So…I’ve spent four days in Saskatoon now. Plenty of time was spent playing with the 6-month-old Joanne. It is quite an interesting experience. She would mostly just stare at me whenever I’m around. Not sure if it’s a good thing or not… But this got me thinking. This baby here, such a miracle from God. I can hardly imagine that in the near future, she would be crawling, walking and talking. How does that happen? Certainly not going to be a sudden progress, but more like a day-by-day growing thing. But for now, she’s so vulnerable…she needs the constant care of her parents, who had to provide what she needs based on the limited communication skills that she had. One wrong move and there would be disaster. That got me thinking, when we talk about “baby Christians,” is it like this as well? Constantly needing a spiritual adult to guide and feed them, but at the same time growing day by day. If so, then I really cannot claim to be a baby Christian anymore, eh? I’m more like an adolescent Christian in a rebellious stage? Anyway, there’s a short solo video of Joanne online…

I’m on a trip. It’s supposed to be a relaxing trip. But, as usual, nice things get ruined by me. See, there is this thing called research, and it’s been bugging me for a few years. This time it’s particularly stressful, since the supervisor is going away for a year starting September, meaning that I’ll have to do a lot of things on my own. In addition, she’s going away for a month soon after I arrive back in Waterloo next week…so, there’s this overhanging burden on me that weighs me down quite a lot. Granted, I could just forget about it and enjoy the time here, but I have trouble doing that. Anyway, this is going to be a disaster, so might as well enjoy the things around me while I can… No need to have butterflies when they’ll be dead soon anyway.

I probably mentioned this before, but there are so many things that I regret about my life. I try not to think about them, I try to let go of them, I try to move on, but I simply can’t. There are ways to resolve the regrets, of course, but I just can’t do them…thus is my sad life. Never able to get anything done.

Well, here I am in Saskatoon, playing around with Sinnie & TP’s baby Joanne. It’s fun to play with a baby…until she cried…oops. I’m trying not to think about all the things that drag me down normally, and try to enjoy a little bit of break. Maybe.

I only brought my new laptop here, so there are a few things that I need to get adjusted to. Like, using a “real” MSN messenger…that’s tough. And also, I need to choose an email client to receive my UW mail…so far, I have MSMail, MSOffice, and Mozilla Thunderbird to choose from. I’m also adjusting to the extremely fast speed (relative to my old laptop) offered by this new laptop…heh.

Lots of things have happened prior to coming to Saskatoon which I failed to mention here. Things like playing around with the video camcorder, getting addicted to Arrested Development, buying and playing Myst V, having a webcam yet not knowing what to use it for, successfully completing all levels of Crazy Machines and starting a new set of CM challenges. Of course, none of these are of any significance…

Just a quick note saying, I’ll be off to Saskatoon soon… And right now, I’m filled with angst and fear…and I don’t know why.

Saturday night, when the foursome were at my place for some Settlers action, there was something that happened which reminded me of something I don’t remember…(does that make sense?) It was while I was teaching the rules of the Settlers expansion to John and Tim while Ed and Harry were eating dinner. It was like, while I was explaining the rules, John and Tim would keep asking questions about either something I’ve just said or something that I’ll explain later. Meanwhile, Ed and Harry were also asking questions, like where is the garbage can and can they use the internet and stuff. So it was such a chaotic frenzy for me that I sort of wondered what in the world did I get myself into when I invited them (or they invited themselves) to my place… Oh yes, I remember now, this reminds me of fellowship dinners, where several people would talk to me at the same time…especially the one on Friday night in St. Jacob’s where I could be fielding questions from all four brothers at the same time…heh. I don’t know, maybe I’m used to this kind of stuff by having office hours with great number of people in the room…

One of the more frustrating things about Christianity is the extensive use of metaphors. I very often have trouble figuring out what the metaphors mean, and Jesus spoke of people like me as well… Even some of the most fundamental concepts are spoken in metaphors, like “walking” with Christ, “abide” in Christ, “draw close” to God, just to name a few. I guess this is what makes the teaching so rich in depth, and it also relates our relationship with God to His creation. But still…sometimes it drives me crazy, and confuses me to no end. Meanwhile, my pattern of sinning is probably at the worst in my life…very disappointing…

There was a supervisor meeting today, and I came out depressed again, I don’t know why. Came home, wanting to do the taxes, but simply couldn’t get it started. John asked me to play board games, but I refused, stating that I have things to do when in fact I was simply tired of playing for now. Eventually fell asleep during the rain that fell during this mostly sunny day… Gary stopped by in the evening, and we went out for a walk around the campus. Well, when he was at my place, it was still dry outside. But by the time we were outside, it was raining…and then it was raining hard, with strong winds that persisted even now. So yeah, we were only saved by Gary’s flimsy-looking-yet-held-on-its-own umbrella. Ah well, interesting experience. Meanwhile, I miss Forest…

