Food post

Three really exciting things are happening this term too! And they are all related. So I'm part now of The Veggie Club, Common Energy's Food Subgroup, and The LFS Orchard Garden. WHAAAT are these things?? The Veggie Club and Common Energy are both UBC clubs, and they both deal with food and sustainability, and the Orchard Garden is a garden two minutes away from my place and Forestry (behind LFS building) where I volunteer every week. A really cool project is in the working, involving these three. Speaking of the Garden, I absolutely love it! When I started at UBC I was like, yeah I want to volunteer at the Farm! Well, guess what, the Farm is SO far away!! It's quite unrealistic for me to fit a Farm trip in my schedule. SOOO the Orchard Garden is the PERFECT solution! It's a joint-management thing between the Faculties of LFS, Education and Landscape Architecture. They grow many many delicious things, and most of the produce is sold to Agora, the LFS Café.

So far, I've harvested onions and zucchini, and we are clearing the beds to plant cover crops for the winter. Last week we composted lettuce which was flowering and was therefore very bitter, and we could take it home if we wanted to. It was too bitter for me, but they looked spectacular - well rounded, fresh, giant. A girl working with me ate lettuce like a rabbit, as she worked. This week I took home the zucchini flowers and made zucchini flower and cheese quesadillas. I have a pepper plant at home (Pepe the Pepper, and Knickers has Pancho The Pepper) and eating the peppers from there is amazing, I just go to the living room and get a pepper from Pepe, and in exchange I only have to water him, clean him and love him. I think it's a good deal, so I decided my goal for when I have my own place is to have a garden with lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes and everything else! Taking care of the garden would definitely require work, but it is so relaxing, rewarding and connected with nature.

Zucchini and flower in LFS Orchard Garden

 Chilli peppers from Pepe The Pepper - he makes (on average) six of these every week

Back in Vancouver

I'm back and I'm extremely happy! I truly realize how much I love UBC, especially after being away for so long.

2011 was a fantastic year for me and this term will be the perfect way to end it. The Christmas holidays will be spent in San Francisco with Leslie & Mike, and then maybe/maybe not I'll go to Singapore.
 
First of all, I absolutely love my courses. One of them is FRST 270 Community Forestry. It used to be taught by Ron Trosper, but now he left and we have a PhD candidate, Reem, and she's just amazing. We are learning what community forestry really entails by analyzing different viewpoints, and through case studies we explore how the broad concept of community forest is applied so many different ways all around the world. What is power? Who determines who gets power over the land? Is there a difference between access and property? How can success be defined in the realm of resource management?  We explore questions like these ones through readings, class discussions, guest lectures and assignements. Plus we are 11 students, smallest class I've had at UBC!

Other two I really love are CONS 210 (Visualizing climate change) with Sarah Burch and Stephen Sheppard,  and FRST 415 (Sustainable Forest Policy) with George Hoberg. We've had very interesting and inspiring lectures for both of these too. For example, we had Valerie Langer from ForestEthics come talk about the success in the Great Bear Rainforest - learning about environmental activism firsthand from and environmental activist was awesome. I have also been introduced to two things I hadn't used before: iClicker and PeerWise. iClickers are like remote controls for answering multiple choice questions and the Prof gets instant feedback as to whether the students are getting the material or not, and it also sparks interesting class discussion. PeerWise is an online tool designed for students to write questions, and then answer, rate and comment other students' questions - great question pool for studying for exams!

My living arrangement is also great. My house is made for someone on a wheelchair, so the corridors are huge and the bathroom is made for dancing with a wheelchair judging by its dimensions. It's first floor, and at first I hated this because I can't leave my windows open when I leave, but I've gotten used to this and my friends come visit my window all the time, which is fun. The residence, Ritsumeikan, is very quiet and organized. We have a tatami room and I was really excited but then Maki my Japanese roomie said she hates to sit there because she gets splinters all over, so I shouldn't wear shorts when I go to the tatami room...

