Cool Cherry Cream

Well, I've certainly been kept busy. I believe I last wrote on my first day here at university before going to the tower party. I went with Kayce, Natalie, Hailey and a guy from the floor below us, Ty.

I think the cost was three dollars, but since I bought an Access Gold card, I got in for free. The guy at the door asked to check my wristband and asked what residence I was in. I said DeCew and he was like "ohh, shitty food, shitty food". We've got a reputation, I see.

As I've always said, I'm not one for dances, and this was no exception. They did play quite a few songs I knew, surprisingly. There was one 90's dance song about love that I recognized, and after that was "Stayin' Alive". Later on they sampled, I guess, "Another One Bites The Dust", "Need You Tonight", and "Walk This Way" (the Run DMC version). Kayce and Natalie went off to find a bathroom and said they'd meet us back in the crowd, but we decided to go looking for them, but no luck. As I we were walking out of the crowd, I looked over at the person walking beside be and then did a double take and was like "hey!" because it was my good friend Desmund from high school. But we lost him after that and left soon after. As we were leaving, we met up with Kayce and Natalie at the door and went back to our rooms.

If I haven't already explained, our floor has eight guys who share one toilet/shower and four girls (including the don, who is in her third year, I believe) who share one toilet/shower/bathtub-shower. The way the bathroom is set up is there are two sinks on your right as you walk in, and a toilet stall straight ahead, just like any other regular toilet stall. Turn past the sinks and you have a shower on your left and the bathtub on your right. Straight ahead is an unopenable steel door that separates our side from the guys' side.

Taking a shower is awkward, but having done it twice, I'm getting used to it. There's really nowhere to get dressed and undressed, so I just do it in the shower, which really sucks when the ground is wet and you're wearing long pants. Plus I have to put my bag of clothes and towels and bath crap on the floor, which always seems to be wet, so yesterday I ended up with a wet shirt when it fell out of my bag. Plus the actual showering is weird, because you're kind of paranoid that someone's going to walk in. I know the other girls on my floor wouldn't do anything mean, and the guys haven't given me any reason to think they're going to walk in on us, but you never know. Plus, people always have friends over, and I don't know what any of them are like. But, like I said, yesterday's shower was better. I'm getting used to it, I guess.

After that, I went to sleep. The bed feels pretty hard, but I've slept fine the past two nights. I've heard some other people complaining about it, but Natalie said she thought it was comfy. I might get a mattress pad, because I mean, it could be comfier, but I'm not dying or anything.

Woke up yesterday at various times in the morning, six, seven, thereabouts, because I was worried I wouldn't hear my alarm go off. I wanted to stay in bed until 8:15, but ended up getting up around 7:45 instead. I had my windows open all night so it wouldn't get stuffy, but apparently they like to mow the lawn just outside the residence early in the morning. At first, I thought it was a big ol' garbage truck and I tried going back to sleep, but it just kept going! I finally went to go close my window and saw a tiny little tractor mower thing. And did I mention, this thing was loud? Because it was really really loud!

Got dressed, brushed my teeth, said good morning to the don who came in as I was leaving, and went down to the cafeteria to eat. I really want to call it the caf, but that's my high school's cafeteria. Plus, no one else calls it the caf. But it's just so much easier to type, you know? Anyway, they had bacon and eggs and things like that, but I decided to play it safe and go for the cereal instead. They had Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which is like my new favourite cereal since trying it in New York, so I had some of that.

As for drinks, they had pop and milk and all kinds of Dole juice things. I was hoping for lemonade, apple juice, or fruit punch, but they had none of those. So I grabbed this yellow drink that said it was a "juice cocktail" or something and tried that. Turns out it was called umm, "pineapple passion mango" and it was pretty gross. Just gulp it down at once, don't taste it.

I took a lot of cereal, because I figured I was paying for it anyway and at least it was something I knew I liked in case there was nothing else to eat the rest of the day, but it was not fun trying to eat all of it. I can't eat big meals in the morning. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, I love them, but the thought of trying to eat all of it so early makes me feel sick. I guess I'll have to start getting up earlier and eating later.

Paying for the meal went fine. I just hand the lady at the cash register my student card and she swipes it. I asked where the spoons were and it turns out they were right in front of me. I need to learn to look around sometimes.

