So, I discovered the downsides to my new apartment today. First of all, the water pressure in the shower isn't the greatest. I guess I'll survive. Secondly, it is considerably cooler down in the bottom of the river valley, as opposed to up on top of the ridge, where the university campus is. You really feel it if you descend into the valley on a bike.

Still, it's nice to have so much space. My apartment looks like a hollow shell at the moment. Once all my stuff is there, it will still look hollow. For the first time in my life, I feel like I should buy a sofa. I guess I need to buy bookshelves and a desk too; I'm setting up the second (front) bedroom as my office.

Man, September is just around the corner, and that should mean new Apple product announcements! Excitement.

I guess I had nothing to say today. The highlight of the day was running into the Japanese contingent from school when I went to Blockbuster to return a video. They were just leaving a pub, so they had had a few beers and were in a party mood. We went to Safeway to celebrate our chance meeting, then I drove Go and Hiroshi home, after discussing the genius of Takashi Miike with them. Funny enough, I am not they saved any time or effort, what with the long walk to my car on campus...

Banana.

I got the keys to my new apartment today. It's down in the Bow river valley, below the hospital. It turns out that out of eight apartments in the building, three are inhabited by medstudents. Anyways, I moved a few things in there, but won't move everything in from storage until Tuesday.

Oh, I watched 'Shaolin Soccer' this evening. Funny stuff, good movie.

Globalfest

Today I went to Globalfest. Specifically, I went to see the Vietnamese pavilion. They put on a funny and touching play/musical/dancefest telling the story of a Vietnamese immigrant to Canada. It's been 30 years since the fall of Saigon, and I guess people are starting to forget about Vietnam and the bad years they went through, especially now that things have changed so much over there. Well, the performance was great; my favourite scene was the cycling.

So, why did I go in the first place? Well, my mentor Albert was involved as a volunteer, and I like this kind of thing already, so that was all the reason I needed. My mentor is age 20 and in second year of meds, which I think is awesome. I should start calling him big bro or something.

Anyways, I went there by subway, which reminded me of yet another free thing here. Public transit! Yes, that's right, we don't get reduced price or even cheap monthly passes or anything like that at U of C, we get free public transit from late August until May sometime. Not too shabby, eh?

One last thing I wanted to mention. Remember my reference to Mme. Lalonde a couple of days ago? Well, I googled her, and here's the result.

Garbage

Just got back from the Garbage concert at MacEwan Hall. I went with Go and Koji. It was awesome; we were about four meters from the stage, dead centre.

I need to see Nick Cave in concert.

Skating

I just got back from a nice Saturday afternoon of skating with a few fellow medstudents.

There are few things in life more enjoyable than going for a skate. Well, it turns out that if you believe that first sentence, then the University of Calgary is the place for you. U of C is blessed with the speed-skating oval from the 1988 Olympic winter games, and unbelievably to me, skating is free for students. They have public skating every weekday from 7:30 to 9 p.m., which makes the oval a great place to head after dinner, as well as at various times on weekends. When I'm out there on that ice, I thank Toutatis that I was accepted into meds here. Back in Boston, I had to dish out to skate at MIT, so I only went once in total after they introduced the entry fee. Anyways, my skating drought is over.

Which brings me to thinking about how many things are free here at U of C. First of all, there was the skating oval. There, helmet rentals are free as well, which is also a bit of a surprise. The huge gym on campus, the rock-climbing gyms, the swimming pools, the gym at the hospital (much nicer than the HMS gym, btw), they're all free. So, for a cheap guy like me, this may result in me not going down the road to obesity, despite the number of burgers in my life these days.

Anyways, getting back to the topic of skating, once again I am reminded of high school, where going skating down on the canal in the evenings was the thing to do on Friday nights and weekends. It turns out to be ditto for medschool, but with the Olympic Oval substituting for the Rideau canal. Good times are here again!

Okay, so I was thinking of running for class AV rep. Yes, apparently they still exist. I remember being the AV guy in history class with Mme. Lalonde back in high school, ah good times, and I'd like to recreate that here in medschool. However, I am afraid that the days of the film projector are over. Oh how I want that title on my CV, though.

I imagine that an AV rep would have the power to organize things like movie nights on the big screen at school, or could 'borrow' an LCD projector for big-screen gaming at home... but all of those activities show the corruption that power will lead you into, and lord knows I hate the corrupt, so the inner conflict that would be created would not be good for me. Not even Natalie Portman could control my brooding.

Anyways, a guy in our class seems to have the position wrapped up, and I can't be bothered to go print out the form.

Banana.

Testing the blog

As a good practitioner, I need to see how the damn thing will react if I probe it.

So consider this entry as my first "temperature taking" of the blog-oh-sphere.

It's getting late ... looks like I'll need to call my maid.