The taste of saltwater

It has been an eventful week.

Monday, I had my first presentation/assignment due. Went pretty well I think. Bit embarassing though when my phone started ringing during someone else's presentation. Oops, bad timing leaving my phone on.

On Tuesday I went out to New Westminster to take a tour of Scott Paper. It was super. I'll never look at a roll of toilet paper the same again. New West is a bit sketch, however.

Wednesday, I was rather depressed after learning that the organochlorine concentration in farmed salmon is so high as to warrant a maximum of 1 meal of salmon per month. Luckily out here, I have access to wild salmon which has less organochlorines. I'm laughing now!

Thursday before class, my friend Prabjit and I went out scouting a location for our major project. We have to find a workplace with at least 3 occupational hazards, monitor them and find a way to control them. As we had decided to do a dry cleaner we trekked all over the West side looking for an accomodating yet less than compliant dry cleaner. I was amazed at the range in friendliness of people. While some people invited us back for a tour, others shot us down pretty much as soon as we opened our mouths. I was really starting to lose faith in humanity. In the end we found a nice dry cleaner in Dunbar (I think) that will let us do our sampling. I also got to visit some cool stores, an awesome bulk food store, a Chinese pastry shop that was selling these teeny tiny moon cakes, and a used book store stuffed to the gills...nice. I found three treasures at this store: 1. "The Taoist Cookbook", vegetarian recipes interspersed with Taoist meditations. 2. Emile Zola's Pot-Bouille and 3. "Don't Mess with Texans", a Harlequin romance, a gift for my roomate, Jenn (the Texan).

Most of the weekend I have spent studying...fun times.

SOEH is competing in Day of the Longboat, a paddling tournament for UBC students and staff. We had our first (and only) practice this morning before the tournament next weekend. For those of you that don't know, a longboat is like a big canoe. It holds about 10 people. Fun times, for sure. So, I got to play around on the beach today, sprayed by the cold salty sea water, sand between my toes. A good day. I'm finding it hard to get my study on this afternoon. That, and Father of the Bride is on the TBS Superstation.

Miss you all very very much. Sometimes I get a bit lonely out here, so don't hesitate to call. I'll try not to leave it on during inopportune moments.