Playing Army Men...with a whole new meaning!

Today I attended my first ever airsoft game, it was an awesome time. I got a ride from Residence commons all the way down to Smiths Falls (about 45minutes from Ottawa) by a very nice fellow by the name of Jean, he was also renting out guns to five of us, and giving out free bb's for all that were renting.

It cost me $60, and that got me a rental gun, magazine, bbs, field fee (which is $20), and someone gave me a free Cadpat BDU...which is basically a Canadian Forces styled jacket and pants. But what really made everything worth it, was playing the game.

For those who don't know, Airsoft is basically Paintball...but with select-fire, automatic bb guns that fire plastic projectiles at around 300 feet per second. All of the guns are imitation of the real deal, they are 1:1 scale replicas of various military used firearms.

I woke up at 6:15am to my alarm clock's buzzing, following a nearly sleepless night...due to it being a Friday night in a Campus dorm, and also due to my excitement about today. It was like Christmas Eve! I had received my Cadpat (Canadian Forces Camouflage) coveralls the day before. I was set to head out at around 6:30am, but my ride wasn't supposed to be around until at least 7am. I sat around for a bit, turned on my computer while I waited for a phone call from Jean. Eventually he called, and said he was close, then called again to say he was outside Residence Commons.

I headed down, carrying all of my gear (including water and sandwiches, and everything I could think of) in my Frosh Week laundry bag. I was heading out the door of Residence Commons, when a guy runs up the steps and inside, he looked like a soldier...although apparently he had left the van that I was going to be riding in to go to the ATM for some cash.

We drove down to the "Foxden" (picture below):

After a being the first ones to arrive, we got out the rentals and I started to look over some of the guns, wondering which one I was going to be using for the day. Once everyone arrived, and we were all dressed up in our camouflage, load-bearing vests, helmets, goggles, we headed out for our briefing with the host and owner of the field (Rick). We divided up the teams, and headed out to the game area.

I was put on Blue team (and for those who are wondering, yes it was RedvsBlue) and given an M4A1 carbine for the day.

The day was longer than I had expected, but that just meant it was more time to have fun! The game started at around 10:40am, and finished at about 4pm. I am 100% sure of 4 kills (don't worry they're alive now), with a smaller percentage sureness of about 1-2 other kills because I was with other people. I also surrendered one guy, but we were in a standoff situtation so we were both surrendered!

The best part was when my group of 4 that I had been going around the field with most of the day (of about 20 something players total of both teams), everyone else died and went back to respawn. Leaving me alone at the front lines. I looked up over the bushes I was kneeling behind and saw 2 guys, I opened up on them and heard one guy yell out "Hit!". Kill one. I looked up again an saw that the other guy was either carrying a very big gun with a scope or a sniper rifle, I ducked as fast as I could and decided that if I was going out...I spray and pray (although aiming was involved) I stood up and fired at the guy. Kill two. I continued down the path, happy about my victory. I glanced to my left...about 20-25 feet to my left was another guy looking away from me. I aimed up my sights on him and let off a burst and then he yelled out "Hit!".

Those few moments alone were well worth my $60.

One other time it was rather difficult to get one guy, my teammate said a guy in the bushes was lying prone on his back. I looked over and sure enough, I could see his vest sticking up. I let off a few bursts from my gun, I was pretty sure I had hit his vest, but he hadn't called out "Hit!", so I tried for a better angle and got him.

Other interesting events throughout the day included seeing someone fire off an M203, which is basically a propane powered grenade launcher; I also was involved in an assault on a sniper tower (in our shorter games of attack/defend) where someone threw a smoke grenade into the area in front of the tower. This engulfed the field in a big orange cloud of smoke, I ran forward toward cover, stumbled on some branches and began to run too fast into the piece of cover. I was just regathering my sense of direction when a gun sticks out from the other side and surrenders one of my teammates, I was about to ask if that included me...but caught a bb on the edge of my goggles. I quickly raised my gun, and got out my yellow flag to put around the muzzle of the gun (showing that I was out).

Overall: "Best first game ever."

Cheers,

Andrew

Chris and I

Special thanks to Anna for this wonderful picture! Also a big thank you to both Anna and Chris for a wonderful birthday night :)

Cake!

