Went to buy some “groceries” with Ed and Roger. Being a green tea/iced tea nut, I was happy that they were on sale, so I put 6 cases onto the cart. The other guys are more into the bubbly drinks, which were also on sale, so they put many cases of pop onto the cart as well. After we paid for everything, we found out that my iced/green tea was not charged any tax, but their pops were charged the full tax. Then Ed realized something very profound…so apparently there is already a “carbon tax” in place and we didn’t even know it! Ha…

I guess there are things that I should be doing, but I’m too lazy to do them. But I’m wasting so much time doing nothing at all. Pretty sad, actually.

Yeah, spending too much time grinding the triple draw, and somehow got my bankroll to an all-time high…which is now higher than the night when I “won” the huge 8 games tournament Dec 1. Wow…took 8 months to rebuild the bankroll that I lost through silliness…

Don’t want to use the word “finished” for it might be blasphemous…heh. But yeah, I’m done with the lectures for the year. Very thankful that I had such a great group of students in my class. Surprised that I might have improved on my teaching from last time (though there’s certainly much more to improve on). I’ll miss teaching for sure. When I finished the lecture, I was taken aback by the applause from the students. They weren’t just polite wimper applauses, but loud and strong ones (at least from what I can hear at that point). Very shocked by this, even slightly embarrassed about it, and started wondering if I really did such a good job with the teaching? After class, the guy who talked to me about boardgames and teaching before (still don’t know his name) came up to me and said “you did good.” And I’m very humbled by all of this happening.

I was a bit dorky and actually brought the camera to class to take some photos. They didn’t turn out too badly, so that adds to the memories for the term. One student wondered if I had facebook, and indeed I do, but won’t let students add me until after the final. I don’t know why…maybe so that they don’t stalk me? Heh…

I’ve walked to school every morning that I had to teach, it takes between 45-50 minutes for one trip. Even though other people might complain about the weather, I’m very grateful that I only had to avoid the rain just once, and for the most part, the weather is cool enough that I can walk to school comfortably. I also got used to the long walk, so I don’t feel so tired after the walk. I guess that’s a start to a minorly-active lifestyle?

Friday, I delivered two lectures. One for myself, one as a substitute for David Jao. These were essentially the same lectures, so I get to make the same bad jokes (ok, so both sections laughed about the “more boys than girls” joke). But yeah, both went reasonably well, I think. I was absolutely exhausted after the second lecture, though… Maybe I walked back and forth a bit too much? Anyway, one more to go, and the students will never get over the shock of what I’ll hit them with…heh. Well, no, they won’t be shocked at all.

There was an interesting incident that played out through the two lectures… I was at the morning lecture, and at the last minute discovered that there was no chalk there! So I hurriedly went next door and found no chalk there either! But there are some in the next room, so I grabbed some and then came back. Then I realized that there were no erasers, either…so I rushed away to get one. And I had a nice morning lecture. Come afternoon, where I was doing the lecture in the same room, I started teaching until I found out that all the chalk are so short that it was getting very very annoying! Someone suggested that I steal some, but I said “stealing is a once-a-day thing”… Not wanting to waste too much time, I decided to use my coloured chalk to do the rest of the lecture. Probably a bad idea, actually, when I tried to look at the board from the side, but it does the job. So…first ever chalk incident for me.

Last class, then office hours, then final exam, then boom, I probably won’t see most of them again…that’s sad.

I’m on a massive heater on the micro stakes 2-7 triple draw cash game. Had a slow month to begin with, but had a run of great cards recently, and somehow got +$31.26 for the month. This also puts my bankroll to $100+ level for the first time since Jan 1 of this year, which is nice. Of course, downswing expected soon…

I’m supposed to go to Vancouver to somehow get a tour of the surrounding areas for my mom and her friends. But I really really don’t want to go anymore…it’s not a place I’m interested in visiting, and I’m not happy with the prep work that my mom wants me to do, which so far I’ve done nothing about. So…disaster expected soon…

Ed and Ingrid somehow decided to print some of my New Zealand photos and put them in a frame as some of their home decors. This leads me to thinking maybe I should get more of my photos printed…but I just don’t want to spend that money! Probably because I’m thinking of big prints like canvas prints that cost at least $40 a piece, or a panorama print which would cost US$70+shipping at the least.

