SU Elections: VP External

Vice President External looks like a really fun job. Think about it: you get to fly across the province/country/hemisphere, you get to attend lobby conferences, sometimes you get to be on TV, and you get interviewed for pretty much everything when something happens on campus. Cool, right?

Next year's VP External will either have the fun of dealing immediately with a provincial election, or dealing with all the fall-out of a very recent provincial election, and will probably have their hands full with all sorts of juicy provincial politics. It promises to be a pretty cool year all-in-all for the next VP External!

Without further ado, here are this year's candidates for Vice President External:

Dorothy Roberts: Dorothy and I go all the way back to last year, when we were councillors together. She's been involved with the SU for quite a long time, and this last year worked as an external policy researcher for the organization. Her platform features Accessibility, Accountability, and Engagement.

Petros Kusmu: I've worked with Petros through Students' Council for three years now. In that time he has been involved extensively with the Bylaw and Policy Committees, chairing both, and has never been afraid of taking on his own initiatives. Petros's platform is hiding somewhere in cyberspace, but based on his SU supplement he promises Fighting Increasing Costs, Investment in Student Work Programs, and Engaging Students.

Adam Woods: Adam has been a student councillor for the last year, and in his first year of council bravely took on the task of chairing the Bylaw Committee. From what I gather he is also extensively involved in other groups on campus, including his fraternity (several greek letters of which I do not currently remember). Adam's platform planks call themselves Removal of Parental Income Consideration, Lobby Training, Residence Property Tax Removal, and Increase Scholarships and Grants.

Before I analyze, I would like to define two things:

Students' Union Political Policies: The Students' Union has a set of political policies. According to our Bylaws, these policies are directives to the executives "dictating on what issues Students’ Union advocacy efforts should be directed", and prohibit any executive from representing a divergent opinion as that of the Students' Union. These policies cover everything from deferred maintenance to quality instruction, and it's safe to say that any Vice President External will be advocating for the positions outlined in these policies.

Plagiarism: The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

A quick glance at the Students' Union Political Policies reveals the following:

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Studentsʼ Union advocates for a financial aid system that does not consider parental income as a factor for loans;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Studentsʼ Union advocates that the Government of Alberta and the City of Edmonton remove the burden of municipal property taxes from residences

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the Studentsʼ Union shall lobby the University of Alberta and the Government of Alberta to increase the relative and absolute amounts of scholarships and bursaries that are awarded based on the studentsʼ financial need and/or involvement

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Students' Union shall lobby for a provincial regulation on mandatory non-instructional fees such that proposed new fees and increases for existing fees beyond their established price inflator be approved by a referendum of the students to whom the proposed fee would apply.

These are of course taken from various points throughout the document, and aren't meant to be interpreted as consecutive statements.

ALL THREE candidates currently advocate for all or some of these points. All three. The fact of the matter is that they simply do not have a choice to do so - if they are elected, this is what the Students' Union rules say they will advocate for. I sincerely doubt a single candidate has told potential voters this fact.

This appalls me. At the very least this is gross ignorance of the mechanics of political policies in the Students' Union (frightening seeing as they nearly have a collective 6 years on council), alternatively this is a misrepresentation of the imagination and lobbying gaps of the candidates. At the very worst this is an attempt to pass off ideas that the SU already pushes as ideas of the candidates, which is plagiarism.

Ignoring the platform promises covered in the above rant, all three candidates promise some form of advocacy training for other students on campus. I love this idea. The more skills that students can be taught on campus, the better the overall learning experience, and I'm thrilled that the Students' Union could be taking a leadership role in some of this. Because none of the candidates go into great detail about how to bring this about, I don't particularly think anyone stands out in how they make this promise, but I am fairly excited about the prospect.

Now that I've blasted through the aforementioned campaign promises, the pieces that remain are pretty decent too. Dorothy's ideas about advocating for undergraduate research opportunities is something I totally appreciate (and her expansion to appeal to government actually takes it a step further than its related policy - hooray), and Petros' ideas about student work opportunities seems well-intentioned, though I imagine quite difficult to bring about.