After that, I went off in search of Mackenzie Chown, where I was supposed to go for my co-op orientation. The campus has a big tower with a big patio walkway up the stairs all around it, and since my two main points of reference are the tower and my rez, I usually end up just going up the stairs and around the tower, even though I know it's probably not the quickest way. Turns out it also took me way out of the way, when I could've just went through Jubilee Court. I knew the building was green and white striped, and I knew it was sort of the the right of the tower, but other than that, I had no real idea where I was going.

I found the stripes eventually and followed them around to go inside when I realized the building is ten separate buildings that are basically the same, just with different letters. I knew I was looking for 207, but the letter…? And no time to go back to my room to find out now. I was kind of planning on there being signs everywhere saying "co-op this way!" but there were none. I guessed that I was looking for building D (which was fortunately correct), and I was at C, so I was pretty close. Got lost a little bit more, but finally found some people who looked like they were doing something.

I think I was just on time getting there, the room was pretty full when I arrived. We watched a presentation which was as exciting as a presentation can be, and then were led outside to go into groups depending on the colour on our nametag. I was the red team, and as it turned out, the rest of my group was all guys. Looking around at the nametags, I quickly figured out why: we were split into departments, so we were all Computer Science co-op students (and the various branches of that program).

We were sent off on a scavenger hunt to answer questions like "how many indoor tracks are there at the Walker Complex?" and "what were General Brock's last words?". We were supposed to write the answers down on a paper and so someone asked who had the neatest handwriting. No one spoke up, so one of the guys said something like "I don't mean to be rude pointing this out, but probably the girl". I gladly accepted and thus had to take somewhat of a leadership role, pointing out what questions we had to answer and that sort of thing. At first, we started wandering around aimlessly but eventually, we were well on our way to answer the questions.

There were three questions on the paper that were brain teaser math questions that were worth ten points each and I was like "sweet, we've got math people, it's in the bag". I think we got all three of them right, but I'm not sure. My first thought looking at one of the questions was "hmm, how could I make a program that would do this?". For another question, I started making an algebra equation in my head, which turned out to be useless because one of the guys just guessed and he had it right.

At one point, half of our group disappeared, so there were only about four of us left. Seeing as I had the paper, we were of course the proper real group. Turns out we bumped into the others about ten minutes later, and they had the answers to two other questions.

At one point it occurred to me that it would be much easier to go to the fish bowl (the computer commons, a glass room filled with computers) and just look them up on the internet, but that of course spoils the fun and purpose. When we were nearing the end of the competition, another guy suggested that he could look up some answers on his iPhone, which went quite well. We were really quite at an advantage, all being computer people, you see. We went to the Walker Complex for refreshments (which turned out to be pop and…… Pizza-Pizza pizza! The best kind of pizza!) and turned in our sheet.

We all sat down and ate and talked (myself of course, mostly listened — though when I'm around the other girls I do talk much more than I normally do) and at one point, one of the co-op people came over to talk to us. He told us that we were fortunate because in Computer Science, they have way more job postings than students. He (or a girl that came by later) mentioned that we had a big group this year, which was rather funny, because there were only nine of us. As I've been walking down the halls, I've been looking at the graduating class pictures. The math & science graduates do seem much less than the say humanities ones. Although, the education/concurrent graduates also seemed very few, and that's what Brock is known for. Anyway, the guy also mentioned that we make quite a bit of money at our co-ops, like $20 a week. Nice.

After an hour or so, they came over and told us that our team and the orange team had tied for first, so we had to pick one person to answer a tie-breaker question, which was the month that Brock was founded. The other team won, and I think their prize was free Tim Horton's coffee or something. I'm not a coffee drinker, so it didn't matter to me, but it still would've been nice just to say we won, you know?

After that, I wandered around the vendor fair to find out where I was supposed to pick up my free calendar, but didn't see anywhere. I was also supposed to pick up my bus pass there, but the lines were enormous. You'd be waiting for literally hours. I went back for my room, read Reddit, checked email, that sort of thing, and Kayce soon dropped by and asked if I wanted to go for lunch. Since I already ate, I went down anyway but just got some gum. As we were lining up, we ran into Natalie who was happy to see some familiar faces, so we all went together. Natalie met three girls in the line — umm, Kelsey, Nikki, and Julia, I believe — and we went to sit with them. They were all from a different residence, but they still eat at DeCew. As much as I hated it when I found out I was living at DeCew, I think it's at least nice that we just go downstairs for our dining hall. Plus, my stairway is right near the dining hall, so extra bonus.

