Busy busy busy day…now I have a headache and I’m really tired. Started with the proof reading of the Trinitarianism text. Then off to school for class, then attend Graeme’s lecture, and then give my own lecture. Afterwards, office hours where one person came, and then the Bible study. It’s been crazy.

So…about the lecture. It was in a much bigger room than last time. I tried my best to speak louder, and perhaps it worked somehow. I went slower than I thought I would, and my writing was huge, fitting very little in one board. I tried to interact with them, and that went well, except possibly the time when I accidentally almost got into a conversation with one of the students in the front row (he must do that a lot). I (accidentally again) made the students laugh a bit, so it’s not all tense and stuff. Overall, David Jackson liked it, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Still waiting to hear from Levent. In any case, I find lecturing very draining, both emotionally and physically. I was feeling weak after the lecture ended.

A note about the homework due today. I spent a ton of time doing it yesterday, and finally solved it. Spent more time trying to type it up, which wasn’t easy at all. And then today in class, before the start of the class, Marshall (the genius of all geniuses) showed a counterexample to the theorem that we were proving. Yikes…so then the professor just said, “there are some complaints with the assignment, so it’s now due on Friday.” Oops. So I think what the problem is, there is an assumption that the prof said that we can make on the assignment which is not assumed in Marshall’s counterexample. So I still belive my proof is correct, just with different assumptions. So anyway, that felt like a waste of time.

Yesterday: Morning church + grocery shopping + laundry + big lunch. Afternoon sleep. Evening homework madness + lecture preparation + Mythbusters border slingshot. Yeah, I started the homework late, again, but this time, it took a lot longer to do it, which made me panic quite a bit. Anyway, go tit done, and I went to bed at around 1:30am.

So I’m going to Saskatoon in December for sure now. I’ve booked the return ticket since I accidentally found a cheap one. As for the ticket to Saskatoon, well, I guess I’ll wait until I get all the information I needed before making a booking, as prices are still comparatively low around the beginning of December.

How did I spend the extra hour due to the return of the standard time? I watched ep5 of Mars. Quality time, I know.

So…I did indeed go shopping, but I bought nothing, so there you go. My search for the Wallace and Gromit soundtrack continues…and after several considerations, I’m not buying online unless it gets cheaper (or if there’s something else worth buying so that I can combine the two to get free shipping).

I guess I’m coming back to the puzzle craze that had periodically occupied me in the past. The recent surge in the “sudoku” phenomenon seems crazy, almost risen out of nowhere. I mean, I’ve been doing this kind of puzzle for years, and only now it’s taking off. I don’t really expect it to last long, though, so maybe just enjoy the surge in the general public’s interest in puzzles while it lasts. And I really want something that I like to be popular in general, quite frankly…

Conclusion: I did nothing today. What a shame…

Today: Usual morning class, unusual lunch with 5 other C&O grads spanning 4 years worth of students, discussion with Graeme on next week’s lectures, played with an online “fences” puzzle, my rare appearance at the Tutte seminar, the rush to get to myf, the myf, the meeting, and home. One note about the food…I ate salad, banana, and apple for breakfast, a nice and healthy pita for lunch, and 4 slices of pizza and a cup of 7-up for dinner. And my body felt very bad after eating the pizza…so…I guess I’ve always had some intolerance for bad food.

Tomorrow: Resist the temptation to go shopping. Need to do homework, prepare lectures, and scan the Trinitarianism book.

Wow…I think this is the first evening in the season to have below-zero temperature, -1. And this morning has probably the lowest temperature of the season so far, -4.

So I fell into the trap and bought some stuffs from that Japanese puzzle site… It was interesting to buy things overseas for the first time, actually. Now I just need to wait two to three weeks for this to arrive…

The final exam schedule is out, and the CO350 exam ended up on December 21…that’s just way way too late. I will probably do some traveling before that.

I was in a pretty bad mood yesterday, actually. Don’t know exactly why. Tired of research, maybe? Or maybe tired of Maggie’s whining on the car? Hmm…

Recipe for disaster (or, valueable time wasting techniques 101): So, it is the day before supervisor meeting, and I have big plans to work hard and study hard to get lots of things done. And what happened? (1) Aaron called saying that he will visit me in the afternoon. (2) In response, I decided to go to school just to attend the lecture, and that is it. Go to school, attend an hour of lecture, come home. (3) Lots of sleeping at home since really, I couldn’t do anything productive at home. (4) Turned out that Aaron couldn’t come, so I wasted the afternoon. (5) More sleeping. Then watching television. (6) To redeem myself, I came to my office with big plans to work hard and study hard to get lots of things done. (7) For some reason, I got the idea that I should check out the WPC results. I did that, read some reviews, and yaddi yaddi yadda, I ended up salivating over the amount of puzzle books that I can buy online…from Japan! Sure, they’re expensive, but you can’t find this kind of good stuff here in North America… So anyway, I wasted the evening in the office that way… Conclusion: Me bad. Very bad.