As for who what I think will happen, I think that Petros has had by far the largest presence on campus. Apart from being a part of and creating a large number of student groups, he's also conveniently had his face on Profile Magazines on stands all over campus for the last month. Because of this, I think Adam and Dorothy will have quite an uphill battle against them. I'm not convinced it will be a blow-out, though, and I'm looking forward to what the rest of the campaign is like between these three.

SU Elections: BoG Rep

The Post Secondary Learning Act of Alberta is a piece of provincial law that grants life to the University of Alberta and its Students' Union. As far as a legislation goes, this one is fundamental to all that goes on around our campus.

Sections 16-19 of the PSLA talk specifically about the Board of Governors at the University. It establishes in provincial law that the Students' Union is given two seats on the Board, for instance, and defines the authority of the board.

One particular sections reads as follows:

16 (5) The members of the board must act in the best interests of the university.

With that being said, let us discuss the Board of Governor's candidates for this year's election:

Rebecca Taylor: Unlike every other candidate in these elections, I have actually never met Rebecca. A quick background check, though, shows that she's been involved this year with the CBAS as External Communications Coordinator, and her website says she's been involved with the CBAS for a few years now. Her platform consists of Build Strong Relationships, Change Images, and Improve Advocacy.
Brent Kelly: I've known Brent for a year now, after he became an Arts councillor midway through a term. Having previously run as a councillor for the SUPA slate, I am not particularly surprised that his platform has a similar tone and message to Adi Rao's when it comes to advocacy. His platform features Advocacy, Accountability, and Action.

A good half of the two platforms are dreadfully similar. Both candidates want the Board to listen to student concerns, and both make sweeping promises to engage students in the decision-making processes. This promise comes up all the time, and this year it's wrapped up under fancy words like "implement student engagement methods" and "townhall-style meetings".

Yippee.

Where the candidates really appear to differ, though, is their approach to talking to the Board. The tone that Rebecca takes is one of forging relationships, being dependable, and taking into account the opinions of others. Brent's website, on the other hand starts with "It's time to send the Board of Governors a message" - suggesting a more hostile tone. Brent repeatedly mentions his unrelenting opposition to several previous Board decisions, and takes a tone that suggests he is unwilling to cooperate with the Board on certain issues.

In what appears to be a bit of a theme across some of this year's races, voters here are given a choice between outspoken, potentially uncompromising, and potentially hostile lobbying, and a measured approach to advocacy that involves compromises and reasoned discussion. Without explicitly saying which method I prefer, this appears to be a conscious decision that will have to be made by student voters about how they want the SU to represent students to the decision-makers both on and off campus.

Regardless of which candidate is picked, however, I believe their effectiveness will be severely limited by who is elected as president. As the president also gets a seat on the Board, having two advocacy styles that are similar and complement each other would be infinitely better than having two contrary approaches to dealing with the BoG. The only thing worse than having a loud, unrelenting, and upset (I use that word lightly) student voice on the BoG would be to have two differing opinions and approaches, but both telling the Board that they represent the opinions of students. That sort of confusion certainly cannot help any advocacy efforts, however well-intentioned. The SU does an impressive amount of preparation and briefing of its executives before they head into any external meetings, and the better coordinated the President and BoG rep are the better.

But what really drives me crazy is the approach to the Board where an individual is completely unwilling to even listen to the arguments of their opponents. Though it currently seems unlikely, it doesn't require too much imagination to picture a scenario where students are in favour of a small tuition increase, and having a board representative who is categorically opposed to any tuition increase suggests that they would be unwilling to listen to any students in favour of said increase as well as any other board members who may have a good reason for proposing one. It could also be argued that an increase to tuition at less than the rate of inflation is actually a decrease to the value paid for tuition, but a certain board candidate of ours would still be opposed to something like that.