Le Bop

On Saturday night, a bunch of people from our floor left residence by taxi and went to Quebec. We arrived at the doorstep of Le Bop, a low-key nightclub, where we danced and drank the night away. Of course not the whole night, we left at about 1:45am to wait around on the sidewalk trying to get a taxi to head back to Carleton.

Overall it was fun, and since it was Quebec, I was of legal drinking age and could buy drinks at the bar. I didn't have to worry about my ID, because it was real, unlike a few of the other IDs floating around our floor. The 'bouncer' at the door wished me a happy birthday, and then let me in. Drinks were a bit expensive, but incredibly tasty, if you haven't tried Smirnoff Ice...do...it tastes like ginger ale or 7up. Since I don't really enjoy the taste of beer, a drink like Smirnoff Ice is a life saver when you go out to drink and party at a nightclub.

I didn't do that much dancing, but I enjoyed the fancy lights and music, the sub woofer causing my clothes to vibrate at each and every beat, and ignored the random girls trying to get me to pay for their drinks. I finally got back with my group and hung out for a bit, then they said they were leaving so we went out into the cold night and waited around for a taxi. A few drove by with people, some without, eventually we flagged down a Taxi driver named Joe. He drove us back to Carleton, where I immediately went to sleep.

The next day was fine, I was a little tired, but I didn't have any of the 'hang over' effects that people get from drinking too much. So don't worry, I didn't drink too much ;)

Sunday night I finished my readings, browsed the past 7 days of news online for review, and thought about seeing the film 3:10 to Yuma, by the time the showing came around I didn't feel like going anymore. It would mean I would have to rush my supper, to get to the theatre on time, and so I didn't go to the theatre Sunday night. Maybe next weekend. But I did head out, looking to spend a bit of my Birthday money on another season of a popular science fiction series. The one thing I forgot, however, was that it was Sunday Night. Most of the stores were closed, except for Chapters & Wal-Mart.

I purchased a book at Chapters, I am Legend, it was written in the 1950's and is about the last man on earth...only thing is...he's not alone. Everyone else has been turned into vampires and he's struggling to survive on his own. I found out about the book after seeing a movie trailer for the film of the same name, starring Will Smith, I thought it looked like a cool movie so I thought to check out the book. So far it is very good, I'll try to post something about it when I finish it.

Movie Trailer

Book

Cheers,
Andrew

P.S.
I now have all of my books, I picked up the last one today, a course manual for my French Course.

P.P.S
I will also try to post some pictures of my cake, and get some pictures from Chris from my birthday!

18th Birthday

Things started off being woken up at 10 in the morning by an intriguing phone call from someone on campus, they told me of a care package delivery, and requested to meet with me. I accepted this odd invitation, wondering why someone would send me cookies...

I showered, and donned my clothing in record timing, took to the stairs hurriedly. As I reached my destination, no one was to be found, so I waited. Sure enough, a young lady approached me and asked if I was waiting for a care package.

"Yes.", I said.

She told me of a cake being given to me for my 18th Birthday, it was located within a plain white cube of a box. She told me of "...accessories" within another box, that sat adjacent to the white one. I retrieved the two boxes, decided on a proper hand hold on both of the boxes, I carefully returned to my dorm room and opened the two boxes.

As the young lady had told me, within lay a beautiful cake with the writing 'Happy Birthday!' on the top layer. It was a chocolate cake, my favorite, whoever had sent it must have known me well. I attended to the second box that also contained, as the young lady had told me, accessories. Various carbonated beverages, ranging from names such as 'Coke' to 'Root Beer', I settled on this box for quite some time. Within the second box also lay forks, a single candle, and many plates. The box was sprinkled with ribbons and the eating utensils were wrapped together with a fine, tan, almost biological ribbon. But within the box, there was no lighter for the single candle.

I thought this suspicious. Whoever had sent me this 'care package' must be playing with me, messing with me, to see what I'll do in a situation like this without a lighter.

I went and purchased a lighter from the local convenience store, a fine little establishment that could sustain my snacking habits for quite nearly 8 months. I returned to my dorm room and lit my candle, after placing it into the dead center of the cake, I leaned closed to the candle. I exhaled upon the flame, it went out with a small puff of smoke. I retrieved the candle from the cake, and licked off any excess icing. I took a knife to the soft surface of the chocolate icing, it cut through the cake like a knife cutting through cake...er...yes.

