By Kyle Lees at Ski Ninjas
Family food
By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Vaikunthe Banarjee
The importance of family dinners.
Like most families these days, mine was a busy one: both my parents worked full time as I was growing up, and I had a string of after-school activities that took up most of our evenings and weekends. Yet through my entire childhood and adolescence, the family dinner was a constant. Sometimes we cooked meals together, sometimes we would take turns, and sometimes we got Chinese take-out, but we always ate our meals at the family table, and used the opportunity to talk about any problems family members had, make any announcements, or just talk about any topic under the sun. As a child, I was dependent on my parents and saw them often, but as I grew older, these family dinners became the only time that I spent with my family.
Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) recently reported that family dinners have a huge effect on adolescents: on average, they get higher grades, are healthier, and feel less stress. They are also significantly less likely to engage in substance abuse, or to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes at a young age. This is very likely linked to the family closeness that the study also reports: adolescents that have frequent family dinners were between one-and-a-half and two times likelier to report having excellent relationships with their parents and siblings. I definitely felt this kind of closeness to my family, as did most of the people I talked to that had regular dinners with their families growing up. In some cases, this tradition simply does not happen. Marchel says that his parents were often working when he was growing up, and so they rarely had dinners together. “It definitely affected me negatively,” he confirms. “I felt less connected to the family, and more dependent on my caretakers.”
What can be deduced from these findings is that families that eat together on a regular basis have more insight into what’s going on in each other’s lives — a rarity between parents and their teenagers — and also have more control over developing healthy eating habits. By eating home-cooked meals instead of whatever-you-can-grab-on-the-go, children and adolescents are taught a certain relationship with food: one of enjoyment, warmth, and nourishment. All one needs to do is look at any women’s magazine to see the rise of unhealthy eating — be it overeating junk food, or under-eating and dieting. There is a growing need — especially among young girls and women but increasingly among males as well — to see food in a healthy way: as a source of nutrition, but also as culturally important in developing bonds between people. “We had dinner basically every single night,” says Alice of her family’s habits. “It totally affected the way I think of food and eating, as well as the kind of family values I hold.”
As our lives get busier and busier, cooking and eating together seems to be a dying ritual. In a society of TV dinners and constant notifications, we rarely get to spend time with our loved ones. We are so obsessed with to-do lists that we lose ourselves in a flurry of tasks, goals and deadlines. In my experience at least, these frequent dinners have been an antidote for all of our daily problems. Not only do you spend face-to-face time with family, it is also an opportunity to learn about them. It was always over dinner that my parents would pass on an oral history of my ancestors to me, and it aided in the growth of my personal identity — another sensitive part of adolescence.
For most of my teen years, I was quite a handful. Many of our dinners ended with me sulking, rolling my eyes, or storming into my room screaming some variation of “You don’t understand me!” but they were family dinners nonetheless. Despite those moments, there were many nights where we would talk about our days, and my teen angst would be lulled for a few hours. There were moments where I saw beyond the hormones and realized that maybe my parents did understand. In fact, the rare moments when I would tell my parents what was going on in my life were exclusive to the dinner table. In the long run, our family dinners proved invaluable to my relationship with my family, and despite everything else, I think I turned out okay.
In a world of fast food, vending machines, and constant multi-tasking, it’s tough to see meals as being their own occasion. Save for special occasions, families seem to be drifting away from the tradition of daily communal meals, but the facts are there: it affects children and adolescents much more than we tend to think, and it is invaluable in their development. Life moves pretty fast; always make time to stop and smell the pig roast.
Letter to the editor, Nov. 19th, 2012
Dear editor,
I’m curious if anyone is interested in leading the official demand for a refund from the university? SFU sold its students an education, and is not providing the package sold. Our brothers and sisters are attempting to bargain in good faith. The members are not being paid, but their wages have been collected by the university. The university has already collected the fees for their services from us in advance. As such, we the students are owed a refund.
Here’s hoping the dispute is settled soon.
Sincerely,
Deborah Skerry,
SFU student.
Mental health issues aren’t a joke
We should be working together to help the mentally ill, not bonding over our mutual dislike of them on transit
By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Ben Buckley
I was riding the number 20 bus along Commercial Drive when a man came onto the bus and sat across from me. His hygiene was questionable, his nails were long and dirty, his clothes ragged, and he was incoherently muttering — all common sights on Vancouver’s public transit. Yet people began to raise their eyebrows and exchange looks; people that moments before had been strangers now shared the camaraderie of thinking this man was bat-shit crazy.
