I don't live in Vancouver. I live in a town called UBC. It has restaurants, a hospital, a police station, recreation centers. It has streets lined with tall trees and an old library that looks like it should be haunted. And when you leave UBC to visit the city, it's clear that you're crossing a boundary. There are signs. They're quite large.

 

It's not so bad being isolated from the city, from the sirens and spinning wheels and lights that never go out. Walking to class in the morning, I'm guaranteed to at least see a few people I recognize, if not ones I know. Leaving campus, faces start to blur, locations become less distinct. Bearings are lost. I spent a few weeks becoming comfortable with this place when I arrived, and over the past months, the lay of the land has become ingrained in my bones. UBC feels as familiar as any hometown I've ever had, but the city beyond remains a tangled mystery.

 

I won't be living here next year. That is for certain: My number in the line-up for residency is somewhere in the billions. Unless I pitch a tent on Wreck Beach, or find a reasonably-sized janitorial closet on campus, I'll be in Vancouver next year. The real city. The big city. The wilderness.

 

A long, long time ago, when I was trying to decide where to attend university, I went through stacks of promotional pamphlets and third-party reviews for Canadian schools. They all mentioned the campus - its beauty, its convenience - as an important factor for deciding where to go. At the time, this seemed frivolous. Who cares where you go to learn, so long as you get the information - and the degree - you want? How does attractive landscaping or a nice climate affect how you study?

 

That varies, depending on the individual. But even if the place you live does very little to change the way you learn, it will define how you live. My friends in the city know the best bars, the best restaurants, the best places to go dancing. They can find their way home wherever they are in the city without Google Maps or the help of strangers. I envy them their knowledge, but I don't aspire to it. Let them take the lead: You choose the bar tonight. Which bus do we need to catch? How many blocks are we from home?

 

 I have to wonder what it's like to go to a university that isn't removed from the city it occupies, but integrates into the landscape - like McGill, for instance. Being separate from the city, and by extension, the adult world one is on the verge of entering, seems like it would delay an individual's growth. By merging knowledge of city life with knowledge gained in the classroom, maybe the transition from student/youth to worker/adult becomes smoother.

 

Or maybe being a step removed from nightclubs and gridlock helps to focus a student on their immediate task - education. Keeping the rest of the world at bay might help a person stay attached to their scholastic role, without getting drawn away from the distractions of worldly life. When the first European universities were established, students lived monkish lives, retreating from the toil and chaos of everyday existence to focus on their books. Maybe the campus away from town is a holdover from that style of learning.

 

The school years are a time for finding one's place in the world, literally and figuratively. It's mentally disruptive to have this ever-changing notion of home - from here, to where I grew up, to wherever I'll be next year in Vancouver proper. But it's part of the process of growing up.

 

I realize now that there is a reason people care so much about where they're going to school, in much the same way that people care where they are going to live. Choosing what place to call your home is important, because it's bound to have an affect on who you are. It's true: You take yourself with you wherever you go. And you take wherever you are with you when you leave.

 

All last week there were fireworks going off outside my bedroom window. In retrospect it seems like they were constantly going off, but my perspective might be skewed since it was always night time. At some point during the weekend previous, a day had disappeared, and my biological clock had turned nocturnal. Which worked out well, I think, since it was the last week I had to finish writing my term papers, and also the last week to start. It's easier to get things done when everyone is asleep. There are no distractions.

 

Except for the fireworks. It wasn't the explosions that were distracting. It was the silences after the explosions, when I waited for someone to start screaming. Drunk college kids are rarely good models for conscientious conduct, and when you add explosives to the mix, someone is bound to lose a few digits. If I happened to be awake during the daylight, I'd check the sidewalks for stray fingers. No luck, though.

 

Halloween is a scary holiday regardless of who has artillery. At some point, I think, we stopped wearing masks to scare away monsters, and started using them to act like monsters. Certain yearly occasions call for the loosening of inhibitions and the transgression of social mores - New Years, for instance, or Spring Break, or 4/20. Halloween does the job better than any other, though. When you're too old to dress up, go out, and collect candy from strangers, something has to fill the hole.

 

The Alma Mater Society puts on a club crawl every October 31st. Students are so strongly encouraged to participate that it's suspicious. The gist of the event is that participants will board designated "party buses" and get herded around to different venues downtown, drinking as much as possible at each one before the bus leaves.

 

It seemed an obvious solution to the fact that nobody wanted students hanging around campus on Halloween night, damaging physical property and the school's reputation. Concentrating 45,000 revellers in an area the size of this campus creates a volatile situation.

 

Saying that the party bus solution is a good idea makes me feel like a parent. There's no way to skirt around the issue, though. When it comes to the inebriated masses, I'm just as happy to have them off-campus as any geriatric Endowment Lands resident. I've always been in favour of irresponsible behaviour, but when everybody's packed in as closely as they are in this neighbourhood, I start to get edgy.

 

Other people must feel it, too. There's a different attitude here when it comes to certain things. You might call it "considerate." I was walking home with a bag full of roman candles and air bombs last week and I ran into someone I know. After I explained my plans for the evening, they said something strange.

 

"Do you have a permit?"

 

Apparently you need special permission now if you want to blow things up in your backyard. The concept's a novel one. I don't remember anything about permits when I lived on the Island. The rules surrounding such things were informal, if they existed at all. The only one I can remember is "don't shoot anything at humans." There may have been more, but once things start exploding it gets hard to focus on details.

 

Thinking about it now, though, it makes sense. Where I'm from there's plenty of space between people. If you want to get drunk and blow something up - a fairly regular occurrence - it's not necessary to ask. Assuming you're not doing anything with depleted uranium, it's safe to say you won't be stepping on other people's toes.

