Update de la semaine.

Well today had two interesting set of races, the World Rowing Cup and the NCAA finals. Canada did decently, taking 2nd and 3rd in a number of races, the Lightweight Women and Men’s double, the Men’s Quad and the Men’s Pair. Great Britain wiped the floor winning every race. While in the NCAA’s Stanford won in their Varsity 8 which allowed them to win NCAA’s.

Which leads to the SFU Rowing Club, some interesting stuff happening there. First of all, because SFU is *trying* to get into the NCAA (which I don’t support for many reasons) they need to balance out what they spend on the football team as a result of Title IX. This means they want the Women to become a varsity sport. This is pretty cool as it will mean we will get more money, better equipment and dedicated coaches. While the men are not going to go varsity, this is not a big deal since men’s rowing isn’t in the NCAA. That is why there are the IRA’s and the ACRA which is something I would like to see the men in eventually.

Other than that, we have been doing some fund raising recently and so we have some money, there has been some discussion on what to do with it. It has been decided that we are going to buy a brand new Hudson Middleweight Coxed Four with Pair Riggers. This will set us back about $20,000 but with the money we have earned last few months and the fund raisers we will be doing we should be able to pay it off in a few months. We get to paint it however we want and I am pushing to have flames painted on. We did a liquor store this weekend, basically all we do is sit in front of a liquor store, smile at people and say hi, they feel bad and give us their change. We are able to make a lot of money out of it. We only spent a few hours on Friday and Saturday and made about $500.

I also got a job (that’s non-military). A local rowing club, the Inlet Rowing Club has hired me on to work for them, as well as another rower on my crew. It’s a pretty easy job, basically all I do is odd jobs around the boat house and coach. Last few weeks we have been cleaning and fixing boats, sandpaper-ing an old rusted boat rack, repainted it and put padding on it. Now we are supposed to recruit high school students to start rowing so we have to go to a bunch of schools in the Tri-cities area. Throughout the summer I will also be coaching learn-to-rows so I am going to try and earn my National Coaching Certificate Level I.

In terms of rowing personally for me, it is has been great. I row at Burnaby lake still five or six times a week (I should be in bed now as I row in seven and a half hours). I told the coach there that I want to do U23’s so he has been giving me more attention this last few weeks which is great. It has been really warm lately so I have been practicing in my uni-suit and soon I will have a really awkward tan-line. With summer comes summer racing and in four weeks we will be going to Calgary for the Alberta Open regatta. That will be a fun trip, plus I am going to do a side trip down to Drumheller. My last race I did really bad because of the weather, only being able to get a time that is 75% of the olympic standard. I am hoping the weather will be nicer so I can get a much better time and podium.

On top of my rowing, running and weights I bought myself a bike.

It is a Kona Shred with the large frame. I was originally going to go with the Kona Blast but it was not able to handle any abuse and knowing me I am going to want to drop off of stuff. Now I got to start getting some bike stuff, like gloves, tools, and a playing card in the back wheel. I plan to try and ride everywhere I can instead of driving.

Froshweek is going pretty sweet, I am done all the major stuff for now, just got to start doing the little stuff and wait for money from the Sponsors.

Speaking of the CSSS, on their forum there was a thread where all the older members were complaining that there are no pictures of events from the last semester on the website. After their going back and forth one member writes this line:

If you’ve been to the common room, you’d know why.

You’d find either a load of nerds who stare at laptops, or jocks that make conversations annoying.

This statement is quite funny for a number of reasons. First of all the person who wrote this is a huge nerd himself, and whenever I have seen him in the common room, he has been on his laptop. So basically we have an example of the tea kettle calling the kettle black. Secondly, there are not jocks that hang out in the common room, let alone in the department of CS.

But school is going pretty well, English has some interesting books, CMPT-383 has really effed up programming language, CMPT-475 is boring and Terrorism has a lot of reading that is not too interesting. But I keep busy with rowing.

I also plan to try and get in a few trips this summer when I have time. VIA rail is giving out free passes to all military members so I am going to try and go to the Rockies. I have trips to Victoria and Calgary for racing. I want to go to Kettle Valley or other places for biking and then I would like to go to Baker and hike the crater. Of course there are many local places I want to hit up too: Grouse, Seymour, Lynn Valley, etc.

