The Autobiography of Sam Smith - 3

I. Sam Smith, continue to throw these notes over the wall, even though I don't get anything out of it.  Makes it more honest.

For third year engineering science, I had to make a choice of options.  Once again, my life was ruled by what I didn't want to do.  I settled for the geophysics option which was mainly to feed the oil industry.  I did well and got a summer job.  At that time, a rich oil guy came down and recruited me for Calgary.  Everything was first class, and I would stay a few weeks in the top hotel until I found a better place.

On my first day in Calgary, the entire oil industry went bust.  That was 1976.  The old guy who recruited me had a heart attack and died.  The company was scrambling like headless chickens and didn't know what to do with me.  We were hearing stories of security guards going into entire floors of oil companies and wiping them out. 

I stayed in the hotel and saw a famous movie star in the elevator, but I had to get out.  I chose a residence in the university.  I was paired with this guy called Harvey, who jammed all my stuff into a corner and hogged all the space.  Every night there was a different women and he said he was going into the movies, while he plied them with booze and drugs.  I was fascinated, but soon got an individual room.

Calgary was the most boring city in the universe.  The only thing to do was to go to these huge drinking houses and guzzle 25 cent beer.  We stayed with our backs to the wall, and near the exit.  Each night we watched the fights, with the bouncers taking them to a back room.  It was great, but I soon went back to Toronto to get my sister's VW bug, and then I went camping every weekend in the mountains.  The only good thing about Calgary.

They put me on seismic reflection and I learned a lot, which I was to use later in life.  A very interesting time.

Coming back to university, I decided that there was no future in oil, and went for my Masters in Rock Mechanics, or tunnels.  That was fun and I wrote the shittiest master's thesis ever that nobody understood, and so, graduated.