The Perks of Being a Winterlover

Perhaps some of you have felt that shift in winds over the past week or so. Perhaps the chill running down your spine was due not just to the physical cold but also to an ominous feeling of wintery dread. That’s right - it’s officially getting colder in Toronto.

As someone who’s born and raised in Canada, I am no stranger to the blistering winters of the Great North. I would go so far as to say that I’m a cold-weather person. So call me biased, but I would argue that Canadian winters aren’t so bad (I have a feeling Emaan would beg to differ). Scratch that - I would argue that Toronto winters aren’t so bad. There’s those ridiculous ice pellet storms but then there’s also the fluffy good stuff that makes for excellent photos and really beautiful scenery. I love seeing the UC building during that perfect snowfall.

While we do get our fair share of snow and the occasional day (or week) where we are blessed with -30ºC + wind chill, winters in the city are pretty tame compared to what our friends at, say, McMaster would experience:

Three students paddling a canoe across a flooded over part of McMaster campus.
Queen's Park can get pretty swampy but this scene of McMaster is a whole other monster. (Photo source: Huffington Post)

Good Food comes in Boxes

I recently discovered the wondrous phenomenon that is the Good Food Box. It is a program started by FoodShare, designed to bring cheap, fresh, and high-quality produce to Ontario residents. They source locally whenever possible and choose their products based on quality, sustainable agricultural practices, fair trade, and environmental conscientiousness (i.e. less packaging). The UTSU organizes this service specifically for U of T students - it is a service that I had no idea existed until now which was surprising considering how neat it is.

A selection of fresh produce on my dining table including a bag of carrots, potatos, bananas, pears, applies, spinach, lettuce, a bag of onions, and a singular tomato.
What I received in my Good Food Box: more than enough produce for me and my two roommates. The one tomato was very amusing.

Getting Paper: A UTFOLD Origami Experience

A large origami structure of Hello Kitty, with more colourful folded pieces in the shelves in the background. The Hello Kitty structure is made up of many many smaller folded pieces of paper stuck together to create the larger model.
An origami modular of Hello Kitty made by last year's UTFOLD team. Look how cute it is!! (please also note the Totoro model in the back). Photo source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/utfold/
As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I’ve been meaning to check out UTFOLD for some time. I thought that it’d be cool to advance my paper-folding skills beyond paper airplanes (is that even considered origami???).