Trying to catch up again…I guess I’m sort of in a pretty bad mood these days… Monday: The dreaded supervisor meeting day, where I had to type a lot of things up. Well, the plan was to type for 3 hours, do research for 3 hours, and that should suffice. What ended up happening was that I typed for 5 hours, do research for less than an hour…but somehow, I got what I wanted to do done. It was frantic, but somehow it was ok. And now, more work for the next meeting…yikes… Went to East Side Marios with Tony and Irene for dinner afterwards, and it was good to get back to the C&O social life, I guess…funny how Irene wanted that free Uno so badly… Took it easy for the evening…maybe too easy.

Tuesday: Well, I even warned myself to be careful with temptations after this big success the day before…and it was futile… It was a long night (or rather, morning) of struggling, and eventually failed again. I went to the pre-study, and the material talked about ambitions, like my own ambition and God’s ambition. And I keep thinking, why do I keep wanting to please my eyes and my body instead of to please God? So that was the question that keeps pounding me over and over…and I don’t know. Got invited to Ed’s place to play games in the evening. I went because quite frankly, I needed a break. We watched Wheel, Millionaire and J! together, and somehow they think that I know everything…well, the D __ __ __ __ T bonus in wheel was kind of an accident solve for me, I guess. Played tower of blocks, darts (I won 2 out of 3), pool (I won 0 out of 2), and checkers (1 lost, 1 draw). Bumped into Tim again (seems like he’s there whenever I’m there…heh). And that about ends the strange day.

I’m grateful to God for…

• His help with the preparation for supervisor meeting;
• continuing to challenge me with a lot of things;
• the time spent with Tony and Irene Monday evening, and Ed Tuesday evening;
• His great blessings for mccf; and
• His overwhelming forgiveness for me.

It’s been a while since I received a hard-hitting sermon at cfc, and I got that today. The topic is basically selfishness. And indeed, I mentioned awareness of my own selfishness not too long ago…it’s very distressing. I reap what I sow, and it seems that I’m sowing my sinful desires these days…not good. The idea of “practice the presence of God” was also brought up, which shook me a little since that was precisely the topic for yesterday’s Bible study, and I was just thinking I’m such a hypocrite for leading such a Bible study without having a hint of applying that to my own life. Also, the idea of not giving up on doing good…well, for a failed example of that, see me. So yeah…hard stuffs. Then at kwcac service, the topic is holding back the tongue…and the main point is that we shouldn’t discuss others behind their backs…and yeah, I guess it’s so easy to criticize others without them knowing…so…more hard stuffs. After the service, we had a group of us sitting in the low chairs of the children’s room, eating lunch. That was fun (and funny), and later, some puzzle games that I received somehow engaged them greatly…heh. So it looks like even though I’m far older than this group of young brothers, I’m still kind of being accepted by them, which is kind of shocking to me, I guess. Afternoon sleep…evening prayer meeting (record number of people showed up…which is 4)…squash…and I’m done for the day.

Random notes…

• I guess I’m slightly upset that an email that I’ve sent to the myf coworkers was largely ignored. But that’s ok, I guess. I don’t want to boost my pride and arrogance, certainly.
• Ah…squash… I’m thankful to David that he is willing to play with beginners like Betty and I. I’m sure that he would rather play with more experienced players like Samuel and Wilfred (just like I would prefer to play with David rather than Betty), but he still plays with us, so that’s very generous of him to do this.
• Yes, I’m officially leaving the heavy research burden stuffs to tomorrow again…yikes. That’s not good.

I’m grateful to God for…

• His stern reminders of my failings through the sermons today;
• the camaraderie among the new new myfers;
• David’s willingness to play squash with me;
• helping me treasure the time that I spend with friends; and
• this reminder that He is willing to listen to me if I just talk to Him honestly.

