Fitness Craze

Lately I've found myself in a bit of a fitness craze. This is unusual for me. During school I hardly have any free time at all, and when I do I usually tell myself I should be using that free time to study. On top of that, my usual fitness routine for the summer is to go for a run every once and a while. I can usually keep that up for a week or two, but running is boring and overall completely unenjoyable for me. I have found a much more enjoyable way to burn many more calories. My new routine involves the following activities:

• Working out (8 times in the past 2 weeks)
  
• Playing Squash (5 times in the past 2 weeks)
  
• Swimming (7 times in the past 3 weeks)
  

How am I able to keep this up? I just bought myself a membership to the doctor's gym in the hospital. Not only does it have the allure of being a high-society exclusive fitness club, but it's less than 5 minutes from my place if I left now. On top of the excellent location, it is open 24 hours a day. I've been there for workouts and squash games past midnight a couple of times already, which is perfect for when I can't sleep. At this rate I should be able to undo a years worth of laziness in no time!

Calgary Stampede

These blog posts aren't in chronological order anymore... oh well. A couple of weekends ago I was invited down to the Calgary Stampede with my friend Nicole. It was an absolutely blast! I won't say much, because its more fun just to look at some of the pictures and read the captions.


Click here for pictures!!
More to come...


But I will fill in some of the gaps of the story, not told by the pictures. I had the sense that the Stampede was a big fair grounds with all sorts of random

eat carnival food, go touch baby farm animals, people watch...

cowboy-like sporting events. This was not exactly the case. You have to buy tickets for the rodeo shows, and these tickets sell out weeks in advance. So I was unable to watch any of the torturing of various pigs and cattle. So in reality, the Calgary Stampede is not much more than a giant carnival. The thing that sets it apart from the giant carnivals in every other city, is how much the city of Calgary gets into it! It's bizarre. The whole town goes crazy for 2 weeks. Everybody wears a cowboy hat and dresses like a cowboy or a stripper-with-a-cowboy-hat. People even dress like this to work. Even at banks! It was funny, I went into an RBC to get some money, and all the staff were dressed like bank robbers. With handkerchiefs over their mouths and everything! But I digress...

So once you are actually on the fair grounds, you can do the following things: ride carnival rides, play carnival games (no thanks...), eat carnival food, go touch baby farm animals, people watch, or go to some of the free shows. I partook in all of the above, except for the dirty carny games. You know the ones where you always lose.

I hadn't had carnival food in sooooo long. It was fantastic. Beef in a bun, corn dogs, cotton candy, ice cold root beer. Once a year, everybody should eat some carny food.

I didn't go on a lot of the roller coasters, 3 perhaps. But we did go one one which took your picture as you drop down the tallest drop. And the picture is FANTASTIC. I can't wait until I scan it into the computer and post it. You'll see...

The free shows at the Stampede are impressive. For example I went to a Nelly Furtado concert for free. She only played for about an hour, but still. She played tunes from 3 or 4 of her albums. We got pretty close to the stage, but I couldn't really see much other than a see of cowboy hats in front of me. I took some shoddy video clips on my cell phone, but Nelly is only 3 white pixels :)

Well that gives you a sense of the Calgary Stampede. I'll post again when I have more pics up!

A Taste of Edmonton

Last night Carla and I (and two of Carla's friends from work) went downtown to get some yummy food at the "A Taste of Edmonton" festival. This is sort the equivalent of the "Folk Fest" held in Victoria each summer. Instead of having stands with various international foods however, they have stands from 40 different restaurants in Edmonton. Each one offers a "savory" dish and a "sweet" dish. Admission is free (unlike the Folk Fest in the past couple of years), and all you have to do is buy some tickets which you trade in for food!

The festival grounds were packed, pretty much shoulder to shoulder in

Ginger beef, Cappucino Chocolate Shooter, Green Onion Cakes...

the main strip. A number of stages were set up with musicians playing various cover tunes (I think one guy was a Johnny Cash impersonator). Carla and I made a bee-line for the stand selling Ginger Beef -- our favourite Americanized asian dish ever. We quickly followed that up with a Cappucino Chocolate Shooter (some sort of giant truffle). Wandering around we cooled off, dipping our feet in the fountain and sat around listening to the second-rate folk music acts (what can I say? I'm a music snob...).

At the Folk Fest in Vic, the most popular item is the Hungarian Langos. Here, however, the longest line is for the Green Onion Cakes from some random chinese place. So we had to line up for those. They were amazing -- much better than you would think. Served with sour cream and super hot sauce.... mmmmmmmm...

Our last dish was a Tropical Gelati from some Italian restaurant. It was cold, but nothing special as far as Gelati goes. We'll be heading back for more food later in the week, because we still have a bunch of tickets left!!

Firing Up This Blog Again

It has been a while since I last posted anything! Wow. I suppose school was getting pretty monotonous towards the end of the year, and I really didn't have anything interesting to blog about. My days were pretty much like:

1. Wake up go to school
2. Sit in class forever
3. Go home and study and surf the net

But now its the summer and I've been up to all sorts of wild and crazy things. So not only should I have much more to blog about, I'll soon be starting my medical internship (actually I'll start a 3 week rotation at the ER in August!). So no doubt there will be lots of crazy things I can write on (omitting patient names of course)!

How to Make a Beat