Sports @University of Alberta

I had my official first tennis lesson today! We started with easy forehand and backhand strokes. The instructor adopted a GCA method of teaching which went down very well with me. The lesson progressed fairly well and we were able to hit quite good strokes. But I really need to work on backhand and service! Today I visited many areas of the PE faculty and also watched two games of the Golden Bears and boy was it a thriller!

The indoor swimming pool was WARM which is added incentive to go and swim there cause it’s so cold now! They have few lanes that intersect one another. Oh the smell of chlorine is really strong! And people do their beginning diving lessons there as well.. Cool.

The butterdome is one amazingly big and well built structure. It is an indoor stadium with a 200m track and also badminton courts, basketball courts, tennis courts and a rock wall. The track & field team trains there as well and the courts are so versatile that they interchange for so many sports. The key distinction is tradition. You could feel it in the air and there’s so much belief that they are that good. We could really bring a lot of these back in S’pore. Last night we went to RATT(Room at the top) which is at the top floor of the SUB building for dinner. They had a beer promotion as it was the Oilers game! It went $4 per pint which was rather cheap! There was quite an atmosphere and they even have emcees and DJs to host the event. It was a rather warm and fun atmosphere! Pity the Oilers lost and everyone was quite disappointed. The puck above was given to us with a player’s no. above, if the player scored, had a foul or even FIGHTS! We could get a prize. Sadly my player was a defender and had a quiet game! This promotion is kinda fun and I haven’t had that back in S’pore.

Today I took the wrong bus and ended up in Capilano when I was supposed to go West Edmonton Mall. Haha. It took 1 and a half hour on the bus. Stupid eh! When we got there we had Vietnamese food and I had beef stew Pho which was really shiok! But expensive la as usual, worth it though! Then we headed back to butterdome to catch the Golden Bears Basketball and Ice Hockey Games. For $5bucks, we could watch both matches and we moved around to catch both to make our money worthwhile! The basketball match was really close and they look really professional! Even the people here treat it like watching a movie as they have popcorn and drinks on sale! Even the managers are decked in suits which really look like NBA man! Alas, the bears lost the game 80-84. SAD. Haha They also have the silly bear mascot who goes around to flirt with girls.

The Hockey game was equally exciting! They gave our free shirts to first 100 people! Darn.. Wasted..The shirts were really cool. The front said : “ Destroy the Dinos” and back “Friends don’t let friends go to U of C” The reason for it is because the opponents are their fiercest rivals, the university of Calgary who are in the same state of Alberta also. Thankfully, we won 6-3! Good one UofA! Then the kids were always shouting “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!” when two players squared up to each other. Haha. But they never did as the referees would intervene.

So far so good. Its really fun. Im going to send my resume to an outdoor shop to work part-time. Hopefully my experience of working in Salomon would come to good use. I will join the UofA winter league on Monday at Kinsmen! Update soon!