Haven’t had a non-lecture-related update in a while. First thing, my weight is scary. I now weigh around 195lbs. The scary part is it’s only 5lbs less than Harry…yikes. I don’t know what’s happening. My consumption of food is just the usual, and I have exercise 2-3 times a week…so, I don’t know.

I procrastinated on the CEMC job application, and it was a painful process. Day after day I promise myself that I would type up the cover letter, yet simply couldn’t do it, as if some invisible force was preventing me from typing it up. I had most of the sentences written inside my head already, yet somehow I couldn’t transfer it to the screen. Finally, pushed myself to do it yesterday, and was done. Sent it in today, and I’m hoping to hear something back, but being the pessimist that I am, I’m not having too much hope.

My toe is still hurting. I think it’s never going to heal. So…I’ll be forever crippled. At least it doesn’t hurt as much and not as often.

Hmm…long time no update. Wednesday’s lecture was boring, basically a rehashing of the triangularization proof. Even I got really bored myself going through the same old proof. I also rushed it at the end to add a corollary about Hermitian matrices, but it’s just too rushed. Friday’s lecture was better, it has all the same proofs as before, but somehow it felt much cleaner this time. Also it was student evaluation day, so I had to leave early for once. Too bad Liam and Janarthan weren’t there…(or is it too bad?) Monday’s lecture was just ok, I guess, nothing too interesting. I’m supposed to build up to this climax in the course where the main result is proved, but it fell short of expectation. Two classes left.

David came and talked to me about his test, and we chat a bit about my teaching and stuff. According to him, I have a bit of good reputation in the science circles after having taught them linear algebra. That’s a pleasant surprise, since I felt I did horribly bad in that one. So…not too bad then.

Ah…final exam. A draft was out yesterday, and my contribution is very little, so apparently it’s going to be good again…maybe.

Another one of those days where I had a slow start and then built momentum through the class. Loving the interactions with the students.

Test 2 was depressing, though. My class got 66% average on an easy test. Dan’s class got 73%. Couldn’t do much about it, though.

It was funny when Daoxing picked up his perfect test. He wanted to hug me, but I was sitting, so it ended up being a high five. There’s always a first, I guess.

I felt good for two lectures straight, which is rare. Real canonical forms on Wednesday and complex inner products on Friday. There’s a sense that I’ve prepared well enough that maybe I felt slightly confident in the material, so I was able to speak with sufficient volumn and stuff. I also loosened up even more now, being able to interact with the students in a good way. This is what I like, of course, talking casually to the students. Too bad there are only 6 lectures left. And after the final exam, I probably won’t see them again (unless they take my course again). I guess that’s the cycle of teaching that exists.

The term test…well, it was horrible to mark. Actually, not that horrible, but considering that one question that I marked had a very easy straightforward answer and most answers I got were long essays, it was really frustrating. So much so that I got a bit angry…ok, I guess I shouldn’t be emotionally involved with marking. On the other hand, the other question that I marked had a longer and harder answer, but because it was on the assignment before, they generally did well. So my conclusion is that these students generally don’t have the ability to understand the material and think for themselves. Which is pretty bad.

Attendance has been “normal”…which is about 20-25 students. I guess that’s a good thing. I wonder when I should take the class photo.

That was the most boringest lecture ever. Basically I talked about how things could work in the complex setting, which essentially is the same as the real setting, just slightly more…complex. Attendance was a very low 12 people + William, so on one hand it’s disappointing that so few people came, on the other hand it’s a good thing that so few people experienced this horrific lecture.

So people do come to my office…hours before the test starts, of course. As always, it’s enjoyable to have Peter and David around. The test comes, and it seems that the students didn’t mind it too much, so I guess that’s a relative success. Have to wait until the results, though… As an aside, I was making my typical bad jokes before the exam, and for some reason they laughed (things like, after about 30 people showed up, I said “this is already more than the average class attendance”). Also, Daoxing showed up with the “I *heart* math” balloon from the UW open house and let it float right above him through the entire exam, which I find funny.

