Woah...a snowsquall warning for tonight and tomorrow, with the possibility of 20-30cm of snow? Interesting... My bet is that school will be closed tomorrow...

A list of things to do for my "free" weeks...

--> Scan those pictures.
--> Find a PhD supervisor.
--> Do a template for the church powerpoint presentations.
--> Read. Lots.
--> Solve almost all Lemmings.

Saw Nemo this morning. It was really scary for me... But at least I didn't stop in the middle of the movie during the scary parts... I got all tense after the movie. I think it's low on comedy, but high on emotions. The only times I laughed (and remembered) are when they play a constant pun on a "school" of fish, and when they show a toy of Buzz Lightyear in the dentist's place. Good movie, I think.

I should add that I find the jokes about "breathing fish" funny as well...

Snow started again yesterday afternoon. It melted, then froze again this morning...so, icy parking lot. Kind of fun, though...although I get a feeling that the spiky ice thing might deflate the tires...

It feels great to not have to go through the toils of anticipating yet another Monday night during the weekend! Whee!

Oh, solved 2 more lemmings...

It is finished!!! (temporary) (for now)

Just solved 7 lemmings...whee!

My ideal "Acknowledgements": I would like to thank everyone I met here. You've been great.

These are confusing times...

So yesterday was MuTao's birthday, and at his request, we went to the doctor's office in the morning (ok, not so exciting), and Cambridge in the afternoon. That was a really nice trip, I have to say, even though it seems more like an exercise in consumerism... I made him laugh really hard at least twice, I think. The first time was when I was trying to make a tight left turn, I got a bit scared/shocked when the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto suddenly started to play on my CD player. As well, I was a bit tense anyway after making an illegal right turn moments earlier. So he laughed at me...hehe. The second time was when we were looking at feet-supporters in Zellers. We had no idea which one to get since everything looked the same. So we made some comparisons. In one case, we had one product that says "Instant pain relief", and another says "Advanced pain relief." So what's the difference? I offered the suggestion that with the "Instant pain relief", you get relief once you put that in your shoes. However, with the "Advanced pain relief", you get relief before you even use it. For some reason, he laughed really hard about that...hehe.

I had a great and exhausting time, and I think he did, too. That's nice.

Hey, Nemo found me!

That was a great dinner at Swiss Chalet. Turned my mood around to the positive side...

BBS cancelled for the lack of interest today...sigh...

I'm supposed to submit my thesis on Friday. Sigh...
I'm supposed to do a Bible study this afternoon. Sigh...
I'm supposed to find a PhD supervisor this week. Sigh...

A snow update: about 4cm of snow so far. One advice: walking in such snow with sandals? Not fun... Although you do get rock-hard snow pieces after you're done...

Oh, by the way, windchill of -11? Didn't feel it...

I thought the temperature drop would be dramatic, but not THAT dramatic...
9AM: 13 degrees
11AM: 11 degrees
12PM: 5 degrees (a drop of 6 in one hour).
1PM: 3 degrees with blowing snow. (wet snow)
4PM: 0 degree with no snow.
11PM: -3 degrees with blowing snow again. (dry snow)

Actually the walk to campus at around 11PM is not as unpleasant as I have thought. It was dry snow, and I packed a lot of clothes on me, so it wasn't too bad. The walk back to campus at 1PM, though, was quite hard. Now I am at office, typing away the thesis, hoping that the walk home isn't too demanding... In any case, SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! We missed ya...

Today's temperature watch: it climbed from 3 degrees at 6AM all the way to 18 degrees at 2PM. Is this winter or what? At least the stroll to school was pretty nice...

The plan: Go to school at around 6 and start working away.
The reality: Took a shower at around 6, and gradually fell asleep until about 10.5. Sigh...

Weather forecast for Waterloo tomorrow: Periods of snow. Low 14. High -2.
Somehow this occurred so many times that it doesn't feel strange anymore...

