Such a depressing day… For one, I’m still bothered by the irregularly-timed stomach pain. I only went outside to buy two stamps and mail out the aeroplan screw up letter thingie. Stayed at home to waste time otherwise. Harry wanted to play boardgames, but after having had 3 consecutive days of boardgaming, I was tired of it already. But I still reluctantly agreed to let him and Jessie come here. We played one game of settlers where Harry won, but it was a close game. They asked for one more game, but I excused myself from it. I was just tired and depressed. Some miscommunication led to a cancelled prayer meeting, and I went on to give in to temptations again. That’s the sad day it’s been…

There was a high volumn of activities on facebook today… I can just watch Danny and Forest interact for ages…heh.

Where in the world would I be able to find an hourglass for purchase?

Sunday: Went to cfc with Gary where Betty was baptised…congratulations! You won’t find us in the group picture, though, since I was showing Gary where to get the cookies and coffee when they took the picture…oops. It was nice to see Yiwen again, though, but it seems that we won’t have much contact with each other as he’s heading to Japan… The kwcac service was long, and the sermon was on forgiveness…that’s the second week in a row that I had to wrestle with forgiveness from sermons. The more I hear, though, the more I figured that with Francis, I initially did all the right things, but when I was hurt even more afterwards, I stopped doing the right things, and those were replaced by bitterness and hatred. I really don’t want to think about this issue anymore, but even during the sermon, I was thinking, “God, you don’t have to be that obvious, do You?” Anyway, had lunch at Ben Thahn with John Tim Brian, then played board games, then I had a long afternoon nap, and that’s it for the day.

A bit of news that went unnoticed… My car hit 60K last Sunday while driving towards cfc on Beaver Creek Road. Congratulations, car!

What kind of a weather is this? It’s March, and we’re getting thunderstorms. And, it was just 1 degree at 3am, but it’s now 22 degrees at 4pm, with humidex 26. No wonder I was sweating when I walked outside…

There was one night when I had two dreams, one about Wayne, the other about Samuel. Awww…I miss those guys…

The missing T4 saga was finally over on Friday. Now I can start doing my taxes and find out how much I owe the government…

I’m having a strange stomach pain these couple of days. Was it something that I ate that was bad? Or maybe I’m dying?

What happened this past week? Nothing much, I guess. For Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn’t go to the office. I didn’t even go outside the building until Wednesday evening. I was planning to go out, but I was too tired. Also, I promised myself that I would read the Bible before I leave home. I ended up not reading the Bible… Wednesday evening, went to school just to pick up assignments to mark, came back to (slowly) start the marking. Thursday, took Danny to career fair in Conestoga College. Danny didn’t even get to hand out a resume, though, which was not good. But the college was situated at a really beautiful location, and the building looks clean and new, so that was an interesting experience. I was madly marking when I came back. I still don’t get the economic interpretation stuffs, and I still have to mark those, so it was more of a random marking scheme for me. I finished Bertrand’s pile just in time for the nervous Margarita, and finished the rest of the marking at home by midnight. Friday, I was doing research at the office, but it was just mindbendingly frustrating. Something as small as 2 was driving me crazy. I had some chats with fellow grads, and those were a bit of a relief. Board games at night while the guys went crazy at Forest’s place…hehehe.

Saturday, the crazy day. First, a trip to Toronto… 5 hours, 2 cities, 6 people, 217.4 kilometres. It was really supposed to be an innocent trip to take Ingrid and Ed to the airport, while I do a little shopping on the side. Word got out, and I filled the two empty spots in the car (Betty and Harry were the lucky winners). I even checked the tire pressure to make sure things are ok (which they’re not, since all four tires were at 35psi while the recommended pressure was 30psi). 6 lives are too much to risk…heh. So off we go with the 5 of us. First stop was T&T. I thought it was going to be a short 30-minute visit and then we can have lunch before sending them off to the airport. Wrong. The visit ended up being an hour and a half, and together we have bought about $400 worth of stuffs. Needless to say, it was a headache to get all of them in the car… I think I was frustrated in and out of T&T, and could only pray to calm down. Anyway, it was too late to get lunch in Mississauga, so we were off to the airport, then picked up Brian, and came back to Waterloo.

