File that in under “Jeopardy clues that I should have gotten if I was paying more attention”… In the category of Twain Twips, for $1000: Twain wrote of how the “maid of the mist descends the fearful rapids” in a piece called “A Visit to” this place.

Boy, the freezing rain today is terrible, but funny. Slippery sidewalks all around. There’s a hill right beside where I live, and I couldn’t climb up that hill, nor could I go down the hill. Needed to walk around into the grass, and even then, it wasn’t easy.

I’ve been thinking about The Amazing Race too much recently, particularly planning for one here and one back in Taiwan. Yes, I think too much of these strange stuffs.

Today: sleep, prepare Bible study, lead Bible study. That’s pretty much it. The Bible study wasn’t too bad, I guess. I certainly wasn’t well-prepared, and I feel that I didn’t do what I tried to teach…so that was a bit sad. I mean, on comparing the old life and the new life of being a Christian, quite frankly I don’t know how that was for me, and maybe it got a lot worse recently. Also, on personal testimony, I really couldn’t think of it for myself…so, again, kind of sad.

Still feeling a bit sick, but it is not as bad as before. Tomorrow, a ton of work to catch up.

I feel so sad that for many times now, I get to know someone just when they are about to leave…sigh… All in the Lord’s will, I guess. Ok, so it’s a day of sadness.

So, what do you know, after staying away from Vietnamese restaurants for a long time, I finally ate there…for two meals! First, after church, I took people home, and took Samuel to the bus station. The bus was scheduled to leave in about an hour, so we went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. That’s nice, until we had only about 6 or 7 minutes to spare for him to catch the bus…he made it, though, so that’s good. I enjoy Samuel’s company greatly. Then there’s the dinner. It is Elaine’s birthday the next day, so they have decided to go to Ben Thanh for dinner. There were 14 of us there, made a fool of ourselves, and had a good time, apparently. Now, my question is, is it true that the more expensive a meal is, the less satisfying it gets? Just curious. And by the way, I still don’t like to eat cake…

Yet another very funny Mythbusters tonight, doing the confederate rocket thingie. The narrator managed to squeeze in a sexual joke in there, and he definitely rocks. There was a silent moment displaying a sign that says “Warning: Science Content” which made me laugh so hard…after all, this is a science show, right? Also, when the build team described the procedures for making parts of the rocket fuel, they had to censor parts of it to avoid people doing these things at home. For example, Grant was making nitrous oxide, and his description of how he made it were censored several times using the symbol of a dog, a cat, and a monkey (or something like that). And then the narrator would say, “So after a dog, a cat, and a monkey, Grant made nitrous oxide!” Ah…I love the narrator…

Incredibly busy week ahead, including marking, research writing, two Bible studies, laundry, and a long-overdue haircut. I wonder how I’m going to survive them all without giving up on the puzzling…

I’m still sick, but feels a lot better tonight. I managed to clean up and re-organize some of my shelf space and drawer space. It’s actually quite nice, so now my bookshelf actually has a few books on it, plus all my dvds. Now I need to clean the recycling things lying on the floor… There was a love feast tonight, and I managed to cook 12 eggs with green onions, so that wasn’t too bad. It got cleaned up pretty quickly, though…hopefully nobody gets a sick stomach tonight. I missed Samuel on the way there, but got him on the return, and he’s still funny. In the mission conference, I stayed behind in the computer room, and talked with Li Zhen for most of that time…it was quite pleasant to talk to him, but it’s too bad that I basically missed the message. Anyway, it’s late, I’m tired, and I still got things to do, including the Bible study plan thingie, which took about an hour yesterday. Hopefully it’s going to be shorter today.

Scrabble last night:

Round 1: Francis 199, Me 228, so I won. Longest word: nature. Most valuable word: zeal (triple word score).
Round 2: Francis 176, Me 222, so I won again. Longest word: strides. Most valuable word: queen (double letter on the Q, then double word score).

Staying home for 3 straight 24-hour periods is apparently not good for me. Once I go outside, the sickness seems to be gone.

Still sick.

After encouraging other people to start a one-year Bible reading plan, I’ve decided to start one myself. One motivation is that I’ve just finished my most recent plan, where I would read through The Message. Now that that’s done, I’m going to be using The Nelson Study Bible that Michael kindly gave me a couple of years ago, and the four-tiered Bible reading plan (which is the one I used back in who knows when…1999?), to do my daily Bible study this year. I’m quite excited about this right now…hopefully this will last.

About the election…right now my thinking is I cannot vote for any candidate with good conscience. So unless things change soon, I don’t think I’ll be voting this time around.

Still sick, and the symptoms seem to mutate all the time. Yesterday, supervisor meeting where I could barely talk, but eventually it was not a bad one. Then an office hour where only one person showed up on a very hard assignment. Today, wasted the whole day to puzzles.

Hmm…should I talk to Aaron about the importance of commitments? Hmm…

What is it with the weather? 8 degrees yesterday, 7 today, yikes…

So now I’m officially sick. Headache, sore throat, clogged throat, feeling hot. Not good when there’s a supervisor meeting on the line… I had to come home early to get a long nap, because I was just too sleepy in the office (even though I woke up late). Slightly better now after drinking a ton of hot water. But still, not feeling well. So much for the Florida orange juice commercial…

But, all is not lost with the research writing when I managed to almost finish a part of it in the evening, and still continuing with it right now. Hopefully it won’t be too bad…

Hmm…apparently yesterday’s Bible study has been more stirring than I thought… Interesting how God works, isn’t it?

Original plan for today: Wake up, do the usual morning stuffs, go to school, work hard, come back, prepare Bible study, and lead the Bible study. So of course that didn’t work out…I woke up, do the usual morning stuffs, and fell back to sleep again…sigh… When I woke up again, it’s around 12, so I don’t really have time to go to school, hence the very risky plan to work hard at home. I did manage to do a bit of work, but it wasn’t significant. Eventually I had to prepare the Bible study, so I abandoned the work to do that. The Bible study itself wasn’t too bad, with 7 people attending. It could have been better, but I’m not complaining.

I’m having a minor headache. I hope it’s because I’m under tremendous stress, and not because of some serious medical condition. Still, it would be nice if it’s gone.

I didn’t go outside today, but just seeing the temperatures listed on the envcan website, I’m wondering where did the usual frigid winter go? A high of 1 and a low of 0 for today, when the normal high and low are -2 and -11 respectively…strange.

I haven’t done a “congratulations, car” for a while…It hit 42,000 yesterday on its way to the fellowship on Erbsville. So, congratulations, car!

Mythbusters is so enjoyable to watch. Today, we have the myths of the “compact compact,” and some vodka myths. Poor Grant…he had to smell Adam’s feet and breath…yikes.

I don’t really know how to prepare for this Bible study tomorrow. It’s a bit crazy here.

It was fun eating dinner with Francis and Samuel. I never knew that Samuel talks so much.

I may be taking on too much work for MYF…I guess time will tell.

Yeah, I’m supposed to do some school work…but…

Wednesday: Sad and disappointing supervisor meeting. Of course I did nothing during the vacation, so that’s understandable. But it’s sad enough that I decided to start intense puzzling again…which is bad. For Jackson’s class, well, even though I’m being told that I have a “solid background” for this course, I’m not taking it. Primarily because I don’t remember much of that “solid background”…so yeah. It was funny to see Jackson trying to figure out who I am, though…

Thursday: Stay at home all day, doing nothing important, except during the night when we had a pre-study. My idea of having the first study of Galatians to be a reading of the entire book went through, but I started to have bad feelings about it…anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

Friday: There was a water shut down just after I finished my shower, but unfortunately this means that Alan couldn’t clean up. We both went to our respective offices soon after. For the first time, I brushed my teeth and washed my face in the school’s washroom…hmm… Anyway, there was tetris, there was a TA meeting, and I was back soon after. The hair salon place seemed to have closed today, so I have to try again tomorrow and live with my long hair for one more day. Of course I did nothing of importance today.

Ah…the first day of school. And I find no classes I’m able to take, except possibly Jackson’s class, which I won’t take anyway, so I don’t know. I tried desperately to go to school early and get some things done, but unfortunately, sleep deprivation overnight wasn’t helping that, so eventually I got to school at 12. Even then, I only got some writing started when Francis came in and we went to Bubble Tease. The Portuguese chicken really is a bit “washroom inducing” so-to-speak, so I had to come home early, hence ruining my plan for the day. And it was at home when I received notice of the supervisor meeting today, so I really needed to get some writing done. But…for some odd reason, after having written only a little bit, I got so tired that I had to sleep again…hmm…this is not looking good for me. So, there goes the day.

I had the weirdest dreams last night. I dreamed that both of my parents were dead, and then were alive. I have no idea.

I did some sort of a monthly budget thingie. Apparently I have no room for frivolous spending.

At first, it seems that I have abandoned all plans of productivity. All play and puzzles with no work…until I actually cleaned my room and the suite late in the evening. It’s not that bad, really, just tedious work. Now I will definitely need to get things done tomorrow… Oh yeah, and I did some exercise for a brief moment, during which I probably hurt my shoulders…hmm…

The Taipei 101 New Year’s display is beautiful. Much much better than the sucky New York City display…

I was quite shocked by the fire alarm this morning. It’s not a constant beeping, only two or three beeps at a time with a few minutes interval in between. I had no idea what was going on, and was awfully annoyed by it. Eventually I went to take out the trash to find them checking up on the fire alarm system…sigh…they could have told us about it so that I didn’t need to start panicking…

5 cities, 36 hours, 2 calendar years, 322.1 kilometres. This would be the trip to Toronto and back, staying over at Eugene’s, wasting a lot of time, and crossing the new year at MamaYen’s. Very tiring, I’d say.

The countdown to the new year thing is kind of…well…disappointing. And anticlimatic. Like, 3…2…1…1…happy new year! Now what? Go home and sleep.

I’m very afraid of what’s coming…the work, that is. Being relaxed for too long now.