I'm...eh...in the dark.

Wow...for the first time since I'm in Waterloo, nobody is online in my icq list...amazing...

Surprising MuTao will be a difficult task...hopefully this thing will work.

I don't have the motivation for making an entry these days. Don't really know why. Here are a few things up in my mind recently:

During this week's BBS, I taught about temptation and sin. The morning after, I was tempted, and I failed. Sigh... I can never put anything I teach to practice, apparently. That makes me really close to be a Pharisee...

Once again, hunger + sleep deprivation = disability of the mind.

Monday night = write-a-thesis night. Tuesday morning = surface evaluation of Monday night's work from the supervisor. Wednesday afternoon = deeper evalution, which, in this case, turns out to be "this is getting much better"! Ok, so that's a relief. I guess one element that made this work is not getting a call after midnight, if you know what I mean...

Wednesday = marking day. The students are torturing me, once again. Good thing I got one hard question and one easy question to mark. Total 62 papers, hard question took 7 hours to mark, easy question took 1.25 hours. Every student wrote the hard question, and some skipped the easy question...what kind of students do they have in UW anyway???

I purposely lent my laptop to MuTao yesterday. This served two purposes: It keeps me from a ton of distraction, and it keeps MuTao busy with movie viewing so that he doesn't complain of being bored. I think one of it worked...

Thursday morning = rushing for nothing. I was at school early in the morning to enter the grades and send off the assignments. Then an emergency came up at around 10. And I have 1 hour to make everything work and arrive back to the office for my office hour.
The plan: Pick up MuTao at 10:30, drop him off at 10:35, go to Optometry and get May at 10:40, drop her off at 10:45, come back to park the car at 10:50, and this leaves 10 minutes for me to walk to office. Plenty of time, I'd say.
The reality: Pick up MuTao at 10:25, he showed up at 10:33, drop him off at 10:38, arrived at Optometry at 10:42, didn't see May, so I ran to the building and back, just to see her approaching my car at 10:45, dropped May off at 10:51, parked my car at 10:56, and this left 4 minutes for me to run to the office. Result: I couldn't run for long, not surprisingly. I arrived at my office at around 11:04, only to see nobody came to my office hour...sigh... And I even did the fearless driving and the fearless running for that! Sigh...now all I am left with is an exhausted body and a pair of sore legs...

One of my wishes is that MuTao would grow and improve spiritually. Then I realize, I couldn't even do that for myself, how dare I hope that it would happen to another person?

Went to Alex's talk today. It was excellent! Definitely one of the more memorable talks for me. He gets bonus points for picking on Mark instead of me...hehe. And the audience questions? Suspicious. Seems so much like a perfect set up...which makes it even more funny.

Here's a Lemmings update. Puzzles solved each day starting at the 13th: 8, 1, 1, 2, 0, 1, 4*, 2. The * indicates that I cheated on one level by looking up walkthroughs on the internet...shame on me! And it wasn't that hard of a level anyway...just very frustrating. Now, lemmings are extremely extremely difficult. Not sure how far I would go... Oh, and that * indicates that on that day, I found out that one level will never load...it just gives a fatal error. Looks like those darn lemmings died before I even get a chance to meet them...

MuTao rented a car today (supposedly) and went to Toronto. Still don't know what he's doing there. Something he doesn't want to tell me, apparently... Now he got his money, he got his car, not sure if that's a good thing... I got a personal mission to make sure he comes to the fellowship this Saturday, but seriously, what are the chances of that happening? He long planned to not come to that one just because he knew we wanted to celebrate his birthday...now that he has a car, the chances just dropped significantly.

I am alone, and lonely, and my attitudes went sour recently. Not sure if it's because of the pressure of thesis, or the fear of finding a supervisor for PhD, or the fact that so much of the time I spent was wasted aimlessly, or the frustration about everything, or something. Not feeling well for sure.

Ok, this post is getting too long. I'll stop now.

