I had a pretty heavy workload throughout the school year.
Being an introvert, I find it a minor inconvenience talking to people but apparently a lot of people in university are introverts or masquerade as introverts because they tend to keep to themselves when they don't know anyone.
I also feel if I went to a different university and lived in dorms, I'd definitely know more people and have more fun.

What is the workload like?
For those wondering what the workload or what to expect of university, it all depends on your faculty.
In my opinion, here is the hierarchy of work with most work at the top and least work at the bottom:

Engineering

Sciences

Social Sciences / Business (don't actually know where to put business but since they don't have 3 hour labs, I'm putting them below sciences)/Humanities

Fine Arts

Its a very steady workload, almost routine, every week I had 1 physics assignment, labs for each of my science courses, 1 math homework assignment, 1 chem quiz. A lot of work but it was all manageable.

What is the transition from high school to university?

Just because you have an A+ average in high school, doesn't necessarily mean you'll ace through your years of university, you probably will but its not a guarantee.

I've heard stories of people who got all A's in high school and then they come to university and become manically depressed or stressed or both but that was from UVic Confessions so the authenticity of those stories are...debatable to say the least.

In my opinion (again), university lectures aren't too different than high school classes. You sit down and write down notes from slides or the board while your professor talks about it...that's about it...oh yeah and there's like 200 other people in there too, that's all.

What are some important things to keep in mind at university?

Well I'm glad you asked me, me.

Two IMPORTANT things for suceeding in university are a healthy work ethic and the ability to balance school life and social life. If you don't want an A, you pretty much just have to show up to a few classes and show up for the exams/midterms. But if you want to consistently score A's, being able to study and understand the concepts is incredibly crucial. If you don't know how to relax and de-stress, you are going to burn out and stop caring about school. I've experienced it first hand and I was pretty burned out all second semester.

What courses did you take and describe them in 1 sentence/phrase thing

Math 100 - child's play, assuming you have taken Calculus 12

Chem 101 - easy enough theory with a lab portion that tests your ability to decipher accents and follow instructions and most importantly of course, beware the dragon

Computer Science 110 - like learning a dialect of English coupled with a legendary TA (I <3 Sarshad)

Physics 120 - like shooting myself in the foot but its pretty much a do-over of physics 11/12 with calculus

English 135 - THE Andrew Murray (the man, the legend)...that is all

Math 101 - integration, integration and more integration featuring the most entertaining social train wreck that is Haggai (AKA Champ, and I do not mean that too kindly)

Physics 130 - like amputating my foot and I still don't understand wave stuff but Dr. Lefebvre's accent negates that

Astro 150 - pretty dry at first but it gets pree cool near the end and I am now forever imprinted with the fact that Einstein wrote 5 papers in 1905 WHILE working at a Swiss patent office as repeatedly decreed by the leader of Albert Einstein's official fan club, Dr. Bluck

Chem 102 - unfortunately contains environmental chemistry but features the brofessor himself, Dr. Brolo

RHCP Concert!!

Absolutely amazing in every way possible...
would be the best way to describe my weekend.

Starting off my blog, like the concert setlist

I've only been to a few major rock concerts, like concerts that you pay more than $50 for a ticket and is held in a stadium. The few that I have been to was...umm memorable I suppose you could say.
I've been to a Three Days Grace concert waaay back when I was in like grade 7 or 8 and I went deaf for a couple weeks.
I've been to a Roger Waters concert which was definitely memorable in that there were giant video wall blocks and elaborate stage set ups and well Roger Waters...



But I've gotta say, Red Hot blew everything out of the water, it went beyond all my expectations.


The night before was a good one, hanging out with Trevor, Brad, Konrad and Tina.
Konrad being the super swell guy he is, took us out for pizza at 1AM
I clocked about 3 hours of sleep friday night....or I guess saturday morning

So to kick off the monumental day, I sat in a Unicolour jam session and twas awesome. Apparently they're rusty, so if what I heard was an eargasm served on a drum stick then I wonder why not rusty sounds like.
After the Unicolour jam and a lovely breakfast made by the lovely TS, we broke the sound barrier to get to the ferry terminal to catch the 11AM ferry.

