Toronto

Quick note here.

Had a very nice Christmas, hope all you people did too. Was relaxing, and I got to eat ham and turkey too =D

I'm staying at my uncle's at the moment, stole one of my cousin's rooms, and yeah, doing Toronto-like stuff.

Went to Niagara Falls on Boxing day, which are very large, and kinda impressive. Unfortunately it was a little foggy, but it cleared up enough for me to get some decent shots. Can't be bothered putting photos up at the moment, so I guess you'll all see then when I get back home. (or when I put photos up later).

Today (the 27th) I went into downtown Toronto, to look at stuff. I went to the Eaton Centre, which is a big shopping centre in the middle of city, and I wanted to go to CN Tower too, but I stood at the bottom, and couldn't see the top for all the fog. I figured I therefore wouldn't be able to see much of the bottom from the top, so I saved myself the $35 admission and didn't bother.

I did go to the Hockey Hall of Fame (ice hockey unfortunately), which was rather big, and had a bunch of jerseys, and skates, and lots of other stuff. They had a couple of cool little games, which I didn't bother doing. They involved being a goalie and shooting, with real stuff mixed with animations. In the end, they didn't really work too well anyway.

I saw a movie about the Stanley Cup (NHL trophy), which was very poorly narrated, and had little to no structure. They also said that the Stanley Cup was the toughest and most sought-after trophy in all of team sport.... pffft.. Americans.

And that's about it. Not sure how much I'll be posting from now on... I'll try to do at least one more before I go. Seeya later =)

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas..

And I'm getting one too =D .. I think

That's the frozen waterfall I saw on the train =) I think it's pretty cool =P

It's Christmas where most people reading this blog are, so Merry Christmas to you all. I hope you have a wonderful time, however you spend it, and hope you have a Happy New Year too.. if I don't get to post again before that.

The Art Gallery of Alberta (formerly the Edmonton Art Gallery) is undergoing a reconstruction, thus currently, there is a temporary Art Gallery is located in a few rooms of an office building (admittedly quite a large office building).

In the art gallery there is an exhibit called "The Fun House." It is a collection of perhaps a dozen contemporary pieces which they say are an attempt to create the mindset that the pieces of art aren't actually pieces of art at all, but real-world objects.

The artists attempt to encourage interaction with their pieces, in order to encourage this mindset. Instead of having pieces of art scattered around the walls of the room, with a implied "Don't Cross" line just inside the walls, the Fun House includes pieces of art such as chairs made out of styrofoam, which you are meant to sit on; a little doorway to the 'next' art piece which you must get on your hands and knees to pass through; a ladder which you must climb to view whatever it is on top of that ledge.

Some sort of physical interaction is required to completely view these pieces. Unfortunately, all they have created, to me, are pieces which would have had the same meaning had they been created without these 'special traits.'

They simply have simply been dressed up to appeal to more people. I guess it's what we, as a human race, do a lot of. We try to superficially change ourselves, our sports, our sales goods, so that they appeal to the greater public, but in the end there's nothing different about them.

But then again, maybe I'm looking at it from the wrong angle. When I look at twenty20 cricket, I see a game which is completely different to Test Cricket, or even One-Day cricket. However, someone who has never known or understood the 'standard' forms of cricket (or the standard forms in the last 30 years or so), may see twenty20 cricket as Cricket - the definition of the sport. As such, either cricket is pretending to be something that it is not, or it itself has changed its definition, to suit other people.

Perhaps this is the same as with these art pieces, or people. Maybe, if I were more aware of the artistic world, I would have seen something new and exciting in these pieces. Seen a change that, would make me unsure that this is really 'art' ... or something

Anyhow, I'm bored of that train of thought now - too much thinking.

I fly to Toronto today, so again, I'm not sure how much internet access I'm going to get from now on. Edmonton has been fun. There's not a lot to do, but I've spent the last couple of days (Saturday night and most of Sunday) with Edythe's friends, doing things.

Friday I went to the Art Gallery and saw not much. Due to the temporary location, there were only really two and a half displays. The main one was about Valley - some Canadian artist who was most reknown for his portraits - which managed to catch the personality of his subject in the picture.. or something. There was also the Fun House, and then a few pieces from the main collection (maybe 10 or so), and then a little display with something to do with Ford, or cars in general. Not a heap to look at, but whatever.