Yesterday's BBS went pretty well. Lots of prayer helped. And everything I forgot to say, Thian-Peng said it for me...hehe! Nice! And also, Thian-Peng shared a testimony which basically puts me to shame...sigh...if only I can do that...

Hmm...not sure if I can go through with today's brothers Bible study. It's such a tough subject, one which I'm still struggling with a lot these days.

A funny story from last week: In part of my thesis, there was a proof where I need to separate things into two cases. The first case, I call it Case A. The second case, I call it Case 2. And I thought this only happens on TV...

Another endless night in sight...

Just met Furino briefly in the elevator. That was a nice surprise, and a good start to the day. Surviving, he said, on my situation...hehe.

There's something wrong about this window which popped up on my desktop...

Morning of work.
Afternoon of sleep.
Evening of mindless discussion.
Night of celebration of a birthday.
Going down a mental spiral very quickly..........

Oh, and did I mention that Peter and Andrew are back? That was the highlight of the day... Too bad they're here for one night only...

I seriously need to start working incredibly hard on my thesis today. I've tried to start working on it in the past few days to no avail. Usually there's something that comes up. But, another reason is that I received so much disturbing red ink on my last draft that my mind simply shut off... I really need to just realize, this is only temporary...need to start working NOW!

MuTao just plunged from a high to a deep low yesterday...

Hmm...spent about 4.5 hours on an assignment...sounds strange?

I can't handle my thesis..........

Wow, that was a really tough walk to school. I even needed to detour in order to avoid the strong winds (Ring Road is too wide open). Couldn't breathe properly when the winds are blowing toward me.

SNOW!!!!!!!!! First snow storm of the season. That's 12 days later than last year...but doesn't matter. SNOW!!!!!!!!!!

Hmm...the weather people say there will be 5 to 10 centimetres of snow today. This is the first time this season that they actually put down an amount for the snow...so looks like it's happening. Whee!!! Can't wait. Plus blowing wind. That should be fun! Good thing no road trips were planned for today.

Two group pictures:

1. Group picture when April and Claire returned for a surprise visit. You should try to figure out why Thian-Peng and Francis are in the dark. Here's a hint: it's in the picture.

2. Group picture taken on a "surprise" visit to Thian-Peng's house on his birthday. It's like a giant warm family there.

Plan for tomorrow (yeah...like that has ever worked...):

2 hours of thesis work
1 hour of BBS prep
1 hour of office hour
1 hour of Lemmings (this is an upper bound, unlike the others)

A brief summary of what happened during the past few days, in reverse chronological order:

Giant thunder-wind-rain storm, where the rain falls at around 45-degree angle.
SFU people called.
Solved 6 Lemmings today. Total solved so far: 35.
18 hours without eating.
Played a sad game of table tennis for half an hour.
Played some sad word games online.
Wasted the whole morning.
Got my driver's license. I get my "angry" face on it.
Very late dinner, cheap though.
Minor road trip in the afternoon which included a visit to some Vietnamese restaurant in Cambridge that MuTao has been looking for for ages. Also, shopping at that big mall nearby and Costco. No, didn't find Nemo.
Supervisor meeting went embarrasingly well, as she totally expected me to write something for the introduction which I did not write. At least we got a giant pile of paper now.
Didn't sleep until 4AM.
Deal more with MuTao.
Tons of revising and writing and drawing.
A round of shopping, including me getting Lemmings Revolution. Yay, Lemmings!
Cancelled KWCACMYFBBS.
Francis' mom asked for a copy of the "8 general rules for being a good parent" right after Sunday service. Haha...expect great things from Francis in the near future...like if that's possible.
Deal with a mocking MuTao.
Long staff meeting.
I cannot sing when people do not sing what's on the page.

Ah, the joy of not being able to do what I want to do...

Lemmings! Yay!

Tired, exhausted, drained, collapsed, both physically and emotionally. That was not a good night.

There is nothing too hard for God!

