oh-my-god-i've-never-had-that potluck extravaganza

We just had our first dinner of the term! We love having people over and doing things like potlucks, and that's one of the many things that made last term so awesome. And we still have the Christmas lights (and tree...) which makes our house even prettier.

Oscar and I came up with the idea of this extravagant food potluck, inspired by his mom's idea of sweet sushi. Originally we were going to make sushi with gummy bears and fruit roll-ups. Then we decided to colour the rice with food colouring. And then Ricko suggested using natural dyes, such as beet, to colour the rice (because he says you can die if you eat artificial food colouring, which is probably true if you drink like a bottle each day, but in any case we decided to follow his advice). So the sushi idea morphed completely, but we built the potluck around it. Here's the Facebook event description:

we will be having the first-ever oh-my-god-i've-never-tried

-that potluck extravaganza! everyone will bring a CRAZY dish made with unusual ingredient combinations, or something that looks really unique and exotic! the purpose of this is to have many things people have never tried before, so you could even make something really special from your country. the conditions for the dish: has to be edible, has to be original-looking or original-tasting, and it would be better if it was vegetarian so we all can try everything. AND there will be awesome prizes for the most extravagant dish so be creative.

SO what did people bring? Here's the list of awesome and extravagant food:

strawberries for the happy island sushi

pre-blend blueberries

- HAPPY ISLAND SUSHI - by oscar and olivia. 4 types of rice: coconut rice, carrot rice (orange colour), beet rice (bright red colour), and blueberry rice (purple colour). 5 fillings: umeboshi, cream cheese, mango, banana and strawberry. Endless combinations! Oh yeah, and in addition to this we had special 'wasabi' made from mashed carrot and beet, lemon, salt and chilli pepper. And for people that didn't like seaweed, aka Vale, we made seaweedless sushi using coconut rice, filled with melted chocolate and fresh strawberries, and coconut shavings sprinkled on top. And a chocolate sauce at the side, of course.

carrot, beet and blueberry rice

Try-it-yourself part: to make the rice you first have to make the juices. Blend the carrots, blueberries and beets (separately) with water. Then sieve the mixes to get the water with the intense colouring. Cook the rice normally, using 1:1 rice to colour water ratio. For the coconut rice just use coconut milk instead of water. 

SO GOOD! The coconut rice and blueberry rice are really delicious, they really taste like coconut and blueberries. Possible ideas for other coloured sushi (which I'll get around to when we finish all the rice we now have in the already-exploding fridge..): using spinach extract to make rice green; using orange juice to make rice taste like oranges; using coffee and milk to make coffee rice...

- PEPPERY BLOODY ORANGE SALAD A LA MINT - by vale. A delicious salad made with pepper, bloody oranges and mint! But it doesn't stop here. The pepper comes from the Himalayas, the oranges are rare because of their bright red colour, and the mint was hand-picked by Vale... She also made ate de membrillo with cheese.

- EGGS A LA VAMPIRE - by emil. Eggs cut in half and filled with eggs, yougurt, celery and pepper.

green eggs & ham

- GREEN EGGS AND HAM - by nichole. Inspired by Dr. Seuss, Knickers made (scrambled) green eggs and (vegetarian) ham! Awesome idea.

- COMPOST SALAD - by nancy. Salad with gummy worms! Just like a compost.

- FRIED CHEESE - by paula. Authentic mexican fried cheese, like the one they sell outside of clubs. Tomas claims he was the brains behind the whole frying cheese operation, but Paula denies this.

- JAMAICA WATER. Which apparently is Jamaica tea... we had a discussion about this and it was decided it will now be referred to as Jamaica iced tea.

- COCONUT SOUP - by ricky. This is one of the best soups I've ever tried and I'm not even kidding. Made with many secret ingredients, I know Ricko used like 5 cans of coconut milk, a bag of coconut shavings, mini corns, palmitos, pepper, onions, and tomato, and mixed everything in the HUGE pot Yaku (Taku+Yasu) use for making a month's supply of curry. It is truly delicious. Thanks El Salvador.

- CURRY SOBA - by yasu & taku. Mmmm authentic japanese food. Noodles with japanese curry, which is completely different to indian curry by the way.

- FRIED PLANTAINS - by tomi. Patties made with plantains, fried and sprinkled with salt.'

the feast

- BREAKFAST MUESLI - by manuel. A yummy mix of yogurt, muesli, apples and many fruits. I can see how this could be a very good breakfast.

- NESTEA and DR. PEPPER - by ceci and susan. When all else fails, bring something to drink!

- CAVIAR AND SHRIMP SOBA - by julie.