At least half the boat was decked out in Red Hot gear and the other half were Red Hot fans in disguise obviously, I mean there's no other reason to explain why you would ever want to go to Vancouver.
There were so many foot passengers on the boat that we missed all 3 buses that would take us to the skytrain station.
So Graeme did the natural thing while waiting in line for the next bus, he started a wave.

So after transiting around, we ended up at our hotel but we couldn't check in so we hung around McDs and ate dinner there.
Graeme's cousin came along and got our hotel room and lemme say this...
Our hotel room was SWANKY to put it in Fresh terms.
The room was like an apartment. We had 2 separate bedrooms, a "living room" and a bathroom, it was pretty friggin sweet, we was living in the lap of luxury.

We decked our selves out in our RHCP gear, facepaint and shirts, and headed off to Rogers Arena.
Unfortunately we took the long way around and we missed seeing Josh and Anthony coming out of their tour bus by literally 30 seconds.
We then spent the next few hours wandering around the arena looking for the right gate to get into. Eventually we settled in and started blasting out songs...while we were standing in line...for the show tonight...there was a light on...heavy glow...
The tour photographer came along while we were waiting and we got our photos taken and they might be used which is AWESOME

This is what I'm getting at

So for the promotion of the concert, they were advertising a new paperless ticket system to save money on tickets which is why the tickets were relatively inexpensive.
Welp when you swipe your credit card, guess what happens?
You get a paper ticket.
So we got paperless paper ticket or papered paper tickets or ticketless papers

We got in and booked it to our seats. Brad and I got decent seats that looked at the side of the stage and Graeme and Trevor got floor seats.

The opening band was Rebirth Brass Band, a brass jazz band from New Orleans and they were pretty tight. I mean all their songs sounded pretty much the same but they were grooving.

Then the lights dimmed, suddenly the somewhat full stadium filled up in the blink of an eye...

They were just there, jamming out

and the entire arena went nuts

There was a pretty damn awesome and elaborate stage set up. There was a giant asterisk on the stage that lit up with the giant screen behind it.
And hanging above the stage were these screen panels and halfway through the concert (around Raindance Maggie), the screens split into bars and hung low to the stage and it was so smooth that I didn't even notice until Brad pointed them out to me when they were almost half split.
There was also the 2nd coolest guys in the arena, working the spotlights.
They took a sketchy rope ladder to the platform where all the lights were and stayed up there for the entire concert...they are probably all badasses when not crewing for the band.

One of the night's favourites

ITs awesome how much energy their show has and how much energy the entire band just exudes.

I'm pretty sure Anthony had only 1 foot on the ground for half the concert because he was jumping and spinning all over the place.

Josh was swinging all over the place and rocking out

Flea was just crazy, he made the entire stadium looked like they were asleep (btw, there was no-one sitting down in the stadium)

Chad was pounding his drums so hard, it looked like he could pound out a tunnel to China

The setlist for the night was:

Monarchy of Roses

Around the World

Snow

Scar Tissue

Can't Stop

Hey

Throw Away Your Television

She's Only 18

The Adventures of Raindance Maggie

Charlie

Did I Let You Know

Under the Bridge

Look Around

Californication

By the Way

Encore

Suck My Kiss

Soul to Squeeze

Give It Away

You could tell who brought weed because they all took out their lighters to wave when this song came on

And they didn't just play those songs, they pretty much jammed between every song

And if you were a real fan (like Graeme and Trevor), you could pretty much predict most of the songs (that means I couldn't predict the songs)

I feel like I got second-hand high again but it wasn't as bad as Roger Waters (maybe because I was on the floor for Roger Waters and there was a haze of smoke (not from the smoke machines if you get what I'm saying) over the floor).

