By Jacob Samuel at The Daily Snooze
Come fly with me: One student’s experience as a flight attendant
By Alison Roach
It’s summertime — or at least every once in a while the weather is decent enough to feel like it is. Maybe you’re starting a summer job; you are a starving student, after all. Maybe you’re taking more shifts at that restaurant, or you’re dragging yourself to the mall every day to help hordes of squealing teenage girls find that perfect tank-top and low rise jeans ensemble. I have a summer job too, but it’s a little different from the classics.
On my school breaks, I’m a flight attendant.
It is really not as awesome as it sounds. First of all, let’s just clear a couple of things up. No, I do not personally get to fly anywhere spectacular. If you’re into exotic British Columbian destinations like Bella Bella, Powell River, or Trail, I’m your girl. Hawaii, or the south of France? Not so much. No, I do not make insane amounts of dollars. It’s definitely better than minimum wage, but it’s not a salary that affords designer sunglasses, or aged bottles of whiskey. No, I don’t wear a little hat and a short skirt; this isn’t the 1960s and PanAm has been out of business for ages. Finally, no, I am not a member of the mile-high club. You’re hilarious.
The truth is, my job is better than most. It’s a grown-up job: something that people turn into an actual career and do for the rest of their lives. But because it’s a grown-up job, I actually have to act as one, which is sometimes not so fun. For your consideration, I present the hours: my average work day is between 10 and 12 hours, with a personal record of 15 hours. The check-in time tends to be before eight in the morning, sometimes before six. All this translates into me not being able to stay up past 10 p.m. The lesson here: if you force yourself to act like an old person, you end up actually acting like one. Sorry friends, I cannot go to the bar tonight, because I will be asleep by the time we get there. If, by some miracle, I do make it to the bar, I have learned the hard way what trying to go to work the next day with even the slightest of hangovers is like: trapped in a bumpy plane for hours is a bad call.
The second part of my job deals with passengers. Most people seem to overlook the fact that being a flight attendant doesn’t only entail being on the plane; it means being responsible for everyone else on that plane. As anyone in customer service can tell you, dealing with people is the best part of the job, and sometimes the worst, too. I have met some very interesting people on my flights: Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, a handful of local hockey players, an author who asked me to read his book, a group of Swedish bird-watching enthusiasts, and an SFU alumnus (who shall remain nameless) who lived in residence at the same time as premier Christy Clarke — apparently Christy knows how to party. Nine out of 10 passengers are complete sweethearts. The other 10 per cent can be a little challenging.
Considering the fact that airplanes have been around for quite a while, some people know surprisingly little about flying on them. There was a woman one flight who seemed genuinely shocked when I told her she couldn’t use her phone on the plane (“Not even when we’re in the air?”). About five passengers each day completely ignore the carefully placed seat belts on their chairs. A passenger once asked me if I could ask the pilots to stop doing “so much of this,” which she then represented by making several swooping motions with her arms stretched out into wings. Unless she would have liked to go somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean instead of to Vancouver, there was nothing I could have done to accommodate her. There are starers, there are nervous flyers who act like you’re personally trying to murder them, there are people who simply do not believe in the unspoken “one complimentary snack per person” common courtesy rule, and every once in a while, there’s a groper. Sometimes, it feels like “flight attendant” isn’t a very appropriate title. Perhaps something like “sky waitress” would be more fitting, maybe “air babysitter” or “plane slave.”
The most important thing I’ve learned being a 19-year-old girl in a grown woman’s job is that you need to be able to adapt. You need to be able to be nice, but sometimes, you just have to be a bitch. I’ve been told by a passenger that I was “as cute as a button” and “a very polite young lady.” I’ve also made a drunken woman 25 years my senior cry when I took away her contraband bottle of wine. What is true in other jobs is also true of this one: people will think it’s easy to manipulate you and ignore you, and the only way to convince them this is not the case is to show them. Nobody respects a pushover, and without respect, I can’t do my job very well. I am trained and paid to handle any situation that may come up, and to possibly save lives in the process. If a passenger doesn’t bother to listen to where the exits are, or pretends they don’t know that they can’t use your iPod during take-off, how am I supposed to do that?