Ah…but Saturday wasn’t over yet. There was still fellowship in the afternoon, where I really wasn’t able to pay attention during the Bible study. Something is wrong with me, like I didn’t want to learn anything, really. Or maybe it’s because I was too tired. I don’t know. The transportation nightmare didn’t occur, and we even had quite a few new people here, so that was interesting. Passengers in my car decided that they would like to get dinner, and after a long discussion where I was driving randomly through the randomly designed streets, we ended up in Lai Lai, which is a place I haven’t been to for years now. The 5 of us ordered 4 dishes plus a big bowl of rice. Despite having Brian there, we were not able to finish all the food on the table…yeah, the portion size was big. And it tasted good, too. And it didn’t cost a bundle, like $11 per person. So that puts this restaurant over other Chinese restaurants in the area. We “utilized” Ed’s place for board games in the evening…heh. And it was all over at 12:30am…

Three boardgaming sessions in three days… Friday evening: Two games. First one is the Cities and Knights of Catan, played with Ed and Ingrid. Somehow we didn’t get enough knights up on the board in time for the first attack of the barbarians, so we all lost our initial cities. Great. I thought that meant a long long game for us…but somehow things turned around a bit and we were building cities and putting up lots of knights and stuff. Somehow, and I still don’t know how, by gaining a variety of different victory points, Ingrid won. And that was her first game…great… I had 8 points at the end, Ed with 6. Ingrid couldn’t keep on playing, so Ed and I played a game of Carcassonne with the Inns and Cathedrals expansion. (It’s expansion night, apparently.) There is one point where I tried to screw Ed by putting a cathedral in one of his cities, but he managed to close the city anyway and gained big points from that. I lost badly in this one… Final scores: Ed 175, Me 130. I find Carcassonne to be not as engaging, so looks like buying the big box was not a good decision…

Saturday evening: 2 games of Settlers at Ed’s place while Ed’s gone…hehehe. John Tim Brian and I were the participants. Since this is the first time that Tim got to play Settlers, we didn’t go for the expansion. The first game was pretty close, actually. We were all doing relatively well, with Brian and I in the lead most of the way. Somehow (and again, I don’t remember how), Brian won. I was at 9 points (with 3 victory point cards…heh), but wasn’t able to get to 10 anytime soon. John was at 8 and Tim was at 7. Tim wanted revenge, so we played again. This time, though, things weren’t so balanced. John initially put a settlement adjacent to a 6-wheat and a 6-brick hexes, which he quickly upgraded to a city. That gained him greatly whenever a 6 is thrown, and boy we’ve thrown a ton of 6s. To add insult to injury, he has gained two 2:1 ports for wheat and brick! So the game was all over within 25 minutes, John winning by a huge margin.

Sunday afternoon: Alright, so Tim still wanted his revenge, so we played one game of Settlers at my place. Could have played more games, but this board has very little wheat, so it took about 1.5 hours to play. I get to place my settlement first, and I picked a 6-6-8 forest-brick-sheep vertex. Very very lucrative, and it seems that I have the game locked up. But…things didn’t go quite that way… I had three settlements in a Y-formation, which yielded me a 3:1 port, and 2 ores if a 3 is thrown (and they were thrown quite a bit, surprisingly). So now I have 2 wood and brick whenever 6 appears, and they have appeared a lot. But it’s almost always somebody else that throws a 6, and by the time it got to my turn, either a 7 was already thrown or I threw a 7. So I’ve thrown away a ton of cards that way. There were so many times when I was ready to upgrade the prime settlement into a city, only to be forced to get those cards thrown away. It was quite frustrating, but I’ve learned to be patient and dealt with it. The other three players were slowly building up, and I was lagging behind. Eventually I got to make that upgrade, but that was too late. In the last round, Tim had 9 points (2 hidden away in VP cards); Brian had 9 points, but he was just one card short of making an upgrade and claiming the win; John had 8 points, but he was buying development cards like crazy, so he played a fourth soldier to claim the largest army from Tim and got the win. Tim was upset because he was so close to winning…heh. After the game (actually, during the game as well), John kept asking me why hadn’t I won already, with such a good location. I kept explaining I had to throw away so many cards, but he kept on asking and commenting on that, even long after the game was over. And it was an excuse for me to invoke physical violence on John…hehehe… Anyway, strange game, I’d say.

