Bonus supervisor meeting this morning. So now I’m going to reinvestigate the proof that’s been killing me. More work for tomorrow… As for today, I went shopping in the afternoon. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so happy about shopping…I don’t even know why. Maybe it’s because I was doing that alone? Maybe I finally bought some clothes on my own, even though they probably look pretty ugly? Maybe I was able to buy stuffs that I needed to buy for a while and now I got them all at once? Or maybe it’s just the relief from the morning supervisor meeting? I don’t know.

We have The Biggest Loser finale tonight, which also conflicts with The Amazing Race. TBL wins over TAR hands down. The transformations on TBL are simply astounding. The tasks of TAR are really boring. Anyway, I liked Seth and Suzy, but they didn’t win. I liked Pete, and he won the eliminated loser weigh-in thingie, so that’s good. And of course there’s Caroline Rhea, so it’s all good.

I think I have some puzzle fatigue now. I would get stuck and think over and over again, only to find that there’s a very obvious logical step that I didn’t see…(e.g. there’s a 4 there, but I didn’t see it; I’m supposed to put three black squares in a box, there are three empty squares in that box, and I just kept thinking, which square should be left empty…) Or maybe I really am getting very very old.

Sunday: 11 hours, 4 cities, 5 people, 284.7 kilometres = go to church in the morning and then straight to Toronto and back. I should remind myself to never go to Toronto on a Sunday again. The traffic was just incredibly frustrating. T&T was so full that it was unnerving. And I didn’t get my favourite milk tea… Anyway, we had a good lunch and stuff, but toward the end, I started to feel tired, grumpy, and just want to go home as quickly as possible (and of course, I hit the traffic jams). Once I got home, I needed to do my homework. It’s 3-colouring a graph with about 50 vertices, and it took like 5 or 6 hours, with a few retries…yikes.

Weird weather lately. It was still cold on Saturday, but then on Sunday, it started to rain. And then today, still raining, but with 15-degree temperature. Apparently it’s going to snow again soon…so…yeah, really weird. As an aside, the weather had kept me indoors for the most part, so I didn’t get a chance to walk around campus for a while now. That’s pretty bad.

Shockingly, I started doing some research today. And got stuck immediately. So…not helpful.

I think nobody that I know is on AIM, but in case you are and you wish to add me, it’s martin31415926 (as you might have guessed). I go on because of this MillionaireIM ask-the-audience thingie, but they never message me…hmm…

Eugene was here for the weekend. Yesterday, we had the awkward lunch at Home Garden, which I’ll probably never visit again. We had lunch with Matt, another buddy of his. Eugene’s still his crazy self, so that’s nice. Today he came over to my place, got Francis to come as well, and we had a nice chat, sort of. And now he’s gone back to Toronto, which hopefully I’ll go as well.

Funny story this morning. Apparently Roger went to work, drove MamaYen there so that she could drive it back. Once there, they switched drivers, and once they were out of the car, they found out that they both locked their doors…so, we have a car still running, locked, and MamaYen frozen outside. Not good. So supposedly someone needs to go back to HouseYen, pick up the backup key, drive to Conestoga (at the other end of town) and save the day (and the environment). Of course all three myf cars that are in Kitchener were not in Kitchener, so that’s where I come in. And other than the snow removal, the rest was as planned, thank God, and MamaYen lives another day.

Woke up early probably because I had a long afternoon nap, but more likely because of the dream I had. In it, I bumped into Kevin Yoon for the first time in who knows how long. It was a good dream. So I think I woke up to Google the guy up. And apparently he’s in Carnegie Mellon University? Wow…of course I’m not sure if that is indeed him, but there are some evidence for it. Boy, considering that I was at CMU in May, that would mean that I was THAT close to him and yet so far away… So Kev, if you accidentally bump into this page maybe by Googling yourself, or maybe you’ve been one of several secret readers, contact me please!

Hmm…going to be driving in the snow for the first time this winter season…hopefully I’ll survive. I really don’t remember having that much snow this early in the winter season, though…

Austin, you look very nice in your military uniform!

Lots and lots and lots of snow today, with blowing winds as well. And it’s still snowing. Lowest temperature today: -12 with windchill -23. It’s beautiful, but hard to walk outside, certainly.

Supervisor meeting today. Supervisor helped me get over the stuckness that I was experiencing, and it now actually looks plausible to do…amazing.

I’m freakishly addicted to these puzzles…yikes.

Time to catch up… Saturday: 8 hours, 2 cities, 1 loud concert, 0 else, 270.3 kilometres. There was this SOP praise & worship celebration. It was way way too loud, way way too crowded, and I couldn’t breathe properly, let alone trying to concentrate on the Lord. We got there an hour early and it was already packed with people. When we got in, the auditorium was full, and then they announced that there were 150 more people outside…we squeeze and squeeze and squeeze again to make room, and eventually all of them were able to came in, so that was kind of amazing. Before it started, I was doing a cross sum puzzle where I found out that 2 + 3 does not equal to 6… It was a lot of fun having David, Alice, Steven and John for the ride. John sounds incredibly smart. The bummer in it all is that I was planning on going to T&T to get some food, but the thingie ended at 10pm, so I presumed that T&T was already closed and came back to Waterloo. Little did I know that T&T actually opened until midnight…sigh…and now I’m stuck with very little food to live…not that I’m complaining, but still a little disappointed.

