Sunday, October 21, 2007

Unsocial Apartments and More

I live in what can only be one of the most unsocial university residences on the planet. Granted, they are not dormitory-style, but actual apartments, but we have an exercise room, several lounges, and other common spaces like the laundry room. There's also a nice games room down the hall from my apartment whic has pool and ping-pong tables. Occasionally, I might see some people in there, but it's rare.

Now, you might wonder, why don't I set an example and go make use of these quality facilities? Well, I do use the exercise room, but otherwise I'm not much inclined to play pool by myself. Solo ping-pong would present an interesting challenge though. Of course, I do have two apartment-mates, at least I think I do. I don't really see them all that much, unfortunately.

But it strikes me... we have some great facilities in this building! Arguably, grad students are simply so tired, overworked, or else suffering from mind-numbing procrastination that they are not in the right mood to enjoy a nice game of pool regularly. Seems reasonable enough. But it would be nice if I lived in a residence community, which seems to be the intent.

*****

However, since I don't want to write a post where I do nothing but complain, I will report some brighter news. My soccer team won* both games today! I didn't make it to the victorious 10am game, but the second ended 1-0 in our favour. Of course, it was technically a forfeit in our favour, since the other team lacked sufficient players, such that we just played a "fun game" wherein some of our team members played on their team. 'Twas good fun all the same.

In my next post, I'll document some of my cooking experiments. In the meantime, here's some Seinfeld. Why, you ask? Because I can!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

A New Beginning


And a new blog!

Moving to Waterloo has been something of an adventure for me; this blog will document the continuing saga of my journey as a grad student among the strip malls and subdivisions of Waterloo, Ontario. Topics will include but certainly not limited to the following, in no particular order:


  • The travails of graduate statistics courses

  • My attempts to learn Mandarin Chinese

  • Experiments in cooking

  • Travelling

  • Whatever else that may come to mind... even politics


Since I'm intending this post to be short-ish, I won't say much more. The blog's title refers to the fact that I'll be living here all winter... and the coming spring and summer too, but I'll worry about that later. I can definitely feel that Winter is Coming, though, as it's starting to get rather chilly not just in the mornings but during the day too. Well, it IS mid-October.

So, since I'm getting pretty tired, that will be all for now. I'll post again soon, though.