I did get super hungry halfway through the concert though.

Lot of parents brought their kids and either smoked in front of their kids or their kids smoked in front of them...great parenting eh? But then again they did bring their kids to the concert...

After the wild concert, we waited at the backdoor to see the band. It started off as 7 or 8 of us and it grew to a small crowd. After an hour we got to see all 4 band members.

None of them signed autographs but it was still awesome to see them.

I don't really blame them either because they were probably tired and they had a show the next day.

Flea gave a heartbreaking apology for not signing stuff and he was genuinely sad.

But still, we got to see them in person, less than 2 meters from us.

After that, we went to 7-11 and McDon's again and after filling up on food, we crashed for 3 hours

So I got about 6 hours of sleep the entire weekend and all of them were at like 3 in the morning.
Pretty hardcore

It has been the MOST AMAZING weekend of my life so far.

First Month of University

So its been a full month of university so far and this is my current outlook on it.

Tired

I fall asleep tired, and I wake up tired

Welp, I'm done now, you don't have to read any more if you don't want to.

(a little music to keep you sane while you read through a small epitaph)

But assuming you're reading this, I'll go into more detail.

Don't be discouraged by all the horrible details that are about to follow.
I mean I love university.
It's great, my brain is thinking like it's never thought before
It feels great to have my brain running this fast and processing this much information
Of course most of the time I feel dumb, but when I don't feel dumb, I feel enlightened
Like if Buddha descended from on high and told me the meaning of life, that kind of enlightened.
No, I don't know the meaning of life but you can try 42.

So a tip if you are registering for classes, don't pick 8:30AM classes unless absolutely necessary
You might think you can handle it...lemme break your delusion now...you can't...adequately (and this is coming from the guy who used to go to high school at 7:30)
Every morning I go in for an 8:30 class, I'm thinking "What was I thinking??"
It's not a good way to start off your day.

Also when registering for classes, you probably don't want to stack class on class on class so you only get a 10 minute break between classes (and that's barely enough time to get to your next class depending on your building).
Not only are you running to your next class, you also lose out on any good seats. Sitting in the back usually results in a lack of attention to what's going on.
Unless you're the question guy in my chemistry lecture and you ask a question every single, bloody lecture.

As of now, I'm a little behind on my physics readings...like 5 chapters
So moral of that sentence is don't fall behind in anything or else you're pretty much screwed

Tests from high school are replaced by midterms in university
Except the midterms are pretty tough... (depending on your class)
and you get less time to write a midterm in university than you do for a test in high school.
So I hope you don't plan on thinking too much during a midterm but don't think too little.

Also the amount of work you get is dependent on the faculty you're in.
So if you signed up for Engineering or Science, you can kiss your social life good-bye (not that I had a blooming social life anyhow)
And the workload per major faculty after Engineering and Science (excluding Business since I haven't really talked to anyone in Business) is as follows from large workloads to parties every night:
-Social Sciences
-Humanities
-Fine Arts (not entirely sure that everyone in the Fine Arts faculty is sane)

Math 100...
it's going well, I aced my first midterm (well this being 3rd time around, I certainly hope so)
We are covering a section each lecture (which I think is kinda slow) but the questions are getting tougher.
Probably doesn't help when the professor publicly announces that the 2nd midterm will be ALOT tougher.

English 135
I'm liking it alot but that's because of my instructor who is without a doubt, the best human being on Earth...in that room. It's pretty slow, you go over how to write an essay and grammar and stuff like that. But the instructor sure makes it entertaining.

By the way, my English professor was rapping this in one of my classes

Yeah he's that awesome.

Chemistry 101
I'm liking all the course material we're learning. For the first time since Chem11, I feel like I'm learning something. I can brag that I know a bit of quantum theory and feel like a genius.

