Day 39 - BCIT, SFU Burnaby, SFU Surrey

Hello friends, today was another fantastic day made even better by the people I was with. Today Vanessa and I left Victoria and drove over to Swartz Bay to catch the ferry back towards Vancouver. When we got to the terminal, we decided to "help the local economy" by buying hot dogs and ice cream from one of the stands by the terminal (because who needs a well-balanced breakfast when you're travelling anyways). After being on the 1.5 hour ferry trip, I dropped Vanessa off at the Pepsi Company in Delta so that she could visit her former co-workers (she joined us later on in the day by busing to SFU), and I started making my visits to the campuses I had planned for the day.

The first school I visited today was the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), and in my personal opinion there wasn't too much to see there, but it was still neat to see how the school operated. All of their buildings are named in terms of where they lie on campus, for example the buildings in the South West part of campus are called SW1 through SW9 (but some numbers are missing from that range, and sometimes the names are not really representative of the location). Another strange thing I found about BCIT is that their Engineering departments are split up between different Faculties, and everything is very confusing to find to the point where people that worked there had no idea where I should go, but it's all a part of the adventure I suppose. A really cool thing I found at BCIT though is that the had a British Red Telephone Booth on their campus, and in there you'll find some cell phone charging lockers where you can put in a pin and leave your phone changing in one of those lockers. They had an alright campus, but overall it was quite weak relative to many of the others that I have seen so far on my trip.

My next stop was to visit Simon Fraser University (SFU), Burnaby Campus. This is the main SFU campus, and it was ridiculous how huge it was. To put it into context, SFU is on top of the Burnaby Mountain, and takes up most of the mountain top. Half of the land used up there is owned by the university, while the other is comprised of a large student community residence called "UniverCity", and by living there you basically have everything you'll need as a student without much need for making the commute down the mountain. While I was at SFU, I met up with Reem Mustafa, Tristan May, and Connor Floyd, who are some great friends that I got to know earlier this year at Congress. We had lunch at a place called "Club Ilia, and the happy hour specials there are ridiculous.

There were so many things that I learned about SFU today. First of all, Terry Fox studied at SFU and so they have a statue of him on their campus, and given how inspirational Terry Fox has been for me on this trip, it meant a lot to me to visit his monument at the school he attended. More fun facts include the fact that SFU has Canada's most powerful super computer underneath one of their water towers. Additionally, they apparently have 4 separate big flights of stairs on campus that symbolize the 4 years of university and the hurdles you have to go through, but they obviously didn't take Engineering into account because most people go longer than just 4 years. For all the Waterloo people reading this, SFU also has Systems, and no one here knows what it is either. Also, they have buildings starting from the base of the mountain which means that they start counting floors from down there, and the main floor of one of the buildings is numbered starting at 9000 because it is the 9th floor if you were to stack all of them on top of each other.

On the SFU campus they have a pond called the "Reflection Pond" (aka Koi Fish Pond) where they often run Charity Plunging events during the Winter (which is insane if you ask me, even if they do get milder winters). There was a statue near the pond which they called the "Sex Avocado", and it's gotten it's name because it's a shaped liked an avocado and a bunch of people have had sex in it (which honestly must've been uncomfortable for everyone involved given how small the space is). They also have a 24 hour radio station being recorded on their campus, and the audio from the studio is playing loudly at all times. Tristan showed me the area that they usually study in, and then he took me to the Engineering Science Student Society (ESSS) Office, and I saw that in both areas they had a replica of the UBC cairn that they've stolen, and in the office they had one of U of C's Super Cows (which is their EngSoc mascot). While around their Applied Sciences Building (ASB), we ran into Steven, who goes to SFU Surrey, and it was wild seeing him shortly before I went to visit his campus. The last place we visited on their campus (for the time being) is their observatory, which is apparently open to the public on every Friday if it's a clear night. Along the outside of the observatory, there are plaques on the grounds with numbers including various magnitudes of 10, and things that correspond to that size (ex 10^6 is the distance between Edmonton and Burnaby, etc). On our way back to the car, I saw that a stage and chairs were set up for convocation, and it's so surreal that I'll be convocation in just over one week!

I dropped everyone off at Reem's house, and I then made my way over to SFU Surrey Campus, where I met up with my old roommate from Congress, James Liu. SFU Surrey is situated in the Centre City Mall, and it makes up half of the mall itself. The facilities they have and the architecture of the building itself are both so modern, and are drastically different from that of SFU Burnaby. James showed me around all of the spaces that are available to students, and even though it is a small school, the students have so much potential for developing their skill set and learning a lot from the small-school atmosphere. Plus, being in the mall is very convenient in terms of buying food or supplies. SFU Surrey currently has 2 Engineering programs, Software and Mechatronics, with a brand new program called Sustainable Energy and Environment Engineering starting as soon as their new Engineering buildings opens up. In comparison, the School of Engineering Science at SFU Burnaby has 5 Engineering programs: Biomedical, Computer, Electronics, Engineering Physics, and Systems. It was very cool getting to see how different the 2 SFU schools were, even with the fact that they are only a 25 minute drive away from each other.

With that, I finished my school visits for the day, and I drove back home to pick everyone up so that they can show us around town a bit more. We went to a place called Rocky Point, which is located in Point Moody. Reem's boyfriend Nikhil met up with is there and joined us for the rest of the night. We grabbed some food from a food truck (I got some chicken strips and fries), and then got some really good ice cream from Rocky Point Ice Cream. We then went to Moody Ales and had some really fun chats and got to really catch up. Vanessa was still recovering from the results of the Ontario Provincial elections, but the conversations started to drift away from real world political drama to student society political drama, so we all got pretty engrossed in that. After hanging out there for about 2 hours, we drove home and dropped my car off at Reem's place. The girls stayed in and watched TV, and the guys walked to campus for what they called "Roof Beers", where we basically climbed to the roof of ABS and looked over an amazing view of Metro Vancouver while the guys drank some beers. We had a lot of fun hanging out up there, and it's things like this that have made this trip of the best experiences of my time. As we were walking home, they showed me a few more parts of their campus, with one of the major highlights being that pathways around the observatory that light up at night. Apparently the colours represent different elements of sorts in the way they're shown. There are also signs on the wall that light up at night showing all the major stars and constellations that can be seen in the different seasons in various directions, which was fascinating.

Today was a packed day with some amazing friends, and I definitely have to say that the West Coast Hospitality has more than lived up to the East Coast Hospitality I experienced earlier in my trip. I am just so grateful for all of this. Tomorrow I visit the final Engineering university on my trip when we get to Kelowna to see UBC Okanagan!

BCIT, SFU Surrey: www.instagram.com/p/BjwqcgLF_iq
SFU Burnaby: www.instagram.com/p/Bjwr5pZFcar