The Sounds of San Francisco

On Monday my father and I left my grandparents house in Laguna Woods. We headed north on the I5 and stopped at Six Flags Magic Mountain. That day it was so hot, easily above 40 degrees Celsius and I had the worst cold ever so besides that, it was a very cool park. There were about ten high thrills roller coasters. I would definitely go there again.

We then drove up to San Francisco. We stayed near the World’s Crookedest Street. On Tuesday we walked all over San Francisco, down the crookedest street, up Russian Hill, up Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower, Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39, and all the big touristy areas in this city. I really liked San Francisco, it was my first time there and to me it reminds me of what New York looks like in tv and movies.

The coolest part of this city was that I got to see the World Famous Bushman.

This morning we took a ferry to Alcatraz and did a tour there which was a very cool thing to see. We jumped back into the car and continued north on the I5 North only to stop just outside of Portland for the night.

Big City Nights

One thing I noticed down here is that doesn’t need to be, is bigger, the people are bigger, the cars are bigger and the meals are bigger. One more thing to add to the list of bigger things is energy drink sizes.

Yesterday I managed to pick up a 1L can of Monster energy drink. I am pretty sure this is good for no body especially since on the side it says: “DO NOT CHUG!” Funnily enough the can is called BFC for “Big Fucking Can!” This small can only cost a mere $3.99.

Of course I also managed to get a hold of a 710 ml can of a Full Throttle which definitely cannot be healthy either.

But these two energy were not the only one I found. I managed to get a 500ml can of Redbull. Now correct me if I am wrong but on the small cans of Redbull, the 250 ml sizes, it says on the side, “Do not drink more than two a day.” I think this big can of Redbull is equal to two cans and on the side it does not say to only drink one.

I wonder if these big cans have anything to do with their obesity problem?

The (not-so)Great Adventure

Well it seems like I get more traffic on days when I write on my blog so I guess I will write some more once again.

Yesterday I went to Disney’s California Adventure, for the first time, and boy was I excited to go. I was like a three year old going to Disneyland for the first time; however, only three hours later I would be sorely disappointed.

Yes there were a few good rides at this park: Soarin’ Over California, a neat little hangliding simulator throughout California; Grizzly River Run, a river rafting ride based on a ride in Sea World; California Screamin’, a very fun and fast roller coaster; Maliboomer, a ride we have at the PNE and finally; The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror which is by far the best ride there.

Now once you are done those five rides there is not much else to do for you at this theme park, by now you can just pack up and hump it over to Disneyland. Of course you could do a couple of the rides again but by now the lines are already going to have a half hour wait. Needless to say, I was not too impressed with this park and probably won’t come back to it.

After a few hours in the park I was bored and since my pass wouldn’t let me into Disneyland I just headed on back to my grandparents. I stopped at this really cool outdoor mall though on the way home where they have a giant ferris wheel.

Today I went down to San Diego to my Nonno’s office, had breakfast there and the headed home. We stopped at Camp Pendelton where I went to the PX and got myself a US Marine, Desert Digital Utility Cover which I think is quite spiffy.

It got as hot as 100 degree Fahrenheit, which for us Canadian is about 38 degrees Celcius. Nice and hot. I went down to the beach again and swam in the ocean as well as got a slushy. Finally to wrap up the night went back to the mall I went to last night and picked up a neat hoodie.

California Dreamin’

This week was a fairly interesting week so far. After my escapade in Tijuana my father and I came back to SoCal to continue our touristy experience. On Tuesday we went to the happiest place on Earth, Disneyland.

Now there is something about that place that I just love but I cannot put my finger on it. I really wish I could spend my entire vacation here. The lines were not very long except for this new ride Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage which had an hours wait all day. I went on all the good rides at least twice: Matterhorn, Old Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain. Unfortunately “Its a Small World” was closed for repairs . Ironically it is closed because the general population of the states is too big and they need to prevent the boats from bottoming out. I must have spent a good half hour in New Orleans trying to find Club 33 but I did not have any luck. There is also a really good and interesting restaurant in New Orleans called the Blue Bayou which is part of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and it looks over where the boats first float by. The restaurant itself looks like it is in the Louisiana Bayou and I would highly recommend you go to this restaurant next time you are in Disneyland.

They also have in their Downtown Disney a store that only sells lego. I fell in love with it. I am going back there tomorrow to possibly pick up an Indiana Jones set or some city set. They sold there a set of the Millennium Falcon for $500 and had 5,000+ pieces to it. Boy would I love to build that.

Wednesday we went to Desert Palm Springs which is where my grandparents own some lots. To best describe that town, well… it looks like one of those little towns in the middle of nowhere in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Out here my grandmother had a door get blown by the wind and slice one finger open and crush another one. She immediately went into shock. Here is what I found interesting about the American medical system. She wasn’t able to go to a hospital there in Desert Palm Springs. We had to drive all the way back to Laguna Woods where there was a hospital run by her health care, so she could get stitches.

