Ashley Chow dot Com

So, have you heard the news? It was just announced today that Aurora, the grandma beluga at the Vancouver Aquarium, is pregnant! I got an email at 9 in the morning with the oh-so-exciting news.

Now, here’s the “twisted” part. Let’s get you filled in on some Vancouver Aquarium beluga facts if you’re not already familiar with them.

There are currently 5 belugas living at the Aquarium:

Kavna: She’s the oldest and is living behind-the-scenes right now because of Tiqa.

Imaq (E-mac): He’s the only male in the group and is living behind-the-scenes with Kavna right now. Apparently he likes to sleep with everyone. Imagine if he gets Kavna pregnant too. Oh my.

Aurora: She’s the mother to Qila (father is Imaq) and grandmother to Tiqa and is currently pregnant (by Imaq). She had another kid with Imaq in the past but that one passed away.

Qila (KEE-la): She’s the daughter of Aurora and mother to Tiqa (father is Imaq).

Tiqa (TEE-ka): She’s the newest beluga, still gray and growing, daughter of Qila.

Incest much, Imaq?

Well, it’s fine for belugas obviously. As long as they keep having more kids! Never a bad thing for them.

This new baby is scheduled to arrive sometime in June or July, which is when belugas are usually born. I really wonder how they’re gonna manage having two baby belugas in the same habitat. Will they move Qila and Tiqa elsewhere when Aurora gives birth? They’ll probably have to, since Qila had to be isolated from everyone.

They need a bigger habitat, that’s for sure.

Normally, Vancouver doesn’t get much snow if at all during the winter season. However, December of 2008 was different. We had about 3 weeks of continuous snow, which obviously caused chaos well… everywhere. I can’t even count the number of times I went outside to shovel the never ending amount of snow. Day and night, night and day…

Here are some pictures of that unusual winter weather.

The creepy, very dangerous icicles on the side of a house at the end of the block.

A fresh dump of snow just outside my house. Oh great.

Some nice bare trees. That’s how thick the side street roads were. I can’t even begin to explain how many cars I saw get stuck.

Just a random shot of the pretty trees.

I thought this was kinda cute. Funny how the seagull’s in focus. But look at those scary icicles just waiting to fall.

Snow is, unfortunately, scheduled for tonight and tomorrow, but hopefully, it’ll just be tonight and tomorrow. I’m sure everyone is totally 100% sick of the snowy winter we’ve had. That includes me.

A photo of Science World that I took has been selected for inclusion in the sixth edition of the Schmap Vancouver Guide.

“Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. … The innovative technology behind Schmap Guides lets end users publish schmaps (to share trip itineraries, local reviews and more), and powers a popular range of Schmap Widgets, syndicating more than 6 million maps a month – together with content and event schedules for travel, sports and concert tours – to a fast-growing network of websites and blogs.” – from the “About Schmap” portion of the site

Schmap Vancouver Guide – Science World Picture
My picture should be on the right hand side.

The picture can also be found on Flickr.

I actually snapped that shot on the SkyTrain heading home one day.

As a volunteer of the Vancouver Aquarium, I have had the privilege of going to the underwater gallery of the beluga pool bright and early in the morning and getting up close and snapping some shots of Qila and her calf!

I can’t even count how many times I’ve been to the Aquarium in the last 3 months — too many to count! Not really, but I have gone around and taken plenty of photos, which I’ll post up here. You can also see them on my Flickr photostream.

For those that don’t know, Qila gave birth to a baby girl on June 10, 2008, @ 4:28pm. She was in labor for approximately 3 hours. Her calf was fighting an infection near her tail about a couple of weekw ago, but has since fully recovered and gotten nice and plump! She’s filling out her fetal folds (like wrinkles) and is discovering more of her wonderful skills!

Now, my pictures aren’t all nice and pro, but I tried my best.

Sigh The dreaded day has finally arrived. Everyone is back at school and probably wishing they had another 3 days off.

I’m supposed to be working on a project right now, but I’m waiting for one of my group members to finish tallying up a bunch of surveys, so I decided to blog for a little bit.

I feel like I haven’t been to school in years. All that work experiene and not coming to school has made me go nuts. Now it’s back into doing homework, working on projects, and cramming for tests. Wonderful, eh?

The upside to this is that Spring is coming! Hopefully. Everyday’s been a typical Vancouver day, with rain and/or showers mixed with sun and clouds. Supposedly there was snow for a couple of mornings, but I was too busy being a sleepy head to wake up and look out the window.

Despite the dreary weather, the cherry blossoms, trees, and flowers are starting to bloom! Hpoefully, the weather will pick up and we’ll have bright, sunny days ahead of us!

Well, FINALLY something interesting during my Spring Break.

As you can probably tell in the title, I went to UBC today. On this dreadful, rainy, bitter cold Wednesday in the middle of March. I went there solely for 1 purpose: to get a degree—in one day! Haha, no. I went for an event called “UBC Degree in a Day”, where you start the day walking for 2 hours around different parts of campus, and then have lunch probably in the SUB (Student Union Building), which is mega jammed with people with nowhere to sit, and then there are 2 sessions in which you got to choose at the beginning of the day.

I got up bright and early (more like groggily and early) in the morning to take the bus all the way to UBC, which is a ~ 45 minute bus ride for me. And that’s taking the Express bus too. I had a map of UBC all printed out and ready to go, and thank goodness I brought it with me. As soon as I got off the bus, I couldn’t tell North from South. I was like a blind person in the middle of campus, just stumbling around trying to find out where in the world Brock Hall was. I decided to stop at Starbucks to take a look at my map, turning it around and around until I found out where I was.

