Frustration seems to be the marquee word to discribe my life these days. It has gotten to a point where I desperately wanted to have some form of violent release… On one hand, I’m glad that it’s still under control. On the other hand, man it feels so bad. For today, the main frustration came from making solutions…it’s not hard, it’s just incredibly tedious, and I just couldn’t do it. I got so tired in the late afternoon that I had this giant headache when dragging myself to the brothers prayer meeting (2 people this time). Anyway, looks like there’s going to be a spending and eating orgy in the next couple of days, with Red Lobster’s dinner tomorrow, trip to Toronto the next morning, come back to mccf and end-of-term dinner at Montana’s…

Random notes…

• My mind keeps a repertoire of gospel music that would just pop up during mentally-idle times like walking around. The latest one comes from last Sunday’s service:
  

  I love you Lord, and I lift my voice
  to worship you, O my soul rejoice.
  Take joy my King, in what You hear
  may I be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear.

  But then I keep thinking (and this is not a new sentiment) that these songs that I sing, I can’t sing it from my heart…

• It’s close to the end of the year, and I have this grand reading plan which will most likely not be realized, but I’ll try anyway. I’ve stopped reading Abide in Christ for a long time now, but I do want to finish the book. There are 31 chapters in the book, so I’ll read one chapter a day for December. The book is pretty deep, though, so I’ll probably only be able to skim through it… Meanwhile, I should do something about the Bible reading plan where I’m still in the January schedule…
• As a result from playing 4 hours of Wii yesterday? My right arm is sore…so is my right shoulder… No squash planned for this week, so I guess I’ll have time to recover…
• Incredibly warm weather these days, reaching up to 15 degrees…where I live, the thermometer shot up to 81 degrees Fahrenheit, which would normally trigger the air conditioning to go off…but I set it to heat now, so it didn’t go off. Meanwhile, it’s snowing and cold in Vancouver…just very very strange. But the snow and the cold is coming my way, apparently, starting on Friday.
• Yeah, I still feel that my prayers (both public and private ones…though more evident in the public than the private) are so fake…even if I’m trying to be truly honest.

I’m grateful to God for…

• time of lunch with David;
• dragging me to brothers prayer meeting;
• giving me good officemates and roommate;
• occupying my mind with worship songs more than tempting thoughts; and
• the incredible blessings that He has given to me which I’ve taken for granted.

Monday: Super-sized supervisor meeting, with two weeks worth of research to be done in 5 hours! Turns out that everything I’ve done for the meeting, I’ve done it all in the first hour of those 5… The meeting was ok, I guess… Usually I don’t eat lunch on Mondays just so that I can get more time working…so I joked that it is kind of a fasting for me…which is kind of true, because I do pray a lot during this day… Meanwhile, I keep pounding myself after realizing my giant selfish heart…I couldn’t get over it. Still feeling a bit of anger as to how I keep messing up my life needlessly. Evening Bible study was on reflection and repentance, which is something I’ve been dealing with heavily this past year. It’s still very difficult. Of course, my lack of devotional life isn’t helping, either… At the end of the day, there’s this feeling of sadness and emptyness…and I just want to cry…

Tuesday: I wanted to do something different from past Tuesdays…usually I just stay at home to take my “sabbath” so-to-speak, but I really wanted to do some work. Well, I eventually did, but not much, since typing up revised simplex is, like the usual simplex, also something not to be desired… In the evening, instead of staying at home and do nothing and possibly get tempted, I decided to go play Wii. It’s still fun, but not as good as last time. Because Ed and Li Zhen have been playing the Wii constantly, they have improved greatly, while I’m still at a beginner level. It’s the kind of sentiment I have in general about games and sports…when played at a recreational level, it’s fun. But when you add tricks to it, making it more advanced, it just doesn’t feel good anymore. Like Scrabble…it’s great to play with friends…but when playing online, the others started to use words that are useful for Scrabble, but impossible to use in real life (qi, anyone?). So yeah, that’s my general gripe about games and sports… Spent the entire evening there, and that was how I escape from life. Plus puzzles. Oh yeah, spent a ton of time on a super hard number link puzzle…

I’m grateful to God for…

• getting me through last-minute research again;
• continuing to reveal the darkness of my heart;
• the good time of gaming at Ed’s place;
• helping me to have Him in my thoughts throughout the days; and
• not giving up on me, even as I have almost given up on Him.