Today’s plan was simple. Prepare the notes for the Bible study, and lead the Bible study. Well, I kept procrastinating on the notes, not getting it finished until like 2.5pm…so that didn’t leave a lot of time, I guess. Here’s another strange miracle…my printer is running out of toner, so after printing every 3 or 4 copies of the notes, I have to take the toner out, shake it a bit, put it back in, and then I can get fresh printings again. Even with this tedious process, somehow I decided that I would print 20 copies. And long and behold, there were exactly 20 people at the fellowship! This was exactly what happened during the last Bible study that I prepared…it’s so amazingly coincidental that it just blows my mind…how can I still refuse God, I asked myself? Anyway, the Bible study itself went a lot better than I thought. I love the people that I had in my group, they’re awesome. There was a lot of positive energy, and we had fun, including Danny rapping to Psalm 139…hehehehe. Hopefully the message (however simple it might be) had been pounded into these guys (and me)… I have to keep reminding myself of how this is all God’s work, and I’m only an instrument for His use… (Bonus: handout and brief leaders’ notes.)

Random notes…

• Anyone going to apply for the Canadian version of Deal or No Deal? I can be the silent supporter!
• I keep having two conflicting feelings that are battling for my mind…one is the despair that comes from knowing that I’m so behind in preparing for Monday’s supervisor meeting…the other is the hope in trusting God that He will take care of it. Oh the agony…
• I’m very thankful about all the new friends that God has given to me, and that I’m getting closer to David. But the closer I get to these friends, the more fearful I am of losing them…it’s a kind of being caught up with history, yet at the same time I’m reminding myself to love without fear…it’s a tough lesson to learn…
• Another tough lesson to learn is showing vulnerability. I find that it’s necessary in all sorts of things, like team work. This means humbling myself and realize that I need the help of others (and God) in order to make things better… It hurts my pride and arrogance, but that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?
• Wooo…Wayne has a blog…of 2 entries.

I’m grateful to God for…

• leading me through the preparation and the leading of the Bible study;
• using me as an instrument for His work, even though I’m in such poor spiritual condition;
• humbling me in the miracles that He has displayed to me;
• the company of great brothers in the fellowship; and
• dragging me away from tempting situations today.

The usual morning procrastination routine led me to school at around 12. Picked up assignments (another routine now) from Steve and the drop boxes. David dropped by my office, so before I had a chance to deal with these assignments, I went with David (and then Betty) to eat at the plaza, where, surprisingly, Betty didn’t eat…heh. Well, we went to Taiwan Small Eat, and it was kind of slow, and Betty was tired…so yeah. Afternoon TA work, interactions with Tony, eating Irene’s cake (she got accepted into PhD), and had a good time at Carlos’ office. Evening mccf was games night, but really, I didn’t like it…played Scrabble once with David, and I finally won against him… Apples game felt boring, and nobody was willing to play Trivial Pursuit… Somehow it just felt flat…anyway, dinner at Lunchbox was another routine, apparently…came home, and that ends the day. Meanwhile, I haven’t typed up the notes for tomorrow’s Bible study…oops.

Random notes…

• I thought I was able to handle cold weather…but today’s walk from plaza to home showed that, well, apparently not. And it was only -2 with windchill -7…
• I discovered today from David that my msn status is always idle or away. I don’t know why I was very disheartened by that, actually…because I’ve always operated based on the assumption that the status would be idle only when I’m really idle for 5 minutes, and comes back to available when I come back…so maybe that’s why people didn’t talk to me much? And I for one really hate to be the ones that is set to “away” or “busy” all the time, so when I found out that I was unknowingly like that, it was strangely painful. Anyway, took a while to fiddle with my fake msn program, and finally got it fixed (for now). So hopefully my status will be true from now on.
• Boy, I really need a haircut…
• I’m being reminded of how I should have cast all my worries to God, and stop worrying about the Bible study and the lagged research! It’s so easy to just get depressed over being overwhelmed with things to do…
• Inspired by the erroneous puzzle on mathNEWS, I decided that I should make some puzzles as well…if I have the time, that is…
• I think I injured my wrist when playing squash last time…so that’s…not good, I guess.
• With falling into temptations almost like a routine now, it’s time to get serious about this. But the thing is, I knew what’s happening, I knew how to deal with it, I knew how to avoid it, yet somehow I just didn’t want to follow through with that…it’s incredibly frustrating after each incident…and I just don’t know what’s going on…

I’m grateful to God for…

• the good times spent with my C&O colleagues;
• a lot of time spent with David, and being able to see Jeff again;
• another reminder about stop worrying;
• keeping me sane in an insane world; and
• helping me fix the silly problem with msn.