I’m such a complex noob…

The more I think about the lunch situation (which I shouldn’t), the more I get angry about it, and the more I wish I had just forget about it. Basically my conclusion out of all this is that these guys are just making my birthday an excuse for going out for an expensive meal, and they don’t respect my wishes at all. I find myself distancing from this group who are generally older, wealthier, and more secured, which at the same time made them more pretentious and self-righteous. I identify more with the younger generation who are more down-to-earth, and much easier to talk to.  I made a perhaps controversial choice in this trivial matter about lunch, but I still contend that I’ve made the right choice. And now, may God let me forget about all of this.

So it ended up just like an almost-typical Sunday. After church, bought some quick groceries, came home to do laundry, had a quick nap, baked chicken drumsticks, ate chicken drumsticks, and prepared lecture. The only thing unusual is I didn’t play any poker, which is good.

For this year, I just wish that things will improve greatly, God willing.

It has got to be the shortest birthday ever…what with DST starting so early and stuff. More than half of the first day is over now, and I just have to say, it’s not my fault if you don’t take me seriously… I have stated repeatedly and unequivocally that I will have my lunch at church. So when I actually do this and you get offended, I don’t see why that could be. I was getting a bit angry for all the plans that they are making, but then I just don’t care anymore, so I don’t have this burden on me.

Of course, there are many reasons why I chose to eat at church for lunch. Mainly, it’s about the younger fellowship people. If we do go out for an expensive meal, are we then excluding those who do not wish to spend that kind of money on a meal? Also, who’s going to give them a ride home? And even if they go, the tradition of the birthdayee’s bill gets divided among all others, and I’ve always find that annoying, so I certainly don’t want others to go through that. I have thought of this a lot, and I thought eating at church makes the most sense, and that’s what I stick to.

Why think so much on such a day anyway? I’m depressed enough, there’s no need to add external complications to my life. But of course, nobody seems to care.

This is my last day in the 20s. As expected, I feel incredibly sad and depressed. At the same time, I’m supposed to feel incredibly blessed about how God has brought me to this point, and yet I can only focus on the negatives. I don’t want to reiterate everything again, as it would just remind me every possible failure of my life.

I’m annoyed by how other people are planning for my birthday. It’s commonly known that I don’t like to make a big deal out of it, and this year especially I’m super depressed, and just want to ignore it completely, and certainly I don’t want to go through meaningless motions. I should get what I wish for on my birthday, right? I guess they don’t care.

So…what else can I say? I give up…again.

For some reason the first part I was really excited and enthusiastic, probably speaking louder than before, going through things clearly (maybe). And then it crashed. I made an arithmetic mistake in my notes, and it took more effort to realize that I couldn’t multiply by 2 properly… And then the brief talk about singular value decomposition in real life was flat. So it didn’t end well. Oh well…

Wasn’t so bored during office hour, I guess the exam has a way of getting people to ask for help. Tim got sort of interested in taking 239 next term, so that could mean one fewer name for me to remember.

Yeah, they are complaining about Durgesh, apparently he holds bad tutorials, and didn’t even sign up for time at the tutorial centre. I wonder how I only got to know this so late…argh… And he hasn’t sent me two assignments worth of grades… Pretty bad.

I spent so much time preparing this singular value decomposition thing. It’s pretty difficult to present, but I somehow managed to present it anyway. Not sure if the students know what’s going on, of course. But even for myself I’m not so sure exactly why we want this kind of decomposition to start with. It’s pretty dry as well, so as much as I find it a bit interesting, I don’t think the students find it that way. Anyway, I found some applications on google, hopefully that will be good.