How about this as a start to the day: a fire alarm at 2:30am! Good thing the temperature was not too cold. And I had a surprise when I found out that my fellow TA Robin is also living in this building…quite a strange way to discover this… I had trouble sleeping after we returned after about 25 minutes. Eventually fell asleep, but woke up at a phone call…it was from David, who said that it was 8:40 already. I’m supposed to pick him up for church at 8:30…oops. Looks like I have overslept for church for the first time in years. So I had to put on clothes and rushed out for get David and Betty, eventually finding ourselves about 15 minutes late to cfc. The sermon talks about how I can tell God that I love Him. It’s a brutal re-awakening, as the only thing I could think of was, do I even love God? And that’s a hard question with a possibly heart-breaking answer… The standard switcheroo after the service, and the kwcac joint service was ok…it was slightly funny when the visiting pastor was switching between Mandarin and Cantonese, even within one sentence. Got home, and finally had some food and shower, which I desperately needed… I also found out that there are still 4 hours left on my countdown alarm clock. I was quite puzzled by this, but eventually figured out that when the fire alarm sounded, the first thing I did was to stop the alarm clock. Then realized that it was a fire alarm and turned that off, too. So…no wonder I didn’t wake up on time…

I was supposed to do research in the afternoon, but sleep took over and I couldn’t get anything going after waking up. There was an evening joint prayer meeting in MC, which consisted of all the Christian clubs on campus. This time, there were a lot more people than last term. I was alone at first, but ccf Alex approached me and we had a brief conversation. Later Wilfred arrived and introduced me to Gary. We all prayed on various items in groups of 3 strangers, and switched to a different group for each category. That was kind of uncomfortable for me, certainly, meeting so many strangers in such a short time. I just felt like a fake, you know, like I don’t belong here. Everyone else seems to be so compassionate about God, yet I still refuse to stop doubting. Another thing I felt was this constant reminder of how selfish I am, keeping wanting things for myself, and not for God… The songs they sang, I only recognized two: The Heart of Worship, and Hand That Holds the World. The second one was, coincidentally, something that I started to like in recent days, so it was quite a surprise for me. Squash after prayer meeting was still on. I played with David and Wilfred, and find it harder to keep up with Wilfred…heh. I did manage to stay on the court longer than I thought, though, which might mean that my stamina is improving, or it might mean that we had a less intense game. I managed to injure my left foot, so the string of injuries continues. And that ends this long long day.

I’m grateful to God for…

• the good weather during the fire alarm;
• challenging me in various ways on my spiritual conditions;
• the brief moments of calm after cfc service and the prayer meeting;
• keeping me up in squash; and
• loving me with the same infinite love, even as I’m doubting and falling away.

I’m really hating myself right now. I don’t understand what’s going on around me. I can’t take the pressure from academia. I’m tired of riding on emotional rollercoasters. I couldn’t get myself right with God. I don’t want to end my life, certainly, but boy do I hope to escape from my circumstances…

Hmm…I guess I have expressed similar sentiments many times over the years…so this is nothing new, and yet I still couldn’t cope.

Yeah, I’m not being thankful right now. I would be a hypocrite if I say otherwise.

Again, the only thing on the agenda is making the solutions. And again, I failed to complete that. It’s just too hard… I had an office hour with 3 people coming, and one of them came here for the third or fourth week in a row and kept saying sorry for bugging me…heh. It’s slightly uncomfortable, of course. Came back home to eat and take a short nap before leaving for the prayer meeting. Somehow I always felt very sleepy prior to prayer meeting, and I had this pessimistic feeling that the prayer meeting isn’t useful at all…but, I have to keep reminding myself of Christ’s promise that when two or three gather together in His name, He will be there. However…I’m starting to wonder if indeed I was there for Christ. Anyway, 3 people came, and that’s not too bad. Looks like Li Zhen might not be able to play the Wii for two weeks as punishment from Ed for not coming to the prayer meeting…heh. Played squash afterwards, and I got myself more injuries, of course. This time, I hurt my wrist, peeled skin off my right thumb, my right ankle was feeling funny, my right hip hit the wall in an uncomfortable position, and the nail of my right thumb made a cut in my fourth finger (recently, something similar happened to my left hand). I felt like I was about to collapse at the end of it, actually, and I hadn’t felt like that before. So desperate for food, I guess. Came home to stuff things into my stomach (hence negating any weight loss effects of the squash session), and that about ends the day.

