March 2019

We're finally here! As we break the halfway mark of April I'm finally writing a post about March :)))

Storm the Wall
March 25th


A lot of stuff happened in March, but Storm the Wall was definitely one of the greatest highlights of the month. For anybody unfamiliar, Storm the Wall is an event put on by UBC Recreation where students sign up in teams of five and compete a relay course that includes swimming, sprinting, cycling, running, and then scaling a 12-foot high wall.

Some my high school friends and I made a team in the "for fun" division and when the day of our heat came up we just all tried our best and we had a really fun time. As my friend said: "Kevin sprinted this team to victory. Sarah too one for the team with her swim. Jean risked her life for the team on a bike. Grace ran her way from the pool. And Carolyn pulled the team together at the wall." It was a day where I let loose and tried my best. I hadn't done much exercise at all for my second year so the long distance run was taxing on me, but there's that sense of accomplishment when you're completely fueled out and you know you gave it your all.

Highly recommend for every UBC student who is even remotely interested :))) Catch us in a competitive division next year ;^)


Battle of BC 3
March 30th - 31st

As a member of the UBC Esports Association (UBCEA) I had the chance to volunteer for Western Canada's largest Super Smash Bros (SSB) tournament, Battle of BC 3. Going into the two day event, I wasn't sure what to expect; I had never played any SSB game (asides from the after-school Wiimote button mashing at my friend's house) and my knowledge of competitive play was pretty much non-existent.

I went anyways and man was it a blast.

For the majority of the two days I was running the SSB Ultimate ladder, pretty much a place for slightly competitive friendlies. Volunteering in that position was extremely rewarding as I could see right up front what the fruits of my efforts were, and I suppose you can extend that to the nature of games like SSB - having to be there in person to play makes SSB stand out from other games I've had exposure to.

My good friend from high school, Calvin, was also attending the event as a viewer and he taught me a lot about competitive SSB Melee and Ultimate in what little time we spent watching the games together. I also bumped into Jennifer (coincidentally a friend of Calvin and I) at the event, as she was helping take photos, so it was a nice little reunion.


UBCEA things
Most of the month

Very soon into my time as a proper executive of UBCEA I found that I loved the club and its people, and when you love something that way you want to do your best for it. Cheesy stuff aside, it was around March when elections were coming up and I had to start thinking about what role I wanted to take on next year.

Eventually I set myself on a Vice President position and resigned myself to taking whatever department was left untouched in the pre-election scramble. As the dust started settling it seemed like I would be going for VP External, however after some discussion with other members of UBCEA I set my sights on the role of VP Human Resources.

When all was said and done, I ended up running unopposed. So there's my announcement - I am officially the next UBCEA VP Human Resources! I am very excited to take on this role in the cub and I hope that I will be able to help the club in a significant and meaningful way.


My 16Personalities Test!
I forgot this so here it is now - April 27th 2019

I changed! By the end of January I was slightly more introverted, however since then it seems that I've become slightly more extroverted (not to mention assertive). This is definitely hindsight bias, but there are multiple things that probably contributed to this change.

I didn't write about this because it slipped my mind, but I did this little project thing on my Instagram called "Reflections" where I posted a picture of myself in a mirror every day alongside a thought I had that day. Historically I've never really liked the way I looked in photos, so the positive response to the picture and my thoughts definitely boosted my self-image. That in tandem with Battle of BC 3 and my campaign as VP HR definitely drew out the more outgoing, confident, and extroverted side of me.

Guess we'll see by April if this is just a fluke or if it might be here to stay ;^)

Wrapping things up!

The OL squad got together for our now monthly gatherings and it's always really good to see them from time to time (spoiler alert: we also hang out in April). Asides from that there were a few food related events: a potluck with UBCEA, a hotpot with some good friends, and dinner and watching How to Train Your Dragon 3 with some other good friends!

Lots of fun things happened in March and I made some really awesome memories :)

As an aside, I feel that only having these monthly recaps is somewhat bland, so I'll try to switch it up and write some posts that don't sound like the answer a six year old gives when you ask him how his day went. Catch you around in the next post!

February 2019

Holy moly this post is about a month too late, but here we are!

February 2019 was a month full of new experiences for me - I was out of my comfort zone a lot and I am proud of myself for doing that. It definitely didn't feel as "busy" as January, but it was still a pretty decently crowded month!

BizHacks 2019

We kick off the very first day of February with BizHacks 2019! The entire event was pretty exciting and though my team and I went in blind we resurfaced on the other side with a whole new experience under our belts. For the uninitiated, BizHacks is the lovechild of a traditional hackathon and case competition - you can choose from a selection of cases released on the day of the competition and develop a solution within x hours.

