The only people in Seattle are Canadians
Every fracking person I meet in Seattle is from Canada! (frack is from my current tv show obsession and is freely substitutable for it's more common 4 letter word, including all its derivatives)
I went to the University of Washington Huskies women’s volleyball game against Stanford last night with some people from volleyball (Huskies are ranked #2 and Cardinals #4, so it was a good game and the Huskies won). Little did I know that they were going as this massive group of 22 people. I later found out that their connection is dragon boating and I’m going to their practice tomorrow/later this morning. The guy that organizes this volleyball watching is like a crazy fan of women's college volleyball. He knows all the players on all the teams by name and their stats and histories, etc. It's sick. A bunch of these people are pretty regular viewers of the Huskies games, and it’s good volleyball to watch. The Huskies haven’t lost a game this season and have only dropped 3 sets out of like 30 or something. So anyways, after the game these guys (and girls) go to the “Ram” for food and it’s kinda funny because I guess their two reasons for going are because it accepts the Microsoft prime discount card and that the volleyball players often go to this place after the game. We saw 3 of the Huskies players there last night, they were sitting at the table on the other side of the glass from us. Gawking ensued.
Anyways, back to the central theme of this post - I have yet to meet anyone from Seattle!!! The stupidest thing is that one of the guys last night grew up in Winnipeg and graduated from the U of M in computer engineering. C’mon!!! Can I never escape these people??? Then there was this girl from Toronto (ok, Etobicoke) and like half the people were from Canada.
I guess the first sign was orientation when I met this girl from Toronto who ended up knowing some of my older sister’s friends who were in Seattle that were originally from Winnipeg. I met up with all them when my sister was in town. Chalk up a couple more Winnipeggers that I met in Seattle….
Then all these interns. None of them are American. These winter interns are worse because they’re all from Waterloo. When I went hiking at Mount Rainier, out of our like group of 10 or something, there was like 1 American. I went to this Fright Fest thing last weekend - Halloween theme at the local Six Flags amusement park, i.e. haunted houses and roller coasters. Anyways, the Six Flags here blows, the rides are all crap, but that’s because it was bought by Six Flags, not built as a Six Flags. The Six Flags over Texas is still the scariest. My pants are still wet from the longest and highest wooden rollercoaster in the world, which was incidentally my first rollercoaster and I was 10. But now all the rollercoasters are just elevator rides. I digress. Half of our group of 6 was from Waterloo, I’m from Toronto/Winnipeg, that makes 2/3 Canadian. The other two were from the Netherlands. They were pretty cool and I spent most of the evening talking to them. Europeans are cool.
That reminds me, I’m famous to the point of getting recognized on the street! Soon I’ll no longer be able to go to the grocery store without disguise. Ok, fine, that’s not going to be a problem. Anyways, one of the Waterloo guys was like, did you write a cycle stealing program that got passed around? I was like no. Then, I was like, umm… wait, I did write such a program, but I didn’t pass it around. Well, a while back, my supervisor told me to send an e-mail to the HPC (high performance computing) guys about my distributed computing system b/c I might need to use their resources to run some stuff. Apparently the e-mail got forwarded around the group and that intern was from HPC.
I digress again. So, when people ask me what it’s like in Seattle. I answer that it’s quite similar to Canada, but my view is skewed because every goddamn person I meet is from Canada!!!!
Oh wait, now that I think of it, I have met some Seattleites. Of course, from volleyball. Everyone I know I met through volleyball. But these Seattleites do not play at the Pro Club – those are all Microsoft employees and none of them are from around here, and many are not from the States. I’ve gone to a school in Redmond a couple times for pick-up volleyball and as that’s more local, I’m quite sure that at least some of them are from Seattle. At least the kids. There are some guys that I’m pretty sure are high school players, so there, I have met some people from Seattle. Of course, conversion is limited on the court and mostly I’m just screaming for help (the passing’s not so great there).
I went to the University of Washington Huskies women’s volleyball game against Stanford last night with some people from volleyball (Huskies are ranked #2 and Cardinals #4, so it was a good game and the Huskies won). Little did I know that they were going as this massive group of 22 people. I later found out that their connection is dragon boating and I’m going to their practice tomorrow/later this morning. The guy that organizes this volleyball watching is like a crazy fan of women's college volleyball. He knows all the players on all the teams by name and their stats and histories, etc. It's sick. A bunch of these people are pretty regular viewers of the Huskies games, and it’s good volleyball to watch. The Huskies haven’t lost a game this season and have only dropped 3 sets out of like 30 or something. So anyways, after the game these guys (and girls) go to the “Ram” for food and it’s kinda funny because I guess their two reasons for going are because it accepts the Microsoft prime discount card and that the volleyball players often go to this place after the game. We saw 3 of the Huskies players there last night, they were sitting at the table on the other side of the glass from us. Gawking ensued.
Anyways, back to the central theme of this post - I have yet to meet anyone from Seattle!!! The stupidest thing is that one of the guys last night grew up in Winnipeg and graduated from the U of M in computer engineering. C’mon!!! Can I never escape these people??? Then there was this girl from Toronto (ok, Etobicoke) and like half the people were from Canada.
I guess the first sign was orientation when I met this girl from Toronto who ended up knowing some of my older sister’s friends who were in Seattle that were originally from Winnipeg. I met up with all them when my sister was in town. Chalk up a couple more Winnipeggers that I met in Seattle….
Then all these interns. None of them are American. These winter interns are worse because they’re all from Waterloo. When I went hiking at Mount Rainier, out of our like group of 10 or something, there was like 1 American. I went to this Fright Fest thing last weekend - Halloween theme at the local Six Flags amusement park, i.e. haunted houses and roller coasters. Anyways, the Six Flags here blows, the rides are all crap, but that’s because it was bought by Six Flags, not built as a Six Flags. The Six Flags over Texas is still the scariest. My pants are still wet from the longest and highest wooden rollercoaster in the world, which was incidentally my first rollercoaster and I was 10. But now all the rollercoasters are just elevator rides. I digress. Half of our group of 6 was from Waterloo, I’m from Toronto/Winnipeg, that makes 2/3 Canadian. The other two were from the Netherlands. They were pretty cool and I spent most of the evening talking to them. Europeans are cool.
That reminds me, I’m famous to the point of getting recognized on the street! Soon I’ll no longer be able to go to the grocery store without disguise. Ok, fine, that’s not going to be a problem. Anyways, one of the Waterloo guys was like, did you write a cycle stealing program that got passed around? I was like no. Then, I was like, umm… wait, I did write such a program, but I didn’t pass it around. Well, a while back, my supervisor told me to send an e-mail to the HPC (high performance computing) guys about my distributed computing system b/c I might need to use their resources to run some stuff. Apparently the e-mail got forwarded around the group and that intern was from HPC.
I digress again. So, when people ask me what it’s like in Seattle. I answer that it’s quite similar to Canada, but my view is skewed because every goddamn person I meet is from Canada!!!!
Oh wait, now that I think of it, I have met some Seattleites. Of course, from volleyball. Everyone I know I met through volleyball. But these Seattleites do not play at the Pro Club – those are all Microsoft employees and none of them are from around here, and many are not from the States. I’ve gone to a school in Redmond a couple times for pick-up volleyball and as that’s more local, I’m quite sure that at least some of them are from Seattle. At least the kids. There are some guys that I’m pretty sure are high school players, so there, I have met some people from Seattle. Of course, conversion is limited on the court and mostly I’m just screaming for help (the passing’s not so great there).
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