Fun stuff that has been going on:
- I went to Seattle with Sharon for a outlet-shopping-spree (I don't understand brands like Juicy Couture... felt sweat pants with GLAMOUR written on them with gold and Swarovski crystals...really??) and had my first Taco Bell meal
-I went paddleboarding with a bunch of friends to Jericho Beach. Oscar and I decided it would be a good idea to share a paddleboard and stand on it at the same time, so we tried that for quite some time, until I fell on top of some hidden aquatic rocks and scraped my leg.
- We went to the FarmAde at the UBC Farm and watched people square-dancing to the beat and following the instructions coming from the speakers
- I completed one of the unofficial graduation requirements - Day of the Longboat! We were the Shockers and we painted our faces like Kiss, with black and white. So I think every occasion is a good occasion to paint faces, and I especially love it when people let me do their faces! It was a team with random members but we had so much fun and we came fourth, which was good as we were eight instead of ten people. I need an arm and neck massage now, though.

Jason my Longboat Shocker friend looking awesome

OrienTREEing

Sharon and I love trees, but more than anything we love to walk around looking for them and identifying them. Yes, sounds geeky - and it is - but it is also SO much fun. For Forestry Week, the Faculty of Forestry Dean's Office came up with a great idea : a tree scavenger hunt. We got clues (verbal and visual), including riddles, to go around campus looking for trees and locating them on a map for about an hour and a half. We got points for strategy, for speed and for knowledge, and we won first prize ($100) :D It was quite a fresh activity, fresher than what the FUS usually does for Forestry Week, and hopefully they will also do it next year. Below: the two of us with arbutus and coulter pine.

Half a month in Chile!

That's the amount of time I've been here. The first week in Santiago, the second in Concepción. This time has been AWESOME!

What am I doing in Chile to begin with?
I'm completing my second co-op work term. At UBC, and Canada in general, doing co-op is pretty popular. When you do co-op, you complete five four-month work placements during your degree doing something related to your field of study. The pros? You get all the tools to learn how to look for and apply for jobs successfully; you typically make a lot of money; you graduate with a better idea of what you want to work in, and with tons of experience; you get the constant support of your co-op advisor; you get access to all the co-op job postings; you get incredible opportunities, like this Chile one or my friend Lise in South Africa. The cons? You have to pay the equivalent of one credit for every work term you do, and you have to prepare some sort of PPT or written report of what you did. Last summer I worked four months in Port McNeil, Nothern Vancouver Island, doing mostly silviculture surveys for a forest products company. This year, thanks to my forestry co-op supervisor, this Chile opportunity came around and things just happened, and here I am! This is the first time someone from UBC comes to Chile, and I think the plan is to start establishing a connection between UBC Forestry and the company here.

What's my job?
The company is trying to get FSC certified (really cool, I'm learning SO MUCH about this!) and if it does get the certification, Chile would become the country with a highest percentage of it's forests certified! For the certification, one of the main things is for everything to be participative, to have the public's input about things such as the already-identified Areas de Alto Valor Ambiental. I will be working on collecting all the information spread around the company related to biodiversity in the over 300 000 ha of native conservation forests in Chile, which will be displayed in a brand new biodiversity webpage. This is why I'm in Concepción right now, because here work most of the people that do stuff related to the environment. I have been shown many of the conservation research that goes on, such as the PIMEX program (Programa de Investigación Marina de Excelencia) that has a sea lion monitoring project in Cobquecura. I will be here one more week, and then back to Santiago. I will blog more details about the cool things I do later!

Cobquecura panoramic shot. That's the sea lion island right there.