But now it is time to go to sleep for rowing.

Till next time, Keep on Keeping on.

Rowing Updates

Given that it’s my blog about me, I have been rowing a lot lately so there are some neat things happening there. I told my coach that I wanted to do U23’s next summer. He is the type of coach that will straight up say the truth, so if you suck then he will tell you. His response was that I just need to keep lowering my erg scores. This means he thinks that I can actually do it. He has also been coaching me a lot more this last week so it feels like I have a real coach.

Being part of the exec we have to come up with the budget for this year, next year and the year after. Apparently we have spent around $16,000 from our own pockets. I never really realized that rowing costs so much for the team. Next year we want to buy a coxed four with sculling riggers, (which will cost another $20,000), a full time coach at $25 an hour and a new launch with a four stroke motor. We are applying for a grant from the city of Burnaby for the amount of $100,000 so we really hope to get it.

I am looking at buying a bike too, I went to a store and rode the Trek 4300, it was pretty sweet. I looked at the North Shore Mountain Biking Gear Swap but they only had medium sized bikes and I am needing a large one. I am going to try out a Norco Kokanee and a Kona Blast.

Here’s a funny video to end off the post.

Interview With a Scientologist

So back in January I interviewed a Scientology at the Church of Scientology for my Intro to Religious Studies Class.

Here is the paper I wrote up post-interview on what went down.

Violent Islam

Here is a paper I wrote for HUM-130: Intro to Religious Studies.

It is a paper entitled “Violent Islam” and describes how the Qur’an tells Muslims to commit violent acts over and over thus making Islam the most violent religion.

The paper got a decent mark, the only thing my prof had to say about it was that she was not impressed that I “attacked” a religion. She had no real specifics so I was happy with the paper in the end.

Preliminary Frosh Week Schedule

I am a bit impressed with Google Calendar’s function to print to a .pdf.

Anyways, here is the first version of the Frosh Week 2009 schedule. While the event times may change, they are basically now set for what events we are doing, and on what day.

If you want to take a look you can view it here.

Sinking of an 8+

There’s a Junior regatta that happens at Brentwood College every year and it is one of the biggest Junior regattas in the world.

This video happened from this years race which was about two years ago. It is the sinking of an 8+ because of a combination of the waves are so large and by wakes caused by the coach boats.

I found this video from a sweet site called Row2K which is one of the biggest rowing blogs.

Willkommen auf Deine Rowhaus

Well I have had an interesting last few days. On Friday my new roommates from the rowing team and I, we got access to our apartment. So the last few days has been a bit hectic moving all of our stuff in here, getting furniture from ikea and from randoms, then putting them together and finally being able to unpack.

I have been saving up for a few months to be able to get all the necessary furniture and so far I think my room is really awesome. One of the best rooms that I have ever had. I also got myself a new queen sized bed. I love it so much.

Anyways, here are some pictures of the place.

So this is when you first walk in through the front door, though we don’t use that door. The two doors on the left are the two bedrooms, mine is the farthest. The door straight ahead is the bathroom.

So yeah this is my room. I am pretty stoked for it that I have bought mostly all the furniture myself. That or I was given stuff by people, none of which were my parents. I also got a queen size bed which completely rocks my socks.

And then in my room facing the door.

What’s really weird, if you look out the window in my room it almost looks like you are going into the Bronx. There’s a run down basketball court in the middle of apartment buildings. It’s quite interesting to go from Vancouver to New York.

Then in my door facing the rest of the apartment. You can also see the bathroom on the left. Which looks like so.

We do have a green shower curtain, also an interesting colour combination, lime green + pink.

Entering the kitchen, and then here is a pic to look into the dinning room.

And then both sides of the kitchen.

and

Because it is so small, it reminds me of something European.

Then we have the dinning room.

And the living room (with one of my roommates on the telephone).

And then the third make-shift bedroom which is where another roommate of ours lives. And yes those are SFU colours. Representing the clan.