Your Brains Ever Seen The Light Of Day?

Well, it appears that James will be my successor as UADS President. James has actually succeeded me in every debate related position that I've held that has required transitioning (External Director, VP West and now President). I think he'll do a good job.

With regards to The Amazing Race, I have a certain amount of sympathy for people that get lost in South Africa, as it's actually quite easy to do. In terms of the fact that Rob and Amber kept driving, I think they've sort of been painted into a position where they don't really have the luxury of being nice anymore. It's clear that they aren't extended the same leeway as other teams (witness Lynn and Alex's "No room" thing). As well, it's unclear to me that they would have gotten any positive benefit for "being nice" had they stopped. I'm not saying that it's good that they didn't stop (though, really, what were they going to do to help) however I think it's certainly understandable.

Here We Go Again Scarin' People To Death

Well, apparently I'm back on Council. I was really impressed with the Law turnout. I think this is an argument in favour of having the FA elections at the same time as the Councillor ones. It leads to less voter fatigue as well as less confusion as to when the election is actually happening.

Council has changed since I've last been on it, but it appears that there will be a few familiar faces. Good to see Crossman back on Council. Still waiting on the Science results, but it looks like it should be an interesting Council. Additionally, it's kind of weird to know that this will be my last year on Council.

On the reality tv front, I'm really enjoying Pulau so far. That being said, it was sad to see James go as I found him to be one of the more interesting characters. Over on The Apprentice, I think Erin let her previous boardroom success go to her head. She was swaggering the whole time, and her "that's defamatory", followed up by "I dont' feel like it" clearly didn't go over that well. Additionally, she apparently didn't learn from last week's lesson of when to shut up, as her "Do you have to?" interjection basically left Trump with no choice, when it looked like Chris was still a possiblity to get fired. It's always sad when a lawyer (particularly an attractive one) gets fired, but that one was fairly easy. In terms of who is going to win, at this stage it doesn't look like it will be anyone from Net Worth at this stage. I've missed the last couple episodes of The Contender (Sunday is really a stupid night to put good tv shows on) but I'll be watching it this week. Finally, I'm also really enjoying The Amazing Race, but I think that's mostly just watching the interaction of Rob and Amber with the other contestants.

Not Jetstop, Jetsgo

Nats was incredible. I really enjoyed myself. Right from the start when people started rolling in on Thursday, it was cool to hear people from outside of province say that they'd never been to Alberta before and they were excited to be here for the first time. I'd never really thought of Alberta as somewhere that people from elsewhere in Canada would have those views of (particularly since a couple of them were from Atlantic Canada).

Friday, it was also surreal seeing all these people I associate with Nats milling about Ed North. At times the Tabs room was fairly stressful, but at the same time I enjoyed being in there with Greg, Kevin and Morag. I think things ran reasonably well. It was really good to see people that I hadn't seen in a while, as well as seeing lots of old school UADS types come out in support. The Adjudication Team (or A-Team) stuck around Ed until about 1:00 am on the Friday putting together panels, so we weren't able to make it out to the bar that night (getting lost and swinging by McDonald's probably didn't help either).

There were a few delays Saturday, but no real disasters. The banquet was a lot of fun. That's probably the best public speech final that I've ever seen (and I think I've seen some pretty good ones). While the police coming to get us to turn down the music was unfortunate, it was nevertheless good times, only enhanced by the presence of Alberta Beef. As well, given that I was crashing in the A-Team room for the duration of the tournament, it meant that I could imbibe.

Morag and I stayed up until about 4:00 am, and the entire A-Team slept in the next morning, luckily everyone else seemed to as well. The rounds I judged on Sunday were all good (as one would expect at Nats). I was planning on going home right after everything wrapped up on Sunday, but I was hungry so I wound up hitting Earls. Given it was already fairly late, and it's not everyday that you have a fair chunk of Cusid ready to party in your city, I wound up hitting Wooly Bully's afterwards. I'm really glad I went. The Kinesiology Games were wrapping up as well, so there were a bunch of drunk kinesiologists with a trophy of some sort. Rahool came in with the Nats trophy, and the bartender (thinking we were with the Kin Games types) kept sending us free shots. It was good times. Kat and Christy also seemed to enjoy the selection of music in the car there. At any rate, even though I didn't debate a round, the whole weekend reminded me why I enjoy the activity so much.

Hurry Hard

Went to Iron Ring after party last night. Fun times. There I was able to see that Mini-Gary has a Mini-iPod. I found that rather amusing. I sort of wish that Law had similar traditions and ceremonies surrounding it. I'd be all about a "Law Ring".

After the party, swung by Scholar's (Josh had mentioned that he was going to be there, so I thought I should drop by), where unsurprisingly I bumped into a number of Law folks. Pity that the Power Plant wasn't able to attract the same loyalty of clientele.

In terms of reality television, I'm really enjoying this season of Survivor thus far. Though, I must admit I'm much more familiar with the tribe that keeps losing ( mostly because they tend to focus on whoever loses in the lead up to tribal council).

