Saturday…10.5 hours, 4 cities, 288.6 kilometres. First trip to Toronto since I was back. Originally this was supposed to be a private affair, which then turned into a plan of a convoy of 2 cars, and then turned into my lonely adventure… But that’s good, I get to visit Peter, have a nice chat, go shopping, and have a dinner. Too bad the bowling place was just too full… Picked up David on the way back. The weather was weird…cloudy, windy, sunny, rainy, sometimes warm, sometimes cold, all that jazz. By the end of it, I was Exhausted, needless to say.

Sunday…woke up at 5 again, this time decided to go for a run…which I haven’t done in years, quite frankly. I think I managed to make a slow jog for about 3/5 of the Ring Road, so that’s not too bad. A lot of my muscles hurt right now, though, making the task of walking a bit difficult. Went to CFC for the first time, and that was interesting. Parable of the lost sons. I think I used to be this younger brother on the inside, and the older brother on the outside…and both are bad… Came home, called mom because it was her day, then prayed and accidentally fell asleep. Woke up by a phone call from Li Zhen at around 12, 15 minutes after the KWCAC service started…oops. Went there, drove Li Zhen to buy flowers, then back… Afternoon lunch was barely bearable. Tried to sleep after coming home, only to be woken up by Francis on the phone, telling me to go drink bubble tea… 8 people there, played mini-Scrabble twice. Off to mccf prayer meeting, where all 3 present are myf people as well…so yeah, a joint prayer meeting, apparently. Then came home and crashed on the bed. So that’s the unusually busy Sunday that has been…with no school work done…

This morning…woke up at 5…again! This time, prayer and reading. Now waiting for laundry to be dried…yeah, I have no clean underwears and socks left…for a few days already…

Thursday…huge rain showers…really muddy road outside…matroid class where I’ve discovered that I did too few exercises…lunch with Carlos and Irene…afternoon of very slow progress…mccf Bible study with 8 people…dinner at Border City (at least that’s my translation). Friday…once again, unable to find lunch buddies, which was pretty frustrating…afternoon of extremely slow progress…a nap to restore my jetlagging…evening love feast of strange food. Today…should be off to Toronto.

It’s only in a conversation with Carlos and Tony could we, within a couple of minutes, seamlessly take the topic from Macs to the expanding universe.

It’s kind of disheartening that for once, I want to follow a commandment of Jesus, only to hit a wall that is Francis…sigh…

One song from yesterday that I’ve forgotten for a while now, and is currently running in my head…

Jesus, all for Jesus
All I am, and have
And ever hope to be

All of my ambitions, hopes, and plans
I surrender these into Your hand

For it’s only in Your will that I am free
For it’s only in Your will that I am free

Jesus, all for Jesus
All I am, and have
And ever hope to be.

Originally, I was really excited about the possibility of having weekend trips to visit people this term. But now, this interest has faded dramatically…perhaps it’s because of the stressful workload from school, or it’s because I suddenly lost my courage to do things…in any case, it’s kind of disappointing.

Woke up at 5am again this morning, and a thunderstorm was greeting me. I spent an hour on prayer and on the Word, and it was a good time. Even though I’ve only studied one verse (still stuck in Psalm 19), it was already very good. Maybe this waking up at 5am thing isn’t such a bad thing…

Why do I create unnecessarily pain for myself? Finding lunch isn’t supposed to be a pain…

After flip flopping a few times, I finally decided to go to that Paul Baloche-Robin Mark worship concert thingie…alone. I don’t like answering questions such as what do I think about it, because usually I have no strong opinions on this kind of thing. The more important question is, what does God think about it? And I don’t know. My heart was half in, half out, so that wasn’t so good. I think familiarity plays a big role…like, if I’m familiar with the song, then I can follow along quite nicely…if not, then the time was spent familiarizing with the song… Anyway, new experience for me.

Today…woke up at 5am…spent some time on prayer and meditating on the Word…tried to study matroids and failed…afternoon trip to UW Kitchener…concert…back home…and now very very tired.

Yesterday…started with an early morning jetlag session, where I woke up at around 2 and couldn’t sleep again. I was bothered by more thoughts, and eventually wrote a long email to the set of coworkers for no particular reason. It seems that I like writing long emails these days, eh? Anyway, a brief nap later, it was off to school for the first matroid class. I didn’t quite get it, but that’s ok. Supervisor meeting was short and awkward, but that’s ok. Later wandered around fifth floor MC and bumped into Jochen, and we had our TA meeting there and then. Wandered into Tony’s office to chat about the matroids class, which is later joined by Carlos (to chat about other things, e.g. fun customs stories). Got home, sleep, wasted the evening, and that was it for the day.

I’m going to try something that requires a lot of courage today…may the Lord be with me.

If something you’ve done wrong is being used by God to turn into something useful and nice which glorifies God, that still does not mean that what you’ve done is right…

Woke up with 6 hours of sleep…strange phone call…accidentally discovering that I have a new officemate…discovering that I have two new officemates…lunch with David & Li Zhen…trying hard and failed to stay awake in the office in the afternoon…did very little work…Bible study…being disappointed by Francis, again…dinner at Keg. Strange day it was, the first full day in Waterloo…

I felt that the Bible study went a bit too fast…or rather, my mind works too slowly. I guess I just want to be careful about saying things nowadays…I only want to say things that I can relate to personally, not just as something I’ve learned before but I don’t have experience of.

There are a lot of life’s supposedly enjoyment that I really don’t appreciate. For example, Taiwanese food, massages, hot springs (or “dip in soup” as they call it), and now, steak.

A 25-hour journey from the church in Taipei to my place in Waterloo…boy was it a long and interesting one. Travel from church to airport started at 11.5am local time, and involves my whole family plus mesister’s boyfriend (soon to be part of the family?…heh). The flight to Vancouver was very bumpy, but I felt ok with it. The interesting thing is the guy sitting beside me started talking to me from the moment he sat down, and by the end of the flight, I’ve got a new friend…first time it has happened. The customs and the luggage were extremely quick, like it has never happened that way before… In Vancouver, Mo, Stan and Gini came to spend some time with me, going to Richmond for a meal and then getting lost everywhere…heh. It’s so nice to spend the 5-hour layover this way. I pretty much passed out for the flight from Vancouver to Toronto, so it felt pretty short. In Toronto, we arrived early (9:40pm as opposed to 10pm), but the luggage didn’t arrive until 10:40pm. I was surprised and delighted that Clarence and Li Zhen came to pick me up (Mary came as well, but didn’t pick me up as planned…heh). And I drove home, with just enough energy, and with a detour through McD’s and Sobey’s… By the time I got home, it was around 12.5am here. So there it is, my journey back to Waterloo…

Even something as simple as toothbrush and toothpaste showed God’s blessing. Here’s the thing: I needed to replace my toothbrush and add stock to my toothpaste soon, because the ones that I brought back from Taiwan are trashworthy. Coming back to Waterloo, Clarence decided that he wanted to go to Sobey’s to get toothbrush and toothpaste (strange request, I’d think?), and I thought I might as well go with that and buy some myself. Even as we were inside the store, I had a brief moment where I thought maybe I’ll just buy them later…but decided to buy them there anyway. Then I came home, and discovered that I’ve actually forgotten to bring my toothbrush and toothpaste from Taiwan…so, if any one step in the above process had gone wrong, I wouldn’t have clean teeth right now…heh. I don’t know, I just felt like that’s too strange a coincidence that it must have been that God wanted me to have clean teeth…

Ok, start of my supposedly stressful day which will not be stressful if only I can rely wholly on Jesus…

Boy, what a whirlwind final two days that I’ve had… In simple terms, it involved my family, a secluded mountain retreat, Japanese costumes, tatame, good meals, painful massages, hot springs, nudity, paintball, visiting grandmother, driving a treacherous mountain road, driving with almost no gas (and almost no gas station), driving with almost no room to spare on each side, driving while being lost, all dominated by painful thoughts of my problems back in Canada… It’s a very tiring trip. Sure the experiences were interesting…but, I’m not sure that I fully appreciate the family time that we were supposedly having.

A few leftover notes from the past… I’m having problems with love and forgiveness…I have trouble relate to the recent chapter that I’m reading in Abide in Christ, especially when the author keeps referring to the first time that I have came to Christ, which I don’t remember…I love Globe Trekker, especially when Ian is on…I may be the only person who can have a lot of cash ($5000 in NTD), and yet unable to spend it…I got addicted to this game called Crazy Machines, which unfortunately I won’t be able to play on my own computer…I am weary of this world that I live in, and I wish to just disappear from it (at least for a while)…I’m kind of stuck on Psalm 19, with its beautiful words which I cannot comprehend fully even remotely…Is it even possible that one can be so busy that he is not able to spend time in prayer and reading God’s words everyday?

Final thought from Taiwan: Goodbye, little island. I won’t miss the environment, but I will miss the people I’ve met. I feel that I did not do whatever it is that God wants me to do here, because I may have shut off the voice from the Holy Spirit a few times. And for that, I feel painfully sorry to the Lord. There were some good times, there were some bad times, but I felt that the bad overpowered the good. Anyway, may the Lord lead the way to Waterloo, help me face the problems there, and not forget about my connections here. Oh yeah, I’ll definitely miss the trains here…

Once again, I’ve wasted a lot of time yesterday, mainly to sleep, staring into space, television, puzzles, and more staring into space. Sure there was a brief excusion to two bookstores and a Chinese restaurant whose food tastes like Chinese restaurant in Waterloo…but other than that, nothing interesting.

Trying desperately to stay away from possibilities of temptations. They’re everywhere. But most of all, it’s all in my mind…

Still struggling with faith.

Backtracking a little bit… Saturday: skating at a tiny rink with rough ice and a ton of people…evening fellowship that was both funny and good…surprise tour of the 101 district at night with a Starbucks vanilla frap. Sunday: church…extremely uncomfortable lunch that was matchmaking in disguise (which I didn’t know)…nothing for the evening. Monday: two moderately uncomfortable meals, making the stomach way too full. Tuesday: making my mom angry in the morning…pray in the afternoon…went out with Waterloo friends in the evening.

Today: 9 hours outside, half of it spent on transportation, the other half spent with mesister’s boyfriend! We actually managed to sit at a small restaurant to eat and talk for about 3.5 hours. In it, we shared a ton of our stories, and it was good. Things are hopeful that he will become my future brother-in-law…heh.

Much more relaxed now. Sure the tendency to worry and think attempted to come back, sure the temptations attempted to barge in, but they didn’t find a door open for them…at least I hope not…

I’m thinking of this story from the Bible where Jesus and His disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee on a boat. Midway through, there was a great storm. The disciples panicked while Jesus slept like a baby. Here I am in the middle of a life storm, and I panicked just like the disciples… So now I can hear Jesus’ soft rebukes to me: “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?” “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” “Where is your faith?” Don’t I believe that I can have peace in the midst of a storm? Don’t I believe that with a word, Jesus can calm the storm? Why don’t I believe?

Another Biblical question that comes into mind: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

I stayed at home most of the day, after having angered my mom and made myself depressed and stuff. The evening was spent with Jack and Bobby (isn’t that the name of a TV show?), and we had a good time, I think. Nice to catch up with old friends. Tomorrow: catching up with mesister’s boyfriend!

This is what happens when something bothers me…I start thinking about it over and over, paralyzing my whole being, even if thinking about it doesn’t help at all.

Last week here…I don’t know, as much as I don’t want to stay here, I don’t want to go back to Waterloo, either. It’s just too much pain to bear either way.

Can I say that I’m very tired of these meaningless meals?