There was a supervisor meeting in the morning, for which I felt terribly awful about. I had nothing, even though I did some work. And I also found myself to have a speech impediment or something…I couldn’t express myself properly (although that may have always been the case). Supersivor will be gone for 3 weeks, and that’s going to go terribly for me. I’m quite depressed over everything about this research thingie… I came home soon after the meeting and watched Race to maybe alleviate my depression…and it did, a little bit. It’s the first time in a long time that I actually laughed really loud when watching Race in a long time. Danny and Oswald chasing Phil? Comedy gold.

So there was a prayer meeting and squash in the evening. In the prayer meeting, I just felt like I wanted to close myself up. Even though I have lots of prayer requests, I didn’t say anything. I don’t know why I still feel uncomfortable sharing deeper things with Ed and Harry. So that essentially leave this kind of sharing to…nobody. Hmm…that’s not good. Anyway, for squash, I was playing for the second day in a row. I think I hurt my right arm early in the squash session, but I kept playing, trying to minimize the use of the muscles in my right arm. Turns out that it’s not too bad, actually, and I felt that I was making more “clean” hits at the ball when I don’t rely on these muscles. So that’s something new that I discovered. But eventually I had to stop, because it really hurts too much… So now, I have a barely-functional right arm, and my legs aren’t holding me up well, either…

I kind of reluctantly plunged into preparing for April’s Bible games. It’s been a year since I’ve done this kind of thing. I came up with a format for the games, which is basically a recycling of old ideas that sort of worked. And now I start to come up with the content for the games. Here’s the problem: The games will be held in the middle of final exam periods, so I’m not expecting to see a lot of people there. However, the games that I’m planning will require a lot of work from me. So I’m not sure if it’s worth the trouble to do it… So now the question comes, do I still do this for my own enjoyment, or do I do this for God? Hmm…

The cfc sermon this morning is on forgiveness. Now I’ve been thinking about the subject of forgiveness for quite a while, so it was something that I definitely needed to hear. I have to say, I have indeed thought of almost everything said in the sermon, which was quite an honest take on the subject. Realizing that forgiveness can be difficult and messy is one of the things that I took comfort in. I kept telling myself not to cry, but tears voluntarily came out of my eyes at the end of the sermon and drama. It’s such a hard topic for me…still a lot of things to work on and let go, certainly.

The kwcac sermon is on prayer and peace. It’s a very simple sermon, yet a lot more is needed to have it happening in my life. After-service meal involved rice with too much water…heh. But the funniest thing was hearing Gary and Lisa talking in Taiwanese! Anyway, went to squash afterwards with Jessie, Forest and his dad. His dad’s cool, as Forest always said, and he is indeed. I suck at squash this time, though. Frustrated about not being able to hit any hard shots. Actually, anything involves sports would create some frustration and jealousy inside me, even though I try not to get into it… So for two hours of squash, I probably played for about half an hour. Not too bad, I guess… By the way, Pastor Tim’s talk yesterday created some unappetizing images about our parents, so it was particularly awkward that Forest’s dad was here, and we were making jokes that took advantage of that, which made Forest crazy…heh. Sorry, Forest.

I have had weird dreams lately, dreams where I find myself to be funnier than in reality…so maybe dreams aren’t something that’s subconscious, perhaps there are messages from God…hmm…or maybe not. I dreamed about Kevin Yoon once again, and man I miss that guy…it was a year ago that I had this surprise visit from him…oh wow, that felt like a long time ago now.

So, how do I like to commit sexual sin just before a talk with a lot of sexual content? Yup, that’s what happened today. Pastor Tim probably planted more disturbing images into our heads than anything else…heh. But his “relationship talk” was pretty good, and quite blunt, I’d have to say. Not sure how much the people took in with them, but I’m sure it’s a good thing that they were there.

