What?! No work for today either?! Sigh…my life is in ruins.

Tomorrow: Going to Toronto for a slumber party! Weeeeeee….

Some honourable mentions of things happened in 2005 that didn’t make the top ten in yesterday’s post (plus a few ones that will remain hidden from view):

1. Lecturing. Delivered 3 lectures and received rave reviews (to exaggerate a bit).
2. Tearing down the probabilistic wall. I have resisted probabilistic stuffs for years…until this year.
3. Jeopardy tryout. One April afternoon in Toronto. Fun and exciting experience.
4. Trinitarianism Bible study. Well, it was ok, I guess, but that marks the return of me leading a mid-week Bible study…
5. New TV shows that I (sometimes embarrassingly) watch: Mythbusters, Veronica Mars, The Biggest Loser, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Average Joe, Beauty and the Geek, The Scholar, The Ultimate Fighter, The Contender. The winner for the best of these shows: Mythbusters!
6. Being overweight. That’s not a good thing, and to this date, I still had no idea how I’ve grown so much.
7. A chilling injury from dad. Almost lost my father there. Pretty scary.
8. Faith & confusion. My perception in faith has confused me even more this year.
9. Loneliness & depression. Being alone most of the time, and got depressed over a variety of reasons, none of which were valid.
10. Lots of photographs. With the digital camera, I’ve taken close to 4000 pictures this year.
11. MYF Amazing Race. It was a lot of fun, both for me and for them.
12. Weekly scheduling. Surprisingly, I’ve actually made a weekly schedule and kept at it for 11 weeks. Of course following the schedule was another matter…

Yesterday: Amidst the boxing week crowds, I ventured into the sea of humanity (and automobiles) in a (eventually futile) effort to find cheap wireless keyboard and mouse. It was advertised as $30, but I never found them in the two stores. So then I decided that I really don’t need it anyway, and walked away mildly disappointed but not too much. So, my boxing week haul consists of a mechanical pencil and a box of freezer bags for a total of $8. Yeah, not so much of a bargain there.

Today: Laundry and puzzles. That’s how I wasted my time, again.

Tis the season to look back at the past year and forget about the coming year…so here’s a list of 10 things that shook my world in 2005 (in no particular order)…

1. Fear of flying. Not a good thing to have when I had two trips to Taiwan and a trip to Saskatoon during the year.
2. Connection with friends, new and old. It was wonderful to be able to reconnect with Austin, and have a new friend in KCS.
3. Trip to Pittsburgh. Longest driving experience for me, first time crossing the U.S. border in years, and made a few new friends.
4. Japanese puzzle books. I’m now addicted to them.
5. Getting a heavybag. Fulfilling a lifelong dream.
6. Playing MYST. This is really my first obsession with a computer game. But it is way too hard, I got through I to IV with heavy usage of walkthroughs.
7. Lack of progress in research. Until very recently, I was only going around in circles.
8. Devaluating myself. Realizing that I have a lot of very poor qualities is very disheartening, but at least now I know where to improve upon.
9. Watching movies in theatres. I’ve actually watched 4 movies this year, and considering that I have only watched 3 in my lifetime up to 2004, this is an incredible feat.
10. My own website. So this proofbypicture.com site is set up for 1 year now. It has a functioning blog and gallery, but many of my dreams for this site have yet appear…so stay tuned for more in the future.

I forgot to mention about the weather. Christmas Day (and some days before) are actually pretty warm, around 2 degrees. Sure there was snow on the ground (most of it dirty), but it is really comfortable. Fast forward to today, where it was around -2 with high winds driving the windchill down to -9, with snow. I didn’t get outdoors, but I can certainly hear the wind inside.

Ah…another day wasted in puzzles. I was excited to start on two puzzle books because I sort of finished the last one yesterday (well, finished as in I passed on the two 16×16 sudokus, and I failed to complete a giant fillomino puzzle). Anyway, no more wasting tomorrow! (Which is what I said to myself yesterday…)

I don’t like this spending all day in my room by myself kind of thing… I guess that just means that I better not get in jail in my lifetime.

Christmas Eve dinner and service were kind of ok. The dinner itself made my stomach feeling strange for a bit, but then it was ok. The celebration was kind of boring until the high school kids did a drama that was totally funny. After that, it was off to MamaYen’s place, where we play Scrabble and watch The Mole through to Christmas Day. Scrabble scores:

Round 1: Maggie 59, Ginger 80, Me 132, Francis 132. So we have a tie for first.
Round 2: Maggie 77, Ginger 131, Me 84, Francis 72. So Ginger won, in a game full of foul words.
Round 3: Maggie 81, Ginger 105, Me 90, Francis 106. So Francis won, in a painful game that started with the words RAGE, JET, and QUAY, thus blocking out pretty much half the game board.
Total: Maggie 217, Ginger 316, Me 306, Francis 310. It was very close, but Ginger won overall.

Christmas morning started out with a rush to church, then a usual morning service, then home to catch some sleep. The afternoon was spent mostly on puzzles, trying desperately to complete this puzzle book. Still half a puzzle left, though, and I’m pessimistic that I’ll finish it by the end of the day. Another part of the afternoon was spent trying not to fall into sin. That’s what happens when I’m left alone, which is pretty sad for Christmas Day, I guess.

