Pi in the Sky

I wanted a journal, and this is it.

May 4th, 2009 9:28 pm

First lecture! Ok, have to say, I was super duper nervous the night before, and even just before class started. But once I started rolling, almost everything went just fine. I was still recovering from the walk to school, which I really have to abandon soon since I was breathing in so much car exhaust… I got a surprise in my mailbox when I found many copies of the course outline, which is supposed to be online only. Oh well, I guess I’ll show off the computer on the projector next time.

As for the class itself, I went through the course outline, cracking jokes about my name and stuff. After that started the counting problems, which went really slow, I felt. I really don’t know if what I taught was review or something completely new, including the binomial theorem and stuff. But in any case, they seem to know what’s going on, so maybe I just wasted a lecture. Overall, though, I was pretty comfortable (except for a couple of weird spots), and I was rambling on and on. First question from the students is, of course, can I speak louder…heh. I guess I’m used to that now… A couple more jokes got some laughs, and the students are mostly quiet during the lecture, so it was not too bad at all. Now if only I can find an easy way of explaining generating function…

Waking up early was certainly pretty brutal, especially after a difficult night of sleeping with tons of nightmares. I essentially passed out in the office during the afternoon, surprised that I could sleep on hard floor. Evening brothers “prayer” meeting was boring, except for the arrival of chips and cards that I ordered. They are good, but at the same time it’s pretty disappointing to have so little to show for $80…

May 2nd, 2009 7:33 pm

There was a fellowship coworkers meeting last night. I still want to be distant from the fellowship stuffs. I just wasn’t interested anymore. I’m pretty sure I’m displeasing everyone, and I can’t fix it. That is my sad life. I will do another Amazing Race, though, so that should be fun. But just thinking about the logistics is creating a giant headache for me…

After the meeting, there was a poker game at Li Zhen’s place. 8 people showed up, which is like, a lot. I got a chance to finally unwrap my second deck of KEM plastic cards, which felt so different when it’s brand new. I divided all the red, blue and black chips from Li Zhen’s collection so that everyone gets 1000 chips to start. With the 15-minute blinds that I set up, however, it took forever to even get one person out (Francis). Went through 10 levels in total, ending with Ed and Penny doing crapshoot thingie. Overall, some pretty exciting hands in the mix, and everyone seemed to have enjoyed it. Maybe I should just become a professional dealer or something.

The stress is escalating. Teaching starts very soon, and I have yet to prepare one lecture. Some more work needs to be done on the tree embedding thing. So as usual, as the workload increases, my work output decreases, to a point of just being paralyzed by everything. So now I couldn’t do anything. I just can’t cope with any stress, I guess.