Random notes…

• I’m getting into a sleeping pattern that is very unlike me…sleeping at around 2am, waking up at around 9 or 10am…strange.
• I find myself spending too much time on the computer…I’ve behaved in recent days and didn’t visit temptationland…but on the other hand, spending too much time on warfish and blogging might not be good…
• I really should stop pretending to be a good Christian. I get a bit uncomfortable when, say, during a Bible study or a Biblical discussion, someone had a question, and then people directed the question to me…and I’m like, what did I do? I don’t know God that well!
• Ed continues to play the Wii, and actually claim to have done intense exercise with the boxing game. Again, I’m not surprised that that’s true…
• My other officemates all TA for CO370, and the current mini project for that course deals with image processing. And as a standard for image processing, the famous “Lena” was used as an example. I learned of the story behind Lena back when I was doing an internship at a research centre in Taiwan, so I told them about this story. What ended up happening consists of laughing, nudity, and possibly spoiling a professor’s mind.

I’m grateful to God for…

• keeping the brothers prayer meeting going;
• the interesting things that happen in the office;
• getting me through office hour without a problem;
• the physical exercise; and
• keeping me away from most temptations today.

Yesterday: I was incredibly tired from the previous day’s Wii and squash. It appears that almost all of us who played the Wii got a (and I steal this from the internet) Wiinjury…namely a sore arm…heh. Forced myself to wake up in the morning in order to get the long overdue car maintenance done. Came back home to sleep some more. Managed to get Li Zhen to go to Costco with me, during which we talked a lot about possible myf problems. And yeah, most of it is my fault, really…but I didn’t say that. We bravely hauled up the things I bought to my place (this included 2 cases of bottled water, and with both Li Zhen and I under Wiinjury). Later took Penny to Li Zhen’s place where Penny enjoyed a little bit of Wii herself. After dinner, I finally went to Canada Computers to get a toner for my printer…yay! So now I don’t have to do the print-and-shake thingie. The three of us then went to the in-depth Bible study/listening, where I was once again reminded of some of the spiritual lessons that I’ve learned, and also reminded of how inconceivably rude Francis can be…sigh… Anyway, that’s about it for the supervisor-meeting-free day.

Today: The only thing on the agenda was making solutions…but that didn’t go well when (a) I woke up late, and (b) the assignment was incredibly difficult. After (a), I did manage to cook an elaborate 2-course meal (alright, elaborate for me) after waking up, so that’s something that I haven’t done in a long time (4 months, maybe?). Somehow I kept delaying going to school because so many things are bothering me…one is an idea for a game show, another is how hateful thoughts on Francis kept creeping up, and other things. Eventually dragged myself to the office, only to find (b). Took a long time to finish the “easier” problems 1 & 2, and didn’t even get a start on 3. Looks like my plan to start research on Wednesday will fail once again… Anyway, officemates Tony and David are puzzle fans, so it was fun when we had puzzling discussions, which do occur quite often since I always have a few puzzles on my desk. Came home, did nothing interesting, and that’s about it for the day. By the way, internet was down since around noon…so I had to rely on the unreliable wireless connection…

I’m grateful to God for…

• connecting with Li Zhen;
• keeping me busy so I don’t focus on sinning;
• getting the car maintenance and shopping done;
• guiding me in realizing that I need a different and more realistic view of Him; and
• the opportunity for me to help Penny out with VB.

Two morning services. Nothing intersting to say about them, unfortunately. Had a strange sandwich + potato salad lunch provided by church, which wasn’t really appetizing, but that’s kind of expected. Sent Kai & Sophie to New City Supermarket to buy stuffs, where I ended up getting “empty heart vegetable” and garlic…needless to say, Kai & Sophie got way more than that. Went to Ed’s place to play his new Wii…wheeeee! Yes, Ed spent 8 hours lining up the night before to get the Wii, and didn’t sleep the whole day. Well, what can I say…the Wii is fantastic! I never had such a good time playing video console games. We just played the sports games that came with the console. Spent most of the time on tennis, which was pretty funny, especially when Ingrid was swinging the thingie so wildly that she actually hit me…oops. I was the first to manage a killer serve…heh. Then there was the impossible baseball game, the bowling game where I scored 174 (far far more than real life), the golf game where Ed and I tied for triple bogey on an “easy” 3-hold course, and the boxing game where (unfortunately) we can only play one person at a time. Playing these games definitely constitute some minor exercise, especially if you go very intense…looks like boxing is the one that would burn the most calories, which is not a surprise. Came back for a quick dinner before heading out for prayer meeting (back down to 2 people again), and squash. David didn’t come this time, but Wilfred and I bumped into John and Kai at the court that we signed up for…heh. John is crazy! (But he’s kind of helpful, and wanted to help me in improving.) Kai is so good…and it was his first time playing! Sigh…I’m no good. Anyway, amidst the snow, I sent John and Kai home, and that was it for this gamey day…

