My new understanding of work and life

I find that students of Management school are very busy, since most of them are both taking courses and working part-time. I think it is the same case with students from other faculties. Almost all the student taking German course with me are working part-time. A Canadian friend told me, that University of Manitoba students enter in the labour force at a very young age. A lot of students that work may use the earnings to pay for their tuition and living expense, even for a car down payment or an European trip. This does not take place often among Chinese university students. Working part-time is a very good way of developing students’ money management awareness, from my perspective. Students will realize the importance of saving and hardness of earning from working part-time.  Some of my Chinese friends are doing so right now. They think work sometimes is fun and kind of relief from the textbooks sometimes. I think I should work part-time like they do, but courses always come first.

This term, I am taking Taxation, Accounting Theory, Administrative Policy, Business Government Relationship and German. German is always a highlight and it is full of fun to me. Taxation is my favourite course. I chose that because last March I did income tax return volunteering for international students and it turned out to be excellent for me. I just loved that job. I think part of the reason is this is very beneficial for us, since in China we never get any concept of tax. All taxes are included within the price and we don’t have to file any tax return when we have no income. So, the awareness of tax is really weak for us, at least for me. So that was a great opportunity to know something about the Canadian taxation system and make use of that properly. Our tax professor, Dan, is a great teacher, fun and humorous. He works for one of the “big four”, so he is very knowledgeable about the taxation world. I am even thinking about going the taxation direction when I graduate. But I guess it depends on what job offer I can get first. This term is fast. I have just finished all the mid-terms and now am starting to work on different projects or assignments. I like to be busy, maybe that’s why I am in “busi”ness school. I hope in ten or fifteen years I can have my own little accounting firm after I have either done investment banking or taxation for a career. I am expecting life will fluctuate like stock, sometimes at peak, sometimes at trough.  The key to realizing that goal is to keep focused and do the work. That is what my policy professor, Khan, told me and I will take it to heart forever.

My plan of study and work might have a change and this time I will take full responsibility of it because I regard myself as a grown-up person. Nothing much to say right now before I decide, but I will do my best, not least in the rest of my life.

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Those interesting differences and similarities

Since it is close to the time for me to go back home, I was thinking about the small but interesting differences between University of Manitoba and Ningbo University, also things I have seen.  

As for the fundamental infrastructure, U of M campus is better built and comfortably designed for students.

NBU (abbreviation for Ningbo University) has about 24,000 undergraduates and 2,300 faculty staff on campus, whereas U of M has around 26,000 students and 8,000 faculty staff. The population size is similar but what I feel is we have way more students than U of M. The reasons are as follows: Most Chinese university students are full-time students, and it is mandatory that students should live in dorms, so during times of class breaks, lunch, or dinner time, the campus is just too over-run and cafeterias are just swarming with students. I have that kind of feeling as I go to the Dafoe library but other places are much quieter. Also a lot of them work part-time, thus they only attend classes and go to work and leave the campus after that. Especially on holiday, the campus of UM is always shut down and basically nobody shows up at the campus. When NBU students meet holiday, the dorms are so packed. The whole building is like a streaming hotpot, within a few minutes the roof will be torn off. 

I really appreciate that U of M has enough seats for students to study. Because NBU has only two libraries and limited study area, so in most cases students choose to study in classrooms instead. It is not uncommon at all to see NBU students line up in front of the libraries.  Our library rules work like this: every student waits in line before the library opens, the earlier students each get a seat number and sit at the seat as the number indicates. Students that come late don’t get a seat number and have to wait until someone leaves the library. In summer, it becomes worse.  The libraries are the only places with air conditioners, just like heaven. That leads to longer line-ups and bike races minutes before the libraries opens. Sometimes even riots take place; someone tried to enter with force and even shattered the glass once. This is ridiculous to you and to me as well as I see it now. God, could you administrative university staff not throw money away on building your fancy thirteen-floor executive building, rather than just build one more library? Please!! If I say so upfront, I have to go “talk” to the vice dean and get some “spiritual education”. Or some security people are going to talk to me in the bathroom. (That means I will get a beat-up)