Friday night we went out for dinner - had the most awesome steak ever - and then watched Ratatouille, which was actually quite a good movie. I definitely enjoyed it, probably one of the better movie's I've seen in a while. Disney and Pixar win once again =P

Saturday we went to the West Edmonton Mall, which is the biggest mall in terms of ground space I think. It's a pretty awesome place. It has an ice-skating rink, a water park (which some very large slides, and a wave pool), and even a decently-size theme park inside it. As well as, of course, a lot of shops. It was very cool =P

Saturday night I went to a party at Edythe's friend's house, met a lot of people, and did the walk along some road with a lot of Christmas lights. Every house along the road had lights - even the ones that were for sale. I got very, very cold, my feet were numb, and it was absolutely freezing. Quite nice though. I also made my first snow angel =D

Sunday was church. Edythe was playing the piano, so we had to get there an hour and 45 minutes early. I sat around a lot, but the service was quite good, as was the church. It was all very friendly, great sense of community about the place, and the pastor was really friendly too.

Had lunch, tried to go ice skating in the afternoon (on a pond, which would've been ultimate cliche), but the ice was too thin, and the pond was closed =( Had a fairly lazy afternoon, and then Edythe's friends were over for dinner and an evening full of chatting and piano playing/listening.

Anyhow, that's it for now, I've got to get ready for my taxi which will be here very soon. Hope everyone's enjoying their Christmas, and yeah, shall post again soon hopefully.

COLD

Edmonton is a very cold place. A very, very cold place. Yesterday we had a maximum of -9 degrees Celcius. Very, very cold place.

I've been having lots of weird dreams lately. Really not sure why, but I woke up this morning dreaming that I was back home and we had suddenly aquired a lot of pets. Including a giant komodo dragon that was furry and liked to hug (reminds me of Snugglepuff off Sesame St now that I think about it).

He could climb fences too, so I couldn't escape.

Yeah, maybe I'm slightly disturbed at the moment (or always am).

So, since I last told you anything, which would've been last Sunday. Monday I went shopping in Vancouver. 'twas quite pleasant, walked into some posh store somehow, tried to buy something, and walked into the ladies' clothes department (it was right next to the table with all the gift goodies, I swear!).

The saleslady looked and me and was like "err... can I help you?" and yeah, I wanted to buy something. She also said "you just want to get out of here don't you?" and I said yes =P And then some other saleslady came over and asked if I wanted to join some kind of members club - to which the original saleslady said no =P I said I wouldn't be shopping there again. (And then, I did clarify that that was because I was from Australia. After which the original saleslady said that I should check out the men's department downstairs... I was a little confused).

After all of them, I managed to walk out with a nice bright pink bag to carry around town for the rest of the day.

Monday night I got a shirt signed by lots of people in the house. 'tis quite nice, although I managed to spoil the surprise by walking in when they were signing it, but oh well, a very nice shirt, something I will treasure forever, etc, etc.

[And despite that sounding unsincere, it wasn't =P]

Tuesday was the day I left, which it turned out I had a lot less time than I thought I did. After getting 5 hours sleep, I was running around the place, trying to get things organised, and trying to cram everything into my bags. I then had to rush to get out to catch the bus to get to the train station.

As I was on the bus, I realised I didn't know exactly where the train station was, which made it a little hard. I did have a general idea though, and it worked out well enough in the end.

The train was quite nice, a lot of legroom, and plenty of space. I managed to get my backpack on the train (without having to check it in), by separating it into two piece, thus making the larger one just smaller than the allowable hand luggage size (although technically it was just larger, but they let me on with it).

The train journey was quite comfortable. Some guy who had gone through a lot of jobs, and had a doctorate in Forrestry sat next to me, he had travelled lots, and lived in Brisbane fairly recently.

It took forever to get comfortable to sleep though, with all of the adjustable footrests and sliding chairs and stuff. But it was alright in the end. I slept a lot on the train ride - there wasn't a lot else to do. We were travelling through the moutains which were quite pretty - covered in snow and what not.

We stopped in Jasper, where I managed to withdraw some cash (stupid idea to get on the train without any), and had the most wonderful dinner on the train on Wednesday night (it was quite possibly the best meal I've had on this trip). It was a really nice roast, which almost melted in my mouth.