The lab sections on the other hand...are an entirely different story.
I'm usually one of the last to leave
Every time I have a lab, it's like a bad comedy show how bad I screw up sometimes because I'm
a) clumsy
b) inattentive
c) momentarily lapsing  into stupidity
My TA even told me that I need to be more efficient during the actual lab time so you know shits serious

Physics 120
Apparently the physics taken for a physics and astronomy degree is easier than the general science physics that other science majors are taking. That being said, I felt like I did alright on the midterm or I spectacularly failed it...probably the latter.
But we're pretty much rehashing physics 11 and 12 with calculus and tougher questions.

For the lab sections, I want to cry every time I get to the discussion because there's usually an impossible question to solve. Either cry or flip the work bench that is bolted into the ground.
Other than that, physics labs are alright because all the work (experiment, lab write up and all) are done in the lab so there's no homework to take home like chemistry.

Computer Science 110
Well...
It's frustrating, that's for sure
Steep learning curve too I suppose
Computer programming is so finicky, its like an entire different language written in English...so that thing Scottish people speak pretty much.
Programming in it is like speaking a foreign language that you don't know entirely so you risk offending your host family and then getting thrown out on the streets.
On the bright side, I feel like a god when I solve a problem, like the last question on the midterm...which unfortunately took 15 minutes of my 50 minutes of allotted time.

Also I would like to say that I have the best CompSci lab instructor ever. Sarshad will live forever through my computer programs

First Week of University

University...
My first week at Uni...
What could possibly go wrong?

September 4th, 2012
This day was orientation day for all new students. We were split up into faculties and then into tour groups. We went to a bunch of science buildings and I found out where I need to go for labs and lectures. We also went to a few presentations (a faculty of science presentation, a time management presentation (a bunch of groups showed up late for that, oh the irony!) and a small skit play thing (apparently at university parties, you notice all the different flavours of chips there are)

Then there was the opening convocation which was slow.
Got to listen to Craig Kielburger though.
Now the method I use to determine whether a speaker is good or not is by how well they can hold my attention without me trying. When I listen to someone, I don't want to force myself to pay attention (I have a feeling I'll be doing that with my professors at one point or another), they should be able to grab my attention and hold it. Don't get me wrong, he's inspirational, amazing, selfless and all that, he even met Mother Theresa, I mean who gets to do that? But technically by my standards, he wasn't that great of a speaker.

Oh yeah and then there was free food and free swag everywhere and I got awkwardly cornered by a Christian group that wanted to invite me to their BBQ and that got really awkward really fast.

September 5th, 2012
Welp...I showed up late for my 1st University lecture ever (Math 100) by a few minutes and every seat in the house was taken (that's 200) and I had to sit on the stairs (I lost all sense of feeling in my ass). Then after the lecture, there were a bunch of students who lined up to meet the professor (who has a wicked accent by the way) and I immediately thought "kiss-ups" and then I thought "wait, I'm supposed to do that too..."
Math 100 is looking slightly bleak, mainly because I haven't done any math for 2 months and I can't remember a lot of the precalculus skills.
English was kinda reminiscent to high school, mainly because the actual classroom is smaller than every high school classroom I've been in and there were upwards of 40 or so people crammed in there.
Physics was the first class where I actually had to take notes...can't wait for the rest of them...

September 6th, 2012
The great thing about university is you can set your own classes so I didn't need to go to class until 11. Life is good...
In Computer Science (CSC110), my teacher started typing out a bunch of gibberish (well to me it was), it was like he was speaking a whole other language...which he was...and it was Java.
In hindsight, it was a bad idea to scrunch together a bunch of classes with only 10 minutes in between to get to each one because for each class, there is a group of wait listed students who want a piece of the pie and they come in early and hog all the seats so getting good seats is a hit and miss.