I really do love my job. I get to fly every day. I get to see British Columbia from the air, which, two minutes out from Vancouver, is uninhabited, wild, and beautiful. I get to stay in hotels and work with pilots who have flown all over the world (for the record, they can really drink). I’ve seen a fighter jet being refueled mid-flight, and taken a baby black bear up to its new home at the top of Haida Gwaii. I’ve learned some sign language from a passenger who could before only speak to me in smiles, and I’ve flown over the Rockies at sunset, an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
Having a grown-up job is challenging. Trying to exercise any sort of authority over a group of people old enough to be your parents — even grandparents — isn’t always easy. Trying not to become hardened and bitter in the process is even more difficult. In customer service, it’s easy to start disliking people as a whole when you have to deal with them all day, but I think it’s a fair trade. After all, I do get to scan my fingerprint to get through the door to work every day, which makes me feel like a spy. And I get to wear a snappy silk neck scarf. It might not be PanAm, but flying for a living is still pretty fucking cool. So please, if you’re flying anytime soon, be nice to the lady or gentleman patiently making the announcements for the sixth time that day. Try to listen when they tell you where the oxygen masks are, and thank them when they bring you snacks.
You can’t even imagine how much we appreciate it.
SFU places on list of top 50 young universities
By Graham Cook
Scores highest for international mix and citations categories, lowest for teaching
SFU recently placed on two different lists of the best universities in the world under 50 years old. Both Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Top Universities and Times Higher Education judged Simon Fraser to be one of the best young universities, ranking it 25th and 30th respectively. The Times list, however, pointed to a potentially lack in teaching quality at the university.
QS, which recognizes SFU as 260th in their overall rankings, bases their ranking system very loosely on the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in the U.S., and takes into account size, focus, research intensity, and age. QS gave the top prize to the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
SFU president Andrew Petter said of the distinction, “to look at universities under 50 and compare them to each other is much more of an apples to apples comparison . . . and obviously I was very pleased to see how we did in both.” However, he also outlined some concerns he had regarding university rankings. “The problem is that I think with these rankings you’re necessarily selecting . . . measures that are quantifiable. I take all ratings with a bit of a grain of salt,” he said. “I don’t take any rankings, these or Maclean’s, to be the measure that we should use to judge our own success.”
One striking aspect of the Times rankings was that, save for 23-year-old Charles Darwin University in Australia, SFU scored the lowest in the “teaching” category. A school’s score in this area is determined by a combination of the 2011 Academic Reputation Survey, the staff-to-student ratio, the ratio of PhD to bachelor’s degrees awarded, the number of PhDs awarded (scaled against its size), and “a simple measure of institutional income scaled against academic staff numbers,” according to the Times website.
When questioned about this aspect of the evaluation, Petter posited that the way these ratings measure teaching “isn’t really necessarily related to the experience the student has in the classroom.” He attributes this flaw to the rankings’objective factors and “indicators that may or may not be relevant.” He further stated that “even if [the objective factors] are relevant, they are certainly not the whole story.”
Petter stressed that these rankings represent some of the best universities in the world. Having comparatively lower scores in some areas, then, may not be a troubling indicator.
While QS did not break down individual scores, SFU’s highest scores on the Times Higher Education list came from the “international mix” and “citations” categories.
Harbour Centre lease extended to 2028
By Alison Roach
New contract could mean a 75,000-square-foot expansion
SFU has recently renewed the lease on the downtown campus, ensuring that SFU Vancouver will remain there until at least 2028.
The original lease was put in place in 1989, and was set to expire in 2017. This may seem like a fair ways off, but as SFU president Andrew Petter explained to The Peak, “if we were to lose the right to the facility, the time to find an alternative is becoming short.”
This new lease is a result of discussions with the owners of the Harbour Centre Complex, a family business based in Germany that, according to SFU administration, was very keen to enter into negotiations. The lease was officially approved at the most recent SFU board of governors meeting, and the final documents were signed and sealed in the last few months. “The initial impetus was to provide adult programming,” said Petter on the evolution of the Harbour Centre space, “but it has obviously grown over time. There is now a major undergraduate population downtown.”
Though the main objective of the negotiations was to secure the Harbour Centre space for the future, the new lease also provides room from growth. SFU currently holds 175,000 square feet in the building, but a provision has been included in the new contract that would allow SFU to expand into an additional 75,000 square feet in the future. This opportunity will arise three years from now. A review is planned to determine if this expansion can be justified, taking into account the current programming, financial considerations, and alignment with the university’s academic plan. Petter said that they hope to reach a decision on whether to expand or not before the end of this calendar year.
