My laptop broke me. Now that I had to bring my heavy old laptop to school and walk 1/2 hour each way, the former leisurely stroll became a tough grind. It took a toll on my body, and on Friday afternoon, it broke me. For a long time, I couldn’t muster any strength or will to carry the backpack and walk home. I just felt very drained, and the thought of the walk crushed me. Eventually I had to do it, and did it, but I was just so exhausted. Went to fellowship 1/2 hour late, and regretted going there. I really don’t know if I’ll be able to continue to take this walk for one more month…

These days, I feel like I’m just wasting life. So much time is wasted on random meaningless stuff. Very little time is spent on the meaningful stuff. And I still wonder what am I going to do in Taiwan. It’s all a mystery.

I had a weird dream during my afternoon nap today. In the dream were Tim, Jake and Liam, three of my students from last term. I talked to Liam first as he was closest to me, and he asked why I never get him to answer my questions in class. It was a weird question, for sure. Anyway, then I talked to Jake, who was on the computer, and asked me to draw a birthday cake on the blackboard. I tried, but that was also weird. And finally, I woke up, and never get to talk to Tim…heh. Ok, it’s just very weird when you start dreaming about former students…

In this lecture, I killed a bug. Ok, it was distracting me, and after getting confirmation that no one will complain if I kill the bug, I did that. Probably the only time I’ll be killing in a lecture.

I’m not sure if I’m going too slow now? I tried to explain the proofs in great details, but maybe it’s unnecessary. Anyway, I’ll be skipping a few proofs in the next few lectures, as I’m still a bit behind.

Finally the midterm is finalized. Seeing how Nick and Chris discuss about things was a bit funny and a bit frustrating at the same time. I just sit along side and say mostly nothing. The test is pretty easy, though, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 75% average. Then again, I do tend to overestimate these kind of things.

I’m having a blast! It was just so much fun! I had a shaky beginning and a shaky end, but in the middle, lots of fun stuff happened. I did indeed do the Eulerian tour thing, which took around 15 minutes, not too bad. The tree stuffs are more interesting. In illustrating the property that a tree on n vertices have n-1 edges, I drew a random tree on 7 vertices. I looked at it and said “this is not a tree, this is a person” since it looked like a stick man. For some reason they were laughing pretty hard for this one. I wanted to do another example and asked for suggestions on what I should draw. Mike suggested a dog, and I tried my best to draw one. It turns out to have 7 vertices as well, and as I tried to look for ways to get more vertices in there, I realized that I only drew 2 legs for the dog, and then added 2 more legs. They became semi-hysterical at that point, probably because of something else, I’m sure. Anyway, it put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. It’s usually the most random things that are the most funny.

I have a post-it note on my office door with my name written on it. Today I found somebody wrote below my name “is awesome!” I’m humbled and embarrassed by this, but I don’t think I should take the note down either…heh.

Coming up with a good midterm is a messy process right now…

Cuts and bridges. I think it went well, except for one small thing. I was doing an alternate proof for the theorem that says removing a bridge leaves exactly two components and the two ends of the bridge are in different components. I set up the proof and asked what’s the contradiction, and got a couple of similar answers that are completely different from what I had in mind. So I just gave my answer anyway. Instead of a general question like that, maybe I should have asked something like “what can you tell me about the cut induced by this set?” This way, it gives more direction.

Nick on Facebook was funny saying that “cuts and bridges” are so depressing.

I was debating whether I should give a short part on Eulerian tours. It is not part of the course, but I feel that it is one of the fundamental questions about graph theory that should be included. At the same time, I’m way behind schedule…heh. I think I’ll do it for sure.

So I’m now booked on flights to Taiwan and back for Aug 31 – Apr 27, using points. Cleared a few hurdles to get there, and now I’m just feeling absolutely numb. It’s not something that I want to do, of course. But at this point in time where no jobs are in sight, this is probably the best thing to do.

After almost 8 years of use, my key chain finally broke. It’s the UW key chain that they gave me when I first arrived to campus. It’s been a long time coming. Is it a sign that I should finally break away from this place?

I’m thinking…actually, I don’t know what I’m thinking…it’s all a blur…

It was a bit dry this time. Going through a lot of proofs. I didn’t really feel like asking too many questions, as there weren’t too many instances where it’s interesting. Still a bit behind, though, but I really want to go through things slowly this time.

There’s just an impossible feeling where there seems to be so much more material to cover, yet there are only like 5 weeks left…

I did say happy father’s day to the class at the end, not sure if it offended anyone.

I really like the slower pace now, even though I’m still way behind. There was an unintentional event that ended up being the funniest thing to happen in class for a while. I brought a magnetic cube to illustrate the hypercube. I held the cube up, and matched one side of the cube to a 4-cycle on the blackboard. And as it turns out, the cube stuck to the blackboard making a 3D object sticking out on the board! I couldn’t control my laughing for a bit, and so did many students, and I let cube on the board for a while. Other than that, I really enjoy doing this class, and the student interaction is way different from the first few weeks of class.

Greg said something about my definition of the complete bipartite graph isn’t clear, I tried to explain more, but another student saved me by piping up and saying he thinks it’s completely clear. So…I’m not sure how to deal with such a situation…

I made a joke about when you go from one place to another, you would usually go without repeating any vertices or edges, unless you’re using a GPS. Some students got it…heh. Made it up during the lecture, actually, it wasn’t prepared in advance.

