At last after what seems like eternity, I finally have the time to sit down and compose about my first 3 weeks here. It seemed like a sad moment as I left Kuala Lumpur but I had my mom for company, at least for the first 2 days that is. The trip to Hong Kong was uneventful apart from the fact that the plane was delayed for about an hour because of a missing passenger (the crew had to move out all of his/her luggage- for security reasons of course as it could be a bomb- who knows?). By the time we arrived in Hong Kong, we only had about 3 minutes to make the connection flight. Thank goodness for those Hongkees. Their attendants showed up just as we exited the plane, all eager to guide us to the appropriate check in desk (we were not issued our boarding passes back in Malaysia), then it was off to the plane for a grueling 14 hour flight to Vancouver. The Cathay Pacific plane wasn’t particularly comfortable but I did my best to endure it. The quality of the in flight television was so bad that it looked worse than the lowest grade of pirated DVDs. Still I did manage to watch 300, for the first time. Eventually it was touchdown in Vancouver. My granduncle was there to meet us so we immediately left for his luxurious apartment by the waterfront. During the trip back, I was struck by the politeness of the Canadian drivers (in contrast to the morons that Malaysian drivers are) and the fact that they turned their lights on during the day. We eventually arrived in my uncle’s house where I would spend the first two nights. The next day we left to go shopping for supplies at this huge mall appropriately called Metropolis. It was way bigger than One Utama but unlike the latter, parking was absolutely free.
Fast forward to move in day. I signed up for their week long orientation so I got to move in early. My room is scarcely bigger than Harry Potter’s cupboard but I got a nice view of the Vancouver skyline and well, it is my room- I don’t have to share it. The only room shared by everyone is the washroom. There are simply too many things to go into detail here, so I’ll just briefly summarize what happened so far. On the first night, there was a sort of carnival with games and prizes and a live band. I wasn’t interested in the band but I managed to win a toy doggy (I love stuffed animals). Other events of interest include a scavenger hunt, where we had to go downtown and take some creative pictures (probably a gimmick to familiarize newbies with the city), a hypnotist who was really amusing, a games night (I played Pictionary) and what else, campus orientation. I was extremely pleased that this year's orientation theme was Highland Scottish. That meant wonderful Scottish music with fiddles and bagpipes (there was even a bagpipe player to open the ceremony). The best part was when they gave this lively tune as the orientation staff ran past the gathered students. Nice! The campus is really huge; it takes at least 15 minutes to get to class. Even with the tour, I still found myself lost on the first day of classes.
The international committee organized events for international students to get together. The first was a complimentary boat cruise. Well, it was only about 2.5 hours long but we got a good view of the city. Apart from water, the only drinks on board were alcoholic drinks, which were not to my liking. Still, the cruise was fun and so was the next event. All the international students were divided into groups led by a veteran mentor. On our first night, we chatted until it was really late, each of us telling the rest a bit of our country and how it compares to theirs/Canada. I of course, shared some Malaysian jokes- the famous racist ones. The sort that involves the Malaysian, the Singaporean, etc. One of the most memorable events was when I visited one of my friend’s rented basement. Not only was it cooler than my own crappy room, but it was more worth it for the cost too. The three of us attempted to cook dinner, but we forgot to turn on the exhaust fan so the smoke alarms went off. We eventually got dinner ready, not exactly a gourmet feast, but (burned) fried eggs and microwave macaroni and cheese was fine with me. After dinner, we decided to borrow a movie from the owner to watch on the huge projector TV in the basement. It was hard to decide what to watch, as each of us had different tastes in films, but eventually my two friends settled for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I just agreed having grown tired of choosing, despite the fact that I’ve watched that movie a gazillion times. So that’s basically what happened in the past three weeks. Too bad I don’t have that many pictures to accompany this post. Will remember to take some soon.
1 comment:
Glad to know that you're first 3 weeks here in Canada was good.Having triggered the fire alarm is a scary thing isn't it? Well lucky for you and your friends, there's not much hassle to deal with when there's a fire alarm triggered unintentionally, unlike my case. I still remembered when some drunk moron over at my residence apartment triggered the fire alarm, we had to evacuate the entire premises immediately. The fire fighters came to put out the fire but there was no fire to be put out. Then they called in some mysterious unit like hazmat or something like that to verify the unknown problem which took us several hours before we could get back to the residence apartment.Did you say that there's a mall in Vancouver that's bigger than One Utama? Although, I visited some malls in Vancouver but I didn't noticed that any of them were bigger than One Utama. You even cracked racist jokes about Malaysia? Whoa man, better be careful. You might never know who's hearing or who could be a snitch for the government. The next thing you know, there'll be an assassin waiting for you under your bed with a silenced pistol. Heheh just joking. Anyway, continue blogging man. Your blogs are always more interesting than mine and reading them helps me improve my writing skills.
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