This individual’s situation is surely aggravated by other factors, mainly socio-economic ones, but mental illness affects people from every level of education, status, race, gender, and age. Yes, it can present itself as the man on the bus, but it also includes mood disorders, eating disorders, addiction, and a string of other, less apparent — but equally important — issues. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, 20 per cent of Canadians will personally experience a mental illness in their lifetime, and the rest will probably deal with a loved one with mental illness. With a statistic so high, why are mental health issues still being stigmatized? It is not the man on the bus who needs to feel ashamed, it’s we who do not provide the acceptance and treatment necessary to help these individuals.
There has certainly been a recent rise in awareness surrounding mental health issues, such as Bell Canada’s 2010 “Let’s Talk” initiative, but the stigma surrounding these issues remains a burden on our society. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, only 50 per cent of Canadians would be open about a family member having a mental illness; needless to say, the numbers are much higher for diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Furthermore, a whopping 46 per cent of Canadians think that the term “mental illness” is just used as an excuse for bad behavior. This means that almost half of Canadians think that people suffering from any mental illness ranging from psychosis — such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in some cases — to depression, to eating disorders are not suffering at all; rather, they have chosen that path for themselves.
As if this wasn’t a ridiculous enough statistic, 27 per cent of Canadians are actually scared of being around people that they know suffer from serious mental illness. It’s all fine to just brush this off as being ignorance on the part of a percentage of the population, but it’s not at all insignificant and it has detrimental effects on treatment: 49 per cent of people that have experienced anxiety or depression have never gone to a doctor for it, and only one-third of Canadians who need mental health services actually receive them — quite possibly because they are afraid to seek them. [pullquote]This means that almost half of Canadians think that people suffering from any mental illness are not suffering at all; rather, they have chosen that path for themselves.[/pullquote]
As it stands, our society’s view of mental health is one that marginalizes those that are suffering from mental health issues, and places blame on those individuals for being “weak” or a “burden on the system.” When we look at the numbers, however, the burden lies with those trying to deal with their issues on their own: while mental illnesses make up more than 15 per cent of disease sin Canada, only 5.5 per cent of health care dollars are put aside for the treatment of this incredibly sensitive area of disorders. Having a mental health issue is no more shameful than having any other disorder, and it should not be treated as such. This country is in dire need of an increase in awareness and acceptance — not to mention treatment options — for those suffering from mental health issues.
Does TransLink deserve the hate for fare increases?
With four years warning given for the rise in cost, fretting now is too little too late
By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Mark Burnham
The “fuck translink” buttons left over after a non-paying passenger was kicked off of a SkyTrain for a “fuck yoga” pin last April might find a resurgence in popularity come Jan. 1, 2013 when TransLink’s fares are set to increase by an average of 10 per cent, with monthly passes increasing the most at 12.5 per cent. Fortunately for us, the U-Pass is not included in this price increase (or if it is, it has yet to be disclosed). Many seem agitated. I don’t particularly like it either, but after doing some homework, I’ve decided I’ll be wearing my own pin that says “get the fuck over it.”
This isn’t to say that I agree with TransLink’s spending in general, nor do I think they’re a particularly intelligent bunch. In the 1980s, transit officials spent god-knows-how-much money travelling all over the world to see how other cities’ light rail transit (LRT) systems operated. After bearing witness to the effectiveness of fare gate systems, officials returned and decided we’d use the honour system. Now, in 2012, we’re all awaiting the 2013 unveiling of the $100 million dollar promised-to-be-unveiled-in-2010 faregate system, which, if appearances are to be judged, will be more chaotic than beneficial on a day-to-day basis. All other transit systems have directional faregates, meaning you come in one way, and you leave another. The systems in place in SkyTrain stations appears to be equally accessible from both sides. I can’t wait for the games of chicken I’ll be playing with other transit users trying to enter and leave train stations. Yipee.