We had a discussion about chocolates and things, and the types that we have here that Kayce doesn't have in England and vice-versa. She keeps telling us about all the things she'll need to bring back over the Christmas break that we're missing out on. When we were walking to the tower party the night before, I looked up at the sky and was like "staaars!" and she was like "wot?" and she told us how in the English countryside at night, you can hardly see the sky for all the stars, and she'll have to bring us back a picture.

That's one thing that's really cool about university, because everybody is from everywhere. I've met a few people from my city, but most people are from, really, everywhere in Ontario, and occasionally elsewhere. And everybody really is so different, in their outlooks on life and everything in general. It's really really neat.

After that we went back to the vendor fair to try to find the free stuff. It turns out it was at the Access Gold tent, but I had already picked stuff up from there the day before, so I thought I wouldn't be able to get it. I asked a girl wearing a Brock shirt standing beside the line what I was supposed to do and it turned out alright. The people at Brock are really friendly. The students on committees and adults, at least. The general public students, I don't know. I mean, they're basically still high school kids. But yeah, the other people, they just randomly say "hi" to you when you're walking down the hall.

So we got our calendar and agenda and an SPC card and went back to our rooms. I think then I ended up doing a bit of website work, which I really felt I needed to do to feel at home. I really wanted to have a nap, but they always make me more tired. I think I ended up just laying on my bed, reading papers and things for an hour.

Natalie and Hailey dropped by around six to go get dinner. I think then we ran into Kayce a couple of guys in the stairwell (umm, Jason, Andrew, and… I want to say Tyler, but I don't think that was it). It's really weird, because we always meet so many people and they tell us their names and we tell them ours and shake hands and then we never see them again.

Anyway, we went down to the dining hall, but there was a huuuge line, so we decided to go to the campus pub, Isaac's, instead. Natalie and I have the cafeteria meal plan and we don't have the DCB card that lets you buy food at other places as well, so we weren't sure about eating there, but after we looked at the menu, we decided to anyway. I had been talking to my mom on MSN previously and saying how much I wanted chicken (which I don't think they have at the cafeteria) and it just so happened that they had five chicken fingers for pretty cheap, so I had those and a pop for about $8, which I asked my mom about, and she said was a good price.

It was really weird how they had it set up. I ordered my food at Griller's and then the girl gave me a paper with an order number on it and she's like "you pay at the cashier over there" and I'm like "okaaay…" because the only cashier I see is at the Italian booth next to it. So I end up waiting there for ten minutes when the guy making my chicken comes over and is like "were you waiting to pay? you have to go over there" and then I saw the other cash register. Duhhhh. So, I waited there, and then realized I had to get my own drink, so I did, and just before I got back in line, five people went in before me. So I waited again ten minutes, because they took a long time and then the girl didn't know how the thing worked and yada yada. The girl at the other cash register (and a guy at the cafeteria at lunch!) took a long time too, but I can't really blame them because I'm sure they're just starting. Went over and grabbed my chicken strips from the counter from that guy and smiled at him like "duhh, I'm an idiot" and said thanks and left and retold my story to the other girls, who were all already eating.

We had some more conversations about Britain and their music and Kayce showed us a CD of songs she listens to. The other girls recognized some of them, but all I knew was "well, I know an old musical called 'Singin' in the Rain'?" and I think they kind of laughed at my err old-fashionedness. I also got bit my a mosquito and Hailey didn't want to smack it off my head even though I said it was okay so I smacked it really hard but I don't think it worked. Anyway, there are a lot of bugs around. Bees especially, like at dinner the first night and at the co-op lunch. Everywhere.

Back to the dorm, more talking to mom on MSN, and at about 8:30, Natalie and Kayce came over so we could go to the Sloan and K-OS concert. Kayce decided to go to Isaac's instead since she could hear the music from there, so just myself and Natalie went to the concert.

