The Tribune

Tadpole biting the wax. Not really an appetizing name for the sweet fizzy drink known as Coca-Cola, which is exactly why the Atlanta, Georgia soft drink giant spent loads of money researching a new name for Coke in China, one that would mean “tasty and amusing.

You will encounter many challenges throughout your university experience: making decisions about your daunting major concentration, dealing with significant other problems, answering the question “to drink or not to drink” and of course, facing the quintessential university roommate dilemmas.

When you live in a city where most of the homeless people can beg for money in three different languages, you know it’s international. Out of the 19,000 undergraduates at McGill, 3,660 of them are from outside of Canada. Encompassing over 4,000 students, including graduates and part-timers, the McGill International Student Network is one of McGill’s most valued student organizations.

Think you’re on Facebook to socialize? Think again. With over 20,000 new members registering daily for the infamous friendship network, Facebook is known, first and foremost, as an efficient tool for the communicating masses. While eager stalkers interact via notes, poking and wall writing, they are also tuning into something much larger and essentially much vainer: themselves.

You gotta hear this one song, it’ll change your life, I swear, exclaims Natalie Portman’s character Sam in the 2004 indie film Garden State. While she may have been exaggerating a bit, McGill students are taking her advice rather seriously. Even with the live bands playing on the OAP stage, students everywhere are wandering around campus with little white wires dangling from their ears.

1) The skinny jean – Although some of us may have boycotted the skinny jean for a while, it’s back with a vengeance this season. Every other person on campus is donning a pair. Just keep in mind that they are tight, so the darker they are, the better. 2) The slouchy sweater – An alternative to the McGill sweatshirt, this soft knit is both comfortable and fashionable.

As we enter the first week of school feeling relaxed and refreshed after four months of summer, we tend to forget the horrors of midterms, papers and finals. Slowly but surely, though, the pressure of university starts to creep onto the shoulders of each and every one of us.

If you take a walk down to the corner of Aylmer and Sherbrooke, near the eastern edge of campus, you will find a McGill building. This is no ordinary building, but a confusing labyrinth of dead-ends and key card-access doors that would make King Minos proud.

The big fashion trend this fall is not the skinny jean, nor is it the sweater-dress, peek-toe pumps or military coats. The hot accessory for autumn, as I was informed this past weekend, is the engagement ring. Ah, engagement rings. The world’s smallest set of handcuffs, some might say.

Though it has only been a Western commodity for the past few centuries, tea has one of the longest and most illustrious histories of any beverage. Legend cites its discovery by Emperor Shennong of China around 2700 BCE, though early written record of the drink only stretches back to 300 CE or so.