As a side note, I found that they've got tax included in the price on the train, and in that posh store I went to before. Interesting, no?

As it turned out, despite leaving on time, we got to Edmonton 4 hours late. Not only that, but the train driver managed to shoot straight past the station. Noone noticed, until we started going backwards. That was a little weird.

Anyhow, got to Edythe's place, and yesterday went to the city for a bit. Today I'm doing the same, probably look at the art museum.

Hmm... pretty hefty post. I've got internet here as you can see =P I'll try

[PS The rest of my pictures decided to disappear. I'll try to fix that up later... sometime...]

Fin...

And I leave my room. Very sad =(

Not much time, so that's it =P Not sure how much internet access I'm going to get while traveling, but I'll do my best to try to post at least once in a while, although no laptop, so probably no photos and things.

Onto the next chapter in my trip. I'm going to miss UBC, and all the people here, but yeah, it's been great. Thanks to all involved =)

Shall try to talk to you all soon. Miss everyone. Seeya =)

Sneaky Sneaky

And it's growing extra closer. It's kinda like how I felt when I left Adelaide - it's snuck up on me, and I'm kinda still ignoring it, but I guess it'll hit me properly when I leave.

I'm definitely ready to leave though. I've enjoyed my time here, it's been unbelievable, but I'm ready to head back home.

Unfortunately for me though, I'm not going home, I'm going traveling. Sure, all of you are saying you'd love to swap places with me, and yeah, I wouldn't give it up =P Would be nice to go home for a couple of days first though.

The plan is that I'll train to Edmonton on Tuesday. It's a 23 hour train ride, which will give me time to unwind, and relax, which will definitely be good. In Edmonton, I'll be staying with Edythe (Pastor Tham's Daughter). After Edmonton I'll be flying to Toronto on Christmas Eve, and get there fairly late at night.

Spend a few days staying at my Uncle's place in Toronto, and then bus down to New York on the night of the 30th, to get there on the 31st. I'll meet Ying there, and we'll spend the day and the evening in New York before training back to New Haven at some obscene hour of the morning.

Stay in New Haven for probably another night after that one, and then do something for a few days before meeting up with Yu Heng and Anna to travel the West Coast (Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, and stuff). Should be good.

It's only been 24 hours since my last post, and since then, I've decided once again that I shouldn't consume any amount of alcohol. I've also been to church this morning - which was the Christmas concert-like thing, which was very impressive. Involved (as far as I could tell) hired musicians, and a very large choir.

They played some jazz, which made me happy, and they had 2 trumpets, which made me even happier. Unfortunately, the choir weren't quite up the same standard as the musicians, and the trumpets were often drowned out.

They also had a trombone a 6 or 7 strings as well.

Not a heap of congregational involvement though, and I thought it was a little weird that they did it more than a week before Christmas. Oh well....

This afternoon I've spent trying to sort out what to take with me on my trip, and I met up with Cooper (guy who I met during the first few days on the tour) for coffee. I managed to use the free voucher that I got for them screwing up my order on the first few days I was here, on one of the last days I'm here. There's a little bit of symmetry for you. =P

It's weird though, everyone is leaving college, which means I'm saying goodbye to so many people. I'm coming back though, so although I make an effort to say goodbye each time, I know I'm most probably going to see most of them again anyways. In fact, the 20th of January is the day which I'll probably organise a dinner for everyone I've met.

Anyways, on another note, I'd like to wish Brendan a Happy Birthday. He's 19 today =) Hope you're having a good day (although I've talked to you a couple of times already). I enjoyed traveling with you, and it would've been great to travel the US with you too. I guess we'll have to travel some other place.

I'll talk to you soon (=

It's OVAR!!!

=)

Exams are done. Woo hoo. A bit disappointing though, my last exam was 32 multiple choice.. in a 2 and a half hour time-slot. It was more than a little unsatisfying...

Probably a good thing though, considering I'd hardly studied.

For the first time since I've been here, I've felt I've really missed out on something back home. Last night James had his 21st party, and I really regret not being there. I really, really wish I could've made it. Really sorry I couldn't make James.