The general vibe I'm getting at university is not exactly a comforting one but hey it's only been 2 days. In lectures, I'm alright, apart from the 200+ people sitting in the same room, squeaking in their chairs. But outside of class, it's completely different. Unless you've made a substantial amount of new friends, you feel kinda isolated and alone (or at least I do). Its not exactly easy to make new friends either when every time I turn around, I see a Claremont grad, which is nice to see a familiar face but it also hinders the process of making new friends.
Can't really help but feel that if I HAD chosen UBC, I'd have at least 20 gazillion new friends instead of here where I have made none yet. But again it's only been a few days, I'll start worrying about being antisocial 3 months from now if I still haven't made any new friends

September 7th, 2012
So Math, blah, been there done that, we're moving slower than I thought we would, not that I'm complaining.
English, writing a diagnostic essay, which is basically an essay to diagnose how terminally ill our English skills are after summer.
And that's it
I ended at 12:20
and I do that every Friday for this entire semester
Admit it....you're jelly

Oh yeah and there's these weird washrooms at the Student Union Building (SUB) that are multi-use, genderless washrooms. Basically there are no boys or girls washrooms so its a bit awkward...yeah
My friends decided to go to the washroom together...yeah...

The Oregon Expedition

Back when I was a wee young lad, I'd email my friends en masse of my goings during my vacations which I guess they may or may not have found it annoying. But now I have a blog so everyone can read at their leisure without me spamming their inboxes. Instead, I will now clog their Facebook news feed.

DAY 1 (July 1)
What a better way to celebrate Canada Day than going out of the country? We left Victoria via the MV Coho and entered Port Angeles at 12. We had a lovely lunch of McDonalds for lunch and proceeded to drive our way to Astoria, Oregon. Along the way, I spotted: 15 sketchy fireworks stands 8 deserted expresso shacks and the place where I first ate beef jerky
We entered Astoria around 5ish and proceeded to take up residence in a Comfort Suites Inn. And I must say this hotel room I'm sitting in is incredibly classy for a chain hotel room. It's so classy, I'm not even going to bother explaining what it looks like. But anyhow, we left to go eat dinner and I had the MOST AMAZING STEAK I'VE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE EVER at the Baked Alaskan. That's right folks, the Baked Alaskan, gets the coveted "Michael Situ Seal of Approval and Reccomendation" so whenever you're in Astoria, check them up!
When I eat at a restaurant, I expect to dine at a culinary level above what I usually eat. Unfortunately, my parent's are incredibly competent in cooking so they usually are parallel and on par to what most restaurant's serve or even higher dare I say. It's really rare where I find a restaurant that is truly amazing.
But don't worry, I proceeded to crap my pants when we decided to climb the Astoria Column, a giant tower situated above the town. Did I mention I'm deathly afraid of heights, well we climbed inside a concrete tube and ended up way above ground level so I practically died climbing up.

this was taken with my back to the wall of the tower, not by the railing

Whenever I get near heights, I suddenly start imagining all these gruesome ways I fall off and explode into a million pieces on the ground below. I'm fine in enclosed spaces like buildings high up or planes but I don't do open air well.

getting some use out of my panoramic thing on my camera

DAY 2 (July 2)
I just realized that my days correspond with the day of the month, funny how that works out.
So apparently everyone in Oregon parks like me, and I park like the asian amongst asians, which is really bad. I guess whenever we drive around, my bad driving just forms a radius of influence and makes everyone park wonky.
And another thing, what is up with all these espresso shacks? I mean wherever I go, there are like these 1 room shacks that make espressos and they are everywhere...out in the boonies, in the middle of cities, in rural villages, I mean do farmers just wake up and go for a nice espresso in the morning??