Today we went to Universal Studios. They have a new ride to replace the ET ride which is based on the Mummy Returns. It all in all was a very good ride. As well the Jurassic Park ride rocked, partially because of my facinations with Dinosaurs. I found funny that in the Jurassic Park ride there is a pair of floating bloodied Mickey Mouse ears with the name “Kerr” on it. I am not sure to whom that name refers. So far Disneyland is the better of the two theme parks, and I find Universal Studios tends to try and squeeze every last penny out of you.

Avast ye, I must go to bed now as tomorrow morning I am off to Disney’s California Adventure for my first time. Wikipedia does not make it look too promising but we will see tomorrow.

Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up is Running)

So today I went to Disneyland which was amazing fun. I also found out that I will be flying to St. Jean this summer on 28 June and I return 21 August which allows me to go to NYC for a week.

Now I don’t have a lot of time right now as I am exhausted and about to go to bed but today in Disneyland I saw a bunch of emos which begs the question, should Emos be allowed in Disneyland? Should the saddest people on earth be allowed in the happiest place?

Playboys of the Southwestern World

Yesterday on my first full day here in Southern California my grandparents took us to some Mission and then after I got to go swimming at Newport Beach. I was the only one in the water swimming, everyone else was wearing dry suits and surfing. Last night I played a round of golf with my father and grandfather.

This morning we drove to Mexico where my father and I walked across the border. On the way down from LagunaWoods to San Diego we passed three military bases and a naval fleet yard. It was amazing to see the amount of toys they have compared to us Canadians. One of their bases was so amazingly huge it did not even look like a base but an actual town. There was even a Pizza Hut and Taco Bell on campus; however, in retrospect this does not totally surprise me since we tend to have Tim Hortons and Subways on our bases.

So back to Mexico, we cross the border and there was absolutely nothing stopping us or questioning us or talking to us as we entered. We entered Tijuana and there was Mexicans yelling at us from all over, from down the street, from across the street, from down alleys, et cetera, boy where they persistent.

I had a bunch of cheap alcohol and tacos for lunch like Tequila shots, Margaritas, and Coronas. I ended up bringing back a 1L bottle of Tequila which cost me like $10 CAD.

Next time I go back to Mexico I hope it is back to Cancun/Playa del Carmen or Peurto Valharta. For tomorrow I am off to Disneyland!

Laguna Sunrise

So I arrived today in Southern California and first place my father and I go to is to his parents house, my grandparents, in a city called Laguna Woods which is beside Anaheim. Basically it is an elderly retirement community, however, it is literally a city, 200,000 people live in this walled retirement community. They have everything in here, stores, hospitals, bus routes, a mall, et cetera.

The funniest part is that at each of the twelve entrance gates into the city there are two elderly women working as security guards.

If this city were ever to get attacked the Laguna-Woodsians would sure as heck me able to stand up to that invasion.

Going to California

So this morning my father and I jump into the car to drive down to California. We kept switching who was driving every few hours so I got to drive for a good 500 km or so. We left at 3h00 this morning from Aldergrove and then we arrived just outside of Sacramento in a city called Elk Grove around 17h00. We stopped for breakfast in Portland and then lunch in Coring, CA. The drive was nice as there was a lot to look at and driving is something that I like to do. We also had my dad’s TomTom which was fun to play with on the way down.

I really like travelling to the states because there are so many little things that are different between Canada and the U.S. that makes it fun. There are many restaurants and foods and drinks they have that we do not. Everything down here is so cheap for us, even fuel is was cheap for us ranging in the $3.25 – $4.00 a gallon. At some gas station in Yreka, CA, this Californian was complaining to us how hard they have it. Another perk with the price difference, is the cost, and size, of energy drinks. You can buy cans of Redbull for $2 and two cans of Full Throttle are $3. I even saw 1 litre cans of Monster.

Another thing I notice in the states which I wish we had in Canada was the amount of patriotism American’s have for their military. Every time we stopped, because my father was wearing his grey t-shirt that says “Army” on it, people would come up to him to ask him if he was actually in the military.

Tonight while it was nice and about 20 degrees outside and I was wearing shorts and swimming in the pool, this is what it looked like back at SFU:

and

That is right, it was snowing back at SFU and it was not simply limited to just the university but the whole lower mainland area.

Since I live in Burnaby/Vancouver I am used to customer service people not being able to speak proper English, but what surprised me when I first arrived here was the fact the customer service people here cannot speak English either. Here they speak Spanish, which in all honesty does not surprise me that much.