The Apple Incident: A True Story
My lovely Nichole prepared me a Travel Pack for the trip to Chile, which included some candy, stuff to read, an apple.. I put this in my carry on bag, meaning to eat the apple and read the newspaper while waiting for the plane. At check-in, the lady said I could check in two bags, not only one. So I did, and got rid of the carry on bag. An hour before landing in Chile, I filled in the declaration form, ticking the NO check box for everything, as per usual. No, I'm not carrying with me diseases from a pig farm. No, I'm not carrying animal products. No, I'm not carrying vegetable products... I totally forgot about the apple. In Chile they are pretty strict about this not declaring thing - they even show a five-minute video before landing on the importance of declaring. You can get fined big time and you're screwed if you don't declare something. An apple is 1400 bucks. Yeah. That much. Luckily for me, I never handed in that lying declaration form when I went to get my luggage in Santiago because there was no luggage! It got stuck in LA, and arrived in Santiago later that day. Phew...

The GlobeTrekking Summer Notebook Project
Speaking of stories that involve Nicks, there's this really cool project we started inspired by BOOK, check it out. It will be a notebook we send back and forth throughout the summer, and in it we will draw and write stuff to keep in touch in an artsy way. Stage one has been completed, and our book is crossing the continent at this very moment flying from Chile to Canada. So excited to receive it once Knickers sends it back!

My chilean experience so far
So far, I've loved Santiago and Concepción, the largest (~6 million) and second-largest (~1million) cities in Chile. They are both really nice and they remind me in many ways of Mexico City. In Concepción I'm staying in the very centre. The area where I'm staying in Santiago is called Providencia and my favourite thing about it are the streets.  The sidewalks, I mean. They are really big, allowing for people to hang out, sit down at the many pubs, restaurants and ice-cream places, and chat. This creates a nice atmosphere, reminds me of Cremona in Italy. You will find a lot of (in order of abundance):
1. Banks and ATMs - seriously, I've never seen so many. They are EVERYWHERE. Every two shops there is a random bank you've never heard of with five ATMs in it.
2. Pharmacies - again, the number of pharmacies is crazy. One in every ten stores is a pharmacy. And pharmacies with ATMs INSIDE them? Yep, that too.
3. Ice cream places (sign I will get fat #1) - this is mostly in Concepción, but in Santiago too. There are tons of ice cream places, it's like being in Italy. Same style of ice cream shop too, with the square batches and glass window and stuff.

Some things are really expensive compared to Vancouver or Mexico, but some are cheaper. 1 000 chilean pesos are like 2 CAD. To appreciate how much I'm paying for something, in my mind I always convert chilean pesos to dollars (*2 / 1000) and then to mexican pesos (*12). It's hard dealing with thousands, especially when things cost something like 3 120 and the coins are a mess (they are changing them so there are two types of coins going around) and then it's embarrassing staying more than 60 seconds figuring it out at the counter. More expensive: food. A simple fast food meal consisting of a sandwich or a burger or an individual pizza is like 3 500 pesos, or 7 dollars. Cheaper: art supplies (not the best brand quality but regardless). A really nice set of 18 large tubes of watercolours + set of 5 awesome brushes of the kind I've always wanted + watercolour palette = 4 dollars. A set of 6 wood-carving tools = 2 dollars. No way! That's what I thought.

Building in El Golf

In Santiago, the office where I work is really nice, in an area called El Golf. Like Santa Fe in Mexico City kind of. The elevators are the best. You press the floor number BEFORE getting on the elevators and the screen tells you which elevator to take. This way the elevator takes the best possible 'route' to the different floors and everything is more efficient.

Entrance to the building

We get this card that we can use for a drinks vending machine and a coffee vending machine (which makes cappuccino, hot chocolate, latte...and you adjust the levels of coffee, milk and sugar with the touchpad), and the same card gives us access to the building and the cafeteria, which is called 'casino'. This is really funny here in Chile. Usually large companies provide food for the workers, so they usually have casinos at every level of the operation, from the corporate offices to the pulp mills to the logging operations. So at lunch, you just scan your card and you can eat all you want at the cafeteria-style buffet, which is DELICIOUS (sign I will get fat #2). They have salad bars, soups, at least three different fancy desserts every time (and I looooove desserts!!) And eating like that is just like school, well it reminds me of eating at Vanier in the sense that you eat with friends and everyone eats together. This concept is really cool I think. In Canada, people always take their own lunch to work. I remember how my lunch last summer was the cheese or PB&J sandwich I made myself in 10 minutes before leaving for work, and compare that to the three course meals workers get here...

