Qivare Students and money 7 Entertainment on a budget > By Grace Neptuno ood times don’t have to stop while you’re a student. Instead of thinking, “I can’t go out, I’m broke,” try thinking, “What can I do together that doesn’t cost a lot of money?” Besides, what would you rather remember - from college, being too broke to go out or all the fun you had with your friends? Fun doesn’t mean having money. The key is being creative! Dining out ¢ The most important meal of the day: Ikea serves breakfast for a mere $1 with free refills on your coffee. Just one more reason to applaud Swedish ingenuity. * Good afternoon: Go out for lunch instead of dinner. The menu at most places is discounted from the dinner version, often serving the same food. ¢ Dinner time: Many local papers, including the Georgia Straight, carry weekly ad vouchers for If you don’t mind paying for one meal, you can have the other for free. restaurants with two for one deals. ¢ Sharing is fun: The next time you go out as a group, suggest that everyone order one thing ” off the appetizer menu and share around. Everyone gets to have a little of everything and you won’t have to pay full price for a meal. However, just a word of caution: sharing soup is never fun. Staying in ¢ Cheers: Costs for going out to the bar or pub increase exponentially if you factor in cover charges, taxis, not to mention the drinks you buy for others for the chance to impress. Why not invite your version of the OC crowd over to your place? Make it a BYOB and everyone can afford to party. ¢ Where everyone knows your name: Have a family night with your crew. Board games and pizza make for some good cheap fun; toss in a few bottles of wine and watch the dirty Pictionary fun fly. ¢ Movie marathon: Have you ever sat through all six of the Star Wars movies? This writer has. Your friends will talk through the whole thing. Discuss who would win in a fight, Alec Guiness as Obi Wan or Ewan McGregor? Take a vote, pop some corn and enjoy the show. May the Force be with you! Going out ¢ Coming soon: If you watch the latest blockbusters, sign up for a Scene card and get discounts off your next movie and popcorn. If you know someone who works at the cinema, they may get a few spare passes for free. Ask and maybe you shall receive. * Go play outside: Don’t forget about where you live. Go for a walk around Stanley Park. Pack a lunch. Stay for the sunset. All free. ¢ Rep cinemas: If you can spare the suspense, discounted cinemas run movies after their initial box-office release, as well as other films off the beaten path. Check out Denman Place and the Hollywood Theatre websites for show times. ¢ Bar fly: Arriving at the bar before 11 p.m. may mean no cover charge. Wait— why are you out drinking on a Wednesday? ¢ Entertainment weekly: Check out the Georgia Straight each week. The free events section is a good place to start. Not only is it free but you can try out events you wouldn’t normally experience, like a salmon blessing ceremony. ¢ The college try: Take part in the free or cheap fun to be had at Douglas College. The DSU hosts BBQs and pub nights regularly. Participate in Intramurals. Join a club; watch a Douglas sporting event, or exercise for free at the gym. Next week in the Students and money serires: saving money on clothing Bon appétit, just not in the cafeteria By Janina Stajic ven though I’ve barely “cut my teeth” as a Douglas College student I’d like to fire up some discussion around campus food. I was pretty excited, when I bought my books in August, to see the main cafeteria closed for “renovation.” “Oooo,” I thought, “What gastronomic delights await us—a sushi section? Pasta palace? Sandwiches made with home baked bread created on the spot by a remarkable local deli?” Much to my dismay, when I returned in September, I discovered that the gourmet “Why are we being asked to nourish our bodies with such uninspiring food that is arguably downright unhealthy?” delights I had envisioned were nothing more than Tim Horton’s doughnuts and White Spot burgers. Now don’t get me wrong; I know that sometimes a White Spot burger hits the spot, especially if one is a starving student. However, if higher education is supposed to nourish and inspire our minds, why are we being asked to nourish our bodies with such uninspiring food that is arguably downright unhealthy? It’s particularly frustrating when one considers where Douglas College is situated. It’s not as though we’re living in a frozen wasteland of food opportunities. In fact, the Lower Mainland is home to ever-growing “buy local” and organic food movements. Here, you