Anyways, I'm done for the semester. Last exam is written, and I'm leaving for Edmonton in 3 days (on the 18th). Until then, I'm gonna hafta sort out a few things, buy a few things, and pack a few things up. Going to go to Church tomorrow (which, unfortunately, I haven't been to in a while). Then I might do some Christmas shopping, try to pick a couple of things up. We'll see what happens.

Since my last post, not a lot has happened. I've played way too much Super Smash Brothers and that's about it. Not enough study (although I would've kicked myself had I sat this exam having studied a lot).

There were a group of people in today's exam who got stuck in the elevator, just before the exam. They messaged the lecturer, and he said "Likely story, but given that there are fire trucks outside, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt." Although it was partly their fault, they did try to bounce it =P (well, one of them did anyways).

So yeah, that's the end of my studying here at UBC. Feels a little bit weird, I guess I haven't come to full realisation yet (either that, or I've hardly worked all this semester, and therefore finishing really isn't that big a deal). I'm home in a month and a half from now. =) I wish I could come home for a week, and then go traveling, but I can't so this will do.

Hopefully talk to you all properly, sometime soon.

Seeya =)

One Week to Go!

Happy Birthday to James =) Hope your 21st has been an awesome (although I suspect you may be more than a little tired). It's been awesome knowing you and calling you my friend for the past 7 or 8 years, and I hope it'll remain that way for many, many more =)

(Sorry I can't make it to your party though)

And I now enter my last week at UBC, in this room. It's kinda sad =( I like my room. It may not be as big as my room back home, but it's nice, simple, has everything I need (which, let's face it, is really just my laptop), and is actually more often tidy than my room at home. Go figure.

Had my second-last exam today, it was ok, pretty much the same as normal. Since Thursday I've done not a lot - except get addicted to Tetris. Friday I really didn't do much. Slept in, and messed around until about 4, when I went to Metrotown with Andrew.

We spent 3 hours looking for a sheep, all over this massive shopping centre. It was big enough for me to walk past the same store three or four times, and yet still have no idea where I was. So we walked into many, many stores, looking for anything relating at all to a sheep, and eventually found a little toy sheep at Toys R Us.

I managed to buy nothing but a few lollies, which have already been consumed =(

The shopping centre did have a giant rocking horse though, that actually rocked. It was a bit weird...

Saturday I didn't do much, Sunday I studied a fair amount, and played a fair bit of Tetris. Stupidly addicting game. My problem is, if I do badly, it doesn't count, and if I do well, I need to have another go at it to do even better. It's a vicious, never-ending cycle.

Today was my exam, I slept in, and studied a fair bit (although I did manage to double my previous high score in Tetris an hour or so before the exam).

Had the exam, which was fairly easy. I thought I was running out of time, rushed through it, and then finished half an hour early. It did mean I could waste time checking things stupidly though...

Went to the Village (just outside uni) for a crappy Malaysian meal (tasted like salt...almost), and then went to Mountain Equipment Co-op to buy a backpack for travelling. Picked up a nice, rather large bag for $140, which has a detachable backpack which I can use during the day. Handy =)

And came back, played Super Smash Brothers for an hour or so, and then wasted time. It's been a fairly good couple of days.

I'm gonna spend the next few days tidying up a few things, and perhaps even studying for my last exam on Saturday, and generally sorting things out for my trip.

I've booked my train to Edmonton ($160) on the 18th, and then my flight to Toronto on Christmas Eve ($480 -_-), so yeah, at least I've got plans for a little while.

Anyhow, I think that's it for now. Hopefully post again soon. Not sure if my laptop will be travelling with me (I keep changing my mind), but if it doesn't I'll be sure to at least drop in occasionally via an internet cafe or something.

Let it SNOW!!!

Two down, two to go, and it turns out that my study patterns don't change no matter what side of the globe I'm on.

So Tania told me that I say the same thing in every post, and she's mostly right. I'm beginning to get the feeling I've spent too much time thinking about what's to come, and not about what's happening right now, but oh well, I am enjoying myself, and it is most awesome.

So I've spent the last week or so being very busy. Spent all weekend and half of Monday doing my group project for Software Engineering. It's a project that forced me to use an IDE, and I guess it works ok. Very bloated, and my computer hates it, but oh well.