Anyhow, I'll get back on track, woke up, left Astoria and ended up at a small time at the sea side called Seaside. I see the Americans are very literally and original. What better way to go to the beach than in rainy weather?? Looks like the weather from Victoria followed us down to Oregon because it was raining while we walked around. Downtown Seaside is literally a 6 block rectangle so we walked it and went on our merry way.

my brother and I pull a Lewis and Clark

We stopped for lunch at McDonalds again and I got a 20pc Chicken Nugget meal, the infamous meal that Trevor kept on talking about everytime we passed a McDonalds when I went to DCON for Key Club.
We made a stop at Cannon Beach, an even smaller town/village/hamlet that is famous for...its beach, yeah you guessed it! Well the beach wouldn't be that special if it weren't for the giant 200 foot rock just off shore, called Haystack Rock. So yeah we wandered around downtown Cannon Beach which was like a 4 block square so that took even less time.

omg, a giant rock

Then we booked it to Tillamook, the site of its world famous Cheese factory. Apparently ice cream is a subset of cheese because they served some pretty damn good ice cream there too. If you've ever watched Looney Toons and saw the factories characters got chased around in, that is pretty much the factory at Tillamook. They had this funky looking spiral packaging thing that came over top of a big block of cheese and for all I know dwarves wrapped up the cheese in airtight package because that's what came out after 5 seconds.
I also saw the flavour Mint Chocolate Chip...*cough* Unicolour *cough* (Yeah I know, that's a temporary name but still)
We then proceeded to Lincoln City, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter expert. He apparently endorses outlet malls because we stayed there to shop for 3 hours. I mean, that's pretty much the only thing tourists do when they go to Lincoln City, well apart from seeing the silver axe Abe used to kill many of his prey.
After that we hit up Newport and that is currently where I'm residing.
According to my calculations and projections, I'll be home around thursday or friday which means I get to experience the 4th of July in America...and I've probably passed 50 fireworks tents so this should be interesting...

DAY 3 (July 3)
So looking back at my previous entries, I realize that I'm making these a bit large, so I'll try to tone it down, that being said, I'm wasting space right now.

Today started off in Newport, we walked through the historic district, which is basically a street on the harbour edge. The entire district stank of fish but it was a fishing town.

isn't he cute???

After that, we blasted off to Florence...Oregon, not Italy.
You know your town is kinda in the boonies when your A&W still does that old fashioned thing where you drive up to the restaurant, order from your car and they bring your food to your car with a tray that hooks onto your window. Or if you order inside the restaurant, they bring your burgers to your table.

rocking it old school

Anyhow after lunch in Florence, we moved on to the meaty part of the day. We went to Sandland Adventures.
Now if you're wondering where Sandland comes from, there is a desert just outside of Florence...yeah a desert. So Sandland, provides tours of the sand dunes via dune buggies. Now if you're a senior citizen, you go for the slow riding giant tour bus-esque buggie. You could literally ride a bike faster than it...or at least I'm guessing because I'm young and hip and exciting so I went on the super fast one. That one will for sure put some hair on your chest. I was placed in the front seat so I was sucking sand the entire time...AND IT WAS AWESOME. The driver really knew his stuff, he tackled giant dunes like it was nothing.
If you're ever going to the Oregon coast, make sure you check out Sandland Adventures in Florence, Oregon, you won't regret it.

desert anyone?

After Florence, we booked it to Woodburn, Oregon, the site of a giant outlet mall where we've stopped for the day. You can assume, that I did some shopping. Tomorrow we conquer Portland.

If you're wondering how we get from place to place so fast, it's because my dad likes to travel somewhere near the land speed record and we practically fly everywhere

I've been noticing some signs everywhere I've gone so far on the coast that say: Oregon Coast Bike Route. That gets me thinking about how my life is pretty dull and boring. I mean leaving my house is considered an exciting day. So one day, I hope to bike the Oregon Coast Bike Route because if I don't do it now while I'm young, I'm probably never going to get the chance. Toss that onto the bucket list.

Another thing I realized on this trip is how beautiful the world is. I mean you don't see sights like these around Victoria, it's amazing how beautiful it is out here and how little humanity has touched it. Standing atop high locations, I can see how little we've disturbed the land and its hard to think that despite how little we've developed the land, we're still causing climate change or damaging ecosystems.

isn't it beautiful?