“Most people identify it as the structure that really marked SFU’s establishment of its downtown campus,” said Petter. “It was the Harbour Centre facility . . . that marked the decision that SFU had made to not confine itself to Burnaby Mountain.”
The strengthening of SFU’s ties to downtown falls in line with Petter’s vision of SFU as a strong three campus university, each with their own distinct cultures, rather than a school made up of a main campus and two satellites. “I think with the new vision of the university as an engaged university, it was the move downtown and to Surrey that shows we could engage physically, and established in people’s minds that we were a university that was working down from the mountain and engaging with the community,” said Petter.
“SFU has three distinct campuses, each one, we hope, being the distinct ‘intellectual heart’ of their respective communities,” said Laurie Anderson, the executive director of SFU Vancouver.
Douglas Hume, the general manager of the Harbour Centre Complex Ltd., believes in the importance of having the university in downtown Vancouver. “SFU is not only an excellent tenant, but they’re good for the city. It brings people into the downtown core and adds a certain degree of vibrancy,” said Hume. Anderson agreed, stating, “SFU Vancouver enhances downtown intellectually, socially, culturally, and economically. The range of programs we offer, the free public lectures, the myriad of community ties we have, the money spent by the SFU Vancouver community in downtown businesses, and the joint ventures we’re engaged in; SFU Vancouver’s impact on the health of the urban core of the city is enormous.”
For now, the renewal of the lease provides a welcome sense of security. “We’re very, very pleased that we know that they’ll be here for the next 20 years,” said Hume.
Hall wins BoG race
By David Dyck
Last week, the election results were announced for the position of student representative on the SFU board of governors. The winner was graduate student Angie Hall. Hall beat out three other contenders for the position.
“I’m really excited, I was compulsively refreshing my email this morning,” Hall told The Peak last Thursday, when election results were announced.
“I’m really hoping I can be on the finance and admin committee, looking at the budget for the school and seeing where we can do things better and bring some new ideas to what we can be doing with students’ money,” said Hall. Board members are appointed to various committees by the chair. “To work with some very influential people at the school and in the community will be really exciting,” said Hall.
According to the elections office, the total number of votes received for this election was 424, an extraordinarily low number. Typically there are over 1,000 votes cast.
Board shorts
By David Dyck
The board of directors had a lengthy conversation regarding transparency last week. In an effort to combat what he described as a “lack of trust” towards the board from forum, member services officer Humza Khan brought a motion to board that would see board and committee meeting agendas forwarded to the forum email list “as soon as the agenda is ready; preferably no later than 24 hours before the set meeting times.”
Khan stated that at the last forum meeting it was evident that forum mistrusted the board. Forum is an advisory body made up of representatives from departmental student unions (DSUs) and constituency groups. It meets every other Thursday. Khan told the board that he believes that this is a step forward in gaining the trust of forum members. Moving forward, the constitution and policy review committee will look at making this an official policy. For now, the motion was passed with an amendment that it will continue until the end of the fall semester of 2012.
Prometheus’ fire fizzles
Despite lukewarm characters, the explosive effects and ambiguous philosophizing make Prometheus an intriguing adventure
Having been in development for over 10 years with the largest budget to date for a movie in the Alien series, producer and director Ridley Scott has again jumped on board to produce the long-awaited fifth installment of the franchise.
Prometheus takes place in 2089, with devoutly Christian researcher Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her partner Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discovering a 35,000-year-old star map that proves humans were created by an alien species. Through funding from the Weyland Corporation, the pair embarks on a two-year space journey to a distant moon in order to find the “Engineers” who created them.
The film borrows many ideas from its precursors — Scott stated that Prometheus is not necessarily a prequel to Alien (additional films are needed to bridge the gap between the two), despite their dual existence in a universe where the Weyland Corporation exploits their employees in the name of scientific advancement. Androids are regular crewmembers, and humans are inferior, expendable commodities to the alien race.
The characters in Prometheus are similarly expendable. Excluding Elizabeth, who doesn’t quite surpass Ellen Ripley from the first four Alien movies, and a subtly condescending android played by Michael Fassbender, the characters are dull and remain stagnant as the film progresses.