I find that my voice is gradually diminishing over time… I just wasn’t paying attention to my volumn, I guess, but at the same time I felt that there are so few people here that I didn’t really need to speak too loud… And they haven’t complained, so I don’t know. Also, I have noticed that whenever I start writing stuffs on the board without looking at my notes carefully, I would do something wrong. Well, not every time, but enough times so that now I look like I’m copying things from my notes…which may or may not be good, I guess.

Handed back assignments, and this time there was a minor uproar because one of the markers had some crazy comments in the assignments. He asked a student why the identity matrix is orthogonal, and asked a student to prove that a symmetric matrix is…well…symmetric. Plus other things as well. So it’s just bad…and funny at the same time.

Another standard boring lecture. One of those days when I just didn’t feel like teaching. Plus there’s this one annoying part that I had to wave my hands and force through…  All in all, just very boring.

They’re still not coming to office hours. Peter did come today, though, asking something about his robot project, which looks cool. But of course, I’m no expert in linear algebra, so I couldn’t help…

4 weeks left…that’s not a lot of time to do all the complex stuff. Singular value decomposition is next, and it looks horrible…

The class started out fairly boring, as I went through some technical stuff. But then it got interesting. I was doing this optimization problem, and fairly quickly got many students involved in solving these problems. I loosened up a bit during this time, and enjoyed it. This is what I like, student interaction. Of course, as to whether or not they learned anything, that’s a different issue.

For several lectures now, I find myself looking over at Michael and see if he nods his head after I said something. If he does, then I move on. If he doesn’t, I might explain the thing again. I think I need to stop doing that, since it focuses my attention on the first row rather than all the way to Peter in the back.

William came to today’s lecture midway through it, and at the end, he even asked a question. When he asked, lots of people looked back and probably wondered who in the world is this guy? I thought that was funny. Generally the same people ask/answer questions, but suddenly they have a voice they haven’t heard before…heh.

I thought this was good. Using Maple to illustrate the concepts of graphing quadratic equations was well received, I think. Not sure though. At least they asked more questions this time around, so I guess at the very least they learned…something.

I know I shouldn’t be concerned about the low attendance rate, but now I really don’t feel like spending hours preparing a lecture for about 20 students. I should stop thinking like that, of course, since my lectures will deteriorate very quickly.

Draft of the second test was out today, and it looks good. I begged Dan to shorten it, and he did, so at least I can say to my students that I did something about the length! Only about 30% of the marks are on my questions this time around, so that should be good.

March 4th 1994 is the day I first landed in Canada as an immigrant. 16 years later, I’m still here, albeit now a tax-paying citizen and on the different side of the continent. I briefly wondered what life would have been like had my parents decided to raise me up in Taiwan rather than send me to Canada. I can hardly imagine it. But there is no point in speculating on such things, as everything is under God’s provision. I’m here in this environment and situation because God brought me here. So how come I complain constantly?

Instead, I should be very thankful. After travelling back and forth between Taiwan and Canada, I would choose Canada every time. Sure there are pros and cons of each location, but I prefer to stay here in Canada. Maybe that has been heavily influenced by my upbringing, I guess…

So many ups and downs throughout the 16 years. I’m in the “down” part right now, facing yet another challenging period of my life. I only hope that I don’t lose faith, and keep on going.

Got a call from mom this evening about the earthquake in Taiwan. This series of earthquakes is very disheartening, and even more so when it hits home. Thank God my family is ok with some damages to my aunt’s church, which they were planning to rebuild anyway. So good news among the bad news.

Started doing a bit of cooking at this new place. Still…don’t really like to cook here. Too many people sharing the kitchen. Started with dumplings, and I’ve been eating them for four meals already. Added sidekick yesterday, which was good. So when will I cook real food? I don’t know.

Got home early and waited until the house is cleared before using the heavybag. Had to stop early since I have no proper technique and my 4th and 5th fingers were hurting. In the evening, after dinner, I slipped when coming down the stairs and the fourth toe on my right foot is broken. It’s painful.