Here, I have one more thing to mention. The Winnipeg transit system is so much different from ours. It is usual that a family owns at least one car in Winnipeg, or broader, Canada. Perhaps there is no need to put many buses on the street. That’s maybe why Winnipeg has so many fewer buses. For students like us, transit is like oil pipe to gas station. The Transit Company considers that we are a small group that can be ignored. If we miss one bus, maybe we have to wait another half-hour for the next bus. In NBU, transit is bad but in a different way. We’ve got too many students getting on the buses, which makes every passing bus “a can of salmon fish”. Waiting for a bus is horror, getting on them on weekends is even harder. Definitely buses are overloaded by 50% capacity at least. And we have come up with ideas for loading the bus from the back door that normally only is for exit passengers. So, it takes longer to get off the bus because you have to let someone get off the bus, leave the door open, and those people get off then the first few people get back on the bus again. Anyways, timing is the skill we need no matter in Winnipeg, and braveness and toughness are characters that needed in NBU.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (from “Anna Karenina”) My point in this blog is to make you laugh and afterwards think of what we can do to improve the situation. Don’t take my words exactly, I may put some exaggeration here. See you next blog.

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Driving a tractor and going snowshoeing

 Saturday was a very fulfilling day for me. I helped feed the cows and tried driving a tractor on the pasture in the morning. After the lunch break we went snowshoeing in a nearby natural park and we heard a lot of local stories about the park, animals and farming. We played a card game called “Dutch Blitz” after the dinner.
 Saturday morning we all got up around 9 in the morning. After a very nutritious breakfast, I, with Farhard, Hannah, and Twylla, followed Ken to see how to feed the cows. The cows were shy animals. They used their big eyes, staring at me nervously and cautiously at us. And they were always backing away as I tried to approach them. Ken got on the tractor and using it to spread hay around the pasture to feed the cows. On the way back, I got on the tractor and became the driver. The tractor was as cozy as a car, with a heater and radio in it. Ken said he would spend twelve hours in the tractor in summer time. So it was important to make the tractor comfortable to stay. After three minutes of driving the tractor, I got stuck in the snow. So unlucky! And Ken told me better to drive through the cow poop even though it was very bumpy. In fact, those poops were like frozen big pucks and they made a road to drive through. 

Then Nan and I went to help Ken build a “Quenssy” (Icehouse). This was a tough job, repeating the same action hundreds of times, digging and pulling out.  But we did accomplish something. We made the room bigger and even built a seat to sit on. The temperature within the icehouse was very nice, close to zero degrees without any wind shield. That is maybe why Eskimo people used to live in icehouses because they were really very cozy compared to the outside.

 
My gloves, socks, and pants were all wet when I finally got home. People staying in the room were playing card games together, very relaxing. After the lunch break, we first visited a local artist’s workshop.

 
He is a normal farmer like the others, but he has a hobby making snowshoes and violins. He had been doing it for decades, just for fun. He told us that usually nearby farmers and tourists would also bring hunted or dead animals to him, such as wolves, elks, and deer and he stuffs them. In the end, he even showed us his homemade violin and played a tune for us. What an interesting lifestyle!

After that we went snowshoeing. Snowshoes looked like big badminton rackets and they can spread human weight wide, so that humans can walk on the snow with ease. It was my first time doing it, and it was fun. Ken said, thanks to the Aboriginals, it’s them who invented the snowshoes. I guess back hundreds of years ago, snowshoeing might be one of the greatest inventions for Canadians. On the way back, we took a picture on Clear Lake, here it is.  Not far away from this position, we could see two tracks of footprints. Lindsey, the naturist of the park, told us they were left by grey wolves, who usually move about in a group especially in the winter. What’s more was that we found various kinds of footprints of local animals, such as snowshoe hares, beavers. Snowshoe hare is the size of a man’s fist, but their feet are as big as a man’s palm, which I found amazing.

 
A very interesting thing is how the naturists keep track of certain animals. Lindsey said they will rent a helicopter and shoot a net onto a specific animal, for instance an elk. The net works like a trap, the more the elk struggles, the tighter the net will get. After taming the elk, they would draw blood from it, tag it with a beeping device on the head and set it free in the end. The blood sample will be tested for contagious diseases, which is in order to prevent the raised economical animals from getting it. When some kind of disease is tested in the raised animals, farmers can’t sell them in the market or export them, so the testing is really important.  Here in the picture she was showing us the detecting device to locate tagged elks.
 
We played some card games after the dinner.  Today was really long, and I felt very tired. But this kind of experience is like once in life, and it was valuable to my understanding of Canadian culture.

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Farm Trip

ISMC, International Student Ministries Canada, organized a trip to a farm in Dauphin, a small town outside of Winnipeg. We had 12 people coming together. Twylla was the organizer, David and Grace were a couple from India, Farhad was from Iran, Seung-young and two of his sons were from Korea, Hongxi, Nan, Hannah, and me were from China, and three other graduate students were from India.
 We went in three cars, and it took almost 4 hours to get to the farm. We changed cars every time we took a break so we could get to know people better. David and Grace lived in Africa, mainly in South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe for a total of 10 years. I knew from the conversation that the above countries were not poor at all, but rich and beautiful. Farhad told us something about Iran, he thought Iran had no ability to invent nuclear weapons and if they did, they would not use them. And the critiques and newspaper just loved that topic and put it on their lips every day.