So, I’m supposed to reflect on the impact of the birth of Christ in my life. I still have this feeling that I’m only a Christian at a theoretical level, not at a personal level. I know the stuff, but I’m not experiencing it, or at least I’m not aware of experiencing it. My prayer is that this will change soon.

It took more than 3 hours total to finish this big slither link puzzle…yikes. But at least there was no error, so that’s good. That’s what I did for most of today, plus uploading photos, including those in MYF, Saskatoon, and some miscellaneous ones. Ready for the Christmas Eve dinner at church.

It is pretty sad, isn’t it? Spending Christmas times alone?

Backtracking my memory: Wednesday evening, proctoring. It was 2.5 hours, so not as bad as before. The most interesting thing about it is being a washroom escort many many times. And there were some minor non-essential typos in the exam, so a lot of students asked questions to keep us proctors awake. We needed to walk around, though, so no doing other stuff. There was an interesting quiet conversation with Steve. Embarrassing moment: Before we let the students in, we were instructed to guard to door to make sure that nobody goes out of the exam room before the exam starts. Well, some people did attempt to go out, and I tried to stop them, but they claim to have gone to the wrong level, so I reluctantly let them go…

Some studentQuotes:

• Proof: By intuition…
• The fundamental theorem of linear programming says that every feasible solution is a basic feasible solution. (Of course this is not the fundamental theorem of LP…not even close.)
• I hope you enjoyed marking this question as much as I enjoyed leaving it blank.

Weird things: People drew fabulous artworks on the exam papers. I saw one with a vase with flowers, and Nathan saw one with a large baseball stadium that contains a lot of details like the bleachers and lights. Also, there’s a mysterious phenomenon where a coefficient of 5 on the variable x_5 is lost in about 20 papers…in another instance, one student copied a coefficient of 1 on x_5 as 5…in yet another instance, a wrong solution was presented, but when writing the conclusion, the right solution appeared…it’s all very very weird.

Ipod envy: Bertrand brought an ipod nano with him, and sometimes it takes some effort to get his attention, which was really funny. Later, Nathan brought an ipod (original) with him too, and there was ipod envy towards the nano… Some time even later, it took some effort to get Nathan’s attention as well, so Bertrand felt redeemed that he’s not the only one to do that. Hehehe…

It’s Christmas Eve…already. And I’m feeling kind of sad. Couldn’t exactly pinpoint the reason, though. Maybe it’s because I’m alone? Or because I’ve been wasting a lot of time? Or because I’m spiritually deprived? It’s a mix of strange feelings, I guess…

Yesterday, busiest shopping day of the year, I decided (against my better intentions) to go out for some grocery shopping and stuff. Well, yeah, it wasn’t a good idea.

Thursday: A long day of marking (9-4:30) followed by a long evening dinner (6-12:30). The marking was painful, especially with the lack of sleep and food and stuff. But we all joked around, so that relieved some tension. I finished my question second, and then helped Jamie with his question. I guess one good thing that came out of this is that I’ve made more friends now. More on marking in the next post. As for the dinner, it was ok, I was dead tired, but managed to stay awake anyway. There was foosball (where a piece of the skin on my right thumb was torn off), there was pool, and there was karaoke. We almost broke the foosball table (what with the incredible feat of strength shown by Ed and Michael). And boy the karaoke people were loud and sometimes scary…I’m not sure I would look at these people the same way again…

Crazy evening yesterday. We had a 3.5-hour coworker meeting followed by 3.5-hour hot pot. Seriously, I was totally drained. The coworker meeting was ok. The hot pot…well…it’s for Michael’s farewell dinner, so I really want to go. But, hot pot really isn’t my thing, so I end up leaving this expensive dinner hungry. Oh well.

I’m really trying hard to live a new life of loving everyone, but once I saw the extremely childish behaviour from Francis, I failed. I couldn’t stop judging (within myself, of course…I said nothing) even though I may have similar behaviours as well. Anyway, really need to pray a lot more.

A puzzle saved from disaster: I made a mistake in the last cross sum puzzle in the book, which I started solving on the plane back from Saskatoon. And it is a big-size puzzle, so I was really unwilling to restart the entire puzzle. Fortunately, the mistake was quickly fixed, and I was saved from spending another mindless hour over it. Really, a mistake in cross sum is usually incredibly tough to fix…glad it happened this time around.

Well, it’s my last day here. I have to say, I had a wonderful time here. I love the people here, and the sights of the South Saskatchewan River are beautiful. It is too bad that my time here is short, but I will return, God willing. I’ll catch up with the posts once I return to Waterloo and get rested. And now, I return to a chaotic world.

Coming schedule: Flight home today. Office hours and MYF coworkers meeting tomorrow. Office hours and exam proctoring on Wednesday. Marking on Thursday. And then free!

I know people have complained about this for a while now, and I have complained about it before, but maybe I should say it again. Saying things like “happy holidays” and “season’s greetings” just don’t make much sense. “Happy holidays” is so generic that really, it can be applied throughout the year. “Season’s greetings” is like writing in the beginning of a letter, instead of “Dear Bob…”, you write “Formal salutations…” What is wrong with simply Merry Christmas & Happy New Year? Hmm…maybe it’s too long? Are we getting that lazy?