While Shaw’s creationist beliefs provoke philosophically heavy, centuries-old questions of the origin of life, the film leaves the answers up to viewer interpretation. The Alien series suggests the presence of Engineers, but otherwise leaves them shrouded in mystery. Prometheus provides concrete evidence for their existence, but continues to conceal most details of their origination, motivation, and whereabouts, hence leaving Darwinist and creationist views unchallenged. Because of the hype created through viral campaigns like the 2023 TED talk featuring Peter Weyland, this unspoken message may disappoint viewers looking for an ending with all ribbons tied.
The special effects in the film are exceptional. Scenes including a dazzling holographic projection of outer space, high-tech spaceship simulations, the dark interior of the moon’s caves, and massive mid-air explosions are exemplary of the effort exerted to produce an eye-pleasing flick.
The movie, despite its minor faults, is still a great science fiction film worth watching. The shortcomings of Prometheus may make it pale in comparison to its predecessors, but as a stand-alone piece it’ll be worth every cent that you spend at the theatre.
Here Be Dragons explores the histories and borders of heritage
Dragons, the abridged version of a longer research piece by Henry Daniel, previewed at Woodward’s on June 1
The lights fade to black as the overflowing audience waits for the performance to begin. Choreographer Henry Daniel has made it clear to the audience that today’s performance of Here Be Dragons is a workshop performance.
“I’ve told the dancers to make sure to do everything they’re supposed to do as a group together, but for them to keep exploring the idea of play,” he said.
We wait in the dark, having no idea what is about to be presented. Sitting by the door, I can hear the muffled excited voices of the dancers just on the other side.
Gord Grdina walks across the stage and began to play the oud, a fretless Middle Eastern instrument similar to a lute. He plucks a string, and I am immediately transported into a dream. This weightlessness multiplies once the dancers enter the stage. They throw pieces of fabric into the air that seemed to be suspended in time for a moment before floating down to earth.
The acoustic element of Here Be Dragons is thorough and powerful. Grdina watches the dancers intently, accenting their movements. Live singers encircle the audience, and a musician takes to an amplified saxophone mouthpiece. There is recorded sound combined with electro-acoustic filtering. Sound emanates from all corners, increasing the ethereal, dream-like state the first images placed the audience in.
Here Be Dragons is part of Daniel’s Project Barca. “Barca had a double meaning,” Daniel explains. “It is a shortened version of Barcelona, and it also means a small boat in Portuguese. I wanted to make a boat to go on this journey [of creating the performance].”
The initial concept for Barca and Here Be Dragons came after Daniel’s recent trip to Barcelona. “As a Caribbean person with a history that has a lot of Spanish and colonial history, I thought about that date in 1492 when Columbus left Spain. They had no idea North America existed and no idea about the Caribbean. It created the rationale that if you go far enough west, you’ll end up in the East,” he says.
A refreshing aspect of the performance was the monologues spoken by the dancers in multiple languages — Japanese, a Trinidadian dialect, and a third I couldn’t quite place. Spoken word is not common in dance, since dancers speak with their bodies, not their mouths. The dancers spoke about their families’ histories, tracing them back to the year 1492.
“I asked some different people to come to the project, and I told them when they came that I wanted them to trace their family histories back to 1492. And of course, they couldn’t. But they would go back as far as they could go, then we would start to create virtual stories with links to real historical facts.”
As Daniel stressed in his pre-show piece, this was a workshop performance. The final version of the performance will take place in January 2013. Until that time, Daniel has a busy schedule with research in Spain.
“I want to work on the beginning of this piece with dancers from Spain. I am very interested in why this journey took place, what was the state of Spain at the time and why Columbus had to go.”
“In an ideal world, dancers from here would go to Spain and dancers from Spain would come here. I’m not sure if that is going to happen.”
British Columbia U-Passes to go electronic in summer of 2013
Next year, expect the U-Pass to change again
VANCOUVER (CUP) — Beginning in the 2013 summer term, the current version of the U-Pass will be replaced with a Compass electronic fare card that will require students to tap the card next to a sensor whenever they wish to enter a SkyTrain or SeaBus.
The new U-Pass will be made out of plastic and students will no longer need to pick up a new one every month. Instead, the same card will be valid as long its owner is enrolled at UBC and eligible for the pass program.
