Aight, so its been a fuck time and a half since a blog

post but my excuse is I was moving into rez and its first year of uni, so I’ve

just been sorting out a lot of thing, met so many chill people. Thought I would

share some tips and experiences with all you kids, since we have no snow yet

(at least 2 and a half months away). In between frosh week, finding classrooms,

buying books, sports and photography, my life is jam packed with good times(

yah that’s right I don’t have school work in there).

My first week was a blur, that being frosh week, you can

expect non-stop parties, music blaring non-stop, so don’t go to first week

expecting any sleep. When your parties start at 12:30 and go till 6 and then

you get woken up with the sounds of shriek horns, drums and smashing cymbals

shortly after 8 for a good hour to make sure you are up for breakfast. One tip,

have big bottle of water close to you at all times, even when your not that

thirsty drink up right before bed, and whenever you wake up drink more. That and

have a bottle of aspirin ready to go. I am sure just like me, you will learn

the hard way. That and your eating habits are going to go right down the hole.

Prepared to be obese by the ski season, but luckily for me the school has a

gym, $10 membership for the year, so worthwhile.So kids stock up on that mac

and cheese and get used to that empty feeling in your stomach.

Also it was just as sexual as any teen movie put, I

remember some odd things…something about a black dildo deep throating contest

[don’t worry I wasn’t involved no homo]….i better not get into it haha, but we

did fill up over 3,000 condoms with water and attacked another college so it

was all god.

My first big scare came when I went to my first class.

With 500+ kids in my first Psych class I was more than intimidated, you feel so

insignificant in a class that big, keeping in mind there were about 1,100 kids

at my high school in total. But so far my proffs seem interesting and I have

yet to fall asleep. My tip here is about laptops. You may think that Laptops

are great for classes, but for some its just impractical, say for example you

have a lot of diagrams or charts. Some classes you will have an actual table,

which is more realistic for a laptop, whereas those chairs that have small

tables attached to them are not to great for laptops and having people right

besides you makes the situation cramped. So for the first week of classes just

take a pad of paper and pens/pencil you can always type up your notes. Also

kids DON’T FUCK AROUND ON YOUR LAPTOPS DURING CLASS. No one sitting behind you

wants to see you surfing a fucking Paris Hilton myspace shopping page, yeah

some bitch was doing that and I wanted to take her Mac book pro and throw it

from the balcony. But yeah kids stick to typing notes.

So York University is situated about a half hour drive

from downtown Toronto. Now while being relatively close to the Jane and Finch

area you would think shit would go down on a daily basis but nope not the case.

So far everyone has been helpful and the campus is surprisingly nice. Sure its

not queens but architecturally it’s a very interesting place, its just like one

big giant park, lots of open areas. Just like a good normal park there are lots

of urban opportunities, I took pics of three but there are two more that are

better that I have yet to get a shot of, but anyone in TO during the winter

feel free to hit me up and I can do a shoot for you here.

Besides from the ravenous parties that only stop when your

legs hurt too much to keep dancing, I have picked up a position with the

newspaper, which for any of you that live on campus is a sick way to get into a

lot of things free, front row seats and get so many amazing portfolio shots.

That and experience and many things you will learn from others. I’ve learned

more in the past two weeks about sports photography than I learned in the past

two and a half years. I’ve got to see some quality ( I am going to say quality

not amazing by Canadian standards, because I know compared to American, Jr.

high teams could most likely beat out school, I am not joking.) But just this

week I got a free trip to the Red Blue bowl for the annual Toronto York

football game, press pass included.

   Last night was a big concert. It was out west

on the campus near the Rexall Centre, in a big metal tent/dome. I had not heard

of any of the bands before but i think i had heard one or two of their songs

before. The main headline act was "Stars". Free music is usually

always good. I got lucky because the paper just bought a new camera and lens,

so I got its virginity. Mind you, the lens itself was more than double in cost

than my camera equipment. The body of the camera was the Nikon D200, with the

$2300 24-70 F2.8 which was OR-FUCKING-GASMIC. I had never used Nikon before but

after realizing it was basically the exact opposite of Canon it was easy, and

its an amazing camera to say the least. Anyways walking into a concert, not to

CLAIM TO HARD, with a $3600 camera set up boosts your confidence level haha,

but i tried to keep humble. So us few photographers had the best seats in the

house, touching the stage, the vibrations of the subwoofers shaking our

clothes, while the rest of the crowd was kept behind metal gates/fence.

 

   There were 5 or 6 bands playing before the

Stars played, each set getting longer as the night grew on, until finally the

Stars played. It wasn't the type of music I would usually listen to, I mean I

was happy listening to it but I thought they lacked character, compared to the

group that played before them at least, but none the less it was an enjoyable

event. Then we rushed back to the offices to format some pictures for the paper

that came today.

So life has been a blur so far, I will accompany this post

with a bunch of shot from games and the concert (any criticism will be taken

with stride as I am always learning), have a great week guys.

 

Cheers

                  

Pippin