Fundamentally, too, is that section of the PSLA I quoted earlier: a Governor of the University of Alberta must act in the best interests of the university. If the University needs to raise one dollar per student, otherwise some horrific catastrophe might occur, the Governors MUST act in the university's best interest. It's the law. Students fundamentally made a choice to come here, and are important, but the Board's responsibility is to ensure that the University itself does ok.

Summary of Promises:

Rebecca:2 X
1 X

Brent:2 X
1 X

What I think will happen
Fundamentally I'm not convinced either candidate has had a big enough profile on campus to make a very concrete prediction at this point - whoever wins may fundamentally come down to whoever comes across the best on one-to-one conversations, class talks, and (sadly) who's posters are prettiest. Having never met Rebecca, I can't even speculate on who would be better at one-to-one conversations. I'd hazard a guess that Rebecca will have a bit of an edge from being an executive on CBAS, though, and the people who were really paying attention to the Occupy protests may be polarized by Brent's platform (one way or another). Until I watch a few more forums, though, I'm going to hesitatingly suggest Rebecca is more likely to win. I'll make an edit after I get a chance to watch them go head-to-head, though!

SU Elections: President

Hey there,

Being the washed up old SU hack that I am, I figured it was important to inflict my opinions on the upcoming SU elections on any of you who are so brave as to actually read this. If you're still reading, thanks a lot!!

My plan over the next week or so is to write about every contested position to try to get my thoughts out there, and maybe (just maybe) have someone read something that I write. I'm going to start off with President today and work my way through the rest, and I hope these will be informative and maybe even slightly entertaining!

Before we begin, though, I'd like to mention that I won't be writing a post on the VPSL race as it's uncontested. That being said, Saadiq Sumar is a stand-up individual with support from all the right people, and you'd be lucky to have him as your Vice President.

Without further ado, onto the presidential candidates! (Yes, I am ignoring the joke candidate)

Colten Yamagishi: Having served as a councillor for several years and as vice president this year, I have known Mr. Yamagishi for a long time. In running for president, he is following a long tradition of Vice Presidents Student Life who have gone on to run for the presidential post. Colten's three promises are Revolutionize Communications, Restrict Backdoor Tuition, and Re-Ignite Past Promises. I'll get back to these in a second after I look at some of the other candidates.

Aditya Rao: I've known Adi for two years now, first as a councillor last year, and this year through his other many involvements on campus. From what I've seen, Adi is running alongside a group of similarly-minded individuals across several of the other platforms (whether intentional or not), all with an extensive social justice and advocacy focus. His platform promises he will Resist, Reform, and Engage.

Farid Iskandar: I've also known Farid for two years, again as a councillor last year and then as a Vice President last year (sound familiar?). Farid's platform features Negotiating the phase-out of the CoSSS fee, Strengthening businesses, and Creating a Student Academic Centre.

All three candidates address fees, so I'll start with that. Congratulations - you don't like paying money! That'll hit a strong vibe with students! Colten and Adi would lobby the government to enforce a tuition cap, whereas Farid would actively try to get rid of the CoSSS fee. Both Adi and Colten also talk about the $40 installment fee and how much they dislike it - looks like Farid missed the bus on that one.

Believe it or not I proposed selling grocery items in SUBmart a long time ago, so I'm actually glad it's starting to catch on in promises. Otherwise, though, Farid's platform (so far) seems a bit thin - he hasn't promised lots apart from continuing to work on promises from two years ago, and the usual staples of "increasing resources" and "restructuring communication."

The most interesting feature of Colten's platform is re-igniting past promises (because, let's face it, communication revolution has been promised by everyone and will be promised forever). The only issue I have with this promise, though, is that none of these past promises have been 'dug up'. The fall reading week is something he's currently working on and has been a major focus of the SU for a while, and he would almost be negligent if he ignored it more so than a hero for continuing it. The PAW centre and powerplant are issues that all presidents will have to face (more so the VPOF, perhaps), and promising to deal with them sadly doesn't mean much more than saying he won't ignore them.