Regardless, TransLink has had this most recent fare increase in the works since 2009, when they initially released their “10-year plan (funding stabilization)”, which got the OK in 2010. It outlined a fare increase in line with the legally allowable estimate of two per cent per year to offset the cost of inflation. In 2016 and 2019 fares will rise an additional six per cent each time. The 12.5 per cent increase noted for 2013 in indicative of the five-year gap in cash fare hikes and a rise in the consumer price index of roughly 12 per cent since 2008. Believe me, I want to be as mad at them as you do, but their math adds up. None of us can act surprised, since this was clearly outlined in a plan and approved from 2009–10. It’s not like they’re pulling the wool over our eyes, and yet we’re reporting on this like it’s a breaking piece of investigative journalism.
This isn’t to say that increased fares won’t hit some hard. The cost of transit probably weighs most on the working poor and young families, but the increased cost of transit still pales in comparison to the cost of vehicle ownership. I was spending $160/month on insurance alone for my car until I let the insurance run out in June. That doesn’t include the cost of oil changes or regular mechanical maintenance, nor tires, and especially not the cost of gas. My mom recently stopped driving the 18.7 km to work, but maintained the insurance on her car. Even with the increased cost of buying fare-saver booklets of tickets and an unforeseen repair to her car, she has been saving over $300 a month. I assume I’ve been saving about the same, but since I’m too impulsive and immature to budget, all I know is that I’m significantly less poor than I was in June.[pullquote]It’s not like they’re pulling the wool over our eyes, and yet we’re reporting on this like it’s a breaking piece of investigative journalism.[/pullquote]
Increasing costs suck, especially when we only had a few months of enjoying our increased minimum wage before someone else decided to charge us more for something we need. There are certainly issues with raising costs for a service that is questionably useful in specific areas (ever tried to bus out to the valley? Lolz!) but we had the past four years to do something about it, or to at least raise awareness, and we did nothing. Our cries of “foul” now might as well be over spilled milk. Instead, those with vested interests would do best to mobilize as much as they can now to effect as much beneficial change as possible before the next six per cent increase in 2016, considering the faregates should increase TransLink’s revenue by $18 million, or about five per cent per year.
My battle with the blinking cursor
What to do (and not to do) when faced with writer’s block
By Kimberly Hartwig
Photos by Ben Buckley
SASKATOON (The Sheaf) — You pump yourself up, telling yourself you are going to crush this paper. This paper is going to be your bitch. You are confident, self-assured. You can do this! You are an intelligent university student, after all.
But when the time comes, when you sit down in front of your computer to make the magic happen — nothing. All that stares back at you is the depressing emptiness of the white page, not the groundbreaking, earth-shattering ideas that you expected. The page is calling out to be written upon; it longs for words, for keystrokes or ink stains.
It’s not long before your entire brain is frozen. You can almost hear the tumbleweeds rolling through your skull. It’s not long before you are spiralling head first into a never-ending pit of despair, pulling your hair out in frustration, verging on tears of anger.
You are not alone. More common than the common cold, more terrifying than the flesh-eating virus, more of a turn-off than an STI, the most dreaded plague that can hit a university student: writer’s block. It can strike at any time, anywhere and no one is immune from its mind-numbing wrath.
There are many strategies for how to beat the dreaded affliction, but like a bacteria, it only seems to multiply. And that’s what makes writer’s block so terrible: there is no over-the-counter cure.
You can’t pop a pill and be done with it, and you can’t sweat it out. You can try to wait it out, but when it will end one never knows. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but the more that clock keeps ticking and the closer you come to that deadline, the more hopeless your situation becomes. The only thing that can be done is to confront it head on.
As a writer, I have had many bouts of writer’s block, and more often than not I come out of the ring battered and bruised. I cannot count the hours I spent banging my head against a wall, waiting for ideas to fall out — yet they never do.
My battle with writer’s block usually follows the same pattern.
Sit down in front of computer. Stare blankly at screen. Realize I need inspiration. Think about where I can get inspiration.
The obvious answer: the Internet, duh.
Go on the Internet and inevitably get distracted. Watch an entire ballet. Do I even like ballet? Dance around my house before realizing I can’t dance. Realize I just wasted three hours doing absolutely nothing. Also realize that I am hungry. Can’t think on an empty stomach. Make an entire three-course meal. Still nothing. Can’t think on a full stomach either. Stare out the window. Think I can get ideas by reading what other people have to say. Read things. Realize I suck at writing and can never be as good as these people.
But this is where the breakthrough comes. Of course I’m not as good a writer as some other people! I’m not getting paid to write; I’m paying to write.
