End of a miserable miserable day. Hopefully not a start to another. I apologize to anyone who saw me today: I was not in my usual form...

Don't know why, but I'm in a really foul mood right now. Not a good day. I have a lot of things to complain about, yet I don't really want to complain about them, as doing so would make me sound like an extreme hypocrite to the n-th degree... Sigh...

Awww...Andrew cried after his accident on Monday...that makes two of us who did that on that day...the crying, I mean, not the accident, though I came close two days after...

Why do I keep a journal online? Well, I've always wanted to keep a journal, and hand-written journal never lasted more than a month (and I tried it too many times in my life already). Looks like this online journal thing lasted at least 5 months now, so it's working wonders for me. I guess typing is a lot faster than writing... Anyway, I kept this public just because I can, and I knew very few people would care to read it, and even fewer people would understand it...

Question...

Should I sign the contract that says I will move into Columbia Lake Townhouses next term?

Pros
--> That's guarantee housing. No need to worry where to stay.
--> Low cost (for at least next term anyway).
--> No worries about furniture, phone, internet connection etc..

Cons
--> It will be smaller space, shared with 3 other unknown people. Less privacy.
--> Far from campus.

I need to make a decision before Monday February 2 (which is like 4 days away)...sigh...don't know what to do here... I'm leaning towards just signing the contract and forget about it, but I really don't know...

Brief synopsis...(as opposed to boxer synopsis...get it? nevermind...)

Thursday January 29
Pretty much spent the day programming integers. Nothing exciting, apparently. MuTao's gone to Toronto, so I'm left alone here. Oh well...I won't complain about the fact that had the prof told us about the delay of the due date earlier, I might have been out of town as well...anyway. I'm still here. Alive. That's the good news.

Wednesday January 28
Yet another last-minute attempt at preparing kwcacmyfbbs. Went to class and came home with wet socks and pants because I decided to take the road less taken. The snow was knee-deep... After checking, it was about 55cm in some parts. Whee! Anyway, there was this last-minute push to get the bbs done, and I did it just in time to get to school 2 minutes late for class. The bbs was great, actually, despite the low turn out. We had excellent discussions, and God really pushed me through this session as I wasn't confident about presenting the materials at all. In any case, I find this bbs really really good. So that's that. Francis was playing with that double-stick thing all the time (except in my car, thankfully). Did I mention that Wednesday nights always involve heavy snow on the road? At least this time the temperature is high enough (like -8) that there was clear vision from inside the car... After I got home, I went out again to Chapters to use that coupon thing. After coming out of it, I lost control of the steering wheel and my car gently slammed into the wall of snow on Weber. Good thing the car behind stopped in time...thank God for that and everything. I mean, after hearing about Andrew's accident, I was scared a bit, and panicked when the car didn't go where I want it to go... Anyway, glad to hear Andrew's fine, and I'm fine as well. Got a KFC burger and came home. After laundry, that's it for the day.

Tuesday January 27
Snow day. Woohoo! Falling to temptation. Oh no! It didn't really snow that much anyway...maybe it's just the ice pellets in the morning that did it. Anyway, I wasted the day on the internet, and didn't even attempt to begin bbs preparation until the last hour. Oh, yeah, sister called to ask me to buy books for her on the internet. Costs a bundle, but at least I don't have to pay for much of it. Won't buy things from America again, that's for sure. She also asked if my mind's fine, and I said it's ok...Bzzzzzzzt! Wrong answer...nevermind. That's a double whammy now, so to speak.

Monday January 26
The day started with, well, the paper due in the morning. It was tough to think clearly when sleepy, so I bravely decided to go have a 3-hour nap. Well, good thing I woke up 3.5 hours later and started typing away. Typing. Typing. More typing. Finally got it done (see previous posts). In any case, it was a long day at school. I was so happy to get home at the end of the day...not one minute too soon. The afternoon nap went pretty badly as my mind was filled with bad thoughts. I complained to MuTao that I'm going crazy. Then mom called to ask if my mind's fine, and I said it's ok. Bad..........lying to mom? Not good. Then I became really really sad, and eventually went for the walk. Not a good night for me. Although I have to say, MuTao was so supportive during this time of distress. I truly truly appreciate his genuineness and concern through this ordeal. Thanks, man!