Random notes…

• Is it true that in the world of instant messaging or otherwise, a lot of people would write “lol” without actually laughing out loud?
• I had 8 warfish games waiting for me when I first got home at around 6pm. It was hard but very fun to play all these games, keeping track of which board is which…
• I promised one new injury for every squash session, and this time, it seems to be my heart that almost couldn’t take it anymore…that didn’t feel good at all. By the way, I figured out this pattern where I would get really tired really quick initially, but after alternating between some playing and resting, I was actually able to bounce around at the end and feeling quite active in playing…
• According to the Wii Sports training exercises, Ed’s Wii fitness age is 71, and mine’s 64. So much for being old…
• I figured out something spiritually very elementary…sometimes, I don’t get because I don’t ask.

I’m grateful to God for…

• this wonderful day of activities;
• the connections made with Ed Kai John;
• making me well for physical exercise;
• continuing to challenge me in various spiritual issues; and
• keeping me away from depression for most of the day.

Friday: Felt like I wasted the day to meaningless stuffs, running around doing TA work. Got tired pretty quickly. Lunch with David & Betty, afternoon mccf with only 9 people (but somehow I managed to say things that are semi-sensible, as John would agree), evening dinner at plaza pho (strange meal and conversations). Saturday: Wasted the whole morning and afternoon to puzzles and stuff. Evening church family event where I got very little to eat, and was locked up in the tech room for most of the time, suffocating with Ed and Li Zhen (and for a few moments Tim). That ended at around 9:15, and we still bravely went ahead with the coworkers meeting, which ended at almost 12…sigh…why does it always have to be so long? Meanwhile, there was frost on the car windshield…first time of the season!

Random notes…

• I’ve gone warfish crazy as well…oops.
• I wonder why I still feel that I need to be accepted by people? Especially with the John-Tim-Danny-Forest gang, even though they have pretty much accepted me already? Need to remember not to get attached to people…
• Things would be so much better and much more comfortable if Francis is not around.
• No, I’m not ok. But maybe I’m just choosing to be not ok.
• Tired of my mom and other people’s matchmaking things… Even worse is my mom saying something about my nonresponsiveness to the “others” is hurting her image or something like that… Seriously.

I’m grateful to God for…

• somehow almost always able to catch Furino just at the right time;
• continuing to stir up spiritual questions in me…;
• the company I have in David;
• having Harry and Steven joining the myf coworkers team; and
• keeping me safe and sound in everything.

Today: Woke up kind of later than I wanted… Decided to bake chicken drumsticks that I bought on Sunday. And it went well, and it tasted good…there was just one hiccup: I forgot that the mittens used for taking the baking tray out of the oven were gone… So I had to improvise a bit, and it was fine, albeit slightly more dangerous. Went to school to finally face the task of typing up simplex method…the first one was not entirely horrible, some small fractions here and there made the calculations slightly harder. But the second one…boy, that was a killer. I got fractions like 39/62 all over the place…and find that I got it wrong. I was so frustrated that I had to go ask for help from the other TAs. Robin came through there…turns out that I picked a bad entering variable. If I had follow his choice for it, it would have been a lot easier (still with fractions, but “tamer”…). So thanks Robin! Got it done, came home, and I didn’t do anything worth noting…

Random notes…(and I do have lots of them)