When Ken spoke about stages of the Christian life, the first thing he mentioned is how in a Christian, we have Jesus at the centre of our lives. He then went on to talk about some aspects around this centre, like evaluate, adopt, grow, commune, steward, and reproduce, including the pathways to intimacy with God. I guess I need more time to think about this, because I think I have a little bit of all these aspects in my life, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have Jesus at the centre of my life…I don’t even know what that means, exactly…I’m questioning so many things that I wonder if this is even going to be good for me in the end…

I have mentioned before that I don’t look myself at the mirror often, so I don’t really know how I look like to other people. There was this one chance today where I stood in front of a mirror for a moment, and thought to myself, why would people be friends with this strange person? I’m not talking about the looks being good or bad or anything, but there’s just this strange sense like the things inside doesn’t match things outside…so who am I?

I find myself not able to persevere through anything. Even with something as fun as boardgames, I got tired of them in like 3 months… So, what about other more important things? Like following Christ? Pursuing holiness? Research? Sigh…yes, I do find a pattern in my life where I would easily give up on something, even if I have worked on it for years. The classic example being giving up on playing the piano when I was 10, after playing it for 6 years… So, is my life going to be just a jumbo mix of failures?

It was a week of frustration at the research front, so I guess I can’t talk much about it. Friday…Forest finished up the exam, so we went out for dinner, grabbing Li Zhen (by accident) and John Tim along the way. It was in St. Jacob’s…heh. We had a good time, though somehow I felt a bit flat… There was a long coworker meeting after that which ended way past my bedtime. Saturday…Harry insisted on playing boardgames, so I guess we just played. Played a game of Settlers expansion at the top floor of Ed’s apartment. It was a brutal game lacking in brick and sheep, and it took 2.5 hours only to find out that Harry won. Brian and I were tied for 11 points. There was fellowship involving watching Al Gore…then some confusion, then people came to my place to play more Settlers expansion. 4 came, so I decided to sit out…I’ve had enough of it anyway. So Ed Harry John Tim played for another 2 hours only to find out that Harry won…again. Seriously, Harry played this game three times, and he won each time…what is up with that?

Sunday…crazy. The usual two morning services, and Forest and I just joked around in the kwcac service, which supposedly isn’t a good thing, but that kept us awake. Then it’s a mad dash to Forest’s place, May’s place, back to Forest’s place, my place, John’s place, Toronto’s airport, Brian’s place, T&T, John’s place, then finally back to my place, all in 6.5 hours and more than 215.4 kilometres (only counted after the first “my place” on the list). In between, we helped Forest move out of his place, said a internally tearful goodbye to Forest (but I’ll probably see him again next week…heh), then a temporary goodbye to Brian, then mad shopping, then John eating something so hot that we had to stop to get him to a Shoppers for the washroom… Anyway, very tiring day. Tomorrow, supervisor meeting, not going to be good…

Meanwhile…I downloaded a free introductory VB2005 book online, and I’m intrigued and interested in learning it now…; I played Crazy Machines up to level 100 out of 102 levels…just two more to go; I need to remember to take Gary to SportChek to undo Forest’s blunders with his rollerblades…; in one weekend, I lose my roommate, Forest and Danny…I guess it’s that time of the year again, the rotation of the company of friends; so many things left to do before I leave for Saskatoon, I might go crazy, if I’m not already.

Time to dig just a little deeper, I guess. First up, self awareness. I don’t know how other people perceive me. I just don’t know. Perhaps I shouldn’t care, but if there’s some quality that I exhibit annoys most of the people around me, then that’s not good. There’s a fine line between “being yourself” and “not annoying people”…

About God…what about God? I feel like I’m regressing on everything, starting from the beginning once again in looking at spiritual things. What is faith, and why does it elude me so much these days? Does faith really have to be backed up by experience? I think Ken was right in saying what we believe determines how we act in every detail of our lives…so what do I believe? How strongly do I believe? Have I not taken all this knowledge and make it personal? How is God connected with what I do everyday? I don’t doubt God’s existence, but it’s hard to connect the dots between God and this world I live in… It’s also hard to connect the dots between God and I…what is this “relationship” that is supposed to happen like? Am I just being too cynical now? I’m guessing God is saying to me, “You foolish man! Can’t you see? Don’t you understand?” But I’m blind and dumb, and I’m a fool…I don’t get it. Meanwhile, I did something stupid today by first thanking God for His gift for me, only to squander it all to give myself sinful pleasure…sigh…

Going a bit shallow now… Sleep is far more enjoyable when I’m desperately in need of it. Well, there’s the thing about having strange or nightmarishly intense dreams whenever I get this kind of sleep, but still…much more enjoyable that way.

