Well, the weather outside is frightful,

Vancouver weather is pretty simple. There's rain, rain, overcast, rain, a chance at sun, and more rain. Every time you head outside in Vancouver, you just hope you get to where you're going before it starts raining again. You can wear your rain jacket and cover your backpack, or you can just chance it, either way, you're just going to have to get used to getting wet.

That said, most of my time is spent inside. I like running around, but I mostly move from building to building. I spent a lot of my time walking around campus. I often explore the SUB, looking for new places, things I've missed, or things that've changed each time. I walk around the academic buildings, looking at classrooms. On dry days I travel farther and explore the gardens and the areas up North. Basically, if I've not studying, tutoring, talking to a girl, or having a debate with a friend, (sometime even when I am,) I'm walking around campus.

I've always liked exploring, finding new paths, making mental maps, learning the lay of the land. In Japan, I probably spent twelve hours a week just walking around. In Sydney, I was a delivery boy, a cyclist, and a long distance runner, often optimizing routes or finding new places to go. Even now that I'm living on a small campus, I'm still trying to explore the edges.

In addition to simply exploring, I also like to see what I can find. There're stores and shops that are almost hidden in the SUB, if I find a group of people standing around something, I find out what they're looking at. I look through the bulletin boards for events and opportunities, I peek in at classes and labs, when I see a vantage point, I stand on it and look at the view (and take pictures).

This is useful for a few different thing. It's great to clear my head, to just get outside. It helps me find my way around. I find all the cool restaurants and shops. But most importantly, I find places to meet and study.

Most recently, I've started taking over empty classes. I have yet to find out the official process for this, but I've found that as long as you're ready to move out when someone who book the room comes in, you can get away with going from class to class to auditorium. One friend and I took over one of the large auditoriums for two hours. We used the chalk boards to write out our formulae, derivations, calculations and proofs. We would work on questions, then take to the other's work, looking at it, correcting it, making sure we agreed on our conclusions. It was hilariously funny, especially when we would take turns teaching each other all professor-like.