It’s unbelievable to me how popular the Tim Horton’s at SLC is. It seems that they have long lines all the time, even when it was very late in the evening…on the weekend! Not to mention the longer lines on weekdays… It’s kind of mind blowing to think about all the caffeine that’s flowing around…

I seriously think that there’s something weird going on with my right eye…

So I talked to David and Levent today about my lecture yesterday. So apparently it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. In fact, they said a lot of good things about it. Something they said in common is that they can hear my voice, but it can be louder. Other comments include I should close the doors, I should be slightly more careful about what I write on the board, I don’t seem nervous at all, I seem to have control of the material, I paced it nicely (by accident). So, overall, not too bad. Now I’m afraid when I falter in the second and third lectures…that would be bad…

Finally uploaded all the photos that I wanted to upload… So the new stuffs: Two trips to Danshui, giant ferris wheel, extra pictures from Taiwan, Mid-Autumn evening BBQ, short trip to Elora Gorge, MYF trip to Ontario Maze, Paul & May’s engagement, and finally, Ginger’s post-birthday celebration.

I’m just really tired today. Couldn’t really do anything useful. Burn-out from all the weekend and Monday things…

So there was this lecture that I was supposed to give today. Woke up early so that I can make it to school and prepare this thing. It was hard to prepare for it, especially with finding examples to work through. The difficulty rose when I couldn’t even do congruences properly…so…that wasn’t good. I had to prepare until about 15 minutes before class starts, and then went and delivered the lecture. The lecture was not too bad. Certainly I was nervous, but the nerves were gone about 10 minutes in. I had 2 examples, a proposition, and then 3 more examples. When I finished the first two examples and the proposition, however, I found that I have used only about 12 minutes of the time…it’s supposed to be a 50-minute class…so I had to slow down in working away the last three examples, and actually finished just 2 minutes early, so…not too bad. I’m just glad that I’m not faced with silence when I asked questions. Also, the murmuring that started when I wrote down the 4th example was sort of funny…I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, really, but I certainly hope it was a shocker of an example. Another funny moment, when I was doing my second example, I looked down and saw one person sleeping. I almost laughed really loud, but somehow managed to control myself. So that’s my first lecture…going to receive feedback tomorrow…two more lectures to go.

There was an office hour today as well. And just when I was talking to Berkant about how nobody will come, somebody came in and asked for me. That was 15 minutes before the office hour starts…funny how coincidences happen. At least the student understood what I was talking about, mostly anyway, so that wasn’t so painful.

To cap off a very busy day, there was a free lunch (yay!); there was going home briefly to pick up things; there was talking to Jessica to get her to hand in my homework and got a book from her to help with the lecture (thanks!); there was talking to Carlos, twice, once to get his notes from the class I missed today, once to give back his notes and basically chat for a while; there was a Bible study that was certainly a lot easier to digest than previous ones, and finished early; there was a lot of picture uploading; and finally, there was the return of Austin from America (yay!).

Morning: helped Alex do his PowerPoint presentation. It was a bit screwy and embarrassing for me, since the PP versions between the church’s computer and his high-end laptop are quite different…but it was good. He’s a good guy. Afternoon: cook more of the meat and then sleep. Evening: Went to the office only to find both Berkant and Shengjun there. It was a Sunday afternoon, and all three of us were there! Wow…amazing… Anyway, got the homework done, and now really thinking hard about the lecture tomorrow…maybe I’ll start serious preparation tomorrow morning…and there we go again with the procrastination.

Excellent episode of Mythbusters tonight. Bulletproof water has a shocking result, and the 360-degree swing is just a ton of fun to watch. Very good job, hosts & build team!

There’s this fly that has been flying around the suite for about a week now, and I simply couldn’t get rid of it…very annoying.

Yesterday: Went to school to class, came home immediately afterwards. Just trying to have a relaxing day. There was a Bible study, and it was good, I think. Then came the crazy evening…first, Paul & May got engaged at a private ceremony. 178 pictures were taken with my camera. I led a game that I thought of a few hours ago. The thing went from 9 to 11:30pm. And then, off to Roger’s place to celebrate Ginger’s birthday (even though it was past 12 already). Eventually came back at around 2. I haven’t slept so late for a long time now.

Today: 4 cities, 8 hours, 5 people, 5 dishes at Congee Wong, 1 gundam at PacMall, 0 pillow for me, 89 dollars spent at T&T, 88.2 gas (wooo!), 1 ice cream cone, 273.0 kilometres. Yup, with only about 6 hours of sleep, I drove to Toronto and back. It was raining the whole day, so that wasn’t particularly enjoyable. The temperature was ok for me, but cold for others. And there was the wind. I was so tired that by the time we return that I had to try really hard to keep myself awake while driving back (the rain was pouring on the drive), and eventually had to take the service station stop and get myself moving a little plus eating a cone… Anyway, I got more food to consume for the next month, and that’s the whole purpose of the trip anyway, so it was good.

Tomorrow: Yikes. I couldn’t face tomorrow. Nor the day after.

