I can’t believe a quarter of the lectures are done! It’s been such a strange ride…and there are 3/4 left to go! I’m realizing that I probably didn’t teach well, because there are little things that they are still asking about which I missed. The problem is I don’t get much feedback from the students, so I don’t know if they understand me or not.

I was sick, and I tried to speak with loud volumn, but I think it didn’t work so well. I find myself almost whimpering in my voice. I guess the most embarrassing thing is probably that I took a sip of water that is too much, and dropped some on the floor…heh.

I vaguely described redundancy, but I probably messed it up. So that’s probably not going to show up in the exams anytime soon. Meanwhile, I finally got exam rooms! Unfortunately I forgot to have a buffer before the exam…so it might be a little tricky…

Also happened on Thursday was a visit to Toronto to see the Yankees. Ok, I’m not a baseball fan at all, so it’s more for Roger’s sake and for the sake of representing the rest of my family’s Yankee fanaticism that I went…heh. It was…interesting, I guess. We were seated 6 rows from the field, so it was pretty close. So close that I thought the field looked pretty small and the distance between bases is pretty short. Anyway, it certainly have a different feel than watching on TV, mostly because of the different “commentary” that I heard…heh. Anyway, Yankees lost because they only had one big star in the line up, I think. Afterwards, went to Chinatown for bubble tea and Chinese food (both excellent) before heading back to Waterloo.

The next day, I headed off to London to see Gary and the Jackson family. Gary was in a new place, and it’s huge…but also pretty empty. Had dinner with new guys Sam and Nicholas, and I’m already impressed with Nicholas because he laughed at my jokes…heh. Anyway, I was pretty out for the night and slept early. The next day, bad news. I started to have a sore throat and that means that I was sick. We went to buy a 4L bottle of water, and I drank about 3L by the end of the day. Went to Riverbanks park to take a walk (where I was exhausted to begin with), then went to the Jackson family to see little Timothy! He grew a lot since I last visited in June! And apparently he really likes to lick the back of my right hand…hmm… Anyway, that’s pretty much it for the trip. Wish I could have stayed longer, but fellowship beckons…

As if I haven’t set up enough blogs already (most of which are hidden), here is yet another blog, created because I complained too much in my head.

So there was a stupid accident that happened Thursday. I was about to go and put in my visa application for Belarus. I forgot something and went back to my office. When I left, I think I was trying to take out the keys from my pocket, and that’s when accident struck. My hand went in there so fast that somehow my thumb made contact with the pencil, and a piece of lead was then stuck just under my thumb’s fingernail! It was pretty painful…

I tried to get help from the C&O staffs, but the pencil lead would break whenever they try to take it out. So Marg walked with me to the Health Services. Initially the nurse couldn’t do it either, so she left me to wait for the doctor who is supposed very good at it. The wait was really long (well, considering that I was in pain, it was long), and when I saw the doctor, he couldn’t get it out either… But the good news is, the pencil lead is not made of “lead” (which I knew from watching QI), it’s made of carbon, so it’s not toxic, and there would not be an infection. The bad news is, I’ll have to wait for the nail to grow and push out the lead slowly…

So for the following weeks (hopefully not too many), I have a piece of lead in my thumb! It looks really disgusting, not good for the squimish, certainly. It’s been a few days since then, and I felt much better now, even though I would still feel a bit when writing. I guess that makes for an interesting life story.

I gave a quiz at the end of Wednesday’s lecture, and they didn’t do as well as I have hoped, I guess. An average of 63% for 10 true or false questions, which is a bit more than random guessing. Oh well…at least I had some fun telling them to write “T” for true and “F” for false, and not a hybrid of the two.

Friday’s lecture was weird. Because of my thumb injury, it would hurt to write on the blackboard. So I tried this thing where I would use powerpoint, but typing up as I go. I don’t think it worked. And besides, I wasn’t well prepared this time, so it was a bit sad. Going to try writing on the blackboard again next week.

I will never revise assignment questions again!

I have trouble explaining the simplest things. Today, I tried to explain how to solve a system of linear equations in a systematic way. It’s supposed to be a simple concept, but I don’t know how to explain in a simple way. In any case, I don’t know whether they find it to be boring or difficult…heh.

I tried to type up the solutions to assignment 2 tonight, and found it to be so tedious… I didn’t know that it would be so tedious…poor students…hope they’re enjoying the course…heh.

Looking ahead, I’m kind of concerned about switching vectors from horizontal to vertical… And vector spaces scare me too… Hmm…

I’m getting more comfortable with the lectures, I think. Still going a bit slower than I thought, but that’s ok. I still don’t know if the students are learning well, though, and I don’t have any feedback on my teaching…so who knows. Maybe I’m doing everything wrong, no idea.