Actually, I’m paying a lot to write. And that means I can write whatever I want. That means if I really want to, I can write a 10-page paper on drunken injuries and how they are best avoided or remedied — complete with pictures. Or I can write my life story, beginning with the day I realized my choice of major will most likely lead to a career at Starbucks.
Of course, I won’t do this. I’ll settle on a more mundane, expected topic that will hopefully lead to a grade that won’t garner looks of scorn from my bill-footing parents.
Throwback Review: You better go back and Check Your Head
The Beastie Boy’s third album is some of their best, most eclectic music
By Colin O’Neil
If you still think the Beastie Boys were only about “You gotta fight for your right to party!” and “Brass monkey, that funky monkey,” you better go take another look, lest you get chewed out by someone like me at a party. Check Your Head, the Beasties’ third offering from way back in 1992, is most definitely their best. Sure, you may only recognize one song from the back of the album, but when you put that shit on, you’ll see.
It’s an album I struggle to genre-tize. It’s hip-hop, I guess, but that label gets challenged throughout. Both “Gratitude” and “Time For Livin’ ” are heavy-distortion, power-strumming punk songs, while “Pow” and “In 3’s” are lyric-less fuck jams, a prelude to the Beasties’ 2007 instrumental album The Mix Up. In fact, the songs on Check Your Head are a mix-up themselves, a collection of the group’s classic verse-trading raps over heavy beats, creeping basslines, and perfectly tangled melodies. But this album is far from one dimensional.
The Beastie Boys are exceptional musicians, and although that may have gone unnoticed on their 1986 blow-up, License to Ill, it comes out full force on Check Your Head. The Beasties prove they can cross musical boundaries with ease on this album, showing a masterful balance of musicianship with demo tracks and turntable scratchings. They find a place for everything: gospel backing vocals, organ lines, and even something that sounds like a slurpee straw moving up and down against a plastic lid.
The Beastie Boys have come back into conversation lately after the death of Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA. For us fans, this unfortunate event means the end of new material, as the Beasties are not a group to pick up and carry on. They have a vast musical library to their name, although to many, they are still only known for the gems of their first album. They’ve got more than that, as Check Your Head proves — much more. It’s an album of groovy beats, catchy rhymes, funky samples, sunglasses, oversized t-shirts, and a little 1990s Brooklyn philosophy. Check it.
WGSN makes bold trend predictions
New movements in style involve technology, animals and modernism
By Caroline Brown
Illustration by Eleanor Qu
What are the trends in fashion, art, and architecture? What is trending in social media? Our world has become obsessed with the term “trendy.” Trends are a forecast of progress and of what will come to cultural fruition in the near future.
During the seminaries at Eco-Fashion Week in late October, the marketing director from Worth Global Style Network (WGSN), Carly Stojsic, presented WGSN’s three macro-trends for autumn/winter 2014: “hack-tivate”, 21st Century Romance, and anthropomorphism. WGSN is a world-renowned trend forecasting company that was established in 1998. Its philosophy is to provide businesses with inspiration, change, and a forward-thinking mentality.Their clients are businesses from all types of sectors — including Apple, H&M and Nickelodeon — because WGSN provides trends that encompass society as a whole.
The hack-tivate macro-trend is derived from the necessary precedence of reclaiming products back to their organic state, and then repurposing and repairing them using technology. It is a socio-movement with positive emotions of energy, fun and enthusiasm. The movement focuses on the skeleton of a product. It exposes its insides, then creatively rebuilds it to have multi-functions using Google sourcing or apps. The attitude behind this movement is that if we can’t access or open what we own, then it does not belong to us.
Upcycling, reimagining, and sustainability are other important characteristics. The movement obtained a lot of momentum with the Fab Lab phenomenon, which originated at MIT with the name “Center of Bits and Atoms.” The Fab Lab has spread across the world to places like Norway, India and South Africa. A Fab Lab is a digital fabrication workshop with invention and social fabrication imbedded into its mission. They take apart technology to its core, and rebuild it for a more functional use.