In Santiago I moved around with the metro. It's 560 pesos to ride the metro (and you can also take two buses) if you're not a student. If you're a student it's only 180. I will go first thing back to the office to see if I can get the student discount. Well, it's fast but it's PACKED all the time. Everything is very busy in Santiago, let's not even start with supermarkets.

Park in front of the office

One thing EVERYONE warned me about in Santiago was theft. I had never had so many people telling me to be careful and to leave the jewelry in the hotel and my purse in my hands whenever I went somewhere. My objective is to avoid theft for the three months I'm here! The centre of the city looks a bit like the centre of the city in Mexico City, but line-ups are really really long to do administrative stuff. Also, despite what chileans say, I find Santiago to be more polluted. At times visibility is terrible, and I've never seen Mexico City like that.

Street in El Golf

In Santiago I'm staying at something called apart hotel, which is like an apartment/hotel. It's super cute and comfy, you can look at pictures here. The best thing is the location. In Concepción I'm staying at a hotel which is one block away from the office, a three minute walk. Extremely convenient. I love it here, my room's the best. The best thing, however, is breakfast (sign I will get fat #3). There are TWO different cakes they make here everyday, cakes I've never had before. So I have to have one slice of each of course. Plus all different beverages, breads, cheeses, fruits, cereal... I look forward to breakfast every day!

Ok, I will write details about what I have done at work on a separate post!

Pre-summer days: last days in The Van

Today Sunday makes it two weeks since I arrived in Chile! I will write all about it in a bit, but I remembered I had written this stuff below while I was on the plane two weeks ago, but had forgotten to post it:

Kiki getting her tattoo!

Here I am on another plane. Going to Chile now, though.  Wow, the entertainment on planes has improved considerably in the last couple years. Now we all have an individual TV where we can select movies, TV shows and music as we please. You can even make playlists with the songs you like from the different albums. This is LAN airlines, which apparently travels all around South America. Very exciting to be in my first South America trip. This particular flight goes from Los Angeles, to Lima, to Santiago, to Buenos Aires.  From LA to Santiago it’s 13 hours, so it’s like going to Europe.

Seeing how I won't be going back to Vancouver for a year (sigh) I will write about some fun things we did our last days there. So these are eating chocolate and live music. In terms of eating chocolate, we went to an all-you-can eat chocolate fondue place, Capstone Tea in Robson Street (which, unless you’re a huge person that eats a LOT, is actually cheaper if you buy individual platters…) For our live music of the month we went to 560 to Five Alarm Funk. They were not as good as the band before them but the night was so much fun! Anyway back to now---> The last 48 hours were so intense… I had my last final on the last possible day, Thursday. Finishing the exam, I had several things to take care of before leaving for a year, and we also had a magic show to go to, so we didn’t start pacing until 11pm. Ok, so just a quick note on the magic show (which I had already mentioned in another post). It’s this guy from Colombia called Camilo The Magician, and he does mostly card tricks, which are crazy! He has a song written after him, Camilo the Magician by Said the Whale. So the trick that blew my mind was one where a guy picked a card, a girl picked a card, they showed them to audience, cards back in the deck, shuffle shuffle, Camilo took one card from the deck, tore it in two, and it was half and half the two cards the guy and the girl had picked! All of this with intensive shuffling involved in between. No idea how he did it. 