Adi, on the other hand, has more of an outlier of a platform. The Students' Union has spent a considerable amount of effort in being an efficient advocate on student issues, and has explicitly limited itself to these student issues in order to avoid diluting its message. Specifically, his idea of screening honorary degree candidates for human rights seems to be quite reactionary to what's going on on campus now. An elected Adi would likely bring about fundamental changes on how the SU does advocacy, and that's a choice that I suppose students will have to consider.

Summary of promises:

Farid5 X
1 X

Adi6 X
1 X

2 X

Colten
8 X
1 X

What I think will happen
I've heard a lot of people talk about how Colten and Farid, both being vice presidents, will split the vote and how this will make Adi win. These people do not understand our system. The only way vote splitting could even be a factor is if it results in anyone winning on a first round count, in which case 'un-splitting' the vote wouldn't have made a difference any way as that candidate would have received more than 50% of first-place votes.

I think all three candidates will run popular enough campaigns that nobody will win on the first round. However, I think that Colten and Farid's platforms, experience, and support bases are similar enough that they will have strong secondary votes for each other on their ballots.
Because of this, my best guess at what will happen is a fourth-round win for Colten, with Adi coming in second place. I say fourth-round because NoTA will get eliminated in the first round (I suspect NoTA will run a little lower than normal, perhaps only around the 5-8% mark), Big Notorious will be eliminated the second round, Farid will be eliminated on the third round, and his subsequent votes will transfer primarily to Colten.

The main reason that I think Colten will outlast Farid is exposure. We've recently come off a world-record dodgeball game, and successful events such as Antifreeze, giving the Student Life portfolio a good amount of press recently. Unfortunately for Farid, his major project (Get out the Vote) was postponed due to the Alberta elections occurring later than hoped, and his other major promises (such as MNIF restructuring) have simply been brushed aside by the powers that be. Farid hasn't had the opportunity to shine recently as much as Colten, and I suspect that will hurt him.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'll be back soon with VPOF!

Quick Physics Lesson

Well hey there!

Looks like I haven't done a blog post in a while. By that I mean in almost a year.

My bad.

I was sitting around trying to write a paper, and instead I decided to write this post. It was something I'd though of a while ago, and I thought it was worth sharing.

Here goes:

In science, a derivative can be loosely defined as a rate of change of something due to something else changing.

For example, let's say you're driving in your car. It's pretty easy for you to check how far you've gone: you just look at your odometer. If you're less clever, maybe you count the trees you've passed. The possibilities here really are limitless.

We can call the distance you've gone your displacement. The derivative of your displacement, the amount of distance you've covered over a certain time (the rate of change of displacement due to time), is your speed. That's why your displacement could be measured in meters, but your speed is meters per second.

That's pretty easy. Let's say you weren't changing your distance uniformly (aka your speed was changing). Then you'd be accelerating or decelerating. The was to measure this is the change in speed as a function of time, or the change in the change in displacement due to time, due to time. This is the second derivative of displacement to time, and is measured in meters per second squared.

"What's the third derivative?" I can almost hear you shouting. Well, it's called a jerk. It's a measure of how variable your acceleration is. This can be explained by thinking of an elevator - as long as you're accelerating at a constant rate, you feel heavier or lighter, but as that acceleration changes you either feel increasingly heavy, or increasingly lighter (it's changing due to time).

After that? A change in jerk due to time is a jounce. It's how much your jerk changes from time, which means almost absolutely nothing in real life. Apparently it's useful for rollercoaster and fighter jet designers, where absolutely sudden unpredictable changes to speed, acceleration, and position happen all the time.

What's really great is what happens next. Some people apparently call the fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives "snap, crackle, and pop", while the following derivatives are known as Lock, Drop, Shot, and Put.

And in case you were wondering, I have no idea what on earth one would need to measure those last few on.

Elections Digest

Hey there,

Remember when I said this would be a weekly blog? Ha! Wasn't that funny...

