2023-10-01 | Mushroom in Vancouver

It has been about a month since I flew to Vancouver, Canada. In life, there are various periods. Once, you’ll focus on your life’s duties such as having relationships, making friends, traveling around, getting married, raising kids, etc. At other times, you’ll have to work hard to achieve your career goal and make money. It’ll be different for all people. To me, I had my Master’s degree time for 2 years, and working in the industry for 3.5 years. I think from time to time with this interval, I have changed the organization I belonged to, and now I’m here at UBC starting my Ph.D. journey. Vancouver was a better place than I expected. I was in Downtown for the first 2 days. At that time, I felt Vancouver was quite a developed and safe place with many kind people. Then I moved to UBC where I found vast land and nature. The campus was so beautiful and full of fresh undergraduates. I did not know the importance of being close to conserved nature in my life. When you either work or study hard and are tired, I used to go back home and watch YouTube, which actually made me even more tired. However here, I go to the beach, gardens, and mountains. Being in nature, for once every breathing, my feeling gets better and better. That’s the power of nature. The campus of UBC is quite wide so it can be called as a campus town. There are everything: restaurants, libraries, classrooms, laboratories, residences, concert halls, gardens, parks, gyms, beaches, markets, cafes, shops, museums, and more.

One thing I found beautiful was the mushrooms. They are big and they’re everywhere. When I went for hiking in Korea, I felt happy when I found mushrooms in the mountains. Here, I could find more. I attach some of the ones I found. I wonder if could develop an image classifier that predicts toxicity of mushrooms from their images..? People say pretty ones have poison. But why and how do they know..? Of course, I wouldn’t try them.

The overall impression is that people are more chilled out and relaxed compared to Korea, especially Seoul. So I think Vancouver would be a perfect place for people who prefer a peaceful and calm place with less crowds and competition. If you like nature, it's also perfect.

But if you care about convenience, it may not be the best place. I feel like the banking system, government system, and generally other facilities are slower than in Korea. Maybe the Korean system is too fast. Public transportation in Korea is awesome.

I think I'm lucky to be in Saint John's College, which is the residence I'm living in. Here, they provide breakfast and dinner every day except Saturday. It's very convenient and I can save a lot of time for cooking and washing the dishes. The price is quite reasonable also. As people have meals together, we can make friends and just naturally get to know each other. Here, people value conversation and multi-cultural aspects. It's really a good place for an international student like me. Of course, there are tons of non-residential events at UBC though.

The commodity price is generally higher than in Seoul. I heard especially the price of house rent is really expensive so that many people live together with flatmates. For students like me, this is not a problem though, once I met Korean people outside UBC, all people said things about the housing prices. This can be the biggest obstacle to living in here.

About nature, I once went to Bunzhen Lake near Port Moody. The water was crystal clear. I could almost see through the lake inside. While tracking through the course, we found bears! They were real wild bears. Two baby bears happily played and their mother followed them. At first, I felt a bit scared. However other people didn't seem to be too much surprised and they seemed to know how to just get by. It may be a common scenery for Canadian hikers.

One thing to lastly mention is the culture. Here, there are so many social events. There is a sufficient amount of social events in my residence though, there are more department-level and school-wise even in the semester. I like this energy and vibrance. It lets people be connected, exchange conversations, and become friends. I also felt it's easier to organize one as well. Where you come from, what your major is, and what your goal is do not hold you back. They are interesting topics to other people.