DAY 4 (July 4)
Happy America Day! or Independence Day!
Even as I sit down and type this out, everyone and their grandma are lighting off fireworks and its not even dark yet. I can't wait for the rest of this night...
I guess all those fireworks tents that we passed by are finally showing their colours...literally.
So the day started off in Woodburn and that's all it did at Woodburn because we were out of there before you could say 'Good Morning'
We hit Portland and visited the Japanese Gardens. It was so nice and peaceful in there and when it's nice and peaceful, I like to think deep, introspective thoughts. I was thinking so much that I walked into a tree. My brother and I then proceeded to disturb the tranquility of the park by banging every single gong we could find at the gift shop, right before we read the sign that said "Please respect the tranquility of the gardens"...whoops.

peaceful and tranquil...until we came along

Next door to the Japanese Gardens is their Rose Garden. The bloody thing is like the size of Buchart Gardens (ok maybe that's a stretch but still). There are so many different types of roses there, and its free admission too!
 After the nice beauty of nature, we hit up downtown Portland and walked around a bit. The downtown is really nice and clean. Apparently all the buskers have been killed off and replaced with ghetto drummers. Basically it's a drummer who is hitting a bunch of plastic buckets and metal rings and making funky beats. We passed like 5 of them in the short time we were there and there were no other buskers.

acoustic drumming at its pinnacle of evolution

After that we hopped back into the car and drove all the way into Seattle just in time to see the Pike Place Market close up. So we'll have to try again tomorrow morning. We ended up at a seafood restaurant at the Seattle waterfront. I don't know if I was in the right area or what but I didn't see a lot of people in american colours waiting for fireworks. Of course, I could be in the wrong section of town but whatever.

Now I might sound like a hippie by the way I describe the splendour of  nature but in addition to loving the sight of unspoiled natural scenes, I also love seeing modern cities with highways stacked on top of each other with a nice rugged skyline. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy nature and if its within my ability to do so, I will be environmentally conscious but the ability for humanity to build giant skyscrapers is pretty friggin awesome.


DAY 5 (July 5)
As I type this, I'm sitting on the BC ferries ride home shaking because the boat is trembling.

I didn't get any sleep between the chainsaw snoring of my dad and the boom of fireworks. So I struggled over to the Pike Street Market and my entire life was made. I found a legit and real keffiyeh scarf (or as I lovingly refer to as my arabic desert scarf etc.) at a little Afghan store. My entire trip was made, I'm set for life.
Anyhow, the Pike Street Market is a gigantic maze of vendors that sell food, fish, trinkets, clothes and just about everything in between that is sellable at a market. There was even an ocarina vendor and she had replicas of the Ocarina of Time and was playing the Song of Time...like a boss.

looks legit..

So the first real Starbucks also started at Pike Street so of course, my dad hit that up and got his 50th cup of morning coffee that day.

definitely legit

There are actually no big name stores like American Eagle or stuff like that, only local vendors, cafes, bakeries and stores so it provides a nice environment for tourists.

looked more crowded in person

After spending 2 hours or so at the Pike Street Market, we proceeded to the Space Needle. Turns out the Space Needle is in a compound that also contains a bunch of other tourist attractions like the EMP. However, we were getting tired of living the tourist life and the lineup for tickets to get to the Space Needle was probably longer than the Needle itself and that's not counting the line for the elevators to the top so we just ate lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant and headed back to the car.

well it looked nice

However along the way, we cut across the KOMO head quarter's courtyard square and a news chopper flew by to the helipad and blew dust everywhere. It also blew my jacket back so I looked like a badass. Just felt I needed to put that in.

Anyhow we were heading back to Vancouver via the Pacific Track X-Crossing (because honestly, the Peach Arch is overrated and takes waaaay to long) and the traffic heading into Vancouver was so long that we just decided that we'd head straight to the ferry instead of to Richmond (as true Asians would)
and now here I am...