My team consisted of Candice, Daniel, Heather, Raymond, and I, with me being the only tech-oriented member. For us we had 24 hours to rack our brains at UBC, and we had no idea what the next 24+ hours had in store for us.

We check in at about 4pm and after settling in and doing a bit of room scouting we have dinner at 6pm. At this point it's only four out of five pieces of Exodia as Candice is away doing a midterm, but by the time she arrives at 8pm we've got a pretty good idea of which cases we want to tackle. With all members present we go full throttle into building our solution until around 11:30pm.

We take a break from the work to ask a mentor for his input on our work so far and he reacts very positively to it. Team morale skyrockets and we decide to ask another mentor for a second opinion.

And that's when The Great Calamity happens.

The second mentor (nothing against him at all, he helped bring us back into reality) absolutely picks apart our approach to the case, with the main critique being a lack of technological innovation.

We've got about 16 hours left in the competition at this point so all hope isn't lost, but we get pretty mopey and depressed after that roller coaster of emotion. Heather retreats to slumber soon after and the rest of us try to do some damage control in a futile attempt.

This part is pretty much a blur to me; I felt awful because I had just been eating pepperoni sticks, beef jerky, and granola bars the entire night, I didn't bring my toothbrush, and I'm pretty sure I was dehydrated. Around 2am the rest of us follow Heather's lead and try to get some sleep in hopes that we can wake up and do something in the morning. Raymond fashions a bed out of the chairs, as does Candice, and I sit in one and shut my eyes.

I manage to fall asleep for about half an hour before I wake up again. My rustling alerts Daniel, who is still awake at this point. Before we had given up to go sleep we had been talking about how to incentivize customers to install our app, so uses a still half asleep me as a board to bounce ideas off of.

At some point I get frustrated and start working on a mockup of an app, just so that we have something to hand in when the competition ends at 4pm, and well, things just took off from there. The app looks alright and as the other members wake up they are on board. By 8am we are back in working mode, with each of us working away at some part of our presentation.

In retrospect our idea was not groundbreaking or super cool, but we pulled off something. We made a (in my opinion) killer presentation and while maybe our submission was not anything special, I think the audience really liked the way we put it out. I feel bad for letting the team down in terms of the tech, but in the end it is what it is, and I am glad I had the chance to do the event with them.

Unfortunately we didn't make it onto the second round, but I learned a lot of things from BizHacks 2019. I learned that you definitely need an experienced "techie" (which I was not) for any hackathon-related events. I learned that team morale is a very important thing and you should never overwork yourself because you will just burn out. I learned that a diet of various cured meats and clementines will make your stomach unhappy. And I learned that you should always bring a toothbrush and change of comfortable clothes to these things.

You can feel the despair

Thanks again to my favourite OLs

David, Kim, Shirley, Tiff, you guys are awesome. It's crazy to think that I might have never met you guys if it weren't for the fact that I became a Transfer Orientation Leader because I have so much fun whenever I'm with you all.

I already wrote about my adventures in February with these kids, but I just wanted to express my gratitude one more time (also they are now aware of the existence of this blog). Thanks again! I know I say it a lot here, but my life is so much better because of you.


Quickfire round + teasers for March

Alright it's getting kinda late for me so let's fire through the rest of February!

The UBCLOL team hosted UBC Cup League of Legends on February 16 and 17. It was a fun time overall and although we could have done a few things better it was overall well done :) Congratulations to the UBC Premiere team for winning the tournament and shout out to the UBCLOL team for their hard work (and Andrew for driving there and home, god bless). While we're still on the topic of UBCEA, I'm excited to make an announcement in my next post ;)

Austin, Philman, Sarah, and I recorded a podcast episode! It's been something we always joked about doing but we finally did it over the spring reading break. Austin brought his equipment over to my place and podcast aside, it was super fun to dedicate some time to talk about random things with people I love spending time with.

And to finish it off I played some volleyball during the last weekend of February. My love for volleyball has somewhat resurfaced, but I'm still pretty rough around the edges so it's been a learning experience for me. It feels amazing to spend a few hours at some remote volleyball center and just get away from the everyday stress of school and work.


March coming soon :))

February was hard to type up so I'm pretty surprised that I finished all of it just now. Overall a very solid month from me. I did not do the 16Personalities test at the end of February so we will be missing one month of data, but I will do one tomorrow (I guess today now) for March for sure.

Thank you for tuning in and sorry for the one month wait. Look forward to seeing you back here for our March post :)))