So after the show we came home to pack , and we packed and packed and packed all night long! We watched the Royal Wedding, of course. I watched because I was up anyway, but it’s not like I would have woken up at 2 am to watch the live streaming, unlike my mum and sister who did do that. I thought the dress was beautiful, and that the cameras shouldn’t have filmed William’s head from the top that much, focusing on his bald spots. It’s weird that we still have royalty now… a king, seriously??

I hate packing. It’s so stressful, especially getting rid of stuff. I never want to get rid of anything, what if I will ever, maybe, potentially need that thing I’m throwing out one day. This is stupid, but I can’t help it. Especially books. Plus I had a keyboard and the stand and a Christmas tree and the drying racks…  so much stuff. After an all-nighter packing, I transferred all the boxes to my neighbours’ place, because they were scheduled to leave the next day while I was scheduled to leave at noon. I went to work, to give my last tour. So the other day Vale and I got sick at the same time, and lost our voices at the exact same time too, so I had no voice for the tour But I did it with Quinn which was awesome. It was sad saying bye to my Friday team mates, our Friday tour groups were so much fun.

After I got back, there were already people in our place. Housing didn’t clean before the new residents moved in, so they got a mess of a house, ew, I sure wouldn’t want to be them. On the plus side, though, they got all the cool stuff we left, such as an awesome NY poster on the stairs oh yeaahhh and food and shampoo (unopened). I spent all afternoon with my neighbours and then Nicki let me store ALL of my boxes in her storage space in her Marine Drive apartment, so I transferred everything from Fairview to MD in a taxi van at 11 pm when Nicki got home. Then we slept for like 2 hours and the taxi came at 3 am to take me to the airport as my flight left at 6 am. And Sharon went to the airport at 3am to say goodbye too, she's such a sweetie. 

Now that I have like 5 hours until we get to Peru I will go to sleep. 

Halfway there!

Something interesting that happened the last week of classes: a guy proposed to a girl in class! So it was the last day of our FNH 355 class, and everyone was there (like 350 people?) and the prof was like, oh my god i'm so excited. no one leave at the end, ok? there is something really special happening!!

So the lecture went on as normal, but she finished 15 minutes earlier than usual, and then she started a slide presentation with music and pictures of this korean girl drinking tea and doing 'cute' stuff. And then a guy in a suit came out of the door at the bottom of the lecture hall, like 30 seconds before the end of the video, and he said like, [whateverthegirl's name was] can you stand up please? OHHAAHHH!! everyone woot wooting!

Anyway, everyone was going crazy, and the girl came down the steps and then the guy proposed in english (so that the audience, us, would get what he was saying) and in korean saying something like, I only follow Jesus in this life, do you want to follow him with me? or something like that. And she said yes. I mean it was a bit of pressure, imagine if she had said no in front of all those people. But it was a great show! For us. 

I had my first (almost) all-nighter the night before the last day of classes. I was writing two term papers that were due on Thursday so sleeping was not an option (I slept for 30 minutes, which was a BIG mistake). Here at UBC we have the AMS-organized Block Party, which happens the last day of classes and EVERYONE loves. I didn't go last year, but I did go this year. I hate to say this but I didn't have THAT much fun, but I think it was because I was not in the mood, it was cold and I had headache.

BUT YEYYYYY!! I'm done with my SECOND YEAR OF UNIVERSITY!!!! Now exam time, and then Chile and Singapore here I come :D

One exciting thing I'm looking forward to before I leave is Camilo The Magician!!! This deserves a post on its own, I'll talk more about it later.

Oh yes, and here is UBC LIPDUB! I appear for 0.5 seconds. I'm so glad UBC has a lipdub now and that I'm part of it.

I was disappointed by the video when I first saw it, but it gets better every time you watch it. And after 1.5 days it has like 80 thousand views. Some things I didn't like: the girl at the beginning (this is a reference to the Old Spice commercial), the length of the clip, the use of two songs (should've been just Pink, with more people in less space so it didn't look as empty as it did), more lip synching with more focus on individual people.  But overall it's good!!