Every time I come to the US I always joke bout how I know why the American population is overweight and it is because of the plethora of refreshing carbonated beverages they have. In gas stations you can choose between Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Cherry Coke Zero… (and the list just keeps going on). In fast food restaurants the food is so greasy and cheap it is just disgusting (but oh so good). As well, the Americans cup sizes are too big, their X-Large is like 42 OZ and their medium is the size of a big gulp. Now anyone who knows me knows that I am a pop aficionado but even I cannot drink that much pop.

So American politicians, listen up, if you want to have less fat people, simply stop allowing unlimited refills and stop allowing cup sizes to get so big.

The Bitter End

As I pack up my belongings in my townhouse on rez I begin to reflect over what has happened here in the last eight months. Many new and interesting things have happened this year to me but the most interesting thing would have been our roommate Andrew (who happened to be an exchange student from Scotland).

Andrew moved into the room next to mine in November as that room had been vacant for a month as our previous roommate got kicked out by Rez and Housing. Andrew had applied to transfer to a townhouse from Mctaggart-Cowan Hall as it was “too noisy” for him, but really he just wanted to be able to sleep in till 15:30 every day without being woken up.

At first he we ok, we all got along. However we noticed that he was a bit messy. At first we ignored it but then it got progressively worse to the point it was unsanitary, unhealthy and pure disgusting. He would leave food in a pot on a stove for a week at a time, leave like a hundred pubes in the shower every morning as well as many other things. We finally realized we could not deal with this so we had to do something. Since we rarely saw him in person we decided to give him a letter and slip it under the door basically saying that he can’t be dirty as it is gross.

After that we no longer saw him, we knew he was home and hiding in his room but we never saw him. This did not phase us as he often did this but it was not till my girlfriend brought it to our attention that he *gasp* removed us as friends on the Facebook! That is when we realized he was avoiding us and he would do whatever he could to not deal with us.

Back in March one day, my roommate Christina and I were talking infront of Tower D and we saw him walking toward us. He saw us and quickly proceeded to run into the parking lot behind the towers to avoid us and get back to the townhouse.

Two weeks ago he stopped coming to the townhouse but he had some of his stuff here, till last night when he came home. This morning, Robin, my other roommate, told me, he had packed up and moved out as well he had once again refused to talked to us (see: Robin). He, however, left in quite a hurry that he left a huge amount of his items, whether intentionally or not, we are not sure, however, we do know that he left a big mess for us to deal with. If we don’t clean it up then we will all get charged but because he is going back to Scotland he won’t receive the charge.

Needless to say we were not impressed with him.

Also with our cleaning of the fridge we found food in the freezer from September from both Andrew and our old roommates. We ended up having to throw away two and a half garbage bags of old food that had either expired or looked disgusting.

Finished the Fight

Well I just finished my finals for my fourth semester here at SFU so now I think it is time for a post-semester, pre-grades-received class and professor summary.

CRIM 101-3: Introduction to Criminology: Well this class was pretty easy. We had class once a week and tutorial once a week, both were mandatory. There were some weekly readings, all in all a basic easy class. I probably got my highest grade this semester from this class. It was taught by Barry Cartwright who is, so far, my most favourite Criminology Professor. He knows his stuff, he can speak English is always willing to and able to help. He often tells funny politically incorrect jokes and his tests, he tells you on the last class what is going to be on it so you should not have a problem with this class. Failing it can only be done if you don’t do work.

CRIM 131-3: Introduction to the Canadian Criminal Justice System: This class was similar to CRIM 101, however I was expecting Barry Cartwright to also teach it this semester but instead we got some other professor, named Karen Brown, to teach this class. The class had the same format as CRIM 101 but there was more information where as CRIM 101 was based on theory. Karen Brown is interesting, she is full of energy, and often calls students out in class to answer questions; however, the downside to her is that she is often giving out her personal opinion on things in class, such as her views of politics the United States.

MACM 201-3: Discrete Mathematics II: This class all comp sci students have to do and it is twice as much fun as MACM101. The only thing worse about this class is next MACM316 has to be taken. The professor at least made the class bearable by making his sample exams similar to his actual ones; however, the English of Robert Samal leaves something to be desired for.

CMPT 275-4: Software Engineering: Another class mandatory by CS students, this semester being taught by Janice Regan this semester. I don’t think I need to explain this class as it was the same as every semester, two months of writing a lot of documents with team mates who can’t speak English and then writing the software in about a week, spending all nighters in CSIL and many stick men diagrams. I spent 62 hours in six days in the lab working on this project. Luckily we got our software done (with bugs) and we received 91% on our UAT. Regan isn’t a bad professor now either.

CMPT 300-3: Operating Systems This was my first 3xx level class, fairly interesting as I actually learned a lot of things that about Computers I was interested. It was taught by Richard Vaughan who is an awesome professor except it takes forever for him to mark anything. Currently, we have two assignments to be marked and our assignments to be remarked and we have already written our final, two days ago.