About research…I mean, I did a lot of thinking that ended up producing nothing. I could, in theory, read more papers or do some writing, but I was too preoccupied with the thinking part. So, I don’t know what I should do there. It’s all very depressing, this researching thingie. During last night’s dinner, Forest asked me, suppose that right now, I’m fired and I have to look for a job, what kind of jobs would I be looking for? And I really don’t know. I don’t have any marketable skills (or at least I don’t think I do). Anything I want to do either pays very little or is impossible to get a job for. So…that would be the end of my career?

Saturday evening boardgame report: I didn’t really want to play games for a third night in a row, but it’s Tim, and I can’t refuse Tim…heh. So there I was, playing Modern Art again, hoping dearly that it would end quickly and we can move on to another game. Boy was I wrong… For the first three seasons, only three artists came into play, and their worth went up to 30 to 50 to start. But of course paintings from these artists quickly ran out, so the final season got interesting. The two other artists’ paintings came up pretty quickly, but nobody wanted to end it so quick. At two points, there was an interesting twist in the sense that Lite Metal had a base value of 50, but it has only 3 paintings left. So when paintings for this artist was on sale, it was a very risky thing to buy. It will either be 3rd place or bust, so its value will be either 60 or 0. John overpaid for it (and most of the other paintings, quite frankly), and he’s still kind of furious about a subsequent move by Tim that made that painting worthless…heh. Anyway, John overpaid Brian in at least a couple of auctions, so Brian ended up winning the game. Final scores: Ed 434, Tim 365, Brian 520, John 373, Me 342. Even after the game ended, those four continued to argue back and forth about things in the game, and I just left…heh. I have had enough of analysis paralysis…bring on the timer!

I’ve made feeble attempts at restarting a daily devotional time since my birthday. I find that I’m very easily discouraged by any tiny little obstacle that comes in the way. Something as small as a bad breakpoint in the reading plan probably kept me from continuing it for more than half a year. Sometimes it’s the high expectation that kept me away from the Bible. Other times it’s the harshness and the “I really can’t follow this” texts that drove me away. There are also times when I feel that all my devotions are fake, so why bother with it? Anyway, I’ve kept this up for three days now, hopefully this continues…God willing.

Thursday evening boardgaming report: Well, boardgaming came after mccf and a great meal…heh. Modern Art was first, and Ed bought poker chips to go along with the game, so now it’s a lot easier to handle the money. I had a strategy in mind, which is to buy early, and ride out the highs later. That didn’t work so well… For some reason, erradic plays from Ingrid meant that she won the game by significant amounts… Final scores: Harry 311, Ed 376, Ingrid 425, Me 351. Ingrid went away for our second game, which was the Cities and Knights expansion of Settlers. It took just a little while for me to explain the rules, but the three of us were all set to play. The approach of the barbarians was always nerve wrecking, but we put up enough knights initially to defeat them handily. There was once, however, that we intentionally lose to the barbarians so that Harry would lose a city…heh. There were so many things to keep track of in this game, but it was a lot of fun. Eventually Harry still won despite our efforts to hamper his progress. Ed and I were tied at 9 points. It was a long game, though, at around 2 hours.

Friday evening boardgaming report: Well, boardgaming came after frustration at the office, fun conversations with Tony and Zhentao, and a meal with Forest…heh. Playing was intermittently paused for 1vs100 and the return of Identity (a much improved show this time around).

• Two games of Modern Art to start with. My strategy from the previous evening appears to have worked, as I bought many paintings that translated into big bucks at the end of the seasons. But mysteriously, newcomer Jessie won the game, and we were still baffled at how that happened… Final scores: Harry 370, Jessie 524, Ed 362, Me 491.
• Ingrid joined the second game despite the need to study…heh. I had 2 double auction cards from Lite Metal, and her paintings aren’t worth much. Since Harry was sitting to my left, he got screwed on these… When I played the second double auction card, it was one where if nobody paired up with me, I would get the painting for free; but if somebody paired up with me, the season would be over and my two Lite Metal paintings would be worth a lot. They decided to go for the second option…heh. It was during the last season, however, that things went upside down. Ingrid managed to snatch up a lot of paintings during this season, and was able to sell it all for something like $360K, which is more than what most of us have anyway, so she won this game. Final scores: Harry 349, Ingrid 476, Jessie 339, Ed 375, Me 359.
• We played El Grande for the night’s final game. And it took a long long time…mainly because Ed and Harry suffered from what boardgamegeek.com calls “analysis paralysis.” Yeah, they took too much time. Sure they ended up in first and second place, but for the losing players, not only did we lose the game, we lose the time that they have spent trying to win…heh. We will need to put a timer next time, and maybe Ed will finally lose this game for once… Final scores: Harry 103, Jessie 73, Ed 113, Me 82.