can find local and 6 organic restaurants, catering companies and food galore. There is even a local young couple who managed to live on the 100 mile diet for one year. Fraser Valley farms are at our doorstep. We are surrounded by the sea’s bounty and the fruity delights of the Okanagan are a peach stone’s throw away. Our land is stuffed full of delicious, healthy, easily available food and we get stuck with the generic chains Tim Horton’s and White Spot. I know White Spot is a Canadian business and that’s important. Tim Horton’s, however, has had a much more tenuous relationship to the great white north, its headquarters only returning to Canadian soil in June 2009 after a 15 year hiatus in Delaware. Fortunately, before I fell into a total food funk, I took a cursory stroll along the streets surrounding Douglas College. What did they reveal? I discovered a plethora of interesting places to chow down... sushi bars, ethnic restaurants and countless funky cafés (the coffee at Urth is brewed to perfection) all with one thing in common— menus chock full of delicious bites and not a brand name in sight. If you really can’t leave campus, check out the quieter Campus Deli on the same floor as the bookstore. It does have made-to-order deli sandwiches, although no homemade bread. Bon appétit! Print is Dead Affordability and convenience make netbooks an attractive alternative By Shoshana Berman, Opinions Editor to attempt a paperless school year. I hope to not only help the environment, but to also change the way my brain processes information. There have been some challenges; for example, handouts not being available online or on reserve in the library. However, my quest has had some success with journal articles being available through the library’s subscription to various online sites. I also finally was able to use my netbook to take notes in class. I picked up my new Samsung N120 last Friday, after having to wait for the flyer to expire as mine was the last available, seemingly in all of Canada. This netbook gets a rating of 99 out of 100 from all the major computer review magazines. So does Scratchy live up to her hype? Oh yeah! Her keyboard is very usable. She’s fast, has great wireless reception, and does everything I need, including being able to run the entire Office 2007 suite. My other laptop, Glitchy, has had to go in for a complete gutting. His hard drive, keyboard, screen, and wireless card are all FUBAR. As you may have noticed, I anthropomorphize computers. Even though I know that computers only do what they are programmed or commanded to do. They have no agency. But they seem so magical and wondrous to those of us who didn’t grow up with them. We couldn’t possibly be able to control them and be responsible for their mistakes. I need to get over that mystification, but I do like giving my computers names, like a city kid wanting to give a personal name barnyard animals. I: the past week, I began my journey Why would you name something that’s already named food? A computer is just a tool. Does anyone name a hammer? As for my quest for the paperless school year, when I went to pick up my netbook, I was weak. I popped in next door and bought pens (I just had to have those pens, especially the colored ones) and some of them purdy-coloured file folders for class room handouts. I managed to resist highlighters, notebooks, and all other forms of paper. Well, except for some photocopying I had to do. It was a difficult challenge, made a little more worthwhile, by noticing that six pens and ten file folders cost me 30 bucks. Holy crap! Print really should be dead. It’s expensive. Imagine having a computer you can easily take to school that costs about the same as buying notebooks, paper, and various other paper- associated paraphernalia for an entire school year. Well, that time is now. Entry-level net books cost $200-$250. A behavioral setback to achieving my goal is that I still take notes in a little notebook. And I still write things on the handouts in class. Environmentally, I think that’s okay because they’re already printed out, but as far as improving how I process information, it’s not reorganizing the way I think or work, so I’m counting that as cheating. Taking notes is such an unconscious habit for me—I still really want to write things down all the time, especially when I’m tired. I did that tonight for almost a whole class, scribbling notes sideways in the margins of the page, but that’s just falling back into old brain patterns that I am trying to change. I guess I shouldn’t expect otherwise after only a week.