Here at UBC, most instructors don’t use the bell curve to grade their students. This is a good thing, because students can be more relaxed while learning, instead of having to deal with unhealthy, intense competition for fear of falling behind others. Learning is really an enjoyable process here, but it’s quite a shame that many students here skip classes half the time (all my unit mates do that)… while I’ve only missed one single class so far. This is quite weird, since I’m on exchange and I should be the one missing more classes (so I can go out and have fun).

This afternoon an incident occurred at the Biological Science building. Apparently there was a ‘threat’ of some sort there and the police were called in. The UBC administration immediately locked down the entire campus at about 3pm – students were advised to stay home if they were not in campus yet, or to stay where they were if they were already on campus. There were ambulances, police cars and even a helicopter… wow… I wonder what happened.

The mood was mostly relaxed anyway, with students and instructors joking about what might have happened, and how we should cancel classes, etc. One of my classmates was saying that he and his friends were standing around at the scene waving to the helicopter! Haha… In any case we were quite a distance from that building so I guess it was OK. An hour later, another announcement was made to cancel the campus-wide lockdown with the exception of the Bio Science building.

Here’s the latest update:

A threat was received from an unknown person indicating the potential of harm to others earlier this afternoon at the Bio Sciences Building.

The RCMP was informed and took operational control to lock down, search and escort people out of the building.

During this period of lockdown, the campus community was cautioned to stay where they were located, to remain alert to their surroundings, and to report any suspicious circumstances to the RCMP at 911.

The Bio Sciences Building has now been cleared by the RCMP and turned back over to the University. While UBC is relieved the situation has been resolved, it emphasizes that issuing threats is a serious criminal offence and will lead to police investigation and criminal charges. Conviction for threatening serious bodily harm or death can lead to a prison sentence of up to five years.

Last night it snowed heavily… the heaviest snow I’ve encountered since coming here. It snowed all the way until noon today. When I went out at 5pm, the snow was a few inches deep. Everything looks so different when covered by snow… it was really nice, except that the roads are slippery and I nearly slipped several times.

Some people took the rare opportunity to make snowmen just outside our residence area… it was quite funny, having 3 snowmen in the middle of nowhere. They must have spent a lot of time on it, ‘cos the biggest one was taller than me!

Wine tasting day again! I suck at it… I think I will fail the practical exam (which is to do blind tasting of wine and identify them) if I don’t buck up and start doing homework! Tomorrow I shall go to the BC Liquor Store to buy some homework =)

I made chicken curry today using the spice pack I brought from home. It was pretty nice this time round, not like the first couple of times when I screwed up.

It’s my residence mate’s birthday today, so he had a drinking session with his friends at the Pit Pub at the Student Union Building (SUB) tonight. I went to make my appearance for a while, drink a couple glasses and bought a pitcher of beer for him, then make a quick exit cos I’ve got nothing much to talk to his friends about (and vice versa). It was quite awkward, but well I tried.

These couple of days I suddenly realized how much older I am getting. OK, for my readers who are above 25, sorry… but it’s the truth – I’m probably about 4 – 5 years older than most of my classmates here at UBC. That’s the effect of having to serve NS.

I find myself in a situation where I’m really short of common interests and topics with them because we’ve got kind of a generation gap. I mean, yesterday I was telling some of them that I am thinking of going for a Bon Jovi concert and they went like “What, Bon Jovi?”. You know, I got no choice but to admit I’m really getting old-er (Bon Jovi had a song called “Older”, by the way… where he admitted he’s getting old-er).

It also doesn’t help that I’ve got different interests from many people my age too… I mean, seriously, how many 25 year olds are into Bon Jovi and Chyi Chin nowadays? And… wine (for me) vs hard liquor or beer.

I’ve always thought and told all my friends that I’ll never ever go for a PhD… ‘cos it would limit my career options severely. However, these days I’ve been seriously considering the possibility of doing one.

The thing is, I’ve come to realized that what’s good for myself may not be what I like… and what I really like may not be what’s best for myself. To do a PhD is really not something I would love, but I think it will get me to where I want – a good financial position to do other things I really like and want to do in future.

So if I do go for PhD, it’ll just be a stepping stone towards (hopefully) better things in the future. Right now I just want to focus on doing a good job in my undergrad years to get a good position where I’ll have more options to choose from.

Anyway, it was a hectic day for me as most Mondays are. I’ve been busy the entire day with classes and projects. And I only slept 3 hours this morning because my unit mate next door was playing with his new Xbox 360 and it was so loud. I didn’t ask him to turn it down because I thought I’ll just tolerate for a night and see if he does it again. If so, then I’ll ask him to try to keep it down after midnight.

Until this morning, I thought we were going to Grouse Mountain. It turned out that we went to Mount Seymour instead… it appeared that there were some miscommunications (either I didn’t hear properly or I understood wrongly). But it was alright, it doesn’t matter to me since Mount Seymour is supposed to be more competitively priced for basic skiing lessons package.

I woke up at 6+ in the morning, went out at 7. Three hours and three transfers later, we were at Mount Seymour. The view was nice but not spectacular, it’s mostly a mountain built for skiing and snowboarding and nothing much else.

We took up a package that costs $80 per pax for rentals, lift tickets and a lesson. Quite cheap compared to places like Whistler where lift tickets alone cost that much. We also had the bargaining power to lower the rates from $90+ (individual rates) to $80, which was a group rate that supposedly required advanced booking. There were about 15 of us.