- POPPY SEED BREAD - by phoebe ('s mom). A delicious imported (came directly from Oregon!) bread and a bar of butter.

- MEXICAN CANDY PLATE. Bomvasos, Dedos Indi, Picafresas and Rellerindos.

Best Job @ UBC : Student Ambassador

Being a Student Ambassador is a pretty sweet on-campus job to have. So what exactly is a Student Ambassador, you may ask. Here's how it works:

Student Recruitment and Advising UBC is the office in charge of, basically, recruiting and advising new students! The office does a variety of things, including sending Recruiters off to University/College Fairs all over the world, and receiving students from all over the world here at UBC. Even before becoming an Ambassador I got to work with the Office when I went to Mexico to give a presentation about my UBC experience. How could I have rejected a free plane ticket home? I didn't, of course, and being part of that event actually made me aware of the existence of the Campus Tours. Many of the Ambassadors travel with Recruiters like that, especially if the Recruiter is going to their home town. It's so prospective students hear from an actual UBC student, makes it more real.

Touring the University of your choice as a prospective students was somewhat of a novel concept to me, and I never thought going to visit universities was such a big deal. Everyone says "What? So you didn't even visit before coming here?" Nope. The webpage pictures were enough (my goal, by the way, is to appear on a student handbook or the webpage or something, just like laughing and hanging out with 'friends' wearing a UBC hoodie. Someday) I hadn't even been to Canada. But apparently touring around is a hugely popular thing to do here and in the States. I mean, you will be spending the next four years of your life here, so you might as well...

So imagine you're a prospective student. You want to know everything about UBC, the webpage is just not enough and you want to see the real thing. So you go to you.ubc.ca and register for one of the completely-free offered-every-single-day-of-the-week tours (if you register for Friday tours I could potentially be your tour guide!) and then come to UBC on that day. You get a 15 min presentation by an Advisor and, after that, the lovely SAs take the groups on a 1 hour 45 minute tour of the University. We showcase the best of our University, cover everything you wanted to know about the school, and are honest about the more negative aspects too.

The cool thing about being an Ambassador is also the slow transition that's incorporated into the training process. It's not like you start doing tours right away. You slowly ease into the tour vibe through the training process. Vale and I were hired at the same time (Vale and I do everything together. This deserves its own post later on...) and we spent like one whole term training. So that means we go on other tours, see what they're like, and then Tag-team, which means giving every other stop in a tour, the other half being given by a more experienced SA. We also reviewed the Wiki, or the online portal where all the documents pertaining to the tours are stored. This contains everything you could possibly ever want to know about UBC. Really.

The average tour: Brock Hall>Student Recreation Centre>Student Union Building>Bookstore>Main Mall & University Blvd.> Trek Cairn> LS Klink> Longhouse> Place Vanier> Nitobe Gardens> Asian Centre> International House> Flag Pole> Chan Centre> Libraries. Wheeeew! Now that's what I call a tour.

My favourite things about being an Ambassador (not ranked in order of importance):

1. Having a badge with my name! Yes, a real badge. Not like a sticker, but a metal badge.

2. The Student Ambassador meetings. They are quite awesome. We have meetings every two weeks. We do things such as, but not limited to: get updates on tour information, talk about the upcoming weeks, play games related to things such as time management, each delicious snacks prepared by the Seniors, get to know each other better, go over the tour routes, FatQs (Frequently Asked Tough Questions), practice avoiding the 'likes' and 'ums', ambassador of the week. Things planned for this term (can't wait!): Visit the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, visit Triumf, visit the MOA. Last meeting we got a tour of the First Nations House of Learning, which is one of the tour stops, to get a better idea of the things that go on here. And meeting before last we got a tour or the CSI (not Crime Scene Investigation, Brock Hall has no place for crimes, only for construction.)
[Some interesting updates on what's happening at UBC (which only UBC people will understand): now every single first year student is guaranteed housing provided they accept the offer of admission before the deadline, regardless of their place of origin. Previously, anyone living within the Lower Mainland, even if three hours away, had to find alternate housing, so this is great news. Rits will now become part of Totem, and besides that ~500 new beds will be added to Totem from the new constructions, which by the way look pretty cool - they're suite style residences with two rooms sharing a common bathroom (versus 35 people sharing a bathroom in the other Totem Houses) AND another thing: no one above first year will be allowed to live in Rits, Totem or Vanier now, except for Residence Advisors, Residence Life Managers, etc.]

3.  Gaining so many transferable skills! Public speaking, check. Organizational skills, check. Time management, check. Communication skills, check. Peer-to-peer interaction, check.

