June
Right, so, I was crazy busy for the month with work (paid and study) and I didn’t keep up with posting stuff here. Some interesting things happened during the month; a few of these are highlighted below
June 26
Irish Alumni Reception
I was invited to this event through the Irish Graduates Association of Vancouver. It was held in the rather swanky Vancouver Club, apparently “the oldest club in Vancouver.” I spent most of the evening chatting with my Irish cousin’s BFF who works in Vancouver with Enterprise Ireland and UBC. It reminded me of all the events at the embassy in Beijing and other spots that I attended over the years. You usually bump into someone you know, or who knows someone you know, and the free Guinness is a great lubricant toward making the conversations flow freely.
June 27
FIPA AGM
I went to the AGM of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) this evening at the Vancouver Public Library. I became interested in and joined the organization after contacting one of their Program Directors after reading a piece he wrote about the concerns he had with UBC’s learning management system: see herefor more. The meeting itself was quite interesting, especially the talk by the guest speaker who is a journalist at The Tyee which “strives to be a widely read and respected independent online magazine that publishes news, reviews and commentary not typically covered by B.C. and Canada’s mainstream media”.
June 30
New Apartment!
We moved into our new apartment (one door over!) on July 30/July 1 (Canada Day). We’d been waiting months for the renovations to be completed and now we are in our lovely bright and clean new home. We’ll likely be here for the next several years so we did a run to IKEA and bought ourselves a new bed, sofa, and a new desk for me. The stuff we had before wasn’t great as, when we moved in, we were only planning to be on campus/in Vancouver for the two years but now we have the opportunity to stay for a while longer as I start my PhD in September.