Stepping out of my descriptive writing about my birthday for a moment, I would just like to say that I had an awesome time. I got a bunch of birthday cards from Nanny & Harold, Oma, Aunt Trudy & Uncle Howard & Family, Aunt Eileen & Uncle David & Family, Chris, and of course Mom & Dad :)

Thank you to everyone that sent me a card! Even my roommate made me a card!

Following the cake and cards, I spent the day relaxing. I had no classes, so I just layed back and let the day roll by. That is until about 6 o'clock, when Chris and Anna came to pick me up from the University. We went out to an nice Italian resturant, I had Fettucini Alfredo with Chicken (noodles in a white creamy sauce, with strips of chicken) it was very tasty. I saved a bit and ate it later on in the night, because I had to save room for my tasty deep fried ice cream dessert that Chris said I could have! It was delicious, to say the least, and I shared it with Chris...which was good because I couldn't eat it fast enough.

Chris and I dropped Anna off at a get-together, then we proceeded to the South Keys (Ottawa) theatre, we watched the new Resident Evil movie (opening night, although there had already been 3 screenings before the one we saw) it was very good. Looking forward to seeing *spoiler?* the next one */spoiler?*

We drove back and picked up Anna, then came back to Carleton to drop me off. Thank you Chris and Anna for a wonderful night, I really enjoyed it, making this a very amazing first birthday away from home. Thank you to everyone else, this made me feel great on my birthday...~850km from home :)

Following being dropped off, I proceeded inside my residence, where I proceeded to "party" as people really enjoyed the thought that it was my birthday :)

Cheers to all,
Andrew

Working Hard :)

Well, I've been here for almost 2 and a half weeks. I've joined the Carleton Film Society, a club that watches, makes, and discusses film. I've spent quite a lot of time reading for Journalism and English, switching my French courses around (now I have to get up early on Tuesday and Thursday!), and enjoying everything else that goes on around here.



This past Sunday afternoon, Chris and I went to the theatre and saw the movie Balls of Fury which was a decent comical flick, not academy award material...but still...I enjoyed it. On the same day I bought the Collector's Edition of Serenity that I highly recommend to anyone that loves science fiction or westerns...it's a combination of the two, make sure that you first check out the cancelled television show Firefly, that Serenity is based on.



Lots of good foods here, sometimes they're greasy, sometimes they're deliciously greasy, and sometimes it's hard to choose what I want to eat because all of the foods aren't in co-ordination with my appetite (lol, a fancy way of saying there's nothing good to eat). Lots of Chocolate milk, however lately I've been having a bit of Skim Milk (*shock*).



I've taken quite a liking to doing the laundry.



No that's a lie.



It takes so long to do the laundry, that I have to plan it out for when I've eaten all of my meals and finished my courses for the day, I have to make sure I'm done all of my homework or have my homework set up beforehand so that I can run from the washers and dryers back up to my room for an hour before the load is done. It's quite easy, which is a big bonus in my line of work (school work) so I don't have to do any extensive heavy lifting or flicking of switches, turning of dials, and typing in passwords just to turn the thing on. Ok there's a bit of that, minus the heavy lifting part, but it's pretty easy to use.



I'm looking forward to my 18th Birthday on Friday, should be a fun one, as it's the first birthday of mine away from home! I already received my birthday present from my parents, a brand new LG 20.1" LCD monitor! Expect a post about my birthday sometime soon ;)

Cheers,
Andrew






Above are pictures of my monitor (top), messy note taking area (middle), and my lovely collection of books and miscellaneous objects (bottom)

Yummy

Monday morning breakfast, what a delight! 1 Omelet, 2 Sausages, 2 Pancakes, 1 Apple, 1 Muffin, and two glasses of refreshing chocolate milk :)

+Vitamins (Don't worry Mom!)

Your truly,

Andrew

EDIT: Also seen above, are the only two photos of Frosh Week 2007, the batteries in my Camera died :(

Triple Bypass

Er...three days off rather. I wasn't sure if I had a course today or not, it was a tutorial or discussion group class, and I had had the lecture already. But the teacher had mentioned that we would see each other in class on Tuesday, not Friday, and as I suspected when I walked over to the classroom this afternoon...no one was there.

I tried to sleep in this morning, I really did, but due to the noises from neighbours and roommates getting up for their classes it was really hard! I mostly just rested my eyes from 9am-11am.

I had a hearty mystery meal for lunch, a salmon burger, curly fries, and of course...chocolate milk. For dessert I had an odd tasting chip's ahoy cookie, it tasted like oatmeal I think.