After finally finding Brock Hall, I also found my friend sitting on a couch reading a book. We proceeded to sign in and also, to sign up for our 2 sessions in the afternoon. We chose for Session #1 to go to a Student Panel (which was insanely boring), and for Session #2, we went to an information session with a student recruiter-advisor (more interesting). But before all of that happened, we had a 2-hour tour of campus.

We went to a lot of places, including (off the top of my head): the SUB, Place Vanier (we went into a dorm and looked inside a double-room too!), the Chemistry Building, Angus High, the UBC Bookstore, the Aquatic Center, the Longhouse, the Botanical Garden, the Walter C. Koerner Library, and much, much more. Our tour guide also told us lots of interesting tidbits; for example, she told that the Chem Building is Lex Luthor’s mansion (in Smallville, I guess)! Probably just the outside, I’m thinking.

After a brutal 2 hours, most of which was spent outside in the freezing cold, holding an umbrella with iced-up hands, we finally got a break and were able to go to the SUB and whatnot to eat some lunch. What bad timing. All of the students of UBC were at the SUB eating their lunch and doing homework on their laptops and whatnot, which meant insane lineups and trouble finding a place to sit. My friend and I spent half an hour lining up for food and then finding a table to sit and eat. That basically only left us 15 minutes to eat and then scramble and rush to look for the Buchanan Building, where we had our 1st session.

Our 2 sessions were basically just sitting there listening to people talk about UBC and what it has to offer and this and that. I was falling asleep during the Student Panel but the 2nd session was fairly interesting, and more “intimate”, considering there were only 10 people in the room. And our recruiter-advisor spoke really fast and never uttered an “um”, so that made it much more interesting.

Since my 2nd session was in Brock Hall, we simply had to walk back downstairs to end off the day with our “graduation ceremony”. We all got certificates with our names printed on it saying that we completed UBC Degree in a Day, a magnet with words that you can peel off and scramble on your refrigerator, and one of those university banner-flag type things that has the UBC logo and says University of British Columbia on it. My motivator! The second I got home, I pinned it up onto my cork board in hopes of making me work harder. (Work experience and Spring Break aren’t very good motivators. )

So that was basically my day. Tomorrow will be another grueling 8.5 hours of work and the day after that will be my one day to just ENJOY Spring Break! Hope you’re having an awesome March break as well!

Yesterday, I went to Central Park to search for plants for my Biology project. I did manage to find some useful plants, but I also found squirrels! They were just too cute, so I took a short video of 2 of them.

Good bye 2007, and hello 2008!

2007 was indeed one rocky year; it had its ups and its downs, but I ended the year 2007 on an up. I went to the VanDusen Botanical Garden with a couple of friends last night because one of my friends wanted to check it out and write a review on it for school.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a tripod–the glue that holds all nighttime pictures together–but a few of my pictures turned out non-blurry. Most of them, though, were a bit blurry.

Here are 2 of the pictures that came out from a steady hand.

My friends and I had a hell of a good time last night. No, we didn’t stay out til midnight to watch the fireworks, and we didn’t party like mad, but we used the advantage of free bus and train rides to go all over the place. After the garden, we traveled to the mall, which was closed, but there were still people in there. After that, we took the train to Broadway to grab a bite, and finally we all went home, exhausted.

So that was my so long to 2007, and here awaits 2008!

Hope you enjoy the new year and stick to your resolutions!

Today, my friend and I went to Holt Renfrew for my haircut and then to the Top of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant for lunch.

Top of Vancouver is located in Harbour Centre overlooking all of Vancouver. As mentioned in the name, it does revolve, so you get a 360 degree view of the city, ocean, and mountains. Unfortunately, today was only a so-so day, so the skies were the normal Vancouver grey, and only a little bit of sun peeked through. However, I managed to get some okay pictures.

Of course, there was the food too!

It’s quite a high class place, and we mainly saw tourists there, and the food’s good!

I originally didn’t plan to go Boxing Day shopping, but I decided to anyways. What the hell, right? Go crazy with everyone else and find all the bargains you can before all the sizes run out.

So, I woke up @ 6 in the morning, freshened up, and was out the door by 7:20am. I arrived at Metrotown a bit after 7:30am. The mall was dark because it still looked like nighttime, but there were already people walking around and waiting outside stores like TNA, Artizia, and Lululemon. I strolled around until 8am, which is when all the stores open up. But it sure didn’t look like that while I was there. A lot of stores had their doors closed while the slower desperate shoppers were forced to wait while the faster desperate shoppers were inside picking their sizes, styles, & colors and fishing out their gift and credit cards.

The mall wasn’t that packed in the morning, but with each hour, there were 1000 more people jammed in the mall. I went to the car to drop off bags twice and both times, there were cars with their hazard signs on, waiting endlessly for someone to leave so they could park and race in and shop with everyone else. I felt bad for telling the drivers, “Sorry, I’m not leaving!” but what’re you gonna do? You don’t care. You wanna shop!

I ate my lunch at 10:30am, and the food court–mind you, it’s huge–was already half full. By the time 12pm rolled around, there was hardly enough room for breathing space. Every little square inch of the mall was covered, and people were still waiting in forever long lineups.

I also got a new phone today, and I absolutely love it. While walking around the mall, I decided to take some pictures, so I whipped out my brand new phone and snapped a couple shots. Obviously, 1.3 megs hardly compares to an 8 meg camera, but it’s clear enough for a cell phone. I uploaded the pictures onto my computer, so here they are.

Hey, that’s pretty clear!

On the very top level, to the left, the crowds are for Aritzia. To the right of that, the crowds are for Lululemon. That was how long the lineups were. It even stretched all the way around the Grand Court, which is pretty darn big. Aren’t these people just nuts?

Sure, I went Boxing Day shopping, but I wasn’t crazy enough to stand in line for hours on end waiting to get into stores that probably didn’t have my size left!