Oh Lord, help me...

Yay! Lunar eclipse! It was quite a surprise, as I have no idea that we are going to have one. So at around 5PM, I specifically remember that, wow, the moon is so yellowish bright and round, I should take a picture, and I did. Later when I was going to get people, I thought, hey, why is part of the moon gone? Doesn't looks like it was covered by the cloud, since there is no illumination whatsoever through the dark portions. So there it is, my first lunar eclipse experience. That is really unexpected, which is what made it really fun. Of course, the lunar eclipse reminds us that the church must be careful not to conform to the world as to not shine in it. Congratulations, Roger! Well done!

Yay! Cold weather! -6 now, -8 later...

I think I'm in a minor depression...

Minor news: updated the "My current favourite mp3" file on the right hand column.

10 hours, 4 cities, 316.5 kilometres, 130 bicep curls, one surprisingly-awake driver, and one passenger who will get a sore arm soon... This is my longest road trip ever. I thank God for continuing to provide me with enough energy to keep awake the entire time.

A brief summary: Conestoga Mall, Wendy's, Metro Square (fly-away documents), Pacific Mall (bread and breakfast...uh...I mean, dinner), Petro Canada (63.5 for 23L, compare to 68.9 in Wat), Somewhere near Islington (with the silent "s"), Main St. in Hamilton (Yves' place), Drive-thru McD's, Home, MuTao's Home, Home.

Congratulations, car, for hitting the big 3K! This occurred in Hamilton while MuTao is being a Hamiltonian circuit. That's 1000 kilometres in 24 days. Right at the median.

Amount of time spent on grading that assignment: 14 hours.
Amount of time spent sleeping this morning: 4 hours.
Amount of energy I have remaining right now: 10%.
Plan for today: Toronto! Hamilton! Me driving! Dangerous! Watch out, 401 people!

More on this later...

Taking a short break from the marking madness to say: I ordered two CD's from the Chapters website on Sunday, and they arrived here today! Wow, that's pretty quick... Too bad that Shrek CD is quick as well: only 44 minutes... In other news, I just found out that I could have saved four bucks if I had ordered the CDs one day later...arrrrrrrgh!!!

Fog! Lost! Run! Marriage! Free food! (more details later...now I have to go to sleep.)

Summary of Progress On Thesis (SPOT): The major components of the thesis are now essentially done. What is left is to put all of them together and write an introduction. Estimated Time of Completion (ETOC): 4:25 AM, November 18, 2003.

How am I supposed to lead a Bible study on marriage when I have no experience whatsoever on that? Not even a boy-girl relationship... Need help.

MuTao got his certificate. Yay! MuTao is still bored. Noooooooooo!

Here's a good Family Feud question: Name something that would end Martin's afternoon nap. You can bet 99 out of 100 people would say, "a phone call"! So today, I get woken up by Keane's call, asking me to take him to a car rental place. Why? Because he passed his driving test! Whee! So that's nice. Although driving in the middle of torrential rain? Not fun.

I think that as I get close to finishing up the thesis, the less motivation I have for trying to complete it. I don't know why...maybe it's because right now I'm writing one of the more difficult parts of the thesis. Or, maybe it's because I'm spending way too much time elsewhere. Or, maybe I just don't like grad school, and I'm afraid what PhD might hold for me. I think I'm confused...

I just realized, ever since I had the car, I rarely ever made any trips on my own. (A trip being defined as the time between I leave my home and the time I finally arrive.) Actually, I can only recall two instances where I did that (both times visiting some driving licensing centres on the same day). So it truly served its purpose, I think. Namely, this is not a car for myself, but of service to others.

On second thought, I did manage a few trips to Canadian Tire and a trip to Costco on my own in early September. However, I don't believe I recall any more incidences after that... So, my paragraph above still stands.

117 minutes and 21 seconds...just when I thought it couldn't get any longer...(subject: irregular verbs etc.)