First assignment was due during Friday’s class, and immediately I saw one problem: No staplers. A lot of students didn’t staple on their own…so I guess I’ll need to bring one to class next Friday. Assignments went to markers relatively smoothly, although now I’m thinking about getting the TA to record the marks instead of me…maybe next week.

I really shouldn’t say the word “parallelepiped.” Also, what’s up with the Indian guy messing up my hair?

I tried my best to explain what happens to lines and planes beyond 3D. I don’t think I did a good job on that…heh. Even I don’t really understand what’s going on.

The other thing that I have to remember is that I should avoid saying the word “intuition.” It’s a difficult word to pronounce.

When I tried to illustrate that a line in 3D might have more than one orthogonal vectors, I was waving my arms around like I was doing an impression of an elephant…

It’s been two weeks since I returned to Canada…and it felt so much longer than that. So many things happened between then and now, and looking back, it felt crazy. But things are going well, and I’m thankful to God for it.

What is up with Harry wanting to buy my Corolla and I wanting to buy a Prius? This is bizarre…

I got some more cheap laughs, this time from the Mandarin congregation of the church. My picture riddles were stupid enough that people would laugh very hard. That’s fun!

I’m feeling more comfortable with the lectures now, even though I still made a boo boo in the third lecture. On the proof of the triangle inequality, I was going to just prove it on the board with only the basic idea of the proof in mind. Of course at the last crucial step, something didn’t look right (just a different perspective would have made it right). So I left it at that. There’s also the issue that I really don’t like to talk about planes, as they are 3D objects that I cannot draw nor explain properly. So yeah, probably the second best among the three lectures this week. But at least I’m not as nervous as before now.

I was also being observed by supervisor, and she said I should write bigger and be louder, and stuffs like that. Not too bad, I guess, could have been much worse.

I should get a bigger breakfast since milk and cereal just don’t cut it anymore…

The second lecture went much better, I think. Still some rough spots, but much improved from last time. I got through 2/3 of my prepared notes, so that means I’m going slower than I wanted. The students didn’t respond much, but it’s an 8:30 class, can’t expect much.

The problem with vectors is that a lot of it is intuition, which is quite hard to teach. All I can do is try to do a lot of things with vectors, and hopefully the students will pick up on the intuition. That’s not easy to do, I think.

Some students were asking for assignments and practice problems. What is it with these first year students who really want to work? Bizarre… In any case, I’ve quietly typed and uploaded assignment 1…should be exciting.

The morning traffic was pretty bad. I was originally hoping to get to school by 8:15, print some things before going to lecture, but ended up getting to school at 8:25 and had to go directly to class. The classroom was filled with students, which is kind of scary. I was a bit shaky already. And the shakyness continues where I tried to mumble through the course outline. I was originally planning to do about 30 minutes there, but ended up doing only 10 minutes. And I was really really nervous. The nerves didn’t go away for the entire class.

There were some good interaction with the students. One Indian guy who seemed to think that he knows everything even got me some tips on “public speaking,” plus a fist bump…huh? A Chinese guy wanted to drop the course, but then later dropped the line “a vector is part of a vector space” in which I replied “that’s very deep.” But the most eventful thing during class was me messing up with simple arithmetic calculations. I was making up examples on the fly, and of course I got the wrong answers…many times. To which I said “calculation errors are negligible,” and some student replied “can I quote you on that?” Oh well, some cheap laughs to break the tension are good. I wanted to do a joke for the next class: “Hi, my name is Martin Pei. I hold a bachelor’s degree in math and computer science from SFU, I hold Master’s and PhD degrees in math from UW, but I am not smarter than a fifth grader.” Nope, not going to do that joke.

Trying to explain vector addition and stuff, and then try to do a geometric version is just too tedious…eventually I got tired of teaching this, didn’t feel like going over to vector equation of a line, and let them go about 15 minutes early. I was under-prepared, certainly, but I think the first class should be a bit relaxed, I guess. Next class should be better, I hope.

Other than the froshes running around the campus shouting embarrassing slogans, it’s pretty quiet around the office area. Oh yeah, I moved my office to fifth floor MC, which is around the administrative and prof area, so lots of familiar names would be walking pass my office, which makes it a bit unnerving. I like the office, though, as I’m the only one using it. I have done quite a lot during this first week, but still not enough, I guess.

Hmm…and now it’s almost time for my first lecture! This is so unnerving…I still haven’t fully prepared the first lecture! Oh well…

Still jetlaggy, but getting better. Moved to a new place, still adjusting, though. Not sure what to do with food. Mostly going out for food for now, which is bad.