Time to catch up, I guess… Saturday was the Bible games day. I only started the programming on this day, but it wasn’t too bad since I recycled most of the stuffs from before. There’s a forgotten-keyboard incident pre-game, but Forest reverted the minor crisis, in a funny way…anyway. The game itself was not entirely a disaster, I think. It started off ok, albeit a bit chaotic. The scores were pretty much even until the last round of the charade game where one team had a run of 7 answers and got the only time bonus. After that, this team pretty much sailed through the rest of the game, making the winner a bit anticlimatic. But I guess the most important thing is about reviewing and learning 1 John, and have some fun at the same time. Not sure if we got that, though. I’m kind of sad that my CD clue wasn’t working…could have been so cool. Anyway, that’s the game, and I probably spent too much time on a game for 15 people to play.

I was mainly trying to recover the lost sleep on Sunday, but the crazy Monday was still to come. Started with an early 5am departure to send my mom to the airport during very intense winds. For my mom’s visit this time, we logged 670.6 kilometres, which is way shorter than the usual since we didn’t make any long distance trips. What do I feel about mom being here? I guess the good thing is the food, but the bad thing is she just kept on talking and takling and talking when I needed to be alone. And also it was during this critically busy time, and that almost blew my head. Monday continued with last minute work for supervisor meeting, followed by the meeting itself, which wasn’t too bad, I guess. I was supposed to do marking after that, but apparently Steve marked most of it for us, so there’s no more marking for me for the rest of this term. I was in Bertrand’s office talking about how next term is all the same, he’s teaching the same course, I’m TAing the same course, and from the looks of the final exams, we might get a lot of the same students…

So what else happened? I installed Visual Studio 2005 on my new computer, which ate up a lot of space, and I’m not even sure if I’ll use it ever…but I wanted to install something…; I’ve also been playing Crazy Machines on my new computer as well, after having the bright idea that I can actually play it now; and keeping on the computer front, I really should start to migrate from the old computer to the new one; also on the computer front, I bought a firewire cable to connect my external harddrive to the new computer, and boy is it fast…I like that…next time, connecting to the DV camcorder…; I’ve booked plane tickets to Saskatoon, leaving next Thursday; I drove Scott to downtown Kitchener yesterday, and Harry to Grand River Hospital today…lots of driving around for good causes…; there might be some possible progress to be made in research…if only I would start doing them again…

Alright, I screwed up. I lied. And I’m ashamed about it. Yet I don’t want to make amends to that…

Whenever there’s talk about prayer items or mom talks about what concerns me the most, usually I say nothing, and the others would say something about my thesis. But in reality, the thesis isn’t anywhere near the top of all my concerns. The top concern of my life: the continuing struggle with faith and how it connects with life. This is what I’m afraid to speak to anyone about…just like the bad old days.

Samuel still has a ton of wisdom and courage. Sadly, I’m still the foolish and wimpy one.

There was proctoring this morning, which is supposed to be routine now, yet this one’s quite different. At a different area of PAC, there’s a course where only one pool proctor showed up, and eventually the instructor showed up, but he’s a visitor, so apparently he doesn’t know much about how final exams work in UW. I was sent up to their section to proctor, and it was massive chaos. For one, none of the three proctors are TAs for this course. The instructor decided to go and do something else for about half an hour. Lots and lots of people asked questions. There were three incidents of suspected cheating, but none were reported. Anyway, the exam was apparently pretty short, so out of the 118 students, only 7 remained until the end. I struck up some conversations with the instructor (who appeared to be quite popular…Dili Das was his name?), and then with one of the other proctors who was also snatched up from another exam. Those were fun, which alleviated some of the craziness that went on. I was a bit tired for afternoon’s depressing marking session, and eventually got so tired that I had to drop out and continue on Monday…

The future…ah, the future…I’m so afraid. The Bible games, I’m so underprepared, yet I so don’t want to prepare for it. There’s the additional conundrum that I do realize the very real possibility of having very few people attending. This is final exam season, after all. So do I really want to do so much work on the game? I keep convincing myself that it’s all work done for God, not for my own pleasure, but still…is it worth it? I’ve set aside the entire day tomorrow to work on this, and it’s probably not going to be enough time… Meanwhile, supervisor meeting will resume next Monday, and I still haven’t done the one thing that she requested me to do…the thesis outline, though not so difficult a task, is tedious enough that I’ve procrastinated almost 4 weeks on it now. Sure I’ve done some research reading and thinking, which are more exciting this time around, but even that isn’t enough… And Monday is going to be so taxing…getting my mom to the airport early in the morning, then meeting, then marking…yikes.