But now, I'm off to go vist some folk (you know who you are) and probably stay the night to review some photos and such. Seriously, I'm not doing anything right now. I'll be glad to get outside and do something!

Cheers,
Andrew

Lunch

Well, lunch was great. I had Spicy Chicken Wings with fries, as well as a slice of pizza and my now all time favorite drink...chocolate milk (2 glasses). I've found a good seat that I like to go to whenever I'm in the caf, it's very padded :)

Cheers,
Andrew

First Day of Classes!

So I'm waking up at 8:15 in the morning, eating breakfast at 8:30, and waiting about 20 minutes for someone to come out of the shower. Only thing is...no one was in the shower (well for 5 of the 20 minutes there was) the toilet was flushing by itself and wouldn't stop flushing. I brushed my teeth and headed out!

What a beautiful day, what could possibly go wrong? A teacher not showing up for class? No way!

Oh, yes way. I went to my jam-packed Canadian History class, of course I showed up a bit early so there were only about 15 people in there. But it eventually got bigger and bigger until about 60+ students were in the room. We waited for 25 minutes, and then some girl (student?) said we didn't have to be there.

Being the education-craving person that I am, I waited for an hour with four other guys for the prof to show up. Alas, he did not show up. So I went to my next course...French!

The prof did show up to this course, and he was very enthusastic about everything. He started off speaking only french, then went into english to help those of us that were French-ily-Challenged know what was going on. We had to write down, in French, what he was reading from a sheet of paper. This was going to be marked, but didn't count, for finding out if we were qualified to be in this course (or...over-qualified!). I personally had more than a good share of problems with writing down everything that was said. The teacher would say one word and continue on (slowly), but I would finish writing that first or second word and he would be done the sentence and starting on the next one. I hope there is a lower level French course that I can take, otherwise I will have to look at taking some non-academic courses (like online audio french classes, and my French for Dummies book).

I'm heading out to lunch now!

Cheers,
Andrew

Carleton Frosh 2007 - Class of 2011

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog about my experiences at the University of Carleton.

This weekend was move-in weekend, so the family drove 11-12 hours from St. Andrews to Ottawa on Friday. We stayed over at my brother's place Friday and Saturday, moving me into residence on Sunday.

Following the rushed trip to Staples for last minute supplies, the "goodbyes", and a walk back to my residence building (Russell House!), I headed out for a night of fun. First there was a long walk over to the Field House, where a number of booths were set up for the different large-scale sports groups. Once the 1500+ people were settled into the field house, there were some demonstrations...including boxing, break-dance fighting, belly-dancing, tap-dancing, and more!

Free prizes were everywhere, with t-shirts being fired (literally, with a co2 powered launcher) into the crowd, as well as hats, mini footballs, markers, and more. I picked up a couple free things; a very fashionable Raven's Basketball cap, and 2-ticket pack to Carleton University Soccer on September 15th.

After this we headed over to the Raven's nest to watch 5-time Champion basketball team, the Raven's, play a game against Alabama (that supposedly had Michael Jordan's son on the roster). The game was very enjoyable, even though my seat was nothing more than sitting on the gym floor for the first half and standing the second half. The Raven's won the match, of course, as they were about 10 or so points ahead of Alabama. I can't remember the final score but Raven's had mid-high 80's and Alabama had mid-low 70's.

The night was not over however, we then went back over to the Field House for an awesome Much Music Video Dance Party! I stayed out until about 12:30/1:00, then headed back to dorms for a "good night's sleep".

---------------

On Monday morning, I woke up early (because of my wacky internal clock) expecting the Frosh facilitators to be waking us up at 6:45 - 7:00 in the morning, I got ready at about 6:00. Unfortunately, and I'll get to the resulting experience a bit later, I forgot to wear any sunscreen during my first day of Frosh. The facilitators eventually showed up around 8:30 to wake us up, I however had spent the past hour and a half lying on my bed, fully dressed, decked out in sunglasses and Mutineers Frosh Team shirt. I was pumped for the first day of CU on the High Seas, Carleton's major Frosh program for first year students on and off campus.

We headed behind our residence...of course me being the second frosh to get outside, I got the nickname Early Bird written on my team shirt, the first guy got the name Shack written on his because he was about 7 feet tall and had size 20+ shoes! After everyone came downstairs, we headed out for a day on the Locke's of the canal next to the university.

