Last night was Friday night of Orientation week...so Canadian band Stars (of whom I've been an avid fan of for all of three weeks since I heard they were playing here at the uni) played a free gig in the ballroom. They were great live...despite the male lead being a bit of a tool and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was balding and thus shouldn't act like Morrisey. It was strange though...it was a dry event at 5 in the afternoon...so it was a bit of a whacked out feeling walking sober out of a gig into the daylight, but there's a first time for everything.
After that, Nikki and I had been invited to a free pizza and beer night at one of the exchange co-ordinators house...for free beer. And also free pizza. There, I ate free beer. And also drank free pizza. Or something.
In fact, it was a bit more eventful than that. The guy who hosted it was the same guy who picked me up from the airport, he's uneccesarily helpful and generous...had five varieties of local beers and three varieties of cider constantly stocked on the kitchen table and a seemingly infinite supply of pizza. The pizza here in Canada is in stark opposition to the pizza at home in that it's actually good. It's tasty, full of cool shit and comes layed on absolutely massive slices. I'm a big fan.
So the night was for Exchange students past, present and potential at the University of Calgary, the crux of which were all French Engineering students. Everyone was very cool, with average to good English skills, so they laughed at all the jokes that were made...especially the ones that they didn't understand, so that was nice for the ego. Nikki fell through a table, I kept leaning on the light switch and unknowingly plunging the room from darkness and back into light again...and we put a decent dent in the beer supplies, so I think we made the most of it. I still can't quite grasp why there were so many French there, but they were all pretty funny people. I liked the Mechanical Engineer who couldn't operate a cordless drill to repair the table...I thought that was pretty amusing and ironic...but I guess you can't do up screws with a textbook.
So other than that, a stumbling departure and a slow, wobbly walk home including seeing a kid fall off his skateboard at midnight before telling us that we'd obviously been drinking and then getting into an argument as I ensured him he was a liar...little happened. Well, little happened that's mentionable in the public arena (read: we went home and fell fast asleep, allowing house-mates sufficient silence for a comfortable night's slumber.)
Today is Saturday, and again, it's ridiculously beautiful...a comfy 13 degrees and sunny as it could be. The hares are bounding around under the squirrel filled pine trees and people are out jogging past my window...tis a good day and I plan to see it, so I'm tearing myself away from the computer and thrusting myself into Calgary's Saturday afternoon.
Until next time,
Max
