Hamilton

Hamilton is a weird town. It's weird in a weird way, too. There's no massive culture shock or anything, but small things are really weird.

For example, the number of mullets in this town is astounding. I have hardly gone a day since I got here that I haven't seen at least one mullet, but it can often be many, many more. You never suspect a mullet either. Someone can get on the bus, sit next to you and look completely normal from the front, and then BAM, party in the back.



I've noticed that McMaster has a lot of weird things too, really college things. At any given time there are dozens of longboarders on the streets, people playing frisbee on the lawns (full disclosure: I hyperextended my knee a few weeks ago playing frisbee on these very lawns.), or sitting in trees reading books. I've even seen people sitting by the base of a tree just playing guitar, which seems sort of like something that doesn't happen in real life. People also apparently care about the football team and have 'homecoming', which I had previously thought was a plot device in movies, not a real thing.

There are also a lot of people in my area (I live downtown, about a block from Gore "Park") with neck tattoos. Middle aged men with huge scary skulls and shit on their necks. Gore Park also seems to be a place where people simply go to stand in one spot all day, unmoving. I've seen the same people standing the same spots every time I've walked past for weeks. The view isn't even that nice.

I always thought Newfoundland was a fat place, and maybe per capita more people are overweight, but the people here are really going to the gold in the girth department. There's probably a 1-1 correspondence between mullets and collapsing fat mountains in motorized scooters. They've just sort of become part of the scenery.

That being said, I quite like it here. McMaster has a really nice campus, the faculty and grad students are awesome. Grad school is continuing the trend of increasing quality with increasing school level that started in Junior High. There's also a really nice trail that follows the train tracks along the Hamilton Mountain, which really should be called the Hamilton Hill, but who am I to decide~