I was quite pleased with The Apprentice this past week. I've disliked John from the start, so seeing him get fired was great. That being said, watching he and Chris in the boardroom was like watching a couple of bad ESL teams fight for the 4th in a bin round at Worlds (and the only people that likely get that analogy likely don't watch The Apprentice. It's apt though, trust me). I'm thinking Magna has the momentum at this stage, as they seem to be meshing together fairly well. Though, these things are always subject to change. Also, I've yet to see anything to change my initial opinion that the calibre of contestants on this version of the show is on par with previous versions.

I'm really enjoying The Contender so far (though, the challenge last week struck me as too survivor-esque). It really is a good human drama. The one thing with all the upsets they've been getting is it may mean less quality matches in the second round. Definitely looking forward to the next go round though.

Good to see Alberta win the Brier. Though, unfortunate that it's been in Edmonton twice since I've been in University and I haven't even gone to the Brier Patch either time.

The Morning After

Well, the elections are over. I think the story of this election, from the all candidate's meeting to the vote count, has to be Mustafa. Now, as most readers know, I've never been one to fall into Hirji-groupieism and have generally found it all rather silly. That being said, this was clearly an amazing performance. Mustafa shocked the hack community twice: when he submitted his nomination, and when he led on the first through fourth ballots. I definitely didn't anticipate that. All of this sort of puts the lie to the oft levied criticism of Mustafa as all theory and no practicality. One short notice with few of the high powered volunteers other campaigns boasted (and black and white, non-glossy posters), he came within 87 votes against one of the more innovative visual campaigns I've seen, knocking off an outgoing OVC and a sitting VPX in a year we had a tuition rebate in the process. I think by any standard that's impressive.

It was disappointing for me that neither of the two candidates that I campaigned for won, but not much that can be done about that. I did help put up a few Kehoe posters, so I suppose that counts for something.

In other matters electoral, I was quite suprised at how the Health Plan shook down. Having watched the whole U-Pass referendum last year, I assumed this one was a foregone conclusion as well, and that the campaign was going to be irrelevant. In the end I was wrong there too.

In other matters electoral, shout out to Dal's new VP (Education) and my favourite Haligonian, Jen Bond on her recent electoral victory.

Nats is in less than a week, and a number of Ontario and Quebec teams had flights booked on Jetsgo, so there's a lot of scrambling going on in that regard. Hopefully it all works out, as this is one giant monkey wrench in things.

I found this amusing. I'm sure some of you will as well (if nothing else it's catchy)

The Wait

Well, campaigning is over for another year. I actually enjoyed sitting at the tables today. There were a number of people that came up and actually had questions and seemed genuinely interested in the process. It's easy to become a jaded hack about these things, but it seemed like people were just starting to want to get their information now, and it almost would have been better to have another campaigning day. At the same time, that sort of defeats the purpose of having a big forum near the end of the campaign, so I'm not sure what the solution is. At any rate, I'm looking forward to seeing the results come in on Thursday. Rugby Formal tommorrow night. Should be fun times.

My Turn To Talk

Well, the election is coming down to the home stretch. I must say, I agree with others that have found it all rather disappointing thus far. Lots of table is SUB have just been sitting empty all week, without even posters on them. I'm hoping for a big show at Myer (which I shall have to miss the end of given that I have a class at 1:00). As well, the Plant is always enjoyable on Thursday night. Have the Rugby Formal on Wednesday night as well, so it looks like yet another week where not a lot is going to get done.

While I'm already watching too much reality tv (with Rob and Amber on The Amazing Race I've been catching that too) I'm sort of looking forward to the premiere of The Contender. Mark Burnett can usually be trusted to produce quality reality television, and the boxing segments should be fairly entertaining as well.

On Survivor lately, I've been rather amazed at how one team can be unstoppable when it comes to reward challenges, but at the same time utterly useless when immunity is on the line. Very strange. As well, given that Kim is still there there should still be tension in Ulong next week.

On The Apprentice, while I felt sorry for Audrey, realistically when your entire team loses confidence in you, you're pretty much gone. I was glad that John's stock fell a little bit, as he's sort of bothered me from the beginning, and he was also one of the standouts. At this point, I think Alex is probably one of the contenders as he hasn't really made too many bad mistakes yet. I do find this season that there aren't as many people to pull for, and more that you want to pull against.

It's good to see that the Eskimos have started to make some good signings (though, I remain somewhat skeptical as to how well Davis Sanchez and Ed Hervey will actually get along, though they're on opposite sides of the ball so it shouldn't matter too much). We are looking a tad thin at quarterback, however (with Bart Hendricks expected to leave, if Maas goes down we're left with Jason Johnston. And he's still rather green). It's also rather interesting that Crandell is probably going to Saskatchewan, given how much he enjoyed backing up Nealon Greene last time around.

Hack Christmas

I love election time.