Overall I'd say the trip was very fun. I got to do some things I'd never do at Victoria, I got some sick new stuff and a couple of souvenirs and a ton of photos.

By the way, fun fact, it is illegal to pump your own gas at gas stations in Oregon. Yup...

Last Week of High School

So I've finished my last week of high school education (not that I've learned anything for the past 2 weeks as its all been review)

I would like to say that this week has been one of the best in my life so far, one that is by far the most positive experiences ever.
But I can't because it has been a disgusting week, packed to the brim with all kinds of stress inducing situations.

I'm absolutely positive that all my teacher's meet in an underground cult layer, chanting incantations to bring about the downfall of my grades because they plotted to make my last week the worst one ever.

I had 3 midterms, 2 tests, 1 mock exam, 1 presentation, 1 lab in this week and then next week its 4 exams in 3 days and then the week after that, its the english provincial.

Can't imagine how those people with 20 spares in their timetable managed this week.
Everyone is saying how fast it came and how they're not ready or it came too soon but they also couldn't wait.
This week has been one of the most agonizingly slow weeks ever, I could feel myself growing old everytime I touched my notes.
These past few months, it feels like I'm trading a piece of my personality for a good score on tests but that might just be me wearing out after straight academics from grade 11 until now.

So I've studied like mad this entire week and I like to think I destroyed most of it

Towards the end of the week, I guess I burned myself out? Never happened before but I just lost the momentum I built up and all that was running through my head was this:

Thanks to Graeme for getting that mantra stuck in my head.

Don't get me wrong,
this week was definitely memorable, from the giant waterfight to the last jazz band practice where we played some songs that we haven't played since Mr. K was teaching (nostalgia is a beautiful thing, no?) to all the people who signed my yearbook to the countdown to the last Key Club meeting.

High school has been a great experience to me
I'll do an in-depth post of my entire high school career after the grad ceremony


EDIT: well the debacle with the Grad song was cute too but you know, nothing like a good argument to get the brain thinking and to keep you on your toes

UVIC...I choose YOU!!!

So as the title suggests, I've selected UVIC as my university for undergraduate studies for Physics and Astronomy.

This was a gigantic and colossal decision that I made.

If you read my earlier blog post about the trouble I had deciding, you'd know that it was the logical side vs. emotional side. The logical side picked UVIC from the outset and set it's uhh mind i guess on it whereas the emotional side clung to UBC.

Evidently, the logical side repressed the emotional side (as usual) but this time, the emotional side went down with a fight or flail I guess.

Even though I know I made a good decision based on my future, I feel like I forget that I live in the present.
I know I will miss new experiences and feelings because I'm going to UVIC instead of UBC and I feel sad because I'm missing out.

"Stop moping!" shouts the logical side of my brain, "It's not like you go out and party your brains out! What could you possibly be missing out on that you would enjoy??"
"Well I'd be missing out on residence, parties (not that I'd really have that much fun there), the feeling you get when you're alone without supervision, living in a new city etc." quips the emotional side as it is dragged kicking and screaming back to its box

A few things helped propel me into UVIC's arms:
-One of my friends quoted an article that resonated inside my mind.
"When something is new we have the tendency to want it because some part of our brain is activated, but it wears off over time when we just end up remembering we wanted it and therefore still want it, but when we get it we don't feel the satsifaction we were expecting because that part of the brain has already calmed back down."
-I talked to one of my teachers who suggested that I go back to UBC to see if I still felt the vibe I felt when I first visited and make sure it just wasn't what the quote above says. Well I certainly felt something but I had no idea what I felt
-I emailed my cousin and a friend who went to both UBC and UVIC and see what they had to say.
Ironically enough, the one who left UBC sounds like they promote UBC and the one who left UVIC sounds like they promote UVIC more. But both left solid impressions
-I thoroughly explored the astronomy buildings of UBC and UVIC (well not UVIC so much, but I did look around, but they do have swively chairs)