[pullquote]The movement focuses on the skeleton of a product. It exposes its insides, then creatively rebuilds it to have multi-functions using Google sourcing or apps. The attitude behind this movement is that if we can’t access or open what we own, then it does not belong to us.[/pullquote]
The second trend that Stojsic spoke about was 21st Century Romance. This trend comes from the literary term “magic realism” and the cultural term meta-modernism. The former aspect plays with the concept of adding a touch of magic to everyday products, while the latter oscillates between contradictions. The difference between 21st Century Romance and the previous Romantic Period is the evolution of technology and how it has become deeply integrated into our lives. This techno-romantic period plays on this antithesis of nature versus technology to create a strong emotional reaction. A great example of this macro-trend is Erdem’s spring/summer 2013 collection. With the help of technology, he uses textile techniques like lucid layers of transparency organza or floral embroidery with a 3D effect to elevate his clothes into another dimension that creates a hypercraft.
The third macro-trend is anthropomorphism, products that take on human emotions and personalities, or animal characteristics. This trend focuses on a cross-fertilization of creature and comfort with an emphasis on touch. The revitalization of fur (e.g. fur iPhone cases) gives evidence to our need to humanize our products, but this trend evolves past that. It stresses a hybrid of technology, humans, and animals to signify honest and fun emotions. Mixing and matching high and low fashion will evolve into dressing to convey one singular emotion. The resurgence of animated graphic clothes, reflective of pop art mania, is an example of using an eclectic wardrobe to express a modern theme.
The trends presented at this seminar all had a unifying message: technology is not something that separates us, but something that has become a part of us. Whether it is through magic, contradictions, personification, or repurposing from an original organic state, one thing is clear: technology is no longer an accessory, but an extension of humanity.
Delhi 2 Dublin merges Ireland and East-Asia
The ultimate mish-mash of musical mosaics
By Kate Black, The Gateway (CUP)
Edmonton (CUP) — On the road from Quebec City to Peterborough, Ontario, Delhi 2 Dublin’s Tarun Nayar is working on a mixtape of everyone the band has toured with in the last year. He may not realize it, but his activity draws a perfect metaphor for the band.
Like a mixtape, Delhi 2 Dublin draws inspiration from a mosaic of shared experiences, blending sounds from different cultures into a creation that’s energetic and fresh, reminiscent of travel stories and late-night anecdotes.
Founded after a one-off performance in Vancouver, the band emerged as a unique hybrid of Celtic and East-Asian sound with an electronic party vibe. With most of the band growing up on the West Coast, excepting himself and one other band member, Nayar explains there are few places this musical mish-mash could work.
“There’s something very special about Vancouver after growing up in Montreal,” he says. “Even going back to the East Coast now, they don’t really get us. Whereas in Vancouver, people got us literally from the very start, from the first moment we started playing. People understood.”
“And that mentality also carries through all the way down the West Coast to Northern California for sure. We get on stage there, and people have never seen us before, and they just go apeshit.”
[pullquote] “Even going back to the East Coast now, they don’t really get us. Whereas in Vancouver, people got us literally from the very start, from the first moment we started playing. People understood.”[/pullquote]
Confirming that the lifestyle and energy manifested in California was a major influence on their latest album Turn Up the Stereo, Nayar explains that Delhi 2 Dublin pulls inspiration from their tours by amping up their songwriting and the electronic aspect of their music. Most recently, the band returned from an international tour that landed them in Bali, where a lot of “fine tuning and tweaking” of the album took place. He adds that the final song, “Bali High”, features samples from the trip, inspired by nights of partying in Asia.
Despite their wealth of touring experience and the obvious blending of cultural sounds in their music, Delhi 2 Dublin hasn’t been labeled as world music by the college charts for the first time in their career. Nayar explains that they’re focusing more on creating a party atmosphere than conforming to a particular genre.
“I don’t know what god figure decides what’s electronic and what’s world, but for us, it’s kind of all the same,” Nayar says. “I kind of think it’s a dated term, but I don’t get angry if people call us world music. It’s like, whatever, if that’s what they want to call us, that’s what it is, but we don’t really think of ourselves as making any kind of traditional music. We just kind of make party music that we like, and it just so happens that some of the instruments are different.”
Delhi 2 Dublin identifies as a group that reaches out to other cultures to create something distinctly their own. After recently posting an open call on their blog for “freaks and weirdos” for their new music video, Nayar jokes that eccentrics — even the weirdos — are key to keeping things original.
“Because we all are [weirdos], really,” he laughs. “Maybe you a little bit more than me, but definitely everyone is.”
