Ubiquitous

A Canadian in America

// September 11th, 2009 // 18 Comments » // Academic, Work/Volunteer

I’ve been at Cornell for about three weeks now - it’s exhilarating! Okay yes, the honeymoon period is slowly draining out of my system but I still find something new to love in Ithaca every day.

Now as a Canadian I expected very few differences north and and south of the border. But I’ve been noticing a lot of small amusing things!

• Y’all say “bathroom” instead of “washroom”! I’ve gotten so many weird looks when I say I have to go to the washroom. I mean, you wash your hands in the washroom, but you don’t bath there!!
• People are highly amused when I say “eh”. I’ve been saying it a lot more now that I’m here just to emphasize my Canadiana
• Labor! Color! Neighbor! Favor! Note to self: take out u’s
• Fahrenheit still makes no sense, but I think I’m slowly getting it
• I still have no idea where Long Island is, even though 50% of my faculty seems to be from there (okay now I do because I just Googled it)
• People laugh at me for my US geographical-challenged-ness
• No one knows what IB is

Some classes are fascinating, some are good but not too relevant. I found a job already - as an administrative assistant in a VP office. Joined a bizallion student organizations as well, need to whittle that down. My suite in my dorm is really chill. Life is good.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Update on life

// January 29th, 2009 // 7 Comments » // Academic, Personal, QOTW, Work/Volunteer

Clearly “blog more often” should not have been one of my new year’s resolutions as I haven’t blogged since LAST YEAR. That must change!

Academics. I’m quite happy with my 4.21 GPA (on a 4.33 scale here at UBC) but I know I got lucky this term.  My deadly 70-something history mark won’t be released until end of the year and that’s gonna hurt, bad. Who says university isn’t easy?! I’m slacking off a lot in term 2 though… ahhhhhhhh. Rating: 8/10.

Social life. Holy crap, went out SO much over the winter break. And as soon as school started? ZILCH. Nothing. Became a total hermit with no friends. Will someone be my friend? This is pathetic. That happens in university I guess. Rating: 1/10.

Career. So apparently it’s already considered late to start applying for summer internships. Omfg stress. Oh and I quit one of my part time jobs! Hurrah. Rating: 7/10.

Love. There are basically no boys in my life. I’m slowly forgetting what it feels like to be in love/be loved. Another reason to move on campus next year? Rating: 3/10.

Health. Got hit with a nasty fever last week and am slowly recovering. Must start eating more than one meals a day. Keep forgetting. Rating: 3/10.

Total: 22/50 or 44%. I fail at life.

QOTW: How’s life?

Popularity: 9% [?]

I Blog for UBC

// November 21st, 2008 // 11 Comments » // Academic, Online Experience, Work/Volunteer

Indeed, it’s the epitome of geeky blogger pride. People sometime elevate me to the status of a campus celebrity, but seeing no photos of myself have made it on my UBC blog yet, I highly doubt it.  However, it is a very special/odd feeling when my friends or classmates come up to me and say, “hey! I read your blog!”

There’s a bunch of us blogging for the University of British Columbia (the theme isn’t too sleek and professional, then again, UBC’s edgy like that XD)  in fact. The entire blogsquad of 10 or so people is going out for an awesome night of laser tag and sushi tonight =D But I digress. UBC was recently ranked the #34 top university in the world (Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge claimed top place, surprise surprise). To make it sound more important than it really is, you might be wondering what it’s like to blog for a world-class university, to be the tech-savvy face for all current freshmen as well as incoming highschool students?

Well to start, we use Wordpress and premade themes LOL. Aside from skimming over juicy details of alcoholic consumption and latenight m/o sessions (ew, gross), we pretty much have freedom in whatever we say. It’s so casual and awesome, I love it. I use the same conversational tone I always do. I’m free to rant and rave as I wish. Recently, one of my entries got featured in a New to UBC newsletters sent to all 6000 first year undergrads. THEY DIDN’T EVEN WARN ME *goes back to edit out all the grammar mistakes* Too bad we can’t put adsense blocks on the site to generate $$$ from all the clicks.

Now the reason I mentioned this is because it’s my excuse for the sparse updates on Ubiquitous since the start of the school year. I’M SORRY PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

P.S. - for those who still remember the university dilemma/drama from a few months back… Berkeley, I’m so over you. UBC’s my new love now =P

Popularity: 10% [?]