• Yesterday in the office, Berkant was trying to figure out the voicemail system in our office, which we’ve never used previously. He did indeed figure out how to do that, and found over 25 messages in there. Among them, one that caught all of us by surprise…it was from April of this year, and from a guy named Scott something (I couldn’t catch his last name) from Discovery Channel! Apparently he found a picture of Taipei 101 at night that I put on this site, and wanted to use it for an “educational documentary”! From the phone number he left, it seems that this would be the Discovery Channel from the U.S. as it is from Maryland. So anyway, that’s kind of exciting…too bad it’s too late for that now, I presume. Ironically, I was in Taiwan when he left his message…
• I find a lot of painful memories from the past swell up recently. I tried to escape it by either doing puzzles, or watching TV, or sinning. Instead of going to pray and read the Word of God…it’s bugging me a lot how this is happening like that…
• An update on the “breaking the loop” puzzle that I’ve mentioned previously… I got officemate Tony to try to solve it, but it was indeed too difficult. So instead of giving only 2 breakpoints, I added 3, and that made the puzzle much more manageable. It turns the puzzle from being an extreme trial-and-error one to a more logic-based one, and I’m quite happy with the result. The updated puzzle is here. A reminder about the rules: The solution consists of a loop that travels through every grid node, and 16 breakpoints (some of which are shown as “x”s in the grid). There are exactly two breakpoints in each row and column. The breakpoints divide the loop into 16 pieces, and the midpoint of all 16 pieces are shown as dots in the grid.
• More reflections on friendships…as much as I enjoyed having many friends around me right now, there is one thing I’m very sad about…and it is the fact that if I’m depressed, disappointed, or troubled, I can’t talk to any one of them about it… I can only keep it inside myself, or write a vague edition here, or maybe talk on the internet…but it would be so much better to talk to people in person, you know?
• I had a lot of weird dreams lately. One involved going to Spain for an unknown puzzle competition, and everything went wrong prior to going…including not able to do the laundry, no food for breakfast, going to the wrong terminal, missing a crucial flight… Another dream was a short one that involved Karel (yeah, I don’t know why), where, like in real life, he didn’t say much… One final dream was another typical amazing race dream…I was partnered with Byron from the Canadian wpc team to do The Amazing Race, and we were philiminated at the end of it… One of the tasks was eating a lot of good dim sum…so I’m not sure where that came from.
• While eating breakfast/lunch this morning, I turned on the TV and watched The Price is Right. And Scott ran out of his room saying, “is that Bob Barker?!” Turns out that Scott hasn’t seen the show for a while now, and thought that Bob has retired already. It triggered his “childhood memory”…heh. Nice.
• Man, a phone call from mom reminded me of how much I hated going to Taiwan…and here I am, going to Taiwan again this December… Can I cancel my tickets?
• I do find myself not as punctual as I used to be. I got to quite a few events late recently…granted, I wasn’t late by that much, usually just 2 or 3 minutes, but still…unusual. Then again, sometimes I just don’t care anymore…many people will be late, so why should I be on time and wait for them?
• Boy, this is such a long list of random notes, eh?

I’m grateful to God for…

• keeping life very interesting, certainly…even if there’s more sadness than joy;
• helping me finish typing the solutions;
• “You see the depths of my heart and still love me the same”;
• not leaving me alone even as I try very hard to flee; and
• blessing me so that I can put food on the table everyday.

Three days, three failures…can it get any worse than that? I suppose it could. But let’s backtrack a little… Tuesday: The predetermined “I won’t do anything” day. Well, somehow, my mind was plagued with painful memories of the past that involved Francis. I wanted to stop, but I can’t. Even if I try to distract myself with other things like doing puzzles, I still couldn’t stop. I keep having these very bad thoughts of him. I wanted to say, alright, it’s over, just drop it already. But that seemed like an extreme case of “easier said than done.” Anyway, went to take a long-overdue haircut in the afternoon. Came home to sleep past the pre-study, so I didn’t go to that. The evening was a blur. And that was the day.

Wednesday: The only thing that I had to do was to type up the solutions. But, with two simplex questions in the mix, it was kind of hard to get motivated. There was office hour where two people came. There was eating out for a very late lunch on my own. Then gave up writing the solutions after 5. Evening prayer meeting was ok, I guess…we had 4 people, which is a lot. But…something just didn’t feel right… Squash after prayer meeting was really tiring, actually…I was kind of hungry and I was very frustrated about not being able to hit the ball…and I got another injury, this time around the heels… Meanwhile, the injury at the metacarpal still hasn’t healed, so that made things a bit painful. I find that when I play on my own or with Betty, I was just not able to play well…but if I play with David, somehow there would be energy in my to hit the ball harder and run around and stuff…strange. During squash, Betty asked me if I want to join them in a “surprise” midnight party for David’s birthday the next day. I said yes, but when I got home, I was so tired, and I was reminded of a conversation how David doesn’t like this kind of thing…so I said no and didn’t go.