I’m so confused… One moment I can be so full of faith, and yet the next moment be so full of doubts. One moment I can confidently forgive Francis, and yet the next moment having a past memory anger me. And what is up with Samuel? There seems to be this strangely awkward giant wall that both separates us and binds us. Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking on and off for years now, am I really that bad at keeping close friendships going?

Something odd happened yesterday. I was trying to do research, and was thinking of putting together a thesis outline as supervisor requested. But something has drawn me back to solving a problem. I put something together that looked more promising than ever, even got my officemates to think about it as well. It got to a point where I almost thought that I solved it, only to break it entirely, leaving me with nothing. On the other hand, what I’ve discovered showed that a proof in the paper I’m reading must be wrong…so that’s, not entirely without merit, I guess. But the entire thing where I went from getting totally excited to totally disappointed was kind of…well…disappointing.

What is up with the wacky weather these days? Two weeks ago, it was 22 degrees. Last week, it was snowing almost everyday. Now it’s warmed up a bit…to 3 degrees. And it’s almost the middle of April already…

These poor undergrads who are going through final exams… I helped Tim on calculus on two occasions, and he even called me an hour before the exam starts…but apparently the exam was so hard that it threw off Forest as well…that’s too bad. Bad Carlos…heh.

On Saturday, mom and I went shopping, then played Wii at Ed’s place, had a meal at Bubble Tease with a lot of exam-studying people, and then I went back to Ed’s to play the Settlers expansion where Ed won and Li Zhen and I lost. But, the thing is, I didn’t enjoy any of this. I was feeling solemn due to sin, and then dragged myself everywhere, hoping that things would be better, but they weren’t. It’s only after a short msn conversation with Gary in the evening that made up a little for the day.

I have a new computer, but I don’t know what to do with it. I still use the old one most of the time. The new one gives an occasional diversion, but that’s about it. I did install Google Earth on it, though, so that’s cool. I’m not complaining about getting a new computer, but I just don’t know what I should do with its new powers…

It’s Easter! And I try not to be depressed about everything… Ken’s sermon in the morning touched me quite a bit, since he was talking about conditions that I was in precisely…so it’s all about what I believe about who God is that affects everything, which is sort of along the lines of what I’ve been thinking all along… I do try not to get depressed, but when I see the hard week ahead, it’s very difficult to keep from being downcast.

I feel very disgusted with myself. There’s this angst inside of me, trying to say something, wanting to know what’s going on. I wish that I could just hide, get away from everyone, leave responsibilities behind. I feel like going to a desolate place, then scream and cry as loud as I can, if only that will make me feel any better.

I have many friends now, but none I can pour my soul to, and always haunted by previous failed friendships. The coming and going of friends have this numbing effect which I still cannot cope with.

Mom being here brings the comfort of food, but at the same time a torturing of my soul.

After wasting a morning and afternoon, I went to pick up my mom and now she’s here. While in Mississauga, we paid a visit to T&T and another mall to bring back a ton of stuffs…only to find out that the elevator at my place isn’t working. I guess that’s good exercise, then? After some unpacking, we whisk ourselves away to Starbucks with Li Zhen and Penny, and proceeded to have a good time. And now, I’m trying this new laptop…hmm…it is pretty confusing…so much for the user friendly thingie…but I’m still typing on the old laptop…can’t get rid of this old one just yet…

I really haven’t had a full tank of gas for a long time now. Gas prices are just too high…even though it wasn’t historically high, but still, 3 digits is high…

I’m trying to have an honest look at where I’m really at spiritually. And quite frankly, I don’t know. I tried to pray today, but ended up exclaiming “I don’t know how to pray!”

Well, this past week wasn’t a good one. I tried to do research, but always ended up doing very little. And now, my mom arrives for two weeks. I’m not sure how I’m going to survive that…since there are so many things that need to be done…like, marking, research, thesis construction, office hours, final exam proctor and marking, and Bible games. I get a headache just thinking about it…and on top of that, mom will want to make trips everywhere. So…what am I supposed to do? Just drop off the face of the earth? That would be nice…

So I’m in a highly emotionally volatile state right now. It got to a point this evening where I just decided that I would drive to the middle of nowhere for no good reason. And I ended up in Elmira, took a walk around the town, and drove back. The only thing that came up in my mind was, with so many good things happening, why do I force myself to look at the stressful and bad things and choose to be depressed? I don’t know…I really hate this life I’m living right now…

Saturday, there was a Bible study where I totally blanked out on everything…I just didn’t get it…so how am I supposed to do a Bible games on this material? Anyway, on a related note, I’m in a massive confusion spiritually. I find that I don’t understand anything about God. I read the Bible, I read the Christian books, I sing the gospel songs, I listen to sermons, I hear people’s testimonies, and I just don’t get it. This is weighing me down greatly, and I don’t have anyone to talk to about it…(or at least I couldn’t talk about it to anyone.)