So it's election time! Yippee! First thing I like to do before jumping into the fray (as should most voters) is check out the platforms of each party. Fortunately for everyone, they've been released already. I took the chance to review them, and this is what I came up with:

Conservative Party of Canada
Title: Here for Canada
Number of Pages: 68
Pictures of Steven Harper: 9

The Conservative platform focuses on five key points: Creating Jobs, Supporting Families, Eliminating the Deficit, Making our Streets Safe, and Standing on Guard for Canada. The booklet itself is fairly well-put-together, and seems to me to focus a lot on continuing what they've been doing over the last few years with a minority (but they still want that majority!). Lots of reasonable points here, though, the question is only how they really plan on implementing them.

Liberal Party of Canada
Title: Your Family. Your Future. Your Canada.
Number of Pages: 12 (summary), 98 (full)
Pictures of Michael Ignatieff: 1 (summary), 18 (full)

The Liberal platform highlights a couple issues, namely "Economy: Better Choices", "Families, Finances and the Futures", "Clean Environment", and "Bringing Canadians Together". Distastefully, however, their front page of their summary has a comparison of their promises versus stuff the Conservatives have already done. I'm not reading your booklet to find out why the other guys weren't awesome, I'm trying to find out if you are! Gah. Otherwise there are some nice graphs, some gentle assurances that everyone matters, and some really grainy photos on the full document (shudder).

New Democratic Party of Canada
Title: Giving Your Family a Break - Practical First Steps
Number of Pages: 28
Pictures of Jack Layton: 19

The NDP's first steps are (hopefully in no particular order): Hire more doctors and nurses, Strengthen your pension, Kick-start job creation, Help out your family budget, and Fix Ottawa for good. The document also comes with a handy-dandy cut-out for you to put on your fridge to hold them to their promises! If we ignore the fact that this platform document looks like a photo album of Jack Layton (19 pictures? Really?), we get a reasonable document, I suppose, in that it does go into a good amount of detail on their various points. The question comes, again, as to whether or not these can or will actually be done.

So right around this point you're probably saying "Hey! You just skimmed these and pulled useless stats from them! You don't know anything!" If you're saying this, you are mostly correct. I'm not really going to comment one way or another on their actual policies until I've done more research, but I thought I'd just share my first impressions with y'allz!

Catch ya next time,

MDR

Election Predictions

Hey gang!

It's SU elections time again! Yippee! Hooray! In the spirit of trying to maybe actually run a blog, I'd decided to post my predictions on this year's elections, race by race! Please note that these do not necessarily reflect who I think ought to win, or who I necessarily will vote for, and are merely a reflection of my judgment of 'the mood'.

Without further ado:

President

• Rory Tighe: 75%
• Dr. Horrible: 5%
• None of the Above: 20%

First of all, I think that the NotA vote is going to be fairly strong this year in all races (VPSL a possible exception), purely because of the lack of candidates for most races. Looking at last year, even the contested races ran at around 20% NotA, with the exception of president - this year, with one presidential candidate, I think 20% is reasonable. Dr. Horrible hasn't done very much at all to make his presence noted, in my opinion, and I don't really think he's filled the normal 'role' of a joke candidate. Way more votes to NotA than him. As for Rory, his campaign has been solid, if not strong - I feel like it would have been much better if maybe he'd had some competition.

VP Academic

• Emerson Csorba: 75%
• None of the Above: 25%

Again, NotA is likely to be a bit stronger this year that normal, given the lack of competition. However, I think that Emerson's done a lot to talk to students, has really gotten his presence out there, and has been doing the ground-work for a very long time. The people who are going to care about the election definitely have confidence in him, and I think this will show.

VP External

• Farid Iskandar: 65%
• Godzilla: 10%
  
• None of the Above: 25%

Again, there's going to be a higher-than-normal NotA vote across the board this year, and this race isn't truly contested. NotA will possibly be higher than it was for president, though, partly because a) most people feel External isn't as important as President, and b) I feel there are some people who are genuinely going to vote non-confidence in Farid, based on conversations I've heGodzilla ought to do slightly higher than Dr. Horrible only because his posters are actually kind of cool, but otherwise this race is pretty straightforward.