I’m grateful to God for…

• revealing more of the darkness in my heart;
• bringing the brothers to the prayer meeting;
• testing my patience in various situations;
• giving me this opportunity for physical exercise; and
• the sharp reminder of what it takes to follow Christ…

I just feel very ashamed of myself today (that seems to be a common theme in my life, apparently). It’s like I keep myself away from God, yet I still ask Him to help me on supervisor meeting day… Yes, He came through each and every time, but after each and every time, I run away from Him and start to have doubts. That is very terrible, and disheartening to me.

Random notes…

• There’s this sense of despair that I want to do better, whether it be in spirituality or work ethic or mental sharpness or physical fitness…yet at the same time I just want to be lazy.
• There’s that in-depth Bible study (or rather, listening) which talked more about devotional reading. I was reminded of how it used to be, and the joy from the devotions, and how I’ve pretty much stopped now…I feel sort of excited about wanting to go back to that, but somehow I’m sure I would never start…sigh…there’s the negativity again… Meanwhile, during the Bible study, Li Zhen started a puzzle that I would never do, so, good for him on solving something I’m not good at…heh.
• You know, I definitely want to keep in touch with friends who have moved on…yet the physical distance just seems too great to overcome, not even the internet can close the gap…

I’m grateful to God for…

• leading me on in the research work once again;
• the painful reminder about devotions;
• keeping my body going through the day, despite the tiredness and the pain;
• stirring up these spiritual problems in me to deal with; and
• keeping me alive, even though I’m so fruitless.

Morning church that felt more like routine than anything… Took Kai and Sophie grocery shopping after church, which, surprisingly, took an hour to finish…but it was always funny to see these two shopping together. Supposed to do research in the afternoon, ended up sleeping over it. Evening prayer meeting saw another record high attendance (for this semester anyway), with 5. The post-prayer-meeting squash had 7…woooo… We actually occupied 3 courts at one point… But anyway, I find myself getting worse and worse at squash, so why did I even buy a racquet anyway? Tomorrow is going to be another crazy stressful day…having done no research work this week so far…

Random notes…

• I guess I have been in a kind of extreme mood swing these days…I could get hyper one moment, and then very depressed the very next moment. This is reminiscent of the late-winter-semester days. I put that up as prayer request to the fellowships…
• One note from the cfc sermon this morning…Jeff was talking about how to help each other grow. One of the things he mentioned was something from psychological studies, which is 8-10 meaningful touches each day… Ah…I knew it…
• I accidentally cut my fourth finger (is that called the ring finger?) with the nail from my thumb on the left hand…oops. And, I never knew this kind of thing could happen…

I’m grateful to God for…

• the encouraging testimony from Pastor Kaan;
• the prayers of family and friends for me;
• helping me realize one applicable aspect of Philippians 3:13 “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead”;
• the time spent with Kai Sophie today, which is something that’s not happening next term; and
• getting me to be slightly accepting squash…

Friday: Seems too coincidental that when I bumped into Nathan when I was thinking about him, and bumped into Brendan while he’s leaving schol when I was looking for him…strange. But anyway, the assignment distribution hit a snag because I couldn’t find Furino…oh well. Went to the back-from-fire Bubble Tease for lunch with David Betty, and it wasn’t too bad, I guess. Went to Conestoga with them afterwards where I got a squash racquet…and forced myself to play squash for the rest of my life (or the racquet’s life). Evening mccf was ok, I guess…with the highlight being John claiming that he doesn’t know me…heh. There was a ton of food at Mikey’s, then a 2-hour mccf meeting that felt kind of strange…going around in circles…with the highlight being, Wilfred said that the cccf has this one week Bible study, next week a practical application of the previous week’s Bible study…and I said that since our Bible study this week is on “new ambition,” next week, we try to be ambitious… I didn’t think it was that funny, but somehow Jeff had a hard time to stop laughing…heh. Anyway, that’s about it for the seemingly crazy day.

Saturday: I wanted to do research work in the morning, but couldn’t get myself to do it. Instead, I turned to sinning against God and got myself really depressed. The depression continued through the fellowship, where I was in a cynical mood, really didn’t want to learn anything, looking at everything as if it doesn’t make sense. But things improved after fellowship when we went for dinner. Started with telling the story of my “matchmaking disaster” to Danny, which sparked some discussion, I think. At the dinner table, it was great to have interactions with Danny Li Zhen Forest Brian, and that lifted my spirits quite a bit. So that’s a nice end to the day, I guess.