 

So the anti-ruckus sentiments around here are understandable. I can see why the Powers That Be wanted to keep Halloween festivities on campus toned down. Even so, it's sad to see some of the spontaneity taken away from the holiday.

 

Despite recent revelations about not being a loud, obnoxious jerk, on the night itself I felt the need to connect with the subversive, immature aspect at the holiday.

 

On the night itself I ended up in a parkade on campus drinking beer from kegs. It was a top-secret affair, put on my some friend-of-a-friend six degrees removed. A few hours before the party started, everyone with an invite was sent the co-ordinates. We all got there at once, because time is of the essence when you're partying in a non-party zone.

 

People were having fun and there was music playing. It was a good time, for about an hour. Then a security car showed up. Immediately, a very convincing teenage version of Mr. Miyagi informed them, in a loud voice, that he wished to engage in combat. Marie Antoinette waved her cup in the air and began outlining the security guards' deficiencies as human beings. Luckily Tuxedo Mask and his Sailor Scouts had left not long before, or things could have gotten ugly.

 

As soon as security left to go get backup, the car with the kegs peeled out, and the partygoers - some of them under duress - made a hasty exit. With everyone out on the street - zombies mingling with Edward Cullens, sexy nurses stumbling into hedges - the campus didn't seem the least bit deserted. And as we watched a stream of vehicles marked "Campus Security" go past and turn into the parkade, I couldn't help but feel relieved that the party had ended early.

 

If we'd stayed there drinking for a couple more hours before security showed up, there was no way the event would have ended as quietly as it did. No, much better just to head home, and not cause anyone any trouble. After all, it's the considerate thing to do.

 

I wandered into the office of the Ubyssey last week, enticed by promises of free snacks. Before I had time to get my bearings, I'd been coerced into drawing an editorial cartoon. I explained that my efforts would never produce something on par with one of the masters of the genre, but staff members - a hardy race of dwarves who dwell in the subterranean bowels of the Student Union Building - assured me that they had the lowest expectations. Literally any two-dimensional figure would do. No Ubysseyan is capable of holding a pencil, their hands having grown knotty and crabbed over years of typing editorials and forging blades of legendary power. Thus the need, occasionally, to steal away mortals from the Realm of Men. I was ready to bolt for the door, until I learned that my labours would be rewarded with taquitos - crisp, savoury pastries prepared by the basement folk on festive occasions. The scent of microwaved bean-paste filled my nostrils. There was no choice but to stay.

 

It seemed like I stayed there for only an hour. But when I emerged blinking into the daylight, gray whiskers reaching down to my midriff, I realized that nearly a week had passed. Time works differently in the Otherworld than in our mundane universe. That's when I understood, to my horror, the true purpose of the free snacks. I had dined at the table of the Gentry. Never again would I be able to return fully to the human realm. I was destined to become one of the knoll folk.

 

I'm sure I wasn't the only one to fall prey to such a trap. During these first couple weeks of classes, it seems as though the campus is full of people recruiting. Fraternities set up tents, offering students the opportunity to purchase friends on the go. Clubs (but, disappointingly, no Lodges) try to entice new members. Diverse sects (and, perhaps, some cults) hand out pamphlets and cards. I got one the other day that informed me "God is better than Sex." Turns out I had it wrong all along.

 

For the very first week, the Student Union Building was a sort of bazaar. Every time I passed through, phonemongers would try desperately to sell me a new three-year plan. Wizened women in brightly-coloured scarves proffered student lines of credit. Portly, loquacious merchants hawked UBC t-shirts to passersby. It was a gaudy and frantic scene, filled with the sort of crass consumerism that would have disgusted me in my teenage punk days. I've long since surrendered my pride and liberty to the mighty dollar, however, and the spectacle of thousands of my peers lapping up the excretions of Moloch seems only natural - comforting, almost. I myself plan on visiting the Imaginus poster sale this afternoon, and buying decorations for my room. Something "fresh," like a poster of Bob Marley, or a print of "Crazy Stairs."

 

It's not all buying and selling, though. There have been numerous opportunities to indulge in free hot dogs, hamburgers, and other delights. Last week a man showed up in my neighbourhood and began grilling. Within minutes, denizens of the area were lined up around the block, each patiently waiting their turn for delicious charred meat. Even in the 21st century, we're ruled by a mead-hall mentality straight out of Beowulf, a hunger for the communal carnivorous experience. If you grill it, they will come. I didn't realize how many people lived in Fairview Place until the free barbeque. I haven't seen most of them since. I can only hope for their sakes that the meat wasn't tainted with the same fairy magic that has made me a slave to the Ubysseyan Underlords.

 

The start-of-school fervour is dying down now. Already life is becoming routine. I'm more sleep-deprived than I have been in ages. Most of my classes start in the morning, and most of my drinking starts in the afternoon. Sleep usually happens very late at night, sometimes suddenly and without warning. Pretty soon I'll have to break the pattern and start behaving like something closer to an adult. Sleep deprivation leads to physical and emotional stress, and do you know what those lead to? The dread Pig Virus, that squealing plague that threatens to swallow our civilization whole. Everywhere there are hand sanitizers and posters warning about associating with the wrong microbes. My irresponsible behaviour could give the plague a toehold, allow it access to the delicate microsystem of the UBC campus. Soon, students will trot about on all fours, rooting behind trash bins for scraps, bathing in mud and feces as protection against flies and the hot sun. Spoiler warning: It will be Animal Farm reversed. Next year, maybe they'll serve pork chops at the first week barbeques.