4. The other Student Ambassadors, the Seniors and our Bosses. We're talking here about a pretty diverse and fun group of people that make the job interesting, engaging and flexible.

5. Walking around campus (exercise of the week when all else fails) answering students' questions and really making a difference in helping them decide whether UBC's the right place for them by sharing personal insights and experiences.

6. Having a flexible, well-paid job (this is a Work Learn/Work Study position, which means the wages are subsidized by student fees, making them higher than the minimum wage. If you become part of Work Learn/Work Study you make between $13 and $21 dollars an hour, usually ~ $16) that doesn't conflict with excelling at everything else we're involved in, such as academics and extracurriculars.

UBC's Got Talent!

Real entry number 1!

One of the events I have been waiting for for a loooong time, UBC's Got Talent, finally happened last night. It will apparently be a yearly thing now, seeing the great success the event had. The Chan's 1,200 seats were claimed, which meant we got to enjoy some Toope and Bijan talent (Stephen Toope is the President of UBC, and Bijan is the President of the Alma Matter Society, which is 'like a high school council except with an operating budget of over $12 million dollars' as we like to say on tours...) So it was a pretty popular event and tickets sold out (not sure if this term applies when the tickets are free...) days before the event, causing a huuuuge line-up outside the Chan before the show of people hoping to get in.

Being an enthousiast of America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent, the whole idea of UBC's Got Talent greatly appealed to me. The 15 acts, selected from 124 submissions, were good. UBC certainly has got some great talent, and you can look at a lot of the audition videos on YouTube. The thing is it not only included students, but also faculty, staff and University Neighbourhood Association people, which made UGT (abbreviation will be used from now on) showcase a variety of talents but also a variety of ages (no kids with angelic voices, though.)

So I'll refrain from talking about the ones I didn't find particularly interesting, but I will say which ones I enjoyed. And I'll upload some videos later too.

-I liked Pentactonics, a chinese band that performed with chinese traditional instruments (craazy! I had never seen those instruments before) some cool songs, one from Bond.
- I liked the guy that could solve a Rubik's cube. Without breaking it and putting it back together (aka cheating). Without sweating. With ONE hand. While eating a banana. In less than 24 seconds. Phew. Pretty amazing! The shortest act of the evening, he actually got a standing ovation from the public. {Which is ironic considering this guy spent like two years practicing, whereas the people in other acts, like the ones playing the piano and violin, have spent all of their lives mastering those skills. AND also, if you youtube 'rubiks one hand' you'll see how people do it a) without looking at the cube for more than a couple seconds before the timer starts (this guy had like all the time in the world planning the strategy in his head), and b) in way less time. I'm not saying I'm not super impressed, I mean I have zero talents, but lets put things in context}
- I liked the beat boxing guys. They made some incredible sound effects and I just enjoyed every second of the presentation. pr pr rp rp r p JJJJ isisije
- I liked the piano and violin duo. Unfortunately, I didn't fully enjoy this act because a couple in front of me thought it would be okay to whisper and have a long conversation during the one act when the Chan was dead quiet.
- The dance group. They were pretty good and performed a story of how men should not trust women (ehm...) using three songs, different choreographies, and ending with Don't Trust a Ho by Oh!3... The theme was not the greatest but anyway.

Wish list of what I'd like to see in the future: acrobatics, MAGIC, more/better a Capella singers (the ones we got sucked), stand up comedy!

I thought it interesting that the Got Talent franchise (yes, it is a franchise! Just like the Idol and the Dancing With the Stars franchise) is one of the fastest growing international franchises. People just love seeing talent, and personally I think what I like the most about the whole Talent Show idea is the feeling of awe and amazement looking at what other people can do with their bodies.

And by the way, the whole idea of applying the term franchise to a concept, when I'm usually accustomed to associating it with tangible things such as fast food or retail chains , is pretty crazy. Franchises exist for a bunch of media, including characters and plots from movies, books, tv shows. And soap operas! Mexico's Televisa, known from all around the world for it's soap operas (dubbed in more than 50 languages apparently) exports them all over the world (check out this link, it's pretty interesting 'The Global Pandemic of the Telenovela - Mexico's Biggest Export to the World is and Endless, Gushing Fount of Insane Television')

And, finally, one of the best things of the night for me was finding out about UBC LIP DUB! I'm so excited for it already. It's a growing YouTube phenomena and Universities around the world are doing it. It's basically one single shot of thousands of people lip singing (lip dubbing I guess...) to a song, doing crazy things and dancing. Check it out and do the dub!