Sunday January 25
Spent the entire morning with Aaron. He talked. And talked. Woohoo! He gave a back massage, which was really nice. Meanwhile, there's this paper due the next day which I essentially haven't started typing out. Late for church due to double backs. Arrived at office at around 5 for concentrated typing. Funny thing of the evening: We math grad students tend to be bad with numbers. One officemate thought 10+7=11. That's ok, because it's a 10-second error to fix. The other officemate thought 12x4=36. Now that hurts. Because an entire day's work were done based on that error...man, that's pretty sad and funny at the same time. In any case, after 3 pages worth of paper, a visit from a strange group of 4, and a visit to Subway, I finally decided to go home to continue on this work, at which time I was already too tired. Got home, and found that I left the text at office...nice move. Had to pull myself out of my room, go drive under limited vision, and retrieved the text.

Saturday January 24
Finally started to read things for the paper due Monday. Peter got into the picture and took me to lunch. Woohoo! The dreaded Wilson's theorem was barely understood at the MYF hotel under a lot of chopping. Dumpling in the afternoon and evening. MuTao always seem fine when he comes to MYF... Number of dumplings I ate: 11. Apparently that's the most of what everyone ate, actually, so you know how good these people are to me. Planned sleepover at Aaron's went awry when their garage door decided not to open under -17 temperature. He ended up staying at my place, woohoo! Too bad I pretty much went to sleep right after we got home. Still thank God that we did plan the sleepover, for otherwise they may still be stuck outside their fortress under extreme temperature right now...

Friday January 23
Panic at school over two assignments. Took Thian-Peng and Sinnie to Chapters at night because I was tired of mt+u. Oh, and I talked to a stranger over icq for a long time. Now that's truly a bizarre thing to happen to me...

Thursday January 22
Don't remember much. Apparently it involved a lot of sleep. Oh, that's because I didn't have class in the morning and decided to stay in.

Walked 1.5 hours under -8 degrees 45km/h wind -19 windchill. The first half was actually quite enjoyable, as the wind blew toward my back, and it wasn't too cold to begin with. The second half, was torture. Wind blew towards me. Legs were almost frozen. Had a cramp on the right leg when I tried to run and hide from the wind. In the end, God sent me home safely, which is the good news. Now my legs are itchy and they are just getting hot... Interesting. Next time: two pair of pants.

The reason for taking the walk: I was too emotionally shaken. Hope to recover soon. At least I feel somehow relaxed after the walk. I'm very calm right now...hope that lasts...

Yesterday, temperature hit -29. Without windchill. Without wind, actually.

Today, snow that falls upwards. Interesting...

2004 sleep deprivation night #1

So the story goes, there's this paper due this morning at 10:30. I decided, very intelligently, to start typing the paper essentially yesterday afternoon. I managed to finish at around 9:40AM today, with only 10 additional minutes for proof reading. Boy it's going to be such a joyful read for the professor.......... Anyway, I got only 3 hours of sleep. I was tired, hungry, and having this gigantic headache that I have not experienced before (well, maybe once or twice). Anyway, really hope to have a nice sleep tonight...

This is the result, by the way. If you actually understand what I wrote, I'll give you a quarter. Heck, I'll be generous and give you a looney.

Busy busy busy busy busy weekend coming up. For the first time in about a year, I actually have homework due...sigh...

Well, the purpose of having big posts is to discourage people from reading them...looks like it didn't work, so, I'll go for Plan C...what is it? I have no idea.

Now I realize, this is a pretty boring post...I had boring days...anyway.

Wednesday January 21
I asked MuTao to call me first thing in the morning, so that I can wake up to do final preparations to the tough Bