Greetings from Mississauga! Yeah, I made this secret last-minute trip to Wayne’s place. Still couldn’t entirely understand why I’m here…probably just want to get out of my depressing life, I guess. We talked until 1:30am this morning, mostly about cars and fellowships (strange combination?) and it was good. Not sure what’s going to happen today…we’ll see. As an aside, I really admire the closeness of Wayne’s family, something that I just don’t have.

TP and Sinnie came by Waterloo yesterday. That was nice. Sinnie had a big stomach now! Well, not that big, only five months into the pregnancy… We all had this big dinner and stuff.

I guess I really should have followed through with that urge to come to Toronto on Wednesday, eh? Sigh…

Today…summer solstice…sunrise 5:41am, sunset 9:05pm. Repeatedly woke up and fell asleep for the entire morning, up until around 1pm. I was just tired. In the morning, I had this sudden urge to just go to Toronto and talk to Samuel, but I didn’t follow through with that. In the afternoon, went to the office for an hour of office hour which nobody was coming anyway. Came home, felt that I needed to go somewhere, because my mind was going crazy with all these questions. Eventually decided on Stratford and off I went…alone. Interesting how it was all cloudy and stuff in Waterloo, but sunny in Stratford… Once there, I saw this biggest swan ever…yikes. But anyway, the main thing was to walk around the river bank, settle down at a bench, and started praying. I just poured out all my questions to God, and trust that He will answer them…eventually. There was a sense of relief, I felt a bit better, and I came home. But I was faced with a test immediately when I received a call from mom and sister. Man, I acted like an idiot with the call, because I just didn’t want to talk to them. That was bad, and my emotions plunged into depression once again. How can that be? It’s just…I don’t know what’s going on anymore. There was a thing for Clarence’s birthday, and even though I didn’t feel like going, I went anyway, for Clarence’s sake. And that’s the day.

It’s very very hard to give up something that I love so much…yet that seems to have always been what God wanted me to do…

There’s a fly in my room that is bugging me right now…but somehow it got itself into the inner tube of my desk’s light and couldn’t get out…oops…it just got out…man, that’s sad. How am I going to sleep then?

Monday…supposedly the day before supervisor meeting and matroidal tutorial. Supposedly the day that I work till I drop. So of course it wasn’t the day it was supposed to be. Woke up late, slept some more, did a tiny bit of work, didn’t go to school at all until the Bible study, came back and still couldn’t do much work, and then slept. I wonder why I could never get anything done.

Tuesday…had trouble with devotion time, kept falling asleep while praying. Matroid class was slightly embarrassing, because I don’t know why I volunteered for the question that I felt was strangely too easy, only to have errors discovered. I guess it’s the participation that counts, not the accuracy, eh? After class, I was plannning to do more supervisory prep, but that was disrupted by David’s full office hour where I sort of helped out to ease the crowd… The meeting was ok, supervisor took the little thing that I’ve done and ran with it.

After the meeting, there were two hours of break, then two hours of proctoring where I almost fell asleep. In the email, Jochen mentioned something about marking right after the exam (two sessions, I proctor the 5-7 session, second session 7-9). I thought that might have meant marking the next day. Nope, he meant after 9pm, just a couple hours before my bedtime…heh. So I had two hours of break, hoping to catch up to some sleep, but wasn’t able to because of phone calls and more emotional breakdowns. But I had to compose myself to go do the marking…which was kind of funny, or laughing and lamenting simultaneously at the students’ incompetence… There was a pizza break, which is nice. The funniest thing is that one student got so bored that on the last page of the exam, he drew a replica of what is on the other side of the exam, so it’s essentially that other side in reverse. It was so good a replica that when I held up that page under the light, I couldn’t even see what was printed on the other side… Anyway, David and I finished slightly earlier and played a game he invented of some sort…we all left at around 12:30. That was quite an experience.

Backtracking once again… Sunday…cfc…kwcac…well, it wasn’t all smooth, really. Initially I get to pick up Samuel for kwcac, but then I got a call asking me to pick up Ice as well, and that I struggled with a lot…but eventually I had to bite my tongue and say that getting people to church is more important than my private interests, so I picked up Ice as well. Once in church, just as I’ve just sat down, I got enlisted to the isolation booth to do computer and sound control…yeah, that was yet another struggle on several fronts, but agreed anyway. I’m still trying to process what exactly did the Lord want me to learn there…that was strangely coincidental…

Anyway, after service, I skipped the church lunch and went to hang out with Samuel, Jackson and Rebecca at Jeff’s place. There were some chatting, a lunch, some shopping, a ton of fast driving, some surprisingly slow driving, a light saber thingie, some wasted alcohol…all in the name of preparing the mccf bbq for the night. Jackson’s clearly-marked bandaids on his forehead were good enough reasons to talk about male aggression, apparently…heh. Somehow I particularly enjoy being in the company of this group of people…something about this group just felt quite different from other groups…I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, though.

Evening bbq…after that big lunch, I really wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t eat much, just a couple of slices of watermelon and half a burnt sausage. The itching for my eyes got really bad, though, so that was kind of painful. Leonard called me David again, this time intentionally like a running joke… Also we had this strangely funny conversation.

Me: “How old are you, Leonard?”
Leonard: “23. How old are you?”
Me: “26.”
Leonard: “Why?”

And I didn’t know how to continue after that… There was foosball thingie during and after the bbq. This guy George and I somehow won two games before losing to Cindy and Feng. Yeah. Anyway, the night ended with me being handed the awkward task of collecting money… I think the whole thing ended at around 10, and I got home at around 11. It was a long day.

Sometimes I’m horrified by the thought that this life that I live, is actually not mine. It should be lived God’s way and not my way. Yet I so want to control what I want to do in my life!

Very frustrated with the academics right now. So much so that I’m starting to think that it’s ok to just quit… Long day ahead.

What, if anything, makes me come alive?

Saturday…the wpc qualifier, otherwise known as the Google US Puzzle Championship. It was really intense, I think…I surprised myself by managing to solve 12 out of the 23 puzzles in the test, possibly scoring 219 points, which would be my highest score ever. Then again, I have to wonder whether it is because my solving skills improved, or it is an easier test this year? I don’t know. In any case, I had a good time solving these puzzles at lightning speed under sweltering heat (yeah, without air con, the room temperature went up to 85 degrees F).

Headed off to the end of the engineering convo after the test was done. It was really hot outside, so my hats off to the grads who stayed in the grad gowns. Stayed around, took some pictures, didn’t talk much. It’s nice, though, I think. For some reason, Leonard still called me David…heh, strange but fun guy. I guess I sort of wanted to stay a bit longer, but for Michael’s sake, went to the fellowship instead.

Fellowship was ok, I guess. The dinner at a downtown Korean restaurant was also ok, but once again, a bit overpriced. I just felt tired the entire day, actually, and just quite depressed about the fall earlier in the day. It was a mix of extreme emotions the entire day, which I had a hard time handling.

Yesterday…morning car maintenance…afternoon nap and convo visitations…evening group dinner. Meanwhile, I was pretty depressed the whole day. It started with the incredibly strange fear about the discrepency between the devotion that I did in the morning and the life that I was living. Sounds familiar? I guess so… I struggled with a lot of questions throughout the day, getting no answers from anywhere. It was quite frustrating to me. Anyway, it was nice to see Wayne and his family again after the convo. Also glad to see Michael here. Yay! The dinner was overpriced and ok, and really, I felt sick the whole day, so it wasn’t pleasant to begin with.

Today…my God, did I really do that? Fell into temptation and sinned, just like my old self… It’s very disheartening. Three months of work from God, all gone now? Starting over again…

Annual WPC qualifier starts in less than an hour. The events of this morning really dampened my enthusiasm for it, though…sigh…

Morning class…afternoon sleep…evening mccf and dinner. Slept a lot, actually…still sick, though. Nice to see Samuel and Wayne again in mccf. Funny how it started with only 4 people… I don’t know if I shared perhaps a bit too much during the Bible study, though…and why is it that Feng’s idea is similar to Francis’? Is it really a common practice to ignore wounds inflicted in the past?

So yeah, I’m still quite depressed. I’m not sure if I’m really connecting with God. I had a lot of trouble and frustration during prayers. I just don’t know how to pray. I wish to be given an opportunity to talk to someone about this……….I don’t want to struggle alone.

Convo season…

Took an evening trip with the car that went nowhere for 45 minutes and 32.7 kilometres. I don’t know…I started to realize that I’m slowly going back to my old ways again. I got depressed, I didn’t know what to make of it, I had no idea what to do, and I had a mental breakdown. But then I returned to God, and once again commit to surrender all of myself to God. I kept saying, I want this, I want that…but God is saying to me, “deny yourself.” O Lord, please take this rebellious soul back to you.

I think part of the problem is that I wasn’t able to discuss my personal problems with anyone. The only person I’m comfortable discussing these with is Samuel, but I would much prefer to talk in person rather than electronically. So I could only wrestle with these problems on my own, and with God, whom I had a hard time hearing from, I have to confess…

To only a God like You…do I give my praise.

Very thankful to the Lord for insisting that I should take a look at the 370 game theory stuffs seriously, for otherwise I wouldn’t know how to handle the crowd at the office hour today… It’s slightly unfortunate that I gave out some wrong information, but I hope that wasn’t too harmful…

Being sick is not fun…

I do realize that I get very jealous when other people get to play the sports that they enjoy, and I can’t… Sorry, Lord, I just don’t trust You enough…

Morning run where I got my best lap time ever…even though I felt like I was only slowly slugging through the road, feeling more pain than ever. I did indeed cancel the supervisor meeting today. Coincidentally, the supervisor passed by my office just as I was opening the door. Strangely enough, that never happened before. For the matroid class today, I finally get to present an exercise, but that’s the exercise that Jim sort of forgot and presumably didn’t care about. I was quite shaky on the board, but got it done regardless. It contains a secret fault, but I guess that will remain a secret for now. Lunch at East Side. Afternoon supposed to be spent on game theory, but I fell asleep after reading on it for a while…

I’ve been sick for more than a week now, and it’s not looking good.

Please, can everyone just stop asking how my thesis is going? It’s going nowhere! Also, can everyone stop asking how long until I graduate? I don’t know! It could be in a year, or two, or even five! Man, I’m so tired of this PhD thingie…

Apparently I take a lot of things personally, and it appears to be true even for playing games…I don’t like winning games…

A day of frustration where I worked on these matroid exercises with the extreme pressure that I need to get something done. I didn’t manage to finish any question until just now. It’s really sad, the whole day of solving, and only one exercise to show for. I tried some of the other exercises, but couldn’t solve them…one is particularly frustrating because I can solve everything up to the very last step, and then I’m stuck. Anyway, this means that I got no time to do research, so maybe I need to cancel the meeting tomorrow.

There are times when I would do something and start to think, I did that just for myself, didn’t I? It’s very obvious that I was doing it for myself and not for God. Jesus asks me to deny myself daily…how hard is that?

I had a strange dream where someone (perhaps God?) knighted me and gave me some strange names… It was a good dream, but I don’t know what to make of it…heh.

Sometimes I just feel so lazy as to avoid the morning devotional time…sometimes I don’t know how to pray anymore, and sometimes I don’t feel like reading the scripture for the day. But I really need it. I really want to connect with God each day so that I don’t go astray during the day…

The song that is now constantly playing in my head…

Holy one, Holy one, all creation bows to worship
Hallelujah, hallelujah, glory in the highest
I will sing, I will sing His praises forevermore
God He reigns, God He reigns, Holy is the Lord of Heaven
God He reigns, God He reigns, Forevermore.

I was very touched by the story that I’ve heard from cfc this morning about this child who had such simple faith and prayed, “Jesus, I want to be your forever friend. And if you can, please come into my heart.” My God, how I have made it so complicated!

The cfc sermon talked about faith. The main point is that Bible is a product of God. But something else caught my mind, and that is, faith is an action. We exercise faith many times each day, and the same faith is required of us in believing God. Not only is faith an action, a consequence of faith is action as well. Just think of the cereal and milk…heh. In the kwcac service today, the sermon is on the feeding of the 5000. The key points: (a) See what Jesus wants me to see; (b) Realize that I have nothing (just look at Moses and what he realized about his communication abilities); (c) Wait patiently for God to act, but actively obey Him so that we don’t miss Him when He acts; (d) Watch and see how the mighty God works! The third point is the one that caught my attention, because that is indeed something I’ve been wondering about, like what it means to wait for God. It’s not a passive waiting thing like a spectator waiting to witness what great things God will do…no, it needs obedience, actively listening to what God is saying, doing things that God asks us to do without even understanding why…but just wait until God acts, and then maybe we will understand.

I’m suddenly struggling with a thought…it’s the thought that I could lead worship for mccf once… It’s kind of an unsettling thought, because I have never led worship before. In fact, it used to be that I would never sing during worship (not anymore, of course). And also, I never knew how to sing, really, and my voice has this cracking feel to it. But now, there is this strange desire to give it a try…last week, when Feng asked me if I could lead worship, I instinctively denied it. I’m wondering where this desire comes from…is it from God, or is it from other sources? Am I holding on to this sabbatical thing so hard that it’s preventing me from serving God as He wants me to? Or am I just attempting to show off myself or something? So anyway, this is one more thing that is being put to my thoughts these days…

Saturday…a lazy stroll around Conestoga where I found out that it’s really boring to be in the mall…alone…spent the afternoon and evening at David Lee’s place, where we played Crazy Machines, Monopoly and Scrabble, and then had a dinner. Once again, David beat me at Scrabble, making my years of experience entirely useless…heh.

Today…I really should give up on the idea that I can do any work on a Sunday…two morning services again, both are thought provoking…passed on a lunch today, surprisingly…slept for most of the afternoon…evening prayer had the largest turnout so far this semester, yet it just felt kind of a let down, like not much serious connection with God for me personally…

Here’s a test of how open one can be: are you able to let someone else use your computer and browse through everything in there without hesitation? For me, it used to be the case that I always have fears whenever someone borrows my computer…but now, the fear is gone.