Learning how to ski was fun, but tiring because the skis and shoes were heavy and quite difficult to control for a newbie like myself. And it got quite frustrating after a while because I just couldn’t get it right. Hmmm, I guess as I previously thought, I’m probably not very into skiing. I’ll stick to more idiot-proof activities next time like sightseeing tours, rides, etc.

The weather was actually just cloudy in the morning, with a temperature of 3 degrees Celsius. However, as the day went along, it started to snow and got quite heavy by early evening.

We wanted to leave on the 6pm shuttle bus. However, at just ten past six, a minivan pulled over and the driver told us that the big bus couldn’t come up because the road was covered in snow and the snow ploughing vehicle broke down. There was already quite a queue, and the minivan could only take 9 people at a time. We had no choice but to wait in the snow at what we estimated to be a temperature of -10 degrees.

Some other groups decided to ski or snowboard their way down the mountain (that’s crazy!), a few chose to walk down… it was about a 2 hours or so walk down in the heavy snow.

We finally got on the minivan after toughing it out in the snow for about 2 hours. Our clothes and backpacks were all covered in centimeters of snow by then. Whew. On the way down, the driver picked up some people who were walking down and were freezing because of the weather. He yelled at them “What the F*** are you guys doing, you’re F***ing mad!”… and then let them squeeze in with us. A few of those in our group had to take the next ride down since the van wasn’t big enough to carry all of us and they came out later.

We finally got back to the Skytrain station at 9+pm, had pizza for dinner and went back home. What a day.

View of West Coast Express trains from outside Waterfront station…

Prima Taste Vancouver (Laksa for $10+!)…

Famous steam clock at Gastown…

Lots of birds bathing…

Go Fish! (It’s the cafe’s name)…

Fish and cheaps, yummy!

Fisherman’s wharf…

View of Granville Street bridge…

The pic’s not big enough, but there was a huge bird sitting comfortably on a huge stretch limo, looking happy…

This morning I woke up early to go queue up for a chance at getting cheap accommodation in Whistler during the Spring Break week. They had a really good system to avoid having people camping out – numbers were given out, and then they had a lucky draw to see which number would go first… and then everyone else would go in sequence. So everyone had an equal chance of being first in line and there’s no need to camp out at all.

I got the date I wanted – was pretty lucky, because there were just a few places left for that particular day.

 It’s groceries shopping day again. I went out thinking of doing my usual groceries shopping and maybe check out some winter clothing, but while on the bus I saw some really nice scenery and decided on a whim to get off the bus to check it out and take a photo or something, then hop on back to the next bus again.

 Well, it was more than two hours before I got back on track. I walked down a residential street towards the view of mountains which caught my attention, and ended up at a beach. I didn’t even know where I was, so I whipped out my trusty phone and checked the GPS… so it turned out that I was at Kitsilano Beach.

 The spoiler was the beach itself. The sand was low quality and quite dirty, it was mostly gravel actually. However, the view was wonderful as you will see in my photo post for today.

I actually walked through the entire park, ending up at Granville Island again. This time, I went to the Fishermen’s Wharf where I had lunch at a shack selling fish and chips and other stuff. The place is called “Go Fish!”, and the food was pretty good, albeit a little pricey at $7.50 for a single cod fish fillet and fries. It was pretty weird eating fish and chips outdoors on a cold day (3 degrees) though, but the experience was unique I guess. It’s somewhere I’ll probably go back to for more, cos its good but of course with my budget limitations in mind, it’ll be quite a while before I go back again. Actually, I must say that $7.50 is considered quite reasonably low-priced already by the standards here… 

So I took a bus from Granville Island to downtown, where I was intending to search for a shop I chanced upon by accident while losing my way on my first few days here. I managed to lose my way again (yes, while equipped with a GPS!). Well, I got on the right track at the end, but I was too tired then to continue and opted to go get my groceries and go back home instead.

It’s a really fun day. I like the experience of losing my way, and then just taking my time to wander aimlessly around, looking at interesting things and people, without any pressure or stress to move on. Along the way today I found the famous steam-powered clock at Gastown, and also went to the Waterfront station where they had SeaBuses going to North Vancouver, West Coast Express Railway to some suburbs and the Skytrain that I took to get back home. 

Oh, another culture shock I got here is that for some reason Kleenex here costs $3+ for a single box. Don’t know where the paper comes from, but it must be really good to cost that much! I buy the el cheapo dollar or less a box type, and they are just… normal tissue, not inferior in anyway I know.

I’ll be going to Grouse Mountain tomorrow. Everyone’s here really into skiing, and there are plenty of mountains around here… time to try it out for myself.

This caught my attention today. Quite laughable. I’ve never heard of earthquakes in this part of BC… not sure about elsewhere, but heck… Australia’s quite crazy - I remember they had a history of issuing travel warnings for the slightest matters.

 http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gFY7RoDOJgR8VycbDmKBsHpdvXtg

Extract:

As Canadian tourism officials prepare to launch a new campaign next week to promote Canada as a place for Australian tourists to “keep exploring,” travellers from Down Under may have second thoughts if they take the advice of their own government’s “Smart Traveller” website.

It has a warning posted about travel to The Great White North.

The website, which is run by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has Canada listed as a country where travellers should “exercise caution,” which is the second-lowest rating out of five - the highest being “do not travel.”

Australians are advised to be cautious because of “the risk of a terrorist attack” in Canada, heavy snow, windchill and ice in the winter, and forest fires that can erupt “at any time.”

British Columbia, in particular, was singled out as being in an active earthquake zone and “subject to avalanches,” along with Alberta.

Umm… the best part is, BC is such a huge province, and they’ve singled out the entire province without specific mention of what areas.