So far, so good.

Did the second orientation, the one just for us writers. We all introduced ourselves and said where we were from, and WOW. Four girls from Mexico, one from Indonesia, a guy from Sweden, another ftom Scotland, another from the UK, a girl from India, a guy from Baltimore, two people from Nova Scotia, and just for marvelous contrast, a dude from downtown Vancouver, where we are right now.

And those are just the ones I can remember!

I am writing this sitting in the basement computer lab at 198 West Hastings, the VFS building where the Writing department is located. I am not super happy about this, because all the others magically broke into groups and went to lunch, and here I am, all by myself.

I obviously have my work cut out for me when it comes to overcoming my tendency to isolate myself. I want in, dammit. So I am determined to make friends and socialize, both for my future career and my own personal development.

Oh… and to land me a boyfriend.

Turns out that part 2 of the orientation today is our tech orientation., which starts soon. I wonder how much of it I already know.

Got my swag bag, which turned out yo be an actual VFS backpack. Score!

(—)

Back home now, fed and ready to blog.

Also in the swag bag : the aforementioned umbrella, our two keycards (you should see one of them, the technology is ancient, the thing is like an inch thick), a copy of Strunk and White (the non-union equivalent of Funk and Wagnall), a copy of Save The Cat by Blake Synderm book I have been wanting to read forever and which I sadly seem to have lost (major sadface), some other screenwriting book I also seem to have lost, and my very own VFS water bottle of the translucent black plastic variety.

Translucent black plastic – another 70’s thing coming back into style!

I did one dumb thing today – I wore my coat. And I almost didn’t. I had already called the elevator, jacket free, when suddenly I thought “But what if it’s cold out right now?” and went and got it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then I was stuck with the big heavy thing all day, and today was definitely not jacket weather. I already have problems dealing with heat (like being fat AND prone to heat stroke, yay) and wearing a big black leather jacket didn’t help.

Had some general free-floating anxiety on the way there. Partly that was because I slept very poorly last night and woke up very oxygen depleted and feeling bad, but a lot of it was probably because I drank a liter of Diet Coke with breakfast, and caffeine is always a gamble for me.

Sure, I’m awake. Awake and jittery! My anxieties don’t need the extra help. I won’t do the same thing tomorrow.

Part of the orientation was a tour of the various places we would need to know about for our classes, and when they told us that, I was having horrible flashbacks to Thursday. But it turned out everything is either in the 198 West Hastings building (floor four, the writer’s floor) or a couple of places at the 420 (stoner laugh) Homer Street building, which is quite large.

And the 420 Homer building is only a block away from 19th West, so it’s no big deal. I had this vision of having to travel the length and bridth of downtown Vancouver to hit all my classes. The horror.

We also got our schedules, of course, although they immediately told us that anything can change at any minute. That’s because most of the instructors are there part-time, and the rest of the time they are working in the actual entertainment industry.

How cool is that?

But because of such instabilities, we are required to check our VFS email twice a day. And I can’t just forward it to my Gmail like I did at Kwantlen. So I will have to actually log on to their web portal for the email twice a day, like a slave.

What else…. tech orientation took like, half an hour. It was just a matter of showing us how to log in to various services, like email, WiFi, and Moodle.

Pretty sure I was the only one of the students who wasn’t like, “Moodle? What the heck is that?”.

Oh, and on the way home, I had a very nice ten dollar lunch at a funky little sandwich shop called Bon Chaz. It had all the things I look for in funky little businesses.

Menus done with flourescent markers on big black boards, check.
Little jokes in said menus, check.
Indie-looking young woman behind the counter, check.
Hippie-ish indie music player, check. Mellow and harmless, but not offensively so.
Lots of mentions of vegan alternatives, check.
and last but the opposite of least…
BIG COMFY CHAIRS! CHECK!

These sorts of things mean a lot to us fatties. We are not built to sit on hard furnishings. Our poor buttocks try to compensate for our weight by becoming very fat and cushiony themselves, but they just can’t keep up with our mass, and so all that weight is bearing down on not nearly enough surface area to spread it, and hence, the pressure on our butts is enormous.

That’s Physics for Fatties 101.

Bon Chaz (which to me, sounds like someone under-pronouncing “bonne chance”, French for “good luck”) had good food. They have this deal where you can get 2 of four things – soup, sandwich, pasta, salad) and a drink for $9.50, which is decent, especially for downtown Vancouver.

I got a turkey wrap and potato salad, and they were both excellent. The wrap was very fresh tasting, and that counts big with me. Excellent lettuce. And the potato salad, despite being sort of greenish with green bits in it, was also very good.

So I have that place on my mental rolodex now. I really wish I could afford to do that kind of thing every day I am at school, but that would cost $50 a week and that’s half my budget right there. So I will have to brown-bag it at least some of the time.

Plus, I am really not keen on fighting through the scrum of people all getting their lunch at the same time, between noon and 1 pm. So brown bagging it might be the only solution.

Anyhow, all in all, I enjoyed today. But what I am really looking forward to is tomorrow, when classes actually start.

Orientation is over…. I’m ready to LEARN.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.