This is a pretty big milestone, my 2000th post! I can’t believe I kept this up for almost 7 years of my life. It started as a testing thing for blogger, and I wanted to record things happening in my life anyway, so there it is. It has been a tumultuous 7 years, lots of ups and downs (probably more downs than ups), and through it all, I ended up…worse than I started? I certainly wouldn’t say that I became more mature, as I’m still pretty childish, and certainly tend to be depressed. The measure of all things should be my spiritual condition, and it has its fair share of swings, which I think I’m currently slipping to the bottom end of things. To speak of worldly conditions, all I can say is I still don’t have a job, but I’m still alive, and that’s what counts. But I need to come back and thank God for the incredible blessings that He has given to me, which I often take for granted.

I don’t usually like to read what I have posted before, usually because either it’s too depressing or I just don’t remember why I wrote some of the things. I don’t like to remind myself of the pains and depressions that I went through in the past. But I also wanted to write a highlight of events in the past 7 years, so instead of dwelling on the bad things (which I tend to do), I’ll write down the best things that happened during this time. In no particular order: (1) Trip to Switzerland was incredibly amazing. (2) Teaching students, getting positive feedbacks, and become friends with some students. (3) World Puzzle Championships in Bulgaria and in Belarus. (4) Support of friends from fellowships and church. (5) The first time I flew in business class and actually slept on a flat bed in the air.

I hope the next 2000 posts won’t take that long. Hypothetically if I have one post a day, it should take around 5.5 years. I can’t imagine what God has in store for the next 5.5 years…I guess we’ll wait and see on this blog.

Last lecture. It was pretty simple. Just explained some more things about matchings, and that’s about it for the course material. Mentioned something about courses beyond 239, but they didn’t seem interested. Mentioned final exam stuff, and they seem most interested when I was talking about “optional studies”… And that’s it for the lectures!

I brought old assignments and tests to class for them to pick up. I placed them along the floor of the stage, except for one which was on the table because that’s where the table interrupted the flow. One student didn’t realize this until the end, mentioned to me about it, and I said that at least they are at most one level apart. He didn’t seem to appreciate my joke about BFS trees.

I usually feel very sad about the ending of a course, mostly because I will miss seeing the students. But this time I wasn’t too sad. Perhaps it’s the desensitization. But maybe it’s because I didn’t manage to bond with many students here. I talked to Mike and Nick the most, but that’s about it. It’s a bit disappointing, of course, I wish I had known more students, but they don’t like coming to office hours much. Oh well. No more teaching for the rest of this year…

Second last lecture. It was fun talking about Hall’s theorem in terms of marriages. They got into it as well, and provided many answers that I would have liked to hear from them, which is nice. I waited all term to make these jokes, and it paid off…heh.

Also took class photos. They seem receptive enough, too bad there are a few students who regularly attend class didn’t show up.

Final exam prep is crazy. Almost done now.

Tried to explain the maximum matching algorithm again, but it just fell flat. The theory is just too abstract, I guess, making it difficult for them. I didn’t really know if they were getting it or not. Made a mistake at the end which was bad.

Mike didn’t show up for the first time. Guessing the heavy rain earlier in the day was to blame.

The process for making the final exam is so frustrating…no movement for a week plus a weekend, and now it’s supposed to be due in 2 days.

A series of items have been breaking down recently. It started with the new computer, which is bad. Then there’s the keychain which I had ever since getting to Waterloo, which is sad. Then there’s the mold-infested bed, which is disgusting. Then there’s the timer, which is inconvenient. Then finally it seems that my body is breaking down, which is horrible.

After saying how I felt guilty about not talking to Dan last time, I bumped into Dan a couple of days later and had a good chat on what’s going on. That’s nice. Tim came by late afternoon yesterday, which is also nice. I always seem to occupy Tim for longer than he wanted to…heh.

Still no news on what’s happening in September. My mind is trying to not go insane.

It’s the least anticipated lecture ever. Well, sort of. Explaining the algorithm for finding maximum matching in a bipartite graph is fairly complicated. I tried my best to simplify the explanation, but it’s still pretty horrible. I didn’t have enough time to finish everything anyway. So, will try again next time.

It’s the first time that Nick missed the class. Laurier projects are crazy, it seems. Still find it amusing that the majority of the students that come to my office hour (of which there are very few) are not in my section.

A bit frustrated at the process of making final exams. I sent out something on Monday, no response. Sent out another batch of questions today, so far nothing. Maybe we won’t have a final exam.