“These cards, similar to ones used in Hong Kong, London, and other major cities, are designed to be more convenient for customers than the current variety of passes,” said Kyle Warwick, VP external for UBC’s Alma Mater Society (AMS).
According to TransLink’s information officer Drew Snider, this initiative stems from TransLink’s overall decision to replace all paper tickets with the electronic Compass Card. Snider said that these changes, first proposed in late 2010, will allow TransLink to simplify the current transit system, which now makes use of over 150 different transit passes, and keep better track of the way the transit network is functioning.
“Our planners are really looking forward to Compass, as the data generated by customer movements will help them manage the transit network more effectively, with a better grasp on where resources are needed most,” he said. “This way, they can make the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars.”
According to Snider, the switch is also expected to fight fare evasion. Like the thin plastic U-Passes that had been issued at UBC until last September, the new U-Pass will once again have the passenger’s name printed on the front of the card.
Also, the new sensors that are expected to be installed in TransLink’s buses, SkyTrains and SeaBuses will help ensure that only those who have paid their fare are able to get aboard.
Still, some UBC students are concerned that requiring people to tap their U-Pass next to a sensor will only increase wait times for express buses, such as the 99 B-Line, which runs along Vancouver’s busiest east–west corridor and is already notorious for its long lines.
“It might actually complicate things even further,” said third-year arts student Alvin Chang. “The lineups are going to be even longer and it’s going to take more time to get into a bus.”
And while both TransLink officials and AMS representatives are confident that the new U-Pass and Compass Card will be an improvement over the current fare system, many details still need to be worked out. Among them is the price of the new U-Pass, which has yet to be determined.
“The AMS, along with other student societies and post-secondary institutions, is currently in the process of working with TransLink and the provincial government to ensure the new U-Pass remains a great program for students,” said Warwick. “This includes working hard to ensure that it remains at an affordable price that students will strongly support during a renewal referendum.”
This renewal referendum, which is required every time UBC’s AMS renews its U-Pass contract, is set to have students vote during the fall 2012 term.
By Colin Sharp
Newest kid on the lady rapper block brings an unpretentious freshness with her debut EP
Female rappers are an interesting case study. Despite the fact that we’re approaching 40 years of hip hop, very few female emcees have been able to maintain a lasting career. Queen Latifah stopped making music, MC Lyte faded away, and Lauryn Hill went crazy. I mean, aside from Missy Elliot (who hasn’t done anything herself in seven years) and Jean Grae, where are the respected female MCs?
Part of this may be because of their tendency to fall into stereotypes. They’re either empowered women and respected lyricists like Latifah, or they’re sexualized products that have male rappers ghostwrite their verses, like Foxy Brown or Lil’ Kim. One of the most fascinating and promising things about Azealia Banks, an upstart 21-year-old from Harlem, is the way she blends several aspects of what it previously meant to be a female in hip-hop.
Banks attacks every track she is on with fervor. The technical skills and flow she displays on every track are incredibly impressive. She has the kind of talent that usually results in a female rapper like Jean Grae that tries to seem like one of the guys, but Banks fully embraces femininity — she just happens to do it in an incredibly abrasive way. Strip away the pop music veneer of Nicki Minaj and you’ll start to get an idea of Banks.
1991 is the first collection of music from Banks. It’s good to see that she’s stuck with what makes her a unique talent in hip hop. The result is a type of music that hip hop should have had years ago. Artists like M.I.A. and Santigold are frequently referred to as rappers despite the minimal amount of time they spend rapping. Azealia Banks takes a similar aesthetic, grabs the tracks with the hardest drum tracks, and actually raps. It’s not exceptionally creative, but it is an appreciated progression of this style.
All the songs on the EP are enjoyable and upbeat, but it still manages to go into a tailspin halfway through. The track “Van Vogue” closes with two minutes of distorted vocals with no backing track. With a meager four tracks and a total running time of a little over 16 minutes, devoting two minutes to this is a waste of time. That’s an acceptable move when your name is Ghostface Killah, the distorted vocals involve getting Raekwon to talk shit about 50 Cent, and none of this happens until the end of Supreme Clientele, one of the finest hip hop albums of all time. When you’re Azealia Banks though? Not so much.
The EP recovers though, and 1991 is a great listen. Don’t expect to come away with a new opinion on what hip hop can be, but do expect to have a fun time dancing around to some obscene lyrics.