So Monday’s lecture was kind of disasterous. At 25 minutes left, I wasn’t sure if I had enough time to present the proof of Konig’s theorem. But then I was in a bit of dilemma: If I hold off the proof until the next class, I wouldn’t have enough material to cover all 25 minutes; however if I started doing Konig’s theorem and did not finish, it would be very difficult to continue the following class. So I made a snap decision to just go through it very quickly, probably causing tons of confusion. At the end, I wasn’t even sure what I was talking about and just powered through everything. Oh well…

Wednesday’s lecture was much better, I think. Summarized the proof again, and presented an algorithm which was overly complicated in words, but overly simple in execution. I made a non-joke about don’t fit a 50-minute proof in 25-minute as a lecturer, so maybe because of that, the guy who talked to me about boardgames previously came up to me after class to talk about being a lecturer and stuff. It was an interesting conversation, and raised the contradiction of the academic environment…why is it that there are so few dedicated lecturer positions? Anyway, still don’t know his name, but it’s always nice to have good conversations with students. And now I get to talk to Freeyon about puzzles and other stuffs, which is also nice.

Two more lectures…I think I’ll be sad when it’s all over. Maybe I should take a picture of the class? I was spying on the tutorial, and was pleasantly surprised to see so many students there. Andrew must have been a good tutorialist. A draft version of the final exam was compiled today…and yikes. Hmm…I may need to hide myself so I don’t get assassinated?

Hi Freeyon! (In case you’re still reading.)

Started the week with colouring, and I got greedy with the materials and started talking about greedy colouring and degeneracy, which is not in the course notes. I just felt that the subject of colouring is far more than what is presented in the text, and I should give more ideas about colouring. Unfortunately this made my lectures unnecessarily complicated, and I immediately felt that presenting the algorithm was an error. Oh well… Then onto colouring planar graphs, which had a fairly complicated proof, and some details were left out (both in the course notes and in my lecture). So it wasn’t so good. Then today, I tried to present duality, and it was a mini-epic fail, quite frankly. I didn’t do it right, actually. And then the matching stuff, I guess I never liked matchings, so it was hard for me to describe the simple concepts of alternating paths…yikes. It was disasterous all around. Perhaps if I have made a more thorough preparation………..

I have a guy with a 30% average so far asking me (through email) on what to do for the final. Well, study hard, man! But I’m guessing it’s pretty hopeless for him…that’s too bad, he works for RIM, and is about to be dropped out of CS because of this course…yikes.

Ok so I bought an OK poker table and it was good. Money down the drain.

It’s happening again…starting to think what am I doing? Happens whenever I got free time.

Funniest gospel music lyric ever (talking about a phone call complaining about a bad product):

I state my business; She puts me on hold.
I’m back to thinking; I’m gonna explode.
And the dog wants dinner,
And the music they’re playing is the sound-track of hell.
You say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right?”
Just try listening to Celine Dion all night.

(“My Friend Jesus” by the Newsboys)

Ok, so it was slightly cheesy to bring out the magnetic building pieces to the lecture in order to build the platonic solids, and it was even cheesier to bring 20-sided dice to throw around, but it was moderately successful in getting laughs. So at least the expensive props finally paid off. I did mention boardgames and stuff, and got into a discussion on that with a student (don’t remember the name). So that was fun.

There was (obviously, I guess) a rush of people asking for marks after handing back the midterm. I rarely adjusted the marks, unless it’s very obvious. It’s funny how I would get so many of these beggings from math students where it was almost nonexistent with the science students.

I think I enjoyed talking to some of the students, and I think I’m enjoying this teaching experience. I also think that I got lucky with such a good (sub)group of students, and perhaps teaching something I know well makes it easier. Sigh…only 7 lectures left.

Haven’t written here for a while again. That’s probably because I was doing this teaching thing quite smoothly now, and nothing major to report except that it’s been going pretty well. I actually caught up to the schedule now, so I can fall behind the schedule again by teaching extra stuffs…heh. I guess I was teaching a bit fast, and didn’t really have any interactive stuffs…oh well.

There was a midterm going on. I thought the midterm was pretty straightforward, and the students generally did well, having a 74% average. They seem to have trouble with graph theory proofs, though… I handed back the midterms during class, and it was slightly chaotic but fun. I made jokes about names and stuff, and heard the toughest possible name to pronounce in Ivan Cajic. Before I attempted to pronounce his last name, he said “no chance” and indeed I would never have gotten it…heh. Running around handing back the midterms was a bit tiring, but I might still do it again next time. If there is a next time…

It really is too bad that I’m not teaching next term…I think I’ll miss it.