Parties at Western - Friday September 23, 2011

Already... we have our parties starting in Western. This one, which was apparently not organized by our sophs or just Western in general... basically one that was planned by the students was having this party where people had to dress as little clothes as possible. Pretty jokes when I saw how my floor was so enthusiastic about it. One person in particular actually had no clothes except for a viking hat that was stuck to his groin and a paper that covered his butt. It was just hilarious when I saw it. Others just uhhh ya know has little clothes but were not as serious as him. So we went to visit other floors but boy, they were surprised at our viking boy who was the man of the show! As we got lower and lower to the floors below, the music starting booming and there were more people gathered. It was just a total mess in the staircase, with beer cans, spilled drinks, leftover food, etc all over the place. But that wasn't all, some of the floors had to have guards in front of their doors to prevent any damages to their floor because people go crazy when they are drunk! Apparently, some incident happened, though I don't know the exact details of what, but RA's were called to control the situation because it got out of hand on this particular floor. I am actually so glad I am on the quiet floor and the very top floor where no one would dare come up so many flights of stairs to bother us. Plus, we dont hear any of the loud music so I can get some good sleep!!!

I feel so Dead - Tuesday September 20, 2011

Today.... I woke up to the feeling of achingness because just yesterday, my sister took me to a dragonboat practice and although it wasn't that intense of a training... I had to go back to the recreation centre in the rainpour because I was gonna go play badminton with my friend. I was dripping wet when I came in but people interpreted me as sweating like a pig, which I was not. I was just super wet because of the rain. Then after our short badminton game, we rushed back in the rain again to arrive back in time for a surprise party for two of our floormates. It was pretty awesome how we surprised them and I was glad I took part in planning it.

Fraternity - Tuesday July 13, 2011

Another beginning of a week of hardcore university classes. I feel exhausted and it has only been the second week of university? It's gonna be really tough for me to keep this rate up especially with my lack of sleep right now. Anyways, I will try to find some way to manage my time between academics and extra-curriculars.... somehow. So today, my roomie talked to me about this fraternity thing he saw at the information booths on the campus. It was tonight at 10:00 and it was in London downtown, not in Western campus which equals something very suspicious. So we took the bus down and arrived at the doors at 9:45 but the party didn't start. I didn't even know it was a party until I went inside and heard the loud DJ music blasting inside the rooms. But inside, it was a whole different story, it was all men or for them, bro's. I was just speechless because it was just my very first time going! They had this swimwear theme and all the guys were wearing swimwear and apparently, girls were gonna arrive.. in their swimwear as well. How joyful would that be, and best of all, they got a big can of keg. I laughed when they tried opening the keg which resulted in the juice blasting out because it was pressurized. Inside was tons of beer and there were vodka elsewhere. Also, inside there was a table that was giving free samples of some energy drink similar to redbull. It wasn't too bad I guess. I didn't drink any beer tho.

O-Week Day 2 - Wednesday September 7, 2011

(Awesome movie)

Another early wake up call, followed by the sound of the alarms woke us up really fast. Today was our faculty meeting and we got to meet our Social Sci Faculty, one of the biggest faculties in Western. There were a few rotations to split up the big numbers and fit us in the classrooms. Inside, they talked more about charities and one of them even gave a touching presentation of someone he knew very dearly, had contracted cancer. It was certainly a crying moment when he finished and I could see the tears that were gathering up on his eyelids. This encouraged a lot of donaters, aka making money off us uni students but guess what, its all for CHARITY so its alright I guess.

Lunch was near, but I could not go because I had the MOSSA meeting to join. In the end, we returned to our rally with empty stomaches and had to sit through a 4 hour rally. We learned some Social Sci cheers and they made a SUPER FROSH TALENT SHOW, where froshies could show off any hidden talents that they had. It was honestly spectacular, with a barely immigrated chinese girl singing an English song really well, a Romeo and Juliet monologue, someone who could shrink their ears (it's actually true and I could not believe my eyes when I saw it) and someone dancing to the music of Tron Legacy. If it hadn't been my stomach growling the whole time, I would have had a great time watching it.

O-Week Day 1 - Tuesday September 6, 2011

(Wish that could happen to me!)