VP Operations and Finances

• Andy Cheema: 70%
• None of the Above: 30%

Mostly some of the same reasons as before. Andy's platform is solid, but NotA always creeps up when there are uncontested races. I'd put the NotA higher than Emerson's again because I feel that the OpsFi position normally doesn't propose radical new ideas like a complete renovation of SUB basement, and there may be people who are genuinely opposed to it and have no choice but to vote NotA.

VP Student Life

• David McBean: Embarrassing second round finish
  
• Colten Yamagishi: Close second
  
• None of the Above: Tie-breaker
  

That's right, I chickened out of making actual quantitative predictions. Here's what I think is going to happen: on one side, we have David McBean: he's climbed the ranks of CSD through orientation, and is (in my view) going one step further to the post of VPSL. I think he's proven to students that he's involved all over the place in events (DJing doesn't hurt popularity, but probably doesn't strictly help credentials), and that he can make Orientation awesome (woohoo). On the other side, we have Colten Yamagishi: very involved in the LHSA, his fraternity, SL Planning Committee, and Students' Council over the last few years. My take on his campaign is that he's taking the knowledge he's learned from all of this, and moving up from the SU Governance side of things.

Why do I give the edge to David? Mostly because I think a) he's shown he can do what a VPSL has to do, and b) a lot of the people he'd be working with next year have already worked with him through CSD, and are adamantly supporting him in his campaign. Previous elections have shown that the "Lister vote" or the "Greek Vote" don't really exist, so we can't rely on them winning the election for Colten, and otherwise Colten hasn't been strictly in the spotlight of SU events recently, regardless of the amount of behind-the-scenes work he's done.

What do I think is going to happen? I think it'll be a two-round election count, with a majority of NotA voters swinging to David on the second count. What I really mean by this is that it'll come down to a popularity contest, and that in the end there will be a small edge given to David from the people who don't care, but really like Pokémon Cards.

Undergraduate BoG Rep

• Raphael Lepage Fortin: 65%
• None of the Above: 35%

Quite frankly, I think that despite Raph's presence at the fora, most students haven't ever seen his face, or of his material other than the hand-drawn pictures promising to save Christmas. People who don't know him personally but care about the position are probably going to be put off by this, and I think some of the NotA votes will strictly be out of non-confidence.

Fall Reading Week

• Yes: 60%
• No: 40%

I think the process this has gone through in terms of plebiscite will provide itself with this high a No vote. People have a variety of reasons to vote no: they don't like starting school earlier, they're confused about the proposal, they don't think a plebiscite matters if it's non-legally binding, or that they just don't want to have the Reading Week. On the other hand, people voting Yes will probably read the bit about the Reading Week, say "Sweet, man!", and vote without reading the logistical proposals. A lot of work has gone into this proposal, and it's funny that the majority of people voting yes probably won't be concerned about how it's implemented, whereas the how is going to be a large factor in the no vote.

Overall

I think voter turnout will be down this year over last, probably to about 15% (from 22% last year). Worst faculty turnout will be Augustana (I just can't imagine why they'd bother this year over any other year), and best could possibly be Sciences/Engineering, as they're running their elections through the SU system this year.

That's all for now!

The Story

Gather 'round, gather 'round!

So I've told this story quite a few times, but figured I'd write it out so that you can experience it as many times as you like, whenever you desire! So sit back, pull up some munchies, and read on!

The adventure all begins on the Friday of Reading Week. A group of us started out to go cross-country skiing in the Jasper backcountry on our very-nearly-annual trip to the Tonquin Valley (Very-nearly in the sense that I've gone every year since 2007, but missed 2009). This year's group included me, my sister, my dad, some hospital friends of my dad's, heart surgeon Steve Meyer and cardiologist Lindsay Reyerson, and then Lindsay's husband Chris. It was a good ski out at -36 Celsius, around 20 km total, and we made it to the Backcountry Lodge without any difficulty (and a good deal of fun!).


Once we made it to the cabin, we had our annual awesome snack of freshly-made cinnamon buns (thanks to the great hospitality of the staff at the Lodge), and met the Hervieux family, who also came to the lodge over the same weekend.