It was a good lecture. I like how there are many people answering my question. I even skipped Mike to go to someone who has never answered questions before. So that is good, the students are engaged in this stuff, and hopefully it continues. I gave an exercise in class, and Andrew and Jack discussed them with me, with Andrew even coming to my office. It was great to see his thinking process and his great relief to finally see the light…heh.

I was stuttering a lot during this lecture, though, and I don’t know why. I would stutter and start speaking at a fast speed. Not sure what to do about that.

I should have prepared an answer to this question in advance. Someone asked “where do you come from? are you Chinese?” I’m not sure what’s the proper thing to say.

Wednesday: Last day of combinatorial analysis. There’s an error in the calculations in my notes on one of the recurrences, but made a good recovery of it. That reminds me that I probably made the same mistake last time, and I merely copied the examples without checking the answers…oops. Started graphs, which is supposed to be exciting, but it started out pretty dry.

Friday: High expectation for this class, as it is one of the lectures that received good feedback from last time. Of course the expectation wasn’t met this time. The motivational problems went a bit long, and I really should do a powerpoint on this the next time, if I get to do it again. Nick commented that he worked for Toronto Hydro before, and Lan said they would add me on facebook as I mentioned that in class. But that hasn’t happened yet…heh.

I still don’t like going through the combinatorial analysis part of the material so fast. It didn’t help the students understand the material well. It showed up when they ask about string decomposition questions. I wish I had more time to explain carefully the reason for each decomposition.

Well, this is it. After enjoying the tablet for 1.5 months, it died. It started out by shutting itself down while I was away for lunch. When I returned, I found that the system would not boot up. It just gives me the silent treatment. I tried many ways to revive it, even the way that an ASUS support person suggested, all failed to revive the tablet. So…sadly, I won’t be able to enjoy this tablet anymore. Now I will need to carry my original heavy laptop to school everyday, which is going to be a pain. And what am I going to do now that I can’t touch the screen anymore?

This type of nonresponse has happened once before, but it revived itself after about an hour or so. Not so lucky this time. Probably going to send it to Taiwan, as I don’t have any sort of receipt for it, even though it is still under warranty. This is my first major computer failure experience.

I should be devastated. But I’m not. With so many things going on around my life, this is just one small bump in a long hectic road. Still, would have been so much better if it’s not dead.

Been walking to school for a week now. It’s about a half-hour walk each way, so not too grueling. But for some reason my body just feels really tired, having a bit of trouble even walking up the stairs. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t had consistent walking in a long time. Anyway, my weight is still going up, so I don’t know what that’s about. Or maybe it’s because I’m still sick.

Went back to doing puzzles to waste most evenings as an escape to real life, which is what I used to do.

Still don’t know what to do for September. Antarctica is tempting, but money and guts are the main concerns.

So many things to cover, but I thought it went relatively well. 4 pages of prepared notes, and I actually almost went through all of them. But of course I missed things like a summary for how to solve nonhomogeneous recurrences. But I can recover next class. Still don’t have a better way of explaining the “guessing” part…and I’m only doing this through example. So…hopefully they get it.

Jack is apparently one of those “must get 100%” guy…this could be scary…heh.

I’m not sure how my casual conversations with Nick prior to the start of class is going to be perceived by the other students. He asked about Lost this time, I find it too scary, he finds it too stupid…heh. Anyway, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Of course, the big thing that’s in my mind is what to do for September? It’s so mind boggling, and it’s coming really soon! The latest idea is Antarctica in November, but it’s going to cost a ton…like around $15,000 for 20 days. Or, I could book round trip tickets to Europe, and round trip tickets from Europe to Taipei, where the return dates for both trips are in April of next year. The cost of the tickets is around $2000, which is about the same as the price of round trip from here to Taipei. Anyway, been playing around expedia for a while, but I just don’t know what I will do for sure.

And now there’s the complication that my mom really wants to come to Waterloo, but there’s no place for her to stay here, and it would just be so much trouble for me… I don’t really want to think about that.

Why stay in Waterloo when everyone else is married or getting married?

Solving recurrences is another concept that really needs to take a lot of time to go through, but I don’t have the luxury of time on my side, so had to rush through a lot of details. The thing is, the majority of the things are irrelevant once the shortcut is known, but the shortcut is so bizarre that it would not make any sense except to go through the tedious theory. So I don’t know how the students will perceive this… Andrew did ask an interesting question after the lecture, though, about those that have complex roots…and I don’t really have an answer for that.

Jason is not in my class, yet he’s coming to me for long help sessions…what is up with that?

Graph theory is coming! So excited…

So it was confirmed that I would not be teaching in the fall. There are many thoughts that go through my head right now, organizing them would be difficult, so I’ll just start typing randomly. First, I was expecting this to begin with, so it wasn’t entirely a surprise. It’s just the reality of it is saddening. I finally have something that I love doing as a job, and I’m being denied from doing this. But I really shouldn’t complain, I’ve already been preparing for this. Even though I told myself beforehand that I would be ok regardless of what happens, I’m still a bit disappointed.

So what now? I don’t really know. I was thinking of travelling through Europe, but it sounds like too much work, and to travel alone is just too daunting. Sure it would be a great adventure, but not sure I can actually do it. Obviously my mom wants me to go to Taiwan and stay there until I find a job. This is less desirable, of course, as I just couldn’t stand staying in Taiwan. These are two options with two extremes in costs…

Of course even with this temporary off time, there is still the question of whether or not being a lecturer is actually a viable option for the future. There are so few of these positions as full time jobs in Canada, which makes it so much more difficult to get any sort of stability. It gives me a headache, so I try not to think about it, but it’s hard.