Marry the man today!

So this week was great. Well, except for the fact that I dropped my phone. Dropped it in water. In a toilet. A dirty toilet. Dirty as in not flushed. In the guys bathroom. Yeah... Gross.
...I can explain. So with Nichster we started this project called Bathroom Stall Musings. Check it out here www.bathroomstallmusings.tumblr.com So I was taking pictures in the girls' bathroom at The Beanery (those are the ones of the basilisc!) I finished with that bathroom and then went outside. My friend was there and I was like, hey I'm taking pictures! Do you think I can go in the guys' bathroom? He was like, yeah sure why not! So we go inside and I go have a look at the stall to see if the writings on the wall are nice. The toilet was gross with everything you can imagine in it and I was like, ewwww this is disgusting, I'm not taking pictures right now, I'll come back when they have flushed this, god are guys gross... So I turn to leave, and as I do so, my phone slips from my jacket pocket INTO THE TOILET. It's so so so so gross and so so so random that I can't believe it happened... like, what was I doing there, and why, oh why did my phone have to fall right in the centre with a splash? I ran outside screaming and laughing so hard my stomach was hurting. I was really rolling on the floor laughing. hahah Even if this was no laughing matter! My phone, in the meantime, was just drowning in terrible terrible things in that dimly-lit smelly boys' bathroom. We went downstairs to get some gloves from the Beanery people, and then my friend was like, ok you stay here, I'll get your phone (I was laughing/throwing up). Anyway, to make a long story short, a lot of disinfectant, 260 dollars and 3 hours getting to the Apple Store later, I got a new phone (my 4th iPhone in the last 10 months). No, the warranty doesn't cover water (or should I say liquid) damage. And the worse thing is that the last time I changed my phone (3 months ago) it was because I had dropped it in a toilet as well. But it was my toilet and it was clean, so it was like a million times better/less worse.

These last few days have been great because I went to watch Guys and Dolls Suite Style Musical (upper year residences do this) it was GREAT!! My friends Keirstyn and Emil were in it and I was just blown away. Here is a random youtube clip of a song I loved, Marry the man today!

Adelaide was Keirstyn. She's smart, beautiful, sings amazingly well, and is also a great tour guide (we give tours together on fridays and I love giving them with her). Emil was Harry the Horse!  He's such a fantastic person as well and soooo funny!! He's always in musicals and I just love him :D emilio. That's one thing about UBC, you're always meeting people that are passionate in many different things but they are all so interesting. I guess that's the beauty of the college experience.

Also, today was UBC LIP DUB!!! woot woot!! It was aaaaaaweeeesommmEEEE!!! If you don't know what that is, check out the webpage and look at the previous lip dubs. Ours was INCREDIBLE!! There were trampolines, horses, a Translink bus, Josh Ramsey from Marianas Trench (who the f..??), sheepdogs...!! and more things I can't remember. I was in section 15 with an amazing group of people including the lovelies Amelie and Vale! We were all forest nymphs hehe we also did a flashmob behind the MOA which was pretty cool, filmed by a helicopter. And we also had a final party scene at the pool. Pretty sweet!! I was in the part were the underwater camera was filming and we jumped in the pool one by one. I was wearing strapless bikini and of course it fell off the second I jumped. I hope that won't show on the film... or I hope the group of scuba divers drinking tea in an underwater living room didn't see anything. Besides this little bikini incident, the lip dub was EPIC. Can't wait to see the finished video, should come out April 8th or something. I'll post it for sureeeee!!