We learned our cheers, and had massive cheer-offs against opposing teams, competing in various games like crab-soccer, the water balloon toss, and the obstacle course/relay race (where I rolled down a big hill and touched a bucket, being dizzy the whole time), and more. The afternoon finished up with a cheer routine competition by each group, set to music, with lots of actions. Our group lost the match, but it was a great day nonetheless.

We had plenty to eat, but not much to drink. We had to pay $1 for a bottle of water if we were thirsty, and mid morning, following most of the activities we got to run as fast as we could (of our own free, exhausted will) to the two water dispensers for a small cup of water. This day alone was well worth the $55 for Frosh Week.

That night we went to see a hypnotist perform a very amusing...no...hilarious show. He eventually had his eyes, and most of his face duct-taped shut, and then "sensed" what type of object was under his hand when people from the audience brought things up. He later got everyone to write something down on a piece of paper and put it in a big bowl and he would figure out the Name, Number, and story that the person had written on the piece of paper. He did this all with tape around his eyes. Very cool show, that ended with a great show of hypnosis with one person being given the hypnotic suggestion to find every chair to be the most uncomfortable chair they've ever sat on every 15-20 seconds. Another person would jump over the laps of others, like a seat belt, whenever the word Safety was said by the hypnotist (Blair Robertson).

One guy had the suggestion given to him that he was the first pregnant male, on the Jerry Springer show, and would give birth when the phrase It's time was said. He eventually "gave birth" by way of his penis, and a group of people who "thought" they were nurses cared for the baby and had the baby nursing from the guy. That same guy was given the most suggestions, whenever Cartoon was said by the hypnotist, this guy would yell out in the most manliest voice he could muster, "My name is Tinkerbell, and I'm the biggest fairy in the world!". The show was very good. It completed Monday night, although there were other events, I was going to bed early to get a good night's sleep.

Tuesday was beach day, we had to wait a bit longer due to a possible strike by support staff at the school, but eventually headed out for the beach just down the street (about 15-20min walk from campus) where we had beach volleyball games, and sand castle building. I personally wanted to build the sandcastle, as that's where I believed my expertise laid.

Our group, the Mutineers, chose to build the bow (or the front, for your land lubbers) of a Pirate ship. I had a lot of fun building it, getting my jeans dirty and my fingernails dirtier. Once we had finished out Pirate ship, with a mysterious plank built at the front, we ate some pizza and drank some water (which was provided much quicker than on Monday, but still was delayed due to cup being late showing up). At the day's end, we had the Old Crows inspect our sand castle, they were the judges throughout Frosh week. We had a cheer planned, as we mutinied against our head facilitator and made him walk the plank into the water! That night we had an amazing concert, with big crowds, and lots of people crowd surfing too! We found out that the Mutineers, us, had won the Sand Castle competition and had placed forth in the volleyball tournament.

Wednesday was Academic day, I woke up just before 7, to have a shower and get ready for a day of finding out who was running the classes and where said classes were located. As a group we headed out to the Quad, next to the library and Dunton tower, and I recieved my Public Affairs Faculty t-shirt (which is the color red). After waiting around for over an hour, eating donuts and drinking carbonated orange juice, wondering why we were woken up so early (7:30) since nothing started until 9:45-10am. We headed over to the Raven's Nest to see the school President and some faculty present Romeo' Dallaire, a former General in the Canadian military, who talked to us about University education and leadership with respect to the ever changing world we live in. Following this was the BBQ, where I recieved a hot dog and hamburger, that was very tasty...I didn't bother with the drink line-up as it was too long for me. I headed over to my Faculty building for Journalism things, finding out who the profs were and what things were located in the fancy building that we had no classes in :P

After that I broke off from the main group, and looked around campus for most of my courses, mainly those that are taking place tomorrow (Thursday). I found them all, and I'm now very excited for classes to start...oh and I don't have class until 10am! Tonight I have opted out of the extra $15 dinner and events that go along with Frosh 2007...as I don't have any cash on me and I don't feel that I should pay for dinner when I have meals just across the "street" that are on my meal plan. Also I don't think I should stay out late tonight, I know I'm not at home where I have to be in bed at a certain time, but I'm sure that I should be well rested for my first day of classes!

Cheers to everyone, friends and family, or to whoever is reading this!

~Andrew Power
1st Year Student
Carleton University