I have been to how many concerts in my life? Like, thirty? And to all kinds of tourist-y places like the Empire State Building and stuff… and I've never been searched so thoroughly in my life. Do you have anything in your pockets? Take them out. Let me pat your pockets and your butt and your legs. Let me look in your purse. I'm unzipping the little pouch on the side. I'm taking everything out. I'm opening your wallet. I'm looking in every compartment. Thanks, show the girl your ticket.

It was a little umm invasive. Kind of violating, but at least it was a girl doing it. Girls are always more thorough, if only because the guys are worried about being thorough. I always seem to get through easy, while my little brother with his facial hair gets checked. But I mean, this is a concert for young people. A rap concert. And these people are mostly first year university students. And most of the people are probably drunk. Yeah, I kind of understand it, but I was just shocked. I'm glad she didn't ask me why I had a big old alarm clock in my bag (my watch broke just before I left for school). She easily could've told me I couldn't have it, because I mean, who brings an alarm clock to the concert? I totally could've chucked it at the stage. Well, I mean, *I* totally could've hit the person in front of on the head with it.

We got pretty close to the stage for Sloan, about ten metres or something away? Immediately I realized that this was not your grandma's rock concert. When I first started going to concert, I stood dead still. Aerosmith is when I started to at least bop my head a bit, and now I just start doing it out of habit, even if the music is crap. But no one was bopping along or moving at all. These are kids! They aren't dancing or moving or anything! My grandma moves more at a concert than this crowd! Wow. And even during K-OS, there wasn't much more activity. People were squeezed in a lot tighter, but no moving.

Another weird thing the crowd did is when the band starts doing the "put your hands in the air! clap your hands!" thing, the clapping lasts really long, which is good and bad. For one, it means they're into it (or at least seem like they are), so that's good. But it just goes on really long, sometimes too long. And it's not just a couple people, it's everyone. These young people don't know that there is a certain point in the song when the rhythmic clapping stops. It changes up, they do a little riff or something, and you stop. The clapping just doesn't work anymore. And also, I'd like to hear the song. There were a few times where there wouldn't be a clear change, so people would just keep on clapping and then get tired of it and stop, but they stop at the stupidest places and shows they don't know anything about music. I just know when the four bars or whatever are up, and it's time to stop, instead of doing it in the middle of a bar, or the end of the third bar. That's just weird.

As for the bands themselves, Sloan were surprisingly good. As I continually seem to tell the other girls when discussion turns to music "I don't listen to anything new", but these guys were entertaining. I nicknamed them all as well: there was the Skipper, Ted, Mick, Costello, and Chris. I couldn't really think of a name for the singer/guitarist/drummer, so I called him Chris, because he looks sort of like a kid I know named Chris, and it turns out that is his real name. The drummer/guitarist was Ted, but it actually should have been Bill, after "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure". I always get those two mixed up, but now I know. The guitarist/singer was Mick because he looked a little like an younger old Mick Jagger, but I couldn't really tell because he was wearing a cap. And the other guitarist was Costello because Elvis wouldn't work because Elvis is Presley and not Costello, and because he was wearing a hat and glasses. And the keyboard player is the Skipper because he had a sailor's hat. Wonderful.

So this band was really weird because Chris and Ted switched one time and Chris played drums and Ted did guitar. And I was like "WTF" because no one does that. Plus, they all sang, like Mick sang one song, and I'm like "whoa, what is this, like The Monkees?". Chris was one of the more entertaining drummers I've seen, he did a lot of crazy Keith Moon/Gene Krupa style type stuff, which in my books means yay. Of course, he wasn't playing drums the whole show, because I'm sure he'd get a lot more tired doing that all night.

Then there was a nice long wait for K-OS. I don't think it was really that long, but it seemed like it because I didn't really care to be there anymore. I'm not sure if the roadies were students or what, but it was really different how they did it. I mean, I saw them carrying the keyboard off stage and hauling pieces of the drum kit away. I've only ever watched roadies with slight interest, but I don't recall ever seeing them do that. The opening band's equipment always seems to just disappear without me knowing. And you could see them bringing in the bongos and keyboard for the next act, and that just doesn't usually happen. It goes without saying that there was a lot cheering for roadies, especially microphone sound check guy.

Amateurs.

