Vancouver! Part 1

Travel Blog: Day # I've Lost Count

Ok, so I haven't updated in ages.... Basically since I got to Vancouver over a week ago. Here goes a long update of everything that I've been upto.

Well, before I get to any details... Man, I love Vancouver. Soooo many reasons. I've thought about it for a while, and it boils down to the fact that it's a vastly diverse Canadian metropolis that isn't Toronto. It's not that I don't like TO, I love it, it's my favourite place on earth (next to Sydney). But I've gotten used to Toronto, and have been taking its many jewels for granted. There are so many events and neighbourhoods in Toronto that I simply ignore, or dont take the effort to go and experience. In a "new" city such as Vancouver, I'm inclined to go out and discover each and every neighbourhood, experience each and every festival or parade (yes I even did gay pride events).

I flew into Vancouver on Monday the 28th, and took public transit downtown. As is the case in Toronto, the Airport is nowhere near the downtown core. And there is no direct link either. I had to take 2 different buses to get to the core of the city. Unlike Toronto, Vancouver won their Olympic bid, and had serious impetus to extend the LRT system to the airport. We'll see how long it takes Toronto to do the same.

The next afternoon was spent discovering a few of the neighbourhoods around the downtown core with Cody, namely Granville Island (think markets and artisans) and Yaletown (condos and yuppies!). That night we met back up with my host Jenn and her friends for a birthday dinner at a Malaysian restaurant, before the girls headed off to a pole dancing class. Scandalous.

Wednesday was spent mostly in Surrey, visiting some family, meeting up with some "old" cousins, and meeting a "new" one. New as in I didn't know about her. She's 19, not a baby. I'm not huge on extended family, so I haven't really gone out of my way to discover the close to a hundred cousins that I have. Side note: My cousin Sabrina is what I call a "high performance vehicle." This girl is on a full ride at Stanford, doing track, and I went to her training session. Crazy stuff.

That night was the HSBC Festival of something or another at English Bay... Huge fireworks show and competition between Canada, the US, and China I believe. It was like the Benson & Hedges show that Toronto used to have. And might still have. Someone let me know if Toronto still has it.

The First Post

March 24, 11:13pm.
11 days until my final University class.
22 days until my final University exam.
66 days until I get a piece of paper telling me that 5 years of University (and 5 years of high school and 10 years of elementary school) was worth something.

The name of my blog has to do with this new realization of mine. It really started to hit me at the beginning of this past summer when I was starting work again. Once most students leave school, they usually say that their jobs has little to nothing to do with what they actually studied in school. Even if a Civil Engineering student (like moi) went off to work for a Structural engineering firm, they would still only know 5-10% of the knowledge required to do their job.

What I have come to realize (I am finally getting to my point...) is that education is not necessarily about the actual knowledge gained. The knowledge isn't the end to itself, as it were. Learning is a means to an end, the end being the development of capabilities. The development of new skills. And it's those skills that I will be using. Not the knowledge, but the experience.

Took me 4 years of University to finally figure that out, but hey, better late than never.