My Project Group

Our project worked ok, I was quite impressed that it all came together well, and it didn't crash during the demo, which was nice.

Friday night I wandered into the Computer Science Beer Garden. As it turns out, the computer science geek stereotype has merit. A bunch of them sat down and started playing Mao. You know, the game where you can't talk. So there's a bunch of cheap beer, the last day of classes, and you start playing the most antisocial game you can think of?

But that wasn't the worst of it. The game got so serious, they were standing up and arguing over what card was put down first, in what order, and what the rules are (which is kinda stupid, because you're not allowed to tell people the rules). It got to the point where they called someone else over who was apparently the "Guru" and got him to clarify the rules.

Who says computer science people aren't nerds?

But on Saturday, it snowed. Like, it really snowed. Snow everywhere. Absolutely beautiful.

Photo:
And Photo:


Unfortunately I spent the whole day indoors doing that project, although we did go out for sushi for dinner, which was nice.

Sunday it snowed more. It really really snowed. Again it was awesome. I got to throw snowballs, but unfortunately I still had to do that project. The snow was deeper and pretty awesome still. I love the snow. It was rather cold though =P


And one ugly Snowman (I didn't make it... in fact, I don't know who did)

Monday the snow had washed away, and it got quite warm. We did our presentation, which was pretty good and then I did a fair bit of study.

Monday night I went to Stanley Park to see the Christmas lights. Apparently there are more than a million, and although I was a little skeptical to start with, when I got there I believed it. =P

On the way to the lights

$7.50 for a little train ride was a bit much, and it was raining instead of snowing (one day late!), but it was kinda cool. Lots of lights, and a good way to take a break from study. I also had a huge pretzel, which was way too salty (I gave half of it away), and apple cider, which was too sweet, which I gave more than half it away. All in all a nice and wasteful night.


Tuesday was study once more.

Exam at 8:30 on Wednesday morning. It's amazing how much less formal it is here. We had the exam in a lecture hall, walked in, sat down and talked until the exams were handed out. Did the exam, left as we felt, I even forgot to turn off my phone.

Much less threatening. It was even better today (Thursday) when we were at first kept out of the room while they set out the exams. They set it out in alphabetical order for some reason, and we were told we could start "When we found our exam."

I almost missed the "Please note the emergency exits" and "Has anyone not handed in their exam *lots of noise here*" routine of the exam.

We've also managed to set a record here. My Wednesday exam was marked and results put up on WebCT (kinda like MyUni for Adelaide people) less than 10 hours after the exam had finished. That's efficiency right there.

As it turns out, I blew my chance to get more than 100% for the course, but still did pretty well. Especially given the amount of study I did.

Today's exam could've been much, much worse, and couldn't have been any better given the amount of study I did. Not sure how I did, but I'm pretty sure I didn't fail =D

And now I've got a few days until my next exam. Should probably do a fair bit of study for it, but It gives me a little while to wind up my time in UBC, buy some stuff, and things like that. The worst is hopefully over.

Still haven't sorted out what I'm going to be doing post-UBC, but I'll get that done in the next day or two.

And that's about it for now. I shall post again hopefully fairly soon.

Take care =) (With a polar bear)

One Last Time...

I finally post, even though I've got one more assignment, and one more lecture to go.

It's sad knowing that it's just about over. It hardly seems real, almost like when I got here. I've just about finished, I've got a week or two of hard work ahead of me, and then I'm outta here.

It's my life at the moment, even though at the back of my mind I always knew I was going home, it's still managed to creep up on me.

That's not to say that I wont be glad when I get home. In fact, I can't wait to get home. At the same time though, I still want to be here, with all the friends I've met.

Most of all, I don't want to forget the people I've met, and the good times I've had. Part of the reason why I'm keeping this blog, and part of the reason I'm so trigger happy with my camera.

I don't want to forget a single detail, a single person, but when I look back, I realise how many people I no longer can picture, or really remember, from Primary School, from High school, people that I've known fairly well, yet have faded away to the edges of my memory.

There are too many people in the world, all over the world. Far too many of which I'd like to remember, and see, and interact with regularly.

Anyhow. It's been a while since I've told you what I've been doing, so I'm going to have to go back a long way. Hmm...