It was a pretty straightforward lecture. Just matchings, then alternating paths, and just barely fit in some vertex covers at the end. For the most part it seemed ok. I don’t know, I might have over-explained some things, but I guess it’s better to be safe that way. It’s also the first lecture where I went in without having had lunch. Ended up just ok.

I’m surprised that the room was fairly full. Maybe people are coming back because the midterm period is over. For some reason Egor always leaves 10 minutes early, it’s just weird.

Time to make the final exam. It’s not going to end well.

I felt good about this lecture. Started with the 6-colour theorem, then the 5-colour theorem (which was a bit iffy), and finally the 4-colour theorem. The facial expressions on some students were pretty funny. I guess maybe I told a good story with this development of colourings. The duality was not too bad either. I finally got the chance to show off the cube/octahedron dual with the magnets. This is one that I will point to as one of the better ones in the semester.

There’s one guy who confessed to being from the morning section came to me before and after the lecture to ask questions. Getting students from other sections is a new experience for me, it didn’t happen last semester, and I only know of 2 from 239 last year. This time there were a lot of them…is it really because the morning teacher is bad, or because I’m not so bad? I think it’s the first one…heh.

Mike came into the class and looked like he was stunned. Really weird facial expression from him, which made me laugh a few times while teaching. Students might be wondering why I was laughing for no particular reason. Anyway, I always look to Mike to see if the class understands what I’m saying, so he’s a good help.

I’ve been feeling sick and tired these days. The breathing is still a problem, and I need to cough a lot to breathe normally. And then there’s the general tiredness that I’m feeling. The walk to school and back is now quite draining, when it used to be just ok. I feel like I want to sleep all the time. Which brings to the subject of sleeping on the air bed…it’s horrible. My body feels tense when I wake up. It’s just not the way to good sleep. Still can’t decide if I want to buy a mattress or not, it’s just a tough decision. Ok, so it’s a tough decision because I’m not flushed with money, and I’m a nit. But still…it’s tough.

I’ve been bumping into a lot of people lately. I bumped into Ningchuan quite a few times now along the MC-DC connector. I bumped into David a few times, even though it took me a while to figure out the first time around, since he has a new hairstyle and glasses now. I bumped into a girl who used to attend my class on the way to lunch. I bumped into Dan in the washroom, which I’m still feeling guilty of, because I said hi, turned around and left. I should have talked to him a bit more… Bumped into Forest and Zhenhua in Sobey’s (of all places). Tim just drops by my office for chats randomly, and that’s always nice. I visited Furino today, and talked about a lot of things including terrors of wisdom teeth removal.

I don’t know…maybe I’ll miss this place. But I so want to get out of here for other reasons. But I don’t want to stay in Taiwan either. I don’t know…it’s all a mess. Also, thinking of a career change. But I have no idea what I could do.

It’s supposed to be a short lecture, as I needed to leave some time at the end for student evaluations. But because I’m still behind in the schedule, I panicked again. I was almost out of breath, actually. I felt extremely bad afterwards.

I really need to handle unexpected answers from students better. I try to ask questions that are easy to answer, but sometimes it just doesn’t go the way I intended. I feel sorry for Mike, as I may have misheard what he said, oops.

It’s weird that I saw at least one student get up to leave when it was time for the evaluations. I don’t know what that means.

It’s one of those depressing lectures, I guess. I wasn’t feeling well, and I rushed at the end to finish some material, which is always bad. So I felt horrible after this lecture.

Mike came up to tell me how to pronounce Grotzsch, which I still failed to pronounce correctly. Learning German from Mike, that’s something on my to-do list.

Student evaluations next class. I’m way behind on schedule. Things are going crazy.

Saturday was the day trip to Montreal. Woke up at around 3am, left at around 4:15, picked up Betty and the way we went. It was mostly a smooth drive, and Betty kept on talking which kept me up (barely). Going past Toronto, the first stop was at Trenton where I got ripped off by McDonald’s. After more driving, I wanted to go to a service station due to consuming a large orange juice at McD’s, but most of them were closed. There’s one open, and we went there, and I had a chance to take a 20-minute nap which somehow refreshed me and I was able to keep on going. Once we reach the border with Quebec, the traffic was a lot more aggressive. Just the French culture, I guess. Arrived in the city of Montreal at around 11, so surely we would be able to make the 12pm wedding lunch. Well, we only had printed google map to work with, and I made two wrong binary choices, causing us to cross the long bridge 5 times. Even after making the two correct binary choices, I still went the wrong way. Eventually with a lot of help with the map and the compass, we made it just after 12. I tried to stay positive throughout the wrong turns and stuff, and it made for a fun story to tell.