7 hours, 3 cities, 4 legs, over 3000 kilometres. That was my journey to Sinnie & TP’s place. Weeeeeeeee! Ok, so I drove to an airport parking thingie; then a shuttle took me to the airport; then a small airplane took me to Saskatoon; and finally TP drove me to his place. For the drive, it was very very windy, and the car shaked a lot. But even before the drive, I had to scrape off ice from inside the car, and that wasn’t fun. For the flight, I ended up sitting at a window seat beside an emergency exit. So…lots of leg room, but not much in terms of hip room. I had fun with the puzzles, and then got too tired. I tried to sleep, but as usual, every time I fall asleep, I wake up after a few minutes. It wasn’t really a pleasant feeling. The views of night time Toronto and Saskatoon are beautiful, though. And now, I have a week here. Hope to spend it wisely. Maybe going to Edmonton as well.

I have this strange pain on the lower right side of my body. Maybe it’s because of too much sitting and stuff, I don’t know.

It’s snowing outside right now. The snow here is kind of different from what I’ve seen in Waterloo. It looks more like very thin rain falling at a very fast speed, rather than a big piece of snow flowing down (or up). Oh…I guess that’s what they call freezing rain, then? (By the way, temperature was down to -20 in Waterloo yesterday? Wow…)

Ok, last quick post before I storm out of town. There was this final exam, which went terrible for me. There was an incident with the thermostat which I won’t retell here… The temperature outside is very cold. -17, I think. I’m still not even half packed yet. I’m leaving in less than one hour. Ok, Saskatoon, here I come!

Another fine episode of Mythbusters yesterday, talking about the 5-second rule and the Chinese invasion alarm. It’s actually pretty cool. I love the build team.

It’s pretty unfortunate that my old (yet bad) friend procrastination keeps showing up in my life.

Boy what a terrible night…I simply could not fall asleep. This happening on a day where I could not afford to take an afternoon nap. Yikes. So what’s happening today? I just woke up, now waiting for breakfast. Arrive at school at 9, exam at 1, finish at 4, go home, pack, and leave at 6:30, arrive at the airport at 8, flight leaves at 9, and arrives in Saskatoon at 12. (All times approximate and subject to change.) I pray that God will lead me through this jam-packed day.

I truly don’t know how to study for this exam today. There are many big theorems, and I don’t feel like I need to understand every part of every theorem, since most likely they won’t be on the exam. But what else can be asked on the exam? I have no idea. By the way, my set up was course notes on one side, puzzle books on the other, and a computer in front of me. That’s a very bad way to study. And to think that I had all that time this past week for studying, and now I’m relying on 4 precious hours just before the exam to study? Yikes…it’s all in the past, though, so I can’t dwell on the wasted time.

Yesterday, the baptismal service, there were 25+ people baptised! That was amazing. And more baptismal service in Saskatoon!

I’m very scared by my total inability to start studying for Monday’s exam. I really hope that nightmare won’t come true. I even thought there was hope when I actually woke up at 7am, but ended up wasting a ton of time anyway…yikes.

I’m thinking many detrimental thoughts. Not a good thing.

Ah…Christmas season…what I really don’t like is what people do with it, e.g. commercialization, superflousness, deChristianization, just to name a few. And because of that, it sort of drags me down as well.

How about having a dream where I was writing an exam that I did not study for, and that is precisely the exam that I’m going to write on Monday? That’s enough to scare me a bit. Funny how in the dream, it was Monday and I was hoping that I could time travel back to the weekend so that I can study. Well, here I am, just started the weekend. So I guess time traveling is possible…in a twisted sense.

I’ve been working on this mini-millionaire-type game for Mary’s variety show. I’m surprisingly excited about it even though I’m not going to be hosting it. It’s such a simple idea, the graphics are plain but slightly elegant, and most of all, it’s bilingual! And I implemented “random” 50:50 and switch the question! Ok, so that wasn’t much to be excited over… If you are very bored, you can download it and waste 5 minutes of your time.

So for the week-long trip starting next Monday, I think I’ll be driving to the airport myself. Seriously, whenever someone asks you to do a favour such as driving to the airport, never ever say “maybe,” just “yes or “no,” because a “maybe” is really an equivalent of “no” to the one asking.

Why yes, I’ve wasted most of yesterday and today to puzzles! And boy those puzzles are getting fiendishly difficult. Some take more than an hour to complete. Crazy stuff. On that thought, I’ll probably never do another 16 x 16 Sudoku again. It’s just tedious bookkeeping, and no fun at all. By the way, I haven’t stepped outside the building for two days straight. So I didn’t get to experience the -14 temperature outside. Meanwhile, there’s actually some minor progress in the research thingie, but because it’s so minor, I kept pushing the task of verifying the details until now…sigh…procrastination sucks.

All of a sudden, I wanted to find out where my high school friends are…I really don’t know why.

I suppose I have an exam to study…yeah, not doing much about it just yet.