So it's been very cold lately. We had snow (well, I called it snow, everyone else called it slush - but there was stuff falling from the sky that was falling slower than rain) for all of about 10 minutes a couple of nights ago, that was cool.

It's also very, very cold in the mornings. The other day there was ice on the pavement, and many people on bicycles slipped as they were going around corners. I almost stacked it walking up a hill. Since then, they've brought in this cool little tractor thing that spreads salt all over the footpaths in the morning, to melt the ice. Clever =)

Incidentally, that photo at the start of the post was taken at 10am. It's still very cold then too =P

I've been doing a lot of work lately unfortunately. My ambitions for my ray tracer weren't quite met, but here's what I produced:

With no reflections:


With reflections and shading and stuff:


My version of that original picture I showed you:

And refraction, which didn't quite work too well:
And here's one which is very wrong, but looks kinda cool =P

It would've been cool to do some other stuff, but I didn't have time (refraction took me a very long time - it just didn't want to work for me).

I've also had a bunch of other assignments to do, and now I've got to study for exams.

So, last Friday night (a week ago today), I went out for all you can eat Sushi with a bunch of people from class. We went after 9:30, so we had all you can eat for $15.95 (excluding tax and tip).

Our first order was 9 serves of Tuna and Salmon Sashimi, which the manager asked us to confirm, twice, before only giving us 5 of each. We had about 5 or 6 rounds, and we walked away definitely getting our money's worth (but still not falling-over-and-dying-full).

Saturday we had a house laser tag game. We went to Richmond (read: Asian Centre) for it, which took us more than an hour by two busses and a bit of walking. It was a lot of fun though, very cool seeing the lasers shoot through the air and stuff. We split up into two team, and it was just a "shoot as many people as you can" game. The guy that won dominated unbelievably. In the first game he doubled the next person's score. In the second game, he quadrupled it.

That's an pwning if I ever saw one.

Why was he so good? His little brother had had his birthday there for the past 8 years.

Saturday night was the Winter formal. Quite honestly, a waste of time. Many people queued up for ages to get a ticket. They only gave away 50 each day for each session - there was a 4:30 session and a 6:30 session. Of course, everyone wanted the 6:30 tickets (who has a formal dinner at 4:30? =s). On the first day, I got there just before 5 (when they started giving them away), and there were more than 100 people infront of me. On the second day, I got there at 4:30, and just got a ticket (although we were originally about 10th in line, but there was a lot of pushing in and stuff going on).

Apparently later in the week, there were people lining up for 2 hours. The irony? On Saturday (the day of the formal) there were still tickets left.

As for the formal itself, it was a fairly sad affair. It was in our normal dining hall (which, admittedly is fairly nice), and it was probably nicer than usual. They'd dressed the place up, with decorations (we even had a tablecloth =o), and stuff. We waited outside for a while (of course), before getting inside, picking up a tray like we normally do (how classy), getting our food, sitting down, eating like normal, listened to about 10 minutes worth of speeches and awards, got up, and left.

Total time spent there was probably 45 minutes, maybe an hour at best. Totally not worth it, but we did get to get dressed up, so I got to wear my suit which I'd lugged all the way here.

Of course, being in Mack House, naturally, when in a suit, we play Super Smash Brothers:


Since Saturday, it's been all work, and little sleep. After I made my last post, I slept for 4 hours, the next two nights were 6 hours. I've got a bit lazy though, procrastinated a fair bit over the last couple of days, but it's all good.

Wednesday and Thursday night were the traditional Mack Serenades, which was quite funny to watch. It's a tradition that a bunch of Mack guys go around to all the other houses, and sing and dance in a "make the ladies swoon" sort of way. There were 7 guys in total (me not being one of them of course), but I did go and watch them 7 times (each show was about 20 minutes).

There was a lot of bad singing and acting going on, but it was lots of fun to watch. I've got the whole video if anyone is interested (but it probably won't be very exciting for anyone who doesn't actually know the performers).

Anyhow, that brings me to about now. Last day of classes, exams start on Wednesday, not sure what to think (much like it was when I got here). I'll be really sad to leave this place, but I'll be extremely happy once I get home too.

Ooops... and Happy Birthday to Calvin too. Even though his birthday is technically over by his time, it's still his birthday my time, so it's all good =P