Yesterday: two stages of madness. First, research madness. Read things all morning, and eventually had a 2-hour supervisor meeting…longest ever, I think. Next, Bible study madness. I had to prepare a Bible study in under two hours, and then do a pre-study. It all went fine, actually, so that’s not too bad.

Today: another two stages of madness. First, the MYF thingie. Then, the May & Paul engagement party. The thing about the party is that they want semi-formal wear, and all of my semi-formal wear are too small…so…maybe I’ll be going without anything on…

Tomorrow: Toronto. Sunday: Write homework, prepare lecture, scan book. Monday: First lecture. Yikes. Chinese remainder theorem…hmm…

This morning, temperature dipped below 0 for the first time this season.  Weeeeeeeeee!

There’s a mad rush to get more reading done in preparation for supervisor meeting.  Didn’t do anything yesterday because of mental meltdowns…

It’s good to be thinking about things while walking around the campus.  Good thing I didn’t get a new mp3 player for that purpose…

Alright, this is the third time I’m writing this post. UW wireless connection sucks. So…the adventure of yesterday. I was given a surprise proctoring job. I somehow managed a “I wouldn’t mind leaving early” and did indeed get home just in time for the sucky Amazing Race. For the exam, I first let the students in, and found out I was short two exams. I made a dangerous move and ran to the other classroom to get two extra exams. Came back, found out that two more students came in. But it was time for the exam to start, so I made another stupid and dangerous move and ran out again, informed Bertrand and ran back. Eventually everything was fine, and I got some extra exercise, so…not bad, I guess. They do ask a lot of questions, though…

There was an awkward class this morning. In the middle of the class, the prof suddenly stopped and cancelled the rest of the lecture because he couldn’t continue…hmm…very awkward.

I’m driven to tears this afternoon, by the frustration with the wireless connection, and by the myf coworkers.

Yeah, I got screwed by Amazon in their strange pricing. Usually, the pre-orders cost less than the regular orders. Well, I made a pre-order on one, a post-order on the other, and it just happens that I paid more for the pre-ordered one, and the post-ordered one (compared to the respective pre-post prices). Sure, I only suffered about $5, but that still doesn’t feel good. And now, the Wallace & Gromit soundtrack suddenly jumped by $3 overnight. I have no idea. Probably not going to buy it now…

There was the morning homework typing. There was the walking to school and realize that I forgot to bring my wireless card while I was in the office. There was the smack in the head for being dumb. There was a nice lunch. There was an office hour where 3 people came by, and I couldn’t answer a lot of their questions. There was a Trinitarianism Bible study, where 5 people attended, but the sad thing about it is that we lose focus a lot.

The frequency of exercise recently has decreased quite a bit…I don’t think that’s good.

I know I’ve said this too many times, but I really don’t like people being late. Case in point, this morning, I needed to pick up four people to church. Appointment times: 8:05 for Laura, 8:10 for Anyu, 8:15 for Christy, and 8:20 for Ray. These times are tight, as I need to arrive church a few minutes before the service starts in order to set up the computer and stuff. So…what exactly happened? 8:05 at Laura’s place. Waited until 8:09. Decided that I should skip Laura, and started backing out the driveway. Laura showed up just as I was completely off the driveway, and got on, just barely. 8:11 at Anyu’s place. Waited until 8:14 before she showed up. 8:16 near Christy’s place. Apparently nobody knew where she lived exactly, just the intersection near it, so we tried to get Ray first, who lives nearby. 8:18 at Ray’s place. Ray was not ready yet, so we turned back in search of Christy’s place again. 8:20 at Christy’s place. She had been waiting outside for a long time. 8:21 at Ray’s place. Ray showed up at 8:22. Mad dash to church. Arrived at 8:26, which is good, but just barely. Of course very few people were at church this time, for some odd reason… So anyway, it ended up being all good, but this lateness thing really made me panic too many times, and I really don’t like it. And I think I have a serious issue with trusting God…it’s still hard to trust without panicking.

An excellent episode of Mythbusters tonight. Having them driving while talking on the cellphone and then driving barely drunk is really funny. But not as funny as having them sit on airplane seats and then drop 5 feet to the ground. Hehehe… So anyway, the conclusions are, talking on the cellphone can be as bad as driving drunk, and the brace position on the plane is actually safer than the upright position. Nice finds.

Finally had the momentum to do laundry. I’ve been delaying this for so long. But I guess this time the delay is an accidental blessing, as I pretty much messed up my jeans yesterday at the corn maze. One of the obstacles in performing the task of laundry is the fear that all the washers and dryers are being used. So this time, I went downstairs to check on them first. Noting that basically none of the washers were in use, I happily came back to do laundry. On the way back, however, I bumped into Omran, and we had a nice conversation on the topic of complaining about our TA job. That was nice…hehehe. Anyway, in other news, I managed to solve the homework in under an hour. There were false positives during the hour, though, but it turned out well. Now I just need some momentum to type up the solutions…well, maybe tomorrow morning?