Ken and Wilma and his brother Evan were the hosts. They were very hospitable and friendly. We went hooping after the pizza lunch. We sat on the “Toques” and slide from a steep slope. It was a lot of fun.  Look at the picture, Hannah was so scared and I looked just enjoyed the trip. There should be some problems with our position, so we ended up feet up and heads down for most of the times. I thought we look much better than that.

Afterwards we went on a horse-drawn sleigh ride. The horses here were really large and powerful.

David and Grace made Indian food for our dinner, and it was very very good and all the people loved it.

After the dinner, we played a little bit of a Wits and Wagers game, which was basically answering hard questions, such as what percent of US presidents have served in war? I partnered up with Farhad and we were doing a decent job. We won some money but kept on losing it afterwards.

At about 10, we watched a TSN interview of Ken’s son, who was handicapped but strived for his life. Now he was working at the Dauphin Kings, which was the local hockey team in Dauphin. Ken and Ann thank God for the survival of their son and they are loyal Christians.

That’s roughly about today, see you tomorrow.

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Skating Trip with Ningbo Students

Criss, Cherry, me and five students from the 07 class went to The Forks Market to skate. The Red River, which goes through the downtown, was already frozen up very firmly and gives Winnipeggers a great spot for skating.

Criss was good at first and he could run on the ice the first time, so did Cherry. They were risk takers and not afraid of falling down on the ice.  We started to make a train when we got used to the ice. It didn’t turn out well, since I almost pulled everyone down at the end.

Certainly, I was not a natural skater since it took me quite a long time to stand and move on the ice. But after two times skating, I felt much more confident and comfortable on the ice. So, surely I would love to try it again when I have time. The Winter Olympics were going on at that time, and we were kind of participating in the game, OH, Yeah! Canada, go, go, go!

Feb.28 , 2010  Canada Beats U.S. in OT for Hockey Gold!!! I think I have to mention it. Since this is such a big win for Canada and Canadians. And after I know how to skate, I would probably try to play hockey.

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The Real Canada

My fear of the cold has almost gone since I arrived here. In Canada, coldness is just a wolf skin that a lamb wears. In most of the cases, you cannot even feel it although it is minus 40 degrees out there. After people come out of the house, they sit in their cars or jump onto the buses, which have hot air. As a matter of fact, hot air is everywhere in every building all over the city. What I feel is that in winter it is much better to stay here rather than in my home city, which sounds ridiculous but true.

In my city, cold means cold.  The lowest temperature will be minus 5, that is already the extreme situation. But, imagine that, if you are always in minus 5, you will soon find your hands are freezing, clothes are not warm enough, cooking in the kitchen is much better than being a couch potato.

So, to have a taste of Canada weather, I would suggest “go walking in a blizzard”.  I think people in this world, except for those living in countries like Russia, Iceland, far north Europe and Japan, will not have a clue about what a blizzard is and feels like.

 I was kind of lucky because this morning I chose to walk to campus as usual, even though I knew the blizzard was there. A few steps away from my apartment I felt OK, wearing layers of warm clothes even made me sweat when I was inside. When the wind started blowing snow on my face, I realized it was not going to be fun walking. The sky was dim despite that it was already 8:20 in the morning. My vision was totally a blur and I could not see though vehicles were crawling in comparison to the usual, and I could hardly see people on the sidewalk. I continued going towards campus.

Half way to the road, I kind of regretted walking. The sidewalk was covered with snow completely. I was wearing snow boots, but the snow was piled up to about half my leg high, in some places it was almost up to my waist!! Mr. Canada, How are you? Please let me through. However, there were no backup plans so I had to keep walking. If there was videotape, police would think I was drunk, with my body swaying left and right, back and front. It was hard to walk. Suddenly, a running creature jumped past me from my back, like a rabbit. That was the most brilliant idea, since your feet wouldn’t get as deep as when you were walking. Then I started to run as well and it worked out very well. By the time I got to the campus, there were not many students I can see. Where were they? I heard from the CBC radio that half of the cars on some highway were stuck in the ditches. That also reminded me of the day when some friends and I went to Holiday Mountain, my friend’s car was stuck, as well. Thanks to a kind man with a truck, he pulled us out. So, I was looking forward to the news tonight. Hope they can get out there finally.