Lunch: $6. Gas money: $20. Shopping at T&T: $110. Plane ticket to Taiwan: $2,080. Spending all of these within a span of 1.5 hours: painfully priceless. (Alright, so this kind of joke was already very old…) Anyway, 4.5 hours, 266.5 kilometres, 3 cities…and mom was sent away to Vancouver (for now) and then I spent so much money…yikes. Nothing notable in this trip, really, except maybe that driving alone for a long distance was kind of hard…especially since I had a really rough night, didn’t get much sleep done, so it was particularly tiring. Anyway, mom’s gone now, so things will be different…in good and bad ways, I guess…

Today’s spiritual journey: Well, the day started badly, really…tempting thoughts during sleep carried over to real life, and that means yet another fall…and I was angry at myself again… The timing couldn’t be worse, as I was supposed to be in a pre-study in the evening, and I didn’t prepare anything, and certainly I wasn’t in good spiritual shape to do any such important task. The evening came, and the pre-study was hard. The topic is God’s omnipresence, and none of us had prepared much, really. We could only muster up random thoughts from everywhere, and I had a hard time organizing everything together. But eventually, with God’s Spirit and team work, somehow everything worked out ok, and I felt sort of relieved. More work to do, though, with the typing up the notes. So, two lessons here: One, depend on God; two, I can’t do everything on my own. After the pre-study, spent some time at Ed’s place just to hang out and stuff, I guess. Ed was sick, so that was kind of risky…but anyway, the interactions were kind of…I don’t know how to describe them…active? Oh well, that ends the day. Meanwhile, I’m still very much burdened by the research thingie…sigh…

I’m grateful to God for…

• His protection in the driving today;
• getting mom to Vancouver safely;
• leading us through our incompetence to complete the pre-study;
• another reminder to lose the self-centred life that I’m indulging in right now; and
• helping me get through with the travel agent…

Tuesday: Stayed at home for most of the day, wasting away precious time to various mindless activities, eventually leading up to yet another fall, which made me quite angry. Wednesday: Dragged myself to the office in the morning, trying hard to type up solutions that included simplex method (yikes!). There was a conversation with officemate David about puzzles, and somehow got him to start another corner of the gigantic cross-sums puzzle…heh. So now 3 out of 4 officemates are doing it. James visited my office hour with questions that I cannot answer…oops. Came home to take mom to her place to wait for…something…which was kind of frustrating… Rushed to prayer meeting to find only Li Zhen and I attending…so we had a long chat, then prayer, and it was good. Squash afterwards where I finally found some way of hitting the ball a bit hard without using too much unnecessary energy or motion from the body…of course we still couldn’t accomplish the mission of making David tired… Mom leaves Waterloo tomorrow morning, and things will continue to be chaotic in my life…

Random notes…

• For last Sunday’s squash session, eventually I got to a point where I lost grip of the racquet…and that was a sure sign that I should stop playing…heh.
• For last Friday’s marking session, we had an interesting trend…it started when Robin was listening to his (presumably) iPod. Later, Brendan started to listen to his iPod, too. Then I thought, might as well make it three, and there we were, three TAs (out of six) all sitting in a row, listening to iPods, which I thought was kind of funny (though not really)…anyway, competing iPods, the new trend in exam marking.
• Somehow I managed to bump into Kai and Sophie both Monday and Wednesday, seeing Kai in an extremely tired and slow-responsive state…poor Kai…
• I find myself at a state of deep depression and constantly complaining to God…sigh…
• Warfish is back…and so is the frustrating feeling of losing every single game…

I’m grateful to God for…

• continue to lead the brothers prayer meeting, which is hanging by a thread;
• the physical exercise;
• all the strange happenings during mom’s stay here;
• constantly reminding me His great blessings for me and how His grace is sufficient for me…; and
• surrounding me with so many good friends that I have taken for granted…