Well, my birthday is over. It started out badly but ended up not too bad. Let’s see…morning, woke up, ate dumpling breakfast, and struggled to do things. I really wanted to restart this devotional thingie, but it was hard to get started. I eventually read something and made a somewhat distracted prayer, but I was just depressed. Went to school, tried to do things, and I did try hard to do some research, but that failed to yield anything. I also tried to see if I can resolve the missing T4 form thingie, but that ended unresolved. I talked to some people around the office, but of course none of them knew about this birthday thing, which is just fine by me. Haven’t seen Koray for a while, though… I bought a light snack at C&D where I bumped into Gary and somehow we always have bizarre but funny conversations. Anyway, I decided that I won’t waste my evening, so I called Li Zhen to see if he wanted to go to Costco, and the response was positive. That resulted in a trip to Ben Thahn Cambridge for dinner, where there were some not-so-shallow sharing, and then Costco, where I had to get my own membership card now. Forest called while I was in Costco to see if I want to squash later in the evening, and my response was positive. So after I got home, selected a notebook that my mom’s bringing here, I was off to PAC. Of course there were no courts available at 9, so Forest and I wandered around the campus, eventually settling into my office, which is when he found out it was my birthday…after heavy hinting…hehehe. Stayed there until 10, which is when we had 40 minutes of squash, where I was surprised that I actually kept on playing for most of the 40 minutes. So I guess my stamina has improved somewhat… Forest came to my place for dinner, we had fun conversations as always, and then he left, and that’s my birthday. I guess it ended in a sort of positive note, in a sense that I got to spend time with my good friends. I’m not so depressed anymore, and that’s always a good thing.

Thank you, Li Zhen, for preventing the nasty birthday surprise!

Starting to enjoy the new Tomlin CD now…hope it doesn’t get repetitive so quickly…

Even though I write a lot here, I rarely go back and read what I wrote before, since I tend to be afraid to re-live my life again. But I was curious what happened this time last year, so I started reading from the March 2006 page. Boy, I have to say, very little has changed. Even though there were a ton of ups and downs in the past year, some things have never changed (or, things have gotten worse). Things like spiritual doubts and depressions, questions about friendships, endless puzzles as escapes from reality, struggles with sins, slacking off in school work…sigh… This is making me even more depressed, as if that’s possible… Man, will I ever be changed?

Might as well mention that this past Sunday, because of the temperature fluctuations, the parking lots at both churches were essentially skating rinks. It was so icy that it was funny…especially when seeing Betty on the ice…hehehe. Apparently I looked funny, too, taking small steps here and there, most likely looking like a penguin. Anyway, not sure why I’m writing this down.

I need to do a lot of things that I keep delaying… Resolve the missing T4 tax form, get aeroplan miles for my European trip last year, sending the link and files from the Niels project to the supervisor, ask Kai to come Saturday, get my life back on track…

Very warm weather today. Snow is melting rapidly, creating lots of puddles. And I just happen to wear a pair of non-waterproof shoes today…excellent… I managed to renew my license plate and buy a Tomlin CD in the afternoon. Headed to the office to do…well…nothing, really. Mostly talked to Tony and David. Tis the day before my birthday, and all is not right… I’m trying not to freak out over everything. I can get through this…no, I can’t get through this… What am I writing anyway? Sigh…

Hmm…Forest disappeared, and I’m starting to worry about it…but I shouldn’t worry, right? I hope?