In my German class, Teresa said everyone was supposed to stay home. She was somehow right, I think. Since three quarters of the students were absent. Viele Glück!! Mr. Canada, I finally see you. The real Mr. Canada is with the snow.

P.S. Something was funny. I listened to the radio after the blizzard around a week later. I remember the CBC news said there were about 4,000 teachers asked for sick leave on that blizzard day, while the average number was about 800. I didn’t remember what area it was and what teachers they were. The radio hosts were saying how irresponsible the teachers were. Even the students made it, how come they couldn’t make it.  My opinion of that is just not to pay them that day.

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End of another term

This term was so short, and I am looking forward to the next term.

Yesterday all my exams finally said goodbye to me, I felt so relaxed and happy. Maybe when we are in school, the happiest thing is to survive from the endless exams and get a breath. I feel that this term was so short. I can still remember most things I’d done on the 1st day of school. Then, school just ended in one second.

Looking around the campus, every place is covered with snow. Trees wear white garments and the ground is sparkling due to the reflection of the snow. I love walking on the snow, because the footprints I leave behind are so fascinating. They can be shallow or deep, straight or round, forwards or backwards. I can tell at least the sex from the deepness or length of the footprints, which makes me feel like a detective. The whole campus does not consist of irons and steels anymore, but a stainless white paper on which everyone can draw. So, with the snow, Christmas is really coming.

We have about ten days off school. I haven’t got any big plans for that. Instead, I will get together with a couple of friends at my apartment, probably drinking some of my homemade beer and playing some card games. I hope we can arrange a skiing trip. I have been looking forward to it since last Christmas. Also I want to call some of my friends and classmates in China. I haven’t seen them for more than a year and I miss them so much. Some window shopping on Boxing Day will not do any bad, I hope. Oh, I forgot, I have downloaded the Harry Potter series and I hope to finish half of the Deathly Hallows. So, I think my holiday is quite a tight schedule, isn’t it?

Next term I will take five courses. There of them will need quite an amount of reading and writing. I need to polish my vocabulary to prepare for them. Better to do it now! At last, I wish everyone MERRY CHRISTMAS!! No matter if you had a good year or not, feel happy for yourself, get around with your families and friends and celebrate the holiday.

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My home is here

When walking on the campus from Asper School to St Johns College, passing university centre, I am often amazed at the large number of Asian students at the school. When I stop and try to pick up what language they are speaking, nine out of ten chances, they are speaking in Mandarin.

So, I want to find out the total number of Chinese students, but I cannot find anything on the university websites. But from talking to some senior students and staff, I got the conclusion. The number has reached about 2000. WOW! It is almost ten percent of UM population. Although we have a large population base, sometimes I hear some students complain about feeling lonely. Yeah, I feel the same. Families and dear friends are on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, who will not miss them. However, all the friends here make my day meaningful and plentiful.

I have studied in U of M over a year, now. So, more or less, I have got in touch with quite a few Chinese student groups and also got involved in some of the activities. U of M has two large Chinese students groups. One is UMCSSA, which stands for University of Manitoba Chinese Students & Scholars Association. The other one is Fenghua Club, which is organized by a number of young Chinese U of M students mainly supporting a famous Chinese magazine “Manitoba Chinese Tribune”. Smaller ones are Purple Pearl dancing club and international committee in Asper. As long as you find nice posters and you are interested, just go to the events and get to know some new people.

For me, I volunteer a lot at Manitoba Great Wall Performing Group. That is thanks to my friend, Xiao Liu. We met each other in the Asper library, chatting about school and study. Then he asked if I wanted to help out at the Chinese New Year festival gala. I wanted to give it a try and said yes. I got the task of being in charge of the music during the show, which I found so exciting and challenging for me.  After the gala, I found I just loved the job. I volunteered at every event Great Wall held thereafter and knew a bunch of nice friends. And almost all of them are graduates from U of M and the rest, like me, are studying there.

There is a Chinese idiom, “friends of childhood will become friends forever”. Chinese students at U of M are making a real difference on the campus and off the campus. Anyone can be a part of it. For me, all friends are from school and most of my time is spent at the school. In that sense, U of M has become my home.

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Golden Dragon Award Gala

On November 10, 2009, I was invited by Scott to attend the Golden Dragon Award Gala. The aim of the gala was to honour the ones who have been continually making great contributions to build and improve the Winnipeg Chinese community. The gala has run for twenty years so far. This year three recipients were awarded to Dr. Lloyd Axworthy, Dr. Tse-Li Luk, and Mrs. Eva Luk. 