I Have a Hitlist in My Head

// July 30th, 2008 // 9 Comments » // QOTW, Work/Volunteer

Not even a hitlist per se (I won’t hurt a fly… I will literally run away screaming from a fly actually), maybe a I-Will-Secretly-Hate-You-And-Blog-About-You-List. I never imagined myself to be a very vengeful person. I don’t retain extreme emotions for long, meaning I can’t stay angry at people and I can’t be bubbly and hyper ALL the time. But after I started working office jobs this summer, I learned that if I am nice to people all the time, they WILL step all over me. With this premise, I find myself subconsciously making two categories in my head: the Nice People and the Shame-on-You People.  Most of the clients I interact with on a daily basis are in the Nice category (including everyone in MY office and my bosses for the day job, they’re about the nicest people I’ve met) and only three had the dubious honour of making it to the Shame List.  In no particular order they are

• Madam Crazy Shipper: a lady in charge of shipping who yelled at me for not having the order ready while SHE was the one who failed to provide me with a expected date (how come other people’s orders were fine, huh?! HUH?!)
• Mrs. Superiority: a sales lady who went on a ranting lecture to both me and my coworker when we asked her to check an order for us placed by her coworker (she and the coworker didn’t get along apparently). I’m just glad other people in the office agrees with me that she is an idiot!
• Ms. Hypocrite (hmm… they’re all women, just noticed): and a shift supervisor in my evening job with emotional problems (she just broke up apparently, I can see why) who put me on hold when I called her to open the building door for me, and lectured me about arriving late (I was outside the building for fifteen minutes on hold). After my shift, she got mad again because I apparently left at 10:59 instead of 11:00 - fyi, there were five clocks in the room and the one I followed was already 11:05PM!

So there you have it, the List of SHAAAAME. I feel like if I don’t write about them and put them on paper, I will never get over how rude they were while I tried to make an effort to be nice. So hopefully, karma gets those assholes (okay maybe not). My payback plan? Kill them with niceness. Ha! We’ll see how that goes.

QOTW: Is there anyone on your Hitlist or List of Shame? How do you deal with people who are unreasonable like that?

Popularity: 4% [?]

Summer Schedule

// July 22nd, 2008 // 13 Comments » // QOTW, Work/Volunteer

It’s easy to sum up my summer these past few weeks in Vancouver: working two jobs, sleeping as much as I can, splurging on end-of-summer shopping sprees, hanging out with friends, and having angsty momenets when the thought of university creeps on.

Technically, the first job I had this summer was working as an assistant in a travel agency, booking tours to Whistler, Banff, and wonderful filled-with-the-glories-of-mother-nature places in British Columbia. It was a parttime job that paid $10 an hour (ha! stil higher than what most of of my classmates are getting) with a short-tempered boss. Even though the job was as relaxing as it comes (and in the process allowing me to learn loads about the international tourism industry), I didn’t feel like it explored my full potentials.

So after three days of melancholy and lots of Facebooking while the boss was away, I quit that job and took up a fulltime job offer as a business receptionist in a furniture manufacturer.  The pay is a bit higher here but more importantly, I actually had a really nice girl train me and show me the ropes of the business. While the employment title sounds easy, it actually entails all the duties and responsibilities of the office manager. I’m in charge of ordering supplies, emailing pricing quotes to customers, overseeing the process of the furniture production from cutting to assembly.  I have a chance to walk around and examine all the cool pieces in the warehouse (reminds me of IKEA). So for once, I found a job I actually enjoy doing!

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, I have a five hour shift at an inbound call centre which coincidentally is a few metres away from the furniture place. That job was mind-boggling at first because the centre uses an elite computer dialing system with way too many bloody keyboard shortcuts. The companies’ clients include doctors, real estate agents, and government branches, who reroute their phones to our call centre after business hours (we run 24/7). So everytime someone calls, say a closed doctor’s office, we get the call and a screen pops up with prompts and message boxes and such. It’s AWESOME when there are no calls and the five or six people in the office are just sitting there reading. Maybe I’ll bring my laptop next time and watch a movie or something. Getting $50 bucks every night for that, pretty sweet!

Just for the hell of it, I want to work at Starbucks on my free evenings (can you say no life at all?! I don’t even know how I managed in that tight schedule of mine to lavishly spend on meals and shopping sprees - where is the time?!). I calculated that I should be making $5000 - $6000 bucks this summer. Ahh… financial independence is on the horizon!

QOTW: Do you have a summer job? What is it like? What do you plan to spend your hard-earned wages on?

Popularity: 5% [?]