Sunday afternoon board game report: Two games, one of which was new. El Grande was the new game that we played, and I thought it was fun. At the start, I was trailing way behind with Harry in the lead. However, a few rounds later, Alice got into the lead while Harry fell back to last place. In the last couple of rounds, Ed made some shrewd move to leap into the lead and won the game. It was a close one, though… Final scores: Alice 97, Ed 102, Harry 76, Me 90. Second game was Modern Art. By now I’ve figured that I would never win this game…heh. And yeah, I got last place in the end. During the last season, Ed and Alice scored big, but we didn’t know who would win this one. Turns out that Alice won by just 1 point! Amazing…lots of “if onlys” that could have changed the outcome of this game… Final scores: Alice 487, Ed 486, Harry 368, Me 356.

I’m very depressed today. I guess part of it stems from the morning’s supervisor meeting. The meeting itself was ok, but after supervisor’s reminder about progress on the thesis, I just had this sinking feeling that this is never going to get done… Later on in the day, I have sinned again, and once again reminded me of how I’ve totally gotten back to my rotten ways, and how the help from God and from Samuel went down the drain. I’m also being reminded of how much faith I had just a year ago…how did I lose it so quickly? It’s so embarrassing… Anyway, I’m not doing well, that’s for sure.

Ed and Harry bought me Cities and Knights of Catan for my birthday. Thanks, guys! I’ve just read the rules, and boy is it complicated…on the other hand, if they’re able to play this game, I’m sure they can play Puerto Rico as well! They gave it to me during brothers prayer meeting. There was squash afterwards, where I was quickly wiped out…well, my body was shaking after playing for a short while, so I didn’t play much…

I get easily startled, that’s a given. There was a funny story from two Sundays ago during the Sunday service. Tim was sitting right behind me, and during the announcements, he put his two hands on my shoulder. Depending on who you ask, there’s either a .5-second or a 2-second pause, and suddenly I jumped. Well, it’s sort of a small leap up my chair. Forest and Tim were trying really hard not to laugh at this…heh. Anyway, if you want to make fun of me, try to scare me (you don’t even have to try hard) and I guarantee comedy…

I’m supposed to do a lot of marking, but ended up spending too much time on puzzles, warfish, talking to officemates, and taking Forest to Conestoga. The marking is supposed to be an easy task, but somehow the ability to do them quickly and efficiently eludes me… Now I want to do more marking tonight, but really, I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot of puzzles instead.

As my birthday nears, there’s this sense of desperation that engulfs me. I’m going to be 27, that’s like really old… And I’m still stuck in this PhD program with little progress. And I’m still stuck in this deplorable spiritual state that I don’t seem to be able to recover from. And I’m still stuck with a childish mentality that never wants to grow up. This is dragging me down to sadness and depression once again…

On a sort-of related subject, I was sucked into the bizarre world of Facebook last week. Yeah, I’ve been refusing to get into it since it’s mostly a thing for the “young” people…but then I caved in. Not sure if it’s a good thing or not…anyway, you can now search for me on Facebook…

More puzzle books arrived yesterday. I wasn’t expected to be excited, and indeed I wasn’t excited. I don’t know, something about these puzzles is starting to bore me, I guess. So why did I buy them? I really don’t know. Maybe it’s an addiction…

Tuesday evening consists of Settlers after brothers prayer meeting which included a sister… We prayed, of course, and I felt like a fake again… Two games of Settlers, Ingrid won the first one that was abundant in resource, Ed won the second one that was deficient in ore (hence a much longer game). One thing that really irritated me was how Ingrid was whining when things didn’t go her way, and even changed the rules to get things done…that was annoying. I’m having board game burnout already… Maybe I played with the wrong people…heh.

Surprisingly my limp body felt fine today, so I went for squash in the evening. That’s after a dinner, some calculus (!), and some puzzles with Forest. Once again, I beat both Danny and Jessie in squash, but not Forest. I can never beat Forest, it appears. Danny and Jessie had beaten Forest before, so I don’t know why this winning thing isn’t transitive…heh. Oh well, anyway, got some exercise in, that’s got to be good, right?