At the reception, I came across a few of friends whom I volunteered with in downtown Chinatown and the Great Wall group. I was very happy for that because at other formal dinners I almost knew no one. This year is the 100th anniversary of the establishment of downtown Chinatown. There has been a series of activities across Winnipeg to celebrate it. Luckily, I got involved with quite a few. And every time when it comes down to getting the event started and finished, not the leaders but us, U of M international students, are the main force. I noticed that, nearly every young Chinese person that I know who is continually dedicated to the community, was or is a student of University of Manitoba. I was very proud of that.

My faculty, Asper school of business, was invited to attend the gala. We had ten people at the table. Judy and Scott represented staff of Asper. Wang, Tammy and Gabriela represented the executives of Asper students’ group leaders. We also had graduate students represented and a few of other good friends joining together. Dinner went quite interesting. Scott shared a lot of jokes with us. We had a chef at our table giving us “free” cooking advice and funny things that happen in the kitchen.  
 

I had a chance to speak to Dr. Luc after the dinner when almost all the people were gone.  I had met Dr. Luc before. We were both volunteering in the Chinatown Misses Pageant in early October. He was shooting photographs for the show that night. Afterwards, all the staff and volunteers had a meal together and by chance Dr. Luc was just sitting beside me. He was very quiet and was very supportive of youngsters contributing to the Chinese community. I was really surprised that he turned out to be a very successful person with great generosity to helping build the Winnipeg Chinese community. About my surprise, he told me that his personality is always keeping a low profile in life but doing things with tons of enthusiasm in what he loves.

His word is as a gem to me. My understanding is, as a young people, we can choose what life attitude we hold. But we are only remembered by our accomplishments and other people’s impression of us. It is important to keep our heads down and finish our jobs nicely. An idiom says, “Other people’s life are movies to you but your life is also a movie to others’.

It was a remarkable night for me. I hope that one day I will get a chance on that stage and be recognized by colleagues and friends. Thanks to Scott, who helps me a lot with the blogs and invited me to the gala. Thanks to Judy, who is always supportive of me and helps me build confidence in a foreign country. Great Asper, great people and great night!

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Time to study, since all exams are coming

At the U of M, usually late October and early December is the time when all the students can be found on campus.  Because all the students are busy with preparing for the exams! If you come to Asper school in the afternoon, you would find the library, cafeteria, and third floor studying areas are full of students studying hard for exams. I bet it is also the best business time for TIM HORTONs and STARBUCK.

This fall term I am taking five courses, two accounting major courses, one finance major course, one Canadian security course and intermediate German. For me, there will be four exams within five days, including the 1st CSC exam.   The Canadian security course takes me the most time to study. Since it has two exams, each of them needs students to finish reading a whole book. So this course is as hard as climbing Mountain Everest to me. However, after completing the 1st exam, I find it is worth of the effort. Because I have learned a lot from the course and it arouses my great interests in working in the Canadian security industry.  Looking back at the time that I was studying at my home university, Ningbo University, I did not spend as much time studying as I do here.  The overall difficulty level of the courses at U of M, I think, is higher than my home university. In terms of my major accounting, I am having a hard time studying it. But all the hard work will turn out to be very beneficial in the future careers, as the quality of the graduates can be guaranteed.

The pictures I took is at Management library and fourth floor studying area.

  
When I have decided to study for a long period of time, the best place for me is school. Because, I consider the atmosphere around me very important. When the other students are working hard, I have a feeling of lagging behind, which makes me awake and work harder.
On the campus, I usually study in three places, Management library, Agriculture library and St Paul’s library. Management is very large, holding nearly one hundred seats. It is close to most of my classrooms and my locker, so it is very convenient for me. But the Management library often gets overcrowded during exam period and sometimes people here like to talk which makes me divert my concentration. St Paul’s is at the other end of the campus, far away from Management. I like it, because it is very quiet and beautiful. The unique design is the library has a medium large glass ceiling in the centre, through which the sun shines. And there are many plants right below the ceiling, bathing in the sunshine.  I’ve just begun to like the Agriculture library since the Librarian Susan is very kind and friendly. I often go there, just to talk to her. We chat a lot about school, study and life, even different ways of cooking. The funny thing about the Agriculture library is that it is occasionally shaking!! When a truck or a bus passes by, the library starts to tremble itself, as if I was sitting on a bridge. One time, my calculator fell down to the floor due to shaking.

Exams are coming up, time to read! Hope all of you can get them done successfully! Have a nice studying week!

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