Today, it was the first day when our soph's decide to wake us up early with a loud and very loud morning call by knocking our doors, yelling, screaming, using a horn, almost everything they can possibly do to try and wake us up. It took awhile before many of us could pick ourselves out of bed and go down to eat breakfast. However there was one girl who was not able to wake-up even with all the racket. We went down to practice our SAUGEEN cheers and into a Dating Show. Basically, it explained to us how guys given the circumstances, would move-in and kiss a girl if they think the girl makes a move, even when its only having a hand on their leg. Logically speaking and from a guy's standpoint, it seems right but from the third-person's view, its just total beeswhack when you think it over again. So, body language is not the way to go to determine if the girl wants a kiss or not. In the end, our speaker told us to always ask because if your not comfortable asking, then your not ready to take the action. There was this scenario which I really loved. It starts off with the guy and girl having a great time and enjoying their date. It's nighttime and it's all quiet. The guy wants to kiss her and says, "Hey, it was a great night and I really enjoyed it! May I give you a kiss?" The girl rejects with a "No". Although the guy is disappointed, he replies "I'm glad I had asked because I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable." That totally deserved an 'awww' moment. That just about wraps up our Dating Show. Lunch was on its way and after that, we had to practice our cheer numerous times before we went into the welcoming ceremony where we shouted our cheers. It was just like a normal welcoming ceremony, nothing special except that they made it so each rez and faculty could present their cheers. There was a hypnotist and I had a great laugh from it. Then there was a dance but I ditched and went downtown to get some dinner.

Move-in To Western - Monday September 5, 2011

My parents can blame me for my stupidity because I had got my move-in day wrong and I had thought it was on Sunday. So I had finished packign everything at Saturday and was ready to leave when I checked on the internet and later found out it was Monday. Got a long and hard scolding from those asian parents, haha. So today was the day to move-in to my new residence, Saugeen (known as the party rez!). It began my hectic life as I took my first step into the building. Inside, we got our o-week kits and other items, necklace, t-shirts, wristband, etc. Then we took a look in our room and unpacked. At first, I had thought I had brought too much stuff but after glancing around, I had pretty little compared to the rest. Then we had our lunch and walked around campus to look at the computer store, pharmacy, book store. After that, we had our floor meeting where we got to know our floor and watched a football game against Waterloo in a very cold and chilly weather. We annihlated them with 31-0 in the first quarter and I was too cold to see the rest.

At night, there was this Limbo dance where people dance and write on each others shirt. It got wild and apparently, one of the girls took off their shirts and started dancing in her underwear.... LOL

I had missed the night dance because I was way too tired from the carride and I still had some jet lag in me.

(My Rez)

Part of My Shang Hai Trip

Shang Hai Trip Day 1 – Tuesday August 21, 2011

It only took a 2 hour flight from Hong Kong to Shang Hai. But within that 2 hours, we were provided with a delicious dinner. The part where it was so amazing was that one of my relatives who sat beside me on our flight was vegetarian and didn’t eat dinner. She only eats two meals a day and skips dinner so I was given an extra dinner to solve my stomach problems. When we arrived at Pu Dong Airport (not too clear about the name) it was 9:00PM. We retrieved our luggages and was about to take the subway to our hotel. However it turns out that the airport subway closed at 9:00PM. Our only alternative was to take the bus which we had no clue as to what stop to get off at. We tried our best with our limited resources to get a better picture of how to get as close to our hotel as possible. We used GPS, our cellphones and our labtops to find a general location of where we are. Thankfully our busstop was right next to the our supposed subway stop. We hitched a short ride on the local subway before we got off at our stop but the exit closest to our hotel was closed because it closed at 10:00PM which was exactly the time we just arrived. Forced to take the longer route, we ended up losing our location and had to ask people on the streets for directions. Even with the directions, it took us nearly 20 minutes to walk to our hotel with our luggage beside us. It was nearly nightfall when we made it to the hotel so I took a light shower and went to sleep.