The next day, we set out to find the infamous Wates Gibson Hut. We'd been told that it exists, but as this was our third year searching for it without success, we can't be sure. Natalie, as always, decided to stay back and do homework instead. Anyway, after 6.5 km of skiing (according to the GPS, which doesn't lie), we ended up on a snowmobile track going through some relatively steep (for cross-country) terrain. The snowmobile track made it really fast as we weren't breaking trail, and after a while 3/5 of us decided to just take our skis off and walk down. I wasn't part of the smart majority. Whoops!

Anyway, after falling three or four times (downhill skiing on cross-country skis is a fine art that I have no skill in), I finally decided that it would be about time to take my skis off too, as the path was starting to get windy. Unwisely, I phrased it to myself as, "Next time I fall, I'll take my skis off". Unfortunately, the next time I fell was the last time I fell. I guess I built up a bit more speed than before, because I fell and landed on my ankle, which went and popped when I landed on it. Not so fun.



So after a couple minutes of me trying to convince Chris (who was walking behind me) that I was fine, and then being unable to walk, we decided to stop there and have lunch, then turn around. Fortunately, by the time lunch was finished, I had had a couple of Ibuprofen, and was able to put all my weight on the buggered ankle, and walked back uphill to the lake level. Once there, my dad put some tape (duct tape, of course) on my ankle (thinking it was a sprain), which allowed me to ski back to the main lodge.

The next day was our day o' leaving the Valley, my dad put on some more duct tape around my ankle and I took more Ibuprofen, and we headed out. 20 kilometers later (at a fairly slow pace, of course), we were back in the mini-van heading home to Edmonton. Once we got home, I took off my boot, and found that my ankle had both swollen up and turned awesome funny colours! So cool!


The next day (Monday, for those of you who can't count) I went to school, and went to my first class. After that I headed over to the U of A fracture clinic, which was absolutely delightful. This is where I learned about the experience of having family in the hospital system: having your surgeon father show up when your orthopedic surgeon is reading your X-Ray skews the diagnostic somewhat :P. Originally, the doctor only took and saw this X-Ray:


This X-Ray looks pretty good, so he thought that I would just have to stay off it for a while. After a bit of extra feeling of my ankle, though (probably brought on by having a mini family reunion in the diagnostic room), they decided to do one more X-Ray 'under stress' (AKA the doctor wrenched on my ankle as they took the X-Ray. Very fun!). That turned up this result:


It's important to note that the tibia and fibula are apparently always supposed to overlap (as in the first X-Ray), so this was bad news bears for me. The doctor was all in a good mood, then took a look at the X-Ray, had his eyes blow wide open, look at me and say "You need surgery", all in the space of about 4 seconds. The doctor's plan was to drill a screw through my tibia and fibula to hold them together, which would then come out in three months.

So I was admitted to the hospital! That was a fun experience which consisted of my calling my professor to tell him I couldn't write his midterm that afternoon, then hopping on a bed up in room 3G3.06 (which would become my home for the next day). I was told that I was put on the Call List, and that I would be called down for surgery at any moment, provided no emergencies popped up later that day. Oh, and I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything for the eight hours preceding surgery. That part wasn't so fun. So I was hooked up to an IV that slowly dripped salt water into my veins to keep my hydrated (aka make me have to pee), given a TV to watch, and told to wait.

It was right around this time when I started mass-texting my friends - thanks everyone who responded to them! You totally took my mind away from the boredom!

Around 5:00 pm, my nurse was still unsure as to where I was on the operating list, so my dad pulled another surgeon trick, walked into the OR, and found out I was not going to be operated on that night. Immediately, my parents brought me food. I was very happy!

So I was made to stay overnight at the hospital, and got some lovely visits from Brett, Jenn, my whole family, Steve Meyer and Lindsay Reyerson. This was particularly cool, because by this point I had been visited by more heart specialists than bone specialists. Happy times!