University students seriously do not know how to attend concerts. I found myself thinking towards the end of the night after standing there and feeling my neck and my back aching, "…I'm too old for this".

I don't know. This crowd… I mean, the whole of the university student body, they just… they're not me. They're really dumb. They really like to drink. And you know, I've never had a problem with people drinking, and I still don't, and I've always figured if someone offers me a drink I'll have a sip and probably won't like it and just be like whatever. But really, I don't want to drink. I don't want to be an idiot like these people are. I don't think there's a rule that says I have to go through "young and stupid", so I'll just skip it, thank you very much.

Also while we were waiting, I heard a bit of people's conversation. Some girls were like "…he sacrificed himself for Desmond" — "who?" — "the Australian guy". And I realized quickly they were talking about "Lost", even though they are terrible at geography. I couldn't quite remember what exactly they were talking about, since all I could think of was Sawyer and the helicopter, but that wasn't for Desmond — Kate, if anybody. A quick look at Wikipedia seems to indicate it was Charlie and the Looking Glass bit, but I mean, that was soooo long ago!

K-OS finally comes on, not that exciting. I think he could be a good singer if he actually, you know, sang. I don't remember if it was him or Sloan that was like "is this the best university in Canada or what?" and everybody's like "yaaaaaah!" and I'm like "I'll let you know once I've been here for at least two days". Just like sometime long ago when someone asked me if I was going to buy a Brock sweater and I was like "well, let me go to the school first and decide if I like it or not. I wouldn't have wanted to buy a sweater with my high school's name on it, now would I?".

He did one song and he was like "I'm a beat-boy b-boy, standin' in my beat-boy b-boy stance" (repeat ad infinitum) and I didn't quite get whether he was being satirical or not. Was he actually saying he's a "b-boy" or was he making fun of people pretending to be "b-boys", a la "look at me, I'm an emo, I'm so sad, boo hoo hoo, I'm cuttin' myself, lookatmelookatmelookatme"? It reminded me of Conservapedia and it's ambiguity as to whether it's run by real extreme conservatives or people poking fun at them.

He played guitar and keyboards for a bit, and I couldn't really see him most of the time (52 week guy was there again in front of me), but it looked like he was just doing some basic chords on both. 'Course, 'course, I'm looking for reasons to not like him. He might've been pretty good, what do I know?

Also, during both bands, the regular guitarists did a thing for a bit, I think it might just been trying to get feedback, but it sounded like my brother trying to learn a song on guitar, hitting the frets in the wrong place and the sound not coming out right. In other words, it sounded shit. Overall, it sounded okay, but at points it was like WTF.

And yet another proof for my point of it being a stupid crowd. Many times throughout the concert, K-OS yelled out "all the ugly people be quiet!" and the first time everyone's like "…huh…?" so he does it again and they're like "uh… oh, I'm s'pposed to not be quiet 'cause I'm totally hot, right? Like, yeah? Umm… oh, wooooo!" By the end, I think most people got it. But Christ, took 'em long enough. So there you go, you've got all your blondes and drunks and popular kids screaming and the rest of us thinking to ourselves "gladly". Got to hand it to him though, nice peer pressuring there.

Back to the dorm at about 11, I think Natalie said he was only on for an hour, and he didn't do an encore. I figured he would, but when the drummer throw the sticks out I was like "let's go, he's not coming back if they threw their instruments away". And he didn't. He was also a bitch apparently and didn't do his biggest song. There are so many bands like that. I think my brother told me Def Leppard doesn't rehearse "Pour Some Sugar On Me" because they're so sick of it, but they still do it because they are not little whiny babies and they do what the crowd wants and what the crowd paid for. I don't know if Warrant does "Cherry Pie", though I know if Jani Lane's deep deep regret of ever recording it, but something tells me they probably do it. They aren't little kids like K-OS who don't know what it's like to be famous.

So, another awkward-but-less-awkward shower after I scoped out the bathroom by brushing my teeth and seeing that no one was actually in the common room even though it sounded like there were a bunch of people there. The guy's next to me had a bunch of people over though and were a little loud, but it doesn't much bother me. Went to bed at 12, which is pretty early by university standards, but whatever. I like to sleep.

And there ends my second day of university. I should probably get some lunch, so I'll write about today some other time.