Shang Hai Trip Day 2 – Wednesday August 22, 2011

I am writing this today, Thursday August 23, 2011 and I practically forgot what we have done today. All I remembered was the big misleading dinner that we had. However after giving it some more thought, the events of the past came up one by one. We went to Hang Zhou to visit the water village. Nothing that special except there was water surrounding it and it is a water village that has been around for many many years. We had a tour about some different styles of beds, the simple carved vs complicated carved beds meant different dynasties. We boarded a small boat and toured around for a bit and went out for lunch. It was a very cheap lunch where all of us were practically full to the brim with food. Then we went towards West Lake and took a boat towards an island in the middle of West Lake. We only had 45 minutes before the last boat left the island. Then we went for dinner because it was getting late. When we arrived and sat down on the restaurant tables. We were discussing when my uncle noticed that the waiters took away a menu. We looked at the rest of the menu’s and when we asked for a few more copies since we only had two on hand, they said they had only two menus in the entire restaurant. Bear in mind, the restaurant had over 100 tables and we only took up 2 tables while the rest of the place was very empty. We found it very suspicious and asked for the menu that we looked at before but they would not give it back. Apparently, the prices rose and so the old menu which they had taken away was not suitable. We thought we were being cheated and started asking for a set meals because on the menu, it only showed individual meals. They immediately went to work to create three set menu for us. Though it took less than 5 minutes, we were pretty sure they had typed it out because it was on a plain piece of paper. Sad to say, we had no choice but to order from the set menu because we would be causing a hard time for our tour guide if we just took our stuff and left. To our surprise, they gave us a plentiful dinner and it was very worth the price. In the end, we found out we weren’t being cheated but we had misunderstood.

Shang Hai Trip Day 3 – Thursday August 23, 2011

Today, we went to a big Buddha place where there was four big statues. Each statue meant a different direction, north, east, south and west. However each of the statues were missing something, one was missing a sword sheath, another was missing a snake’s tongue, a third was missing the umbrella skeleton while the last was something that I forgot already. Then we went out for 雷峰塔. It was a five story tower and at the very top, we could see the 西湖and many other areas of Hang Zhou. It took a long time walking up towards the tower as well as getting down. We went out for lunch at some restaurant which had no air conditioning. Although the food was plentiful and totally worth the prices, the a/c part was very disheartening. I was so full after eating several plates full of food. Our tour guide took us to a silk museum where we were given instructions on how to differentiate between real and fake silk. The only method was not to look or feel the silk but to burn it. If we were to burn real silk, it would not catch on fire very easily because their boiling point is high. Also, white smoke came out from burning instead of the usual black from cotton. We would have to ask the sales representative to do the burning because from the guide’s saying, we burn, we pay. If they burn, it’s not our problem and we would know that it is fake. After hearing this, they showed us 100% silk-made blankets and blanket covers. It was at a very cheap price and many of my uncles bought one though my family didn’t. That museum tour ended and we went out for free shopping at near the West Lake before we watched a performance. This performance was spectacular, because people were actually performing on a stage on water. It was just amazing at their style of acting such as using yellow and red fish lights, lighted flying birds, and large feathers. That concluded our day.

Shang Hai Trip Day 4 – Friday August 24, 2011

I just found out today but Hang Zhou is actually a different area that’s outside of Shang Hai. Today, we took our last ride with the tour bus and crossed the borders toward Shang Hai. However it took around three hours and twenty minutes before we arrived in the center of Shang Hai. The tour guide described that Shang Hai has two big highways which cross in the middle. In the middle is Shang Hai’s center and it’s basically their downtown area. Besides the highways, there is a ring around the city which makes Shang Hai look like a Chinese word if you glanced from a helicopter view. First, we went to a pearl museum where they taught a lesson on how to differentiate between fake and real pearls. It’s basically rubbing the two pearls together lightly. If it turns rough then its real, however if it’s still smooth then its fake. After that, we had a look at their pearl store but the prices were way too high. Oh yea, for pearls, there are fresh water and saltwater oysters and apparently, the salt water oysters are more expensive. However it is very hard to determine if it’s salt or fresh water. At the end of the pearl tour, each of my family members took a small pearl (not exactly round and it’s pretty small) from a nearby cracked oyster. That was the end of our Shang Hai tour and we returned to our hotel to change because we had a family banquet at night. It was to celebrate the marriage of one of my cousins and I was finally allowed to drink some alcohol though it was poor quality. After drinking half a bottle of red wine mixed with tons of pepsi and 7up, I felt a little bit tipsy but I was totally fine. I was deeply disappointed with the fact that our banquet had no cake but there was a cake on display only. It was pretty late when we returned home but me and my cousins decided to sleep a little bit later since we wanted to get some more alcohol. We each drank a shot at the hotel’s local bar but it was so expensive, around $80. So we went to a convenience store nearby and bought a whole bottle of Smirnoff plus some fanta to fulfill our alcoholic desires. It totaled $90ish which was pretty decent. One thing that I was glad about this night was that I was finally above 18 and legal to drink in CHINA and HONG KONG!!