UPDATE: this just in! So the other day my friend Martino came to visit at 1 am because he was passing by. He was kinda drunk and we were hanging out in my living room. Then a couple other friends came, including the one that had fished my phone from the toilet (ew) so we told Marts the story. Then they left at like 2am. And I tried contacting Marty all week-end and his phone was dead, sent me to voice mail. Anyway today when I asked why his phone was dead he was like, yeahh I lost my phone... And I was like, really oh no! where? And then he's like, well, actually, I didn't loose it... I dropped it... in your toilet. HAHAHA yeah so apparently when he was at my place he went to the bathroom and dropped it somehow, and then was too embarrassed to say anything so he just didn't and put it in his pocket instead. SOO LISTEN UP EVERYBODY. This is a curse. Marty will tell the story to the next person at his place, and that person will also drop the phone, and so on. I would suggest you never go near a body of water with your phone.

Reading Week Week-end

The first week-end of the Reading Week is coming to an end! I will probably stay here due to too much homework, catching-up and random stuff that needs to be done. Vale left for the Okanagan on Saturday, but the house is not less occupied, as one of her friends from UBC-O came to visit and she's staying in Vale's room with a friend of hers. Kiks is here. Yaku are in Iceland right now, they couldn't pick something more far away than that.

I just came back from Ricky's place and my stomach is so full, I just want to lie on the floor (yes, the floor, not the bed) and fall asleep. I ate at 4 and then left at 6.30 with Kia to go to Ricky's place for Popusas (which are similar to Mexican tlacoyos I find). It was a lot of fun as Ricko's family is super welcoming and everyone is really nice. They're from El Salvador and the dad, Nelson, always wants you to be drinking something (better if it's alcohol, but things like milk are okay as long as you're having a large piece of chocolate cake with it) and eating something. We watched the Grammys and it was really weird watching TV, as I'm so not used to it. Fairview events always have things like PlayStations and TVs for prizes, which just shows how much budget they have to put on events. We should go more to these kinds of things and win a TV. Well, anyway, watching the Grammys with them and commenting on everything was a lot of fun. Then the sister's husband had his android phone and kept taking pictures of Ricky and Nelson and making them look as if Brad Pitt was signing posters of their faces. And the dog, Pacha, is a pug that considers humans to be part of the furniture, so she just walks on your lap like if you weren't there and finds it comfortable to sit and lie on people's legs without their consent. She's so funny because she's a compacted fat pug.

On Saturday I went with Oscar, Nichy, Jessie and Manuel to a really cool party. It was a 20-30s themed party and everyone was dressed up really nicely. It was in the Waldorf Hotel, in East Hastings (and there was a positive correlation between the distance from UBC and the number of people of questionable character that got on the bus). Stepping through the entrance was like going back in time... the carpeted floor and the dim lights of the locale from the brass candleholders, combined with the wooden dance floor, flowery wall paper and deep-red velvet curtains, created an atmosphere which is in line with what I had imagined a party in the 30s would be like. Everyone was dressed up, guys wearing suits and dancing shoes, vests and suspenders, hair parted to the side. Girls with flowery dresses and dancing shoes (the swing dancers), long silk dresses, pearls and buns made with ondulating curls and peach-coloured fabric roses (the fancy-party goers), corsets, red lipstick and tattoos (the cabaretty-looking girls), beads, sequins and feathers (the flappers).

At the beginning swing music was playing, but then we had two really good live bands. One of them was called Maria in The Shower, and one thing that I thought awesome was how the vocalist stood on top of a leaning chelo while playing the trumpet (and while the chelo guy kept playing the chelo). Really cool. I was next to the stage getting a good view and filming, and was really happy because I got some good shots with good music, and today I checked and the sound quality is terrible because of the closeness to the huge speakers. Speaking of which, there also was a baby too close to the speakers. The baby was a HUGE baby - looked 2 years old but was 10 months - and his mom was tiny, which made the baby look even bigger. But seriously, this was the biggest 10 month old I've seen in my life. He was also super cute, but apathic, like if this sort of scene was normal for him. He was wearing sound mufflers around his ears, but still, he was literally next to the speakers. The mom had like a pouch kind of thing attached to her back and she would carry him around that way, breast-feeding him while drinking beer. I'm guessing he was the kid of one of the band members..

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!