After visiting hours were over, I was given the fun task of trying to fall asleep. That was really tough, because the fellow I was sharing a room with was very sick, and appeared to have problems breathing. In particular, I remember several occasions where nurses thought he wasn't healthy enough to swallow communion bread, and the difficulty his family had with feeding and taking care of him. It was really quite depressing, and made me really want to leave the hospital as soon as I could. I have an incredible respect for nurses and doctors now, for being able to deal with people who are so sick, and their families who are so worried.

By this point I had watched three movies and several TV shows on my little screen - I caught "Demolition Man", "Ghost", and "The Matrix", then several episodes of Mythbusters. Jealous? Don't be. I've found lying in bed watching TV all day is only desirable when it's used to procrastinate against something useful, not as a last result.

The next morning I was told that my operation would likely take place in the early afternoon, which was pretty exciting. Yay! 24 hours after getting admitted, and I was going to have surgery - pretty good, I thought. I definitely gave my nurse a traumatizing experience, though. She was coming by to check my vital signs at around 8:00 am, and I was sound asleep (with super-strong earplugs, thank you random person at 3:00 am!!). Of course, having earplugs, I didn't hear her increasingly louder calls of "Michael? Michael? MICHAEL?". At one point, I guess she tapped me on my back. You know how sometimes when you're about to wake up, some of the stuff in your surroundings gets worked into your dream? That happened to me - I guess her touching my back was translated into a dream of spiders crawling all over my back, so I woke up rather suddenly and quite startled. WELL. That scared the bejesus out of her. It was pretty funny, after we all calmed down...

That morning I watched two more movies, "The Sentinel" and "Avatar". Right around the middle of Avatar, I got word that I was getting called down. Yay!

In yet another shining example of parental privileges, my mom and dad were able to keep me company almost until right up to the OR door. Then they had to say goodbye, and I got wheeled on in. I remember going into the OR, hopping onto the operating table, joking with the nurse that it was cold in the room...

... and then looking around the post-operating room, looking at a shiny white cast on my right food, and having a tube taken away from my nose...

...and then sitting in my hospital bed back in my room, putting my pants on over my cast. Apparently in the middle of that I had a cohesive conversation with my mom about being done, but I don't remember it at all. Memory loss is fun, isn't it?

Anyway, I guess the surgery went great - the original plan to have a screw drilled through my tibia and fibula was changed, because I had a change of surgeons from Monday to Tuesday. The surgeon that I had was an ankle specialist, and after doing some "live X-Rays" (aka yank my foot around in x-rays while I couldn't complain about pain), determined that the screw wouldn't be necessary! Whew! I guess what happened was the ligaments tore away from my bones, causing an avulsion fracture, where the ligament took some of the bone with it. Yikes! Fortunately, they reattached the bit of bone, and all is well!

I spent the rest of Tuesday hanging out with more visitors - Melinda came and gave me a slurpee (best after-surgery experience ever), Daniel came and left me with a ridiculous Rubik's cube, and then Justine and Brett came by (after visiting hours - shock!!) for a lovely chat! Then it was bed-time again, and this time I was in a new room with two neighbors - one who whimpered with every breath on my left (and played with the lights until 1:00 am, not fun), and another on my right who I understand was in a consistent amount of excruciating pain (apparently his catheter was burning?) who moaned all night. My sleep that night was also not helped by the standard after-surgery practices of measuring vital signs - it clearly didn't matter that I was the patient the farthest away from dying on the entire floor, they still had to wake me up at 4:00 am to check my pulse, temperature, blood pressure, sensation on the foot, and give me fresh antibiotics. Sigh.

Anyway, later on that morning I got handed breakfast, and then (before I could finish :() was given a crash course on crutch warfare (I mean walking), had my IV yanked out of my arm, and I was free! Very satisfying experience (though I wish I had finished that muffin).

There you are! That's my story!

PS. This was the 'official' story the CIA wanted me to post. The real one involved the Swedish Women's Ski Team, some orphans that I saved, and Russian spies, but you didn't hear that from me.