At the wedding reception lunch thing, it was good to meet so many of the old friends whom I’ve not seen for ages. I guess it’s the type of thing you do at weddings. But of course I was assigned at a table with Ingrid and Ed whom I see every week. Samuel and Christine looked great, and goofy as usual. The steak I had was not so good, though, since it overcooked the “medium well”… Anyway, the whole thing lasted until around 4. And despite Jackson’s strong insistence that I stay and rest a bit before I leave, I still left anyway. I simply do not want to stay in Montreal too long, especially with its horrific traffic.

Ok, so I was feeling light-headed when I was heading out to the traffic, but somehow I felt fine soon afterwards. Tried to get some gas in Ontario (the difference between ON and QC gas is a lot), but couldn’t until I get to Cobourg (Nick’s home), where it had the cheapest gas I’ve found along the 401. I stopped at the service station just before heading into Toronto to have dinner. I was planning to have a traditional Wendy’s meal, but was shocked at the significant price increase at Wendy’s. So I went for the more traditional Tim Horton’s meal. Arrived home at around 11:30pm, thus ending the long day where I was in the car for about 15 hours, drove about 1400kms, and had 3 hours of sleep the entire day. Won’t do this crazy thing again. At least not soon.

Wednesday was a things-went-wrong day. It began when I discovered my UW computer account has expired. Somehow that broke me. It got fixed eventually, just in time for the lecture so I have printed notes. So that’s good. In the evening, I find my bed a bit wet, turned it over, and find lots of mold on the underside. It was disgusting. After some research, it sees that the only thing I can do is to throw it out. Which is sad, since it’s such a good futon and I only bought it at the end of March this year…sigh… I slept on the floor for a couple of days now, and brought the air bed back from the office. Neither are good places to sleep on, but because of my uncertainty about the near future, it’s difficult to decide whether I should get a new mattress or not. This also raises the question of whether I should just move out or not. It seems that living in a basement is a pretty bad idea for my health. But then the same difficulty arises…

One day round trip to Montreal coming up. Got the oil change done today. Now hopefully the car and I will be intact. Secretly, though, I really don’t want to make this trip… I have bad impressions of Montreal, and definitely don’t want to stay there for too long.

It’s been way too hot this week. Made the walk to school and back more difficult. I even had to use two sets of clothings, one for the walk to school, the other for the walk home. But at least I should be thankful that I don’t have to bring my laptop to school and back anymore, that’s still a giant relief for me. It cooled down today.

Wednesday: Handed back the midterms. Turns out that there are many people in my class who are not in my section. So the classroom would be nearly empty had there just been students from my section! So I guess it’s a positive thing. Other than that, just Jordan Curve Theorem and Euler’s formula for the day.

Friday: I did the optional platonic solids thing, as it was popular last time around. This time, there’s just a lot of silence…so I guess it’s not that popular this time. I did stick them on the board, and they made for a pretty picture. I guess maybe I have not motivated it enough this time around. Anyway, it’s still not entirely disasterous.

Student evaluation next week. Should be crazy.

Another meeting, another signal that the engineering people might somehow magically find something for me to do and get me to stay. It’s not certain yet, of course, but the possibility of yet another plan changer is messing up my mind. I don’t know if I should consider this good news or bad news. After booking the plane tickets, I have been mentally preparing to get out of here, and convinced myself that this isn’t such a bad thing after all. So essentially I have already checked out of here. But now with this new development, I don’t know what to think, and what to prepare for. Well, at least my tickets can be cancelled 22 days before departure date, so there’s still about 1 month of buffer to work with.

There was news today that Peter Eastgate is taking a break from poker, having won huge amounts of money in 2008. He now finds no motivation in playing poker, as he is essentially financially set for life. Several similar stories came out in the poker world recently. That got me to wishfully think about this question: what if all of a sudden I have a large amount of money, so large that I would be set for life? What would I be doing? I really don’t know. I guess one would probably go do things that one enjoys doing, even though money is pointless. Maybe I will keep on teaching, as I treasure these student interactions, and that’s something that money can’t buy. But if the job market is going to be remain really tough like now, would I go out of my way to still apply for teaching jobs? That I don’t know again… So why am I thinking of these questions? I don’t know…it’s all pretty pointless, really.

Planning a crazy Saturday. Start driving to Montreal early in the morning, attend a wedding lunch at noon, drive back to Waterloo afterwards.