Sunday: Traditional homework madness. I thought I found a solution, but when I tried to write it up the next morning, I found a fatal error…so I didn’t complete it. Monday: Nothing much happened. I accidentally fell asleep in my office hour, but nobody came (I think…I’m not sure, though). The Trinitarianism Bible study was better this time around. And then the night of puzzles…man, I’m addicted to these puzzles. Today: I’m supposed to do something, but apparently I got nothing done. Except for those puzzles. It’s quite frustrating to do the cross sums now because of my apparent lack of arithmetic skills. I had to do the first one twice, and still couldn’t get it. The second one I made a mistake of thinking 3 + 1 + 9 = 12, but I did get that fixed. Boy I really hope I don’t make a mistake in the giant cross sum puzzle I posted in the office…it would be super embarrassing if I do…

In other news: I’ve been listening to the Wallace & Gromit soundtrack over and over again…it just rocks; Meanwhile, there were strong winds outside all day, and that made it quite difficult to walk and breathe at the same time…cold, too; Research? What research?; We had the longest wait time at Bubble Tease today…yikes…needed to stuff down my stuff in under 10 minutes, and then later had a minor diarrhea; I find myself having very little control over my overwhelming sinful thoughts and desires.

A comment about Waterloo being on top of the McLean’s list again: seriously, look at the list, there wasn’t much of any competition there, isn’t it? I mean, the big schools like UT, UBC, Queen’s aren’t even in the same category. So…I wouldn’t put much weight on that.

We went out for the “traditional” Friday lunch. This time, we didn’t stay together, instead we were spread out in three separate tables. I was at the table with Karel & Craig, and it was so quiet that it’s kind of funny. Of course, next to us, Carlos was telling jokes as always…maybe should have switched tables there…

I’m listening to the Wallace & Gromit soundtrack, and it rocks.

We have our very first major snowfall yesterday…weeeeeeee! And we have some minor accumulations all over the place. Strong winds made it a bit hard to be on the outside, though.

I’m doing these puzzles at a really fast pace…I’ve done around 60 of them so far, and I’ve only had the books for 3 days! According to the reference time given in the book, apparently I’m an intermediate solver in Cross Sums (Kakro in Japanese), but an advanced solver is Masyu (a sort of loop-forming with certain turning constraints puzzle). The thing with cross sums isn’t surprising as I’ve done it for many years, but the Masyu thing is quite a surprise, as it’s new to me, even though I have done similar variations before. Anyway, I think I’ll be slowing down a bit here so that I don’t solve everything in a week or something…

A mix of news: Wallace & Gromit soundtrack is here, I just need to pick it up today; I have booked the ticket to Saskatoon, so now I have round trip tickets; there was a supervisor meeting, and we had good discussions, I think, even though I felt that I have done so little and being so confused during the week; Mars continues to rock, and I really like Logan and Leo there; the weather certainly stopped me from the usual walking around the campus, which is bad.

Interesting weather phenomenon that went by unnoticed by me (and probably a lot of us here). Here’s a record of hourly temperatures from 10pm yesterday to 7am today: 8, 9, 10, 10, 12, 17, 18, 10, 7, 6. The spike in temperature happened during sleeping hours. All this happening during a night of wind warning and thunderstorm watch. Pretty exciting weather, there.

I’m very happy with the Japanese puzzle books, and already started a bunch of them. I’ve also posted the giant cross sum puzzle inside the office at school, so there’s going to be a ton of distractions for me there.

Research…hmm…I’m having a lot of trouble with that. All those strange numbers really don’t make much sense to me there.

Ok, so I was in a complaining mood yesterday, and apparently that was quite harsh. Let me put it in another way (i.e. I’m going to complain again). There are very few evangelizing opportunities in MYF (unfortunately, might I say), and this SOP thing is one of the big opportunities to do that. It is a very important event, and it seems that a lot of people are interested in going. Also, this event was announced months before it is going to take place, so there are plenty of time to plan and make arrangements for that. But now, all I see is that only 3 out of 6 coworker cars are going. With an average attendance of about 20, that is far less than adequate to provide the necessary transportation. What is maddening even more to me is to hear these reasons that are more like excuses (especially Francis’ very lame “I’m not interested” reason). You are blessed with a car that very few people have in the fellowship, and you seem to have deliberately chosen not to provide it for serving God at a very important time. Of course, as always, I think too much. I’m sure it will work out in the end, as the Lord always does, but man is it frustrating to see this happening.

I went for an eye exam this morning. It was supposed to be a one-hour exam, but it ended up lasting three hours. Apparently they saw something “interesting” to them at the back of my eyes. They dilated my eyes, and kept flashing bright lights to it, from several people, no less. It appears that because of the severity of my nearsightedness, I have strange things happening to my eyes, like seeing floaters and flashers. I was warned that I need to look out for that, and if things get worse suddenly, I need to contact them immediately (even in the middle of writing a midterm) and go see them. So there’s something that I need to be aware of. On some positive notes, because of this problem, I don’t need to pay for my eye exam, and will probably never need to pay for it (unless the government changes its mind). But, I will need an eye exam (which I really never had) at least once a year. The staffs there are very pleasant to talk to, especially this Ehren who took care of me from start to finish, so props to all of them. It’s also coincidental that it just happens to be cloudy and rainy today, because apparently people with dilated eyes have trouble seeing under the sun, so I got really lucky there.

The Japanese puzzle books have arrived! Yay! And they look much nicer than I anticipated. Finally there’s a puzzle book that I can enjoy greatly…I’ve been a very hard customer to satisfy in terms of puzzles, but looks like this will definitely be good on me.

I still don’t appreciate the disrespectfulness towards the author of the Trinitarianism book during the Bible study today. Really, more than a thousand years of theological development is being compressed into this book, written by a long-time scholar in theology, philosophy and other fields, and you just dismiss whatever he writes? Good grief… Anyway, my intention was for the good, so that people can learn, but apparently people don’t want to learn…I can only do so much.

On the subject of complaining, I might as well say this: Elaine, Francis and Roger, what if we need to turn away people who are interested in going to the SOP praise & worship celebration just because you won’t go and provide your car for service for whatever (most likely dumb) reasons? Would you feel right about denying people from attending an event that could be very beneficial to them spiritually? My head hurts…

Ok, I guess I should end on some positive notes: Apparently the Japanese puzzle books that I ordered have arrived, I just need to pick them up tomorrow; I managed a personal record-breaking time of 23 minutes and 41 seconds for walking one lap around campus; I’m going to have an eye exam and a car maintenance tomorrow; starting the homework the night before is still not a good thing, but I dodged yet another bullet this time around, all thanks to the Lord; we had one of the funniest lectures ever today, where the prof asked us to divide into teams to solve a problem, and the team that I was not on was assigned a problem that is not solvable and yet they attempted valiantly to solve it…hehehe.

The directed graphs exam has been set to hold on December 12. Bad news for me, since it’s right smack in the middle of my planned vacation to Saskatoon. So…I can vacation on either December 3-11, or 12-19. But since I’ve already booked the return flight on the 19th, there’s more incentive to go on the latter yet shorter time slot. So…I don’t know.

I’ve been working on this giant slither link puzzle (I still call it fences puzzle), and solved it just now. It took me several days and three peeks at the solution (i.e. cheating) in order to finish it. And it took just 20 minutes for somebody else…so…a long way to go for me there.

Freedom? What freedom? I can’t control my tendency to sin, so where’s the freedom?

No, I don’t appreciate the fact that because of Francis’ decision to not come to MYF tonight due to really sucky reasons, I had to (a) feel very ignored when he didn’t pick up my calls multiple times; (b) make a second (and pretty long) trip to pick up people because we were one car short; (c) feed myself a really sucky dinner; and (d) pick up four people on my first trip, all of whom satisfy the following: one, they are females; two, they are not boys; three and most important of all, they are girls! So anyway, not happy.

I watched a previously unwatched episode of Mars this afternoon, and boy is it good. I’ve been waiting for about three months for this now, and it’s certainly worth the wait.

I went for the “usual but haven’t done it in a while” walk around the campus last night. I was feeling a bit of a pain in my legs, and they were itching probably due to the lack of warming up. So I was kind of expecting a high lap time there. Unbeknownst to me, I scored a 24 minutes and 19 seconds, the best time ever. Weeeeeeee! I don’t really know what happened there, that’s for sure.

First day of snow this season…weeeeeeeee! Very light snow, and for only about an hour, but still…snow!!! Very windy, too.

Finished the huge marking task yesterday, and that was a big relief, not only in that I finished the marking, but I probably won’t need to mark assignments again this semester. Again, as with previous marking, it’s the sheer volumn that’s really tiring, not the amount of brain work going into it.

I tried to prepare for supervisor meeting today, which is the only day I have to prepare for it. It wasn’t too bad, I guess. I was trying to read a proof, got stuck half way, and she pointed me in the right directions. Now that I’ve done the marking, there’s an expectation to do much more this week…

Made the series of calls this morning. Result: I have both an eye exam appointment and a car maintenance appointment next Tuesday. West Jet rocks. Air Canada sucks. I hate calling strangers, it made me nervous and my heart rate was pretty high…

I did make some progress (albeit comparatively very little) on the marking this morning. Really not sure if I’ll be able to complete it…

Don’t worry, be joyful…