I’m grateful to God for…

• the time spent with David and Betty;
• the strange timing of bumping into people at the right time;
• helping me get my spirits up through myfers;
• picking me up time after time when I hit rock bottom; and
• leading us in the mccf and myf.

In the morning, I finally solved that difficult sudoku from yesterday! Boy, that was way too hard…but it feels good to have finally done that. Anyway, I was supposed to get a haircut and make some phone calls, but assignment solution beckons, and I had to go to the office to work on that. I’ve been procrastinating on it quite a bit since I really didn’t want to (a) do and (b) type up simplex method… Eventually got that done, though (probably taking more time than necessary), switching between solution making and puzzle solving…oops. Came home and was once again, lured into temptationland (better known as youtube)…oops. I mean, even though nothing major happened, just the fact that I went there was (I believe) a direct rebellion against God’s command for me, so I guess my heart has already sinned that way…sigh… Anyway, evening squash with David alone. I find it hard to get started in the beginning, but after a break, I was able to just keep going for a long time…however, after another break, I was just on the brink of collapsing…heh. And of course, another session of squash meant another round of injuries for me…this time it may have been something to do with my middle finger, and something to do with the right side of my waist…oh well, the usual then.

Random notes…

• How can a simple innocent conversation aimed at helping my sister ended up driving me crazy?
• It’s been about a month since I went to the wpc in Bulgaria…and I’m still procrastinating on writing up a report…oops. My memory is fading fast these days…
• Being a Christian, I’m supposed to give up a lot of things for God, when He asked of them. One of the more painful things that He asked for is my dream, and boy do I have a hard time giving it up, even though I knew it’s good for me. God is good, after all…but…but…sigh… I’m still a baby Christian.

I’m grateful to God for…

• the improving physical condition;
• pushing me through the necessary work;
• providing more than enough grace for me, even if I don’t appreciate it;
• the joy of puzzling; and
• carrying me through these confusing times.

It was yet another strange day. Woke up late, couldn’t even finish a level 7 (out of 10) sudoku, and went to school. At school, I was frantically making solutions for both the midterm and the assignment…well, not the assignment, as I didn’t even want to start to type out the simplex method. While making solutions, however, one person came in and ask for a CO350 TA. I said it’s me, but it wasn’t my office hour…a second later, I realized that indeed it was my office hour, and I accidentally bumped my head on the chalk tray of the blackboard…oops. Something’s wrong with me, I said. Evening prayer with only two people again…but at least it’s still going. Came home to talk to Samuel on msn because somehow I felt desperate to talk to him (I don’t know why)…I felt better after the chat, however, so that’s good. And that ends the day.

Random notes…

• So apparently that “away” problem with my fake msn isn’t fixed yet…sigh… So I may still be seen as “away” even though I’m there. That’s not good…
• I started to make a “breaking the loop” puzzle since Monday. I think I have made one that is a bit challenging…but I wasn’t sure if the solution is unique. So I tried to solve it a couple of times, wasting a lot of time, obviously, and I think I got it right, so here it is. Tony was particularly excited about it, I don’t know why…heh. Anyway, the instruction is complicated: draw a single closed loop going through all the grid nodes. In addition, break the loop into 16 pieces using 16 break points (some are shown as “x”s in the diagram), where there must be exactly two break points in each row and column of nodes. The middle point of all 16 pieces are shown as dots.
• More on Sunday’s squash…apparently I might have heard David saying something about him being tired after playing with Wilfred, but I wasn’t sure…heh. Anyway, more injury came my way with something wrong with the metacarpus…
• I’m thinking quite a bit about relationship with God. It’s easy to say that yes, God does exist, and God created everything, and God is here. But I find it difficult to realize what it means to have a relationship with God. I somehow just don’t get it…it’s bugging me a lot…
• David has gone warfish crazy, and apparently I’m starting to catch on…oops.

I’m grateful to God for…

• His grace that keeps the brothers prayer meeting going;
• this new adventure of creating a puzzle;
• continuing to pull me towards Him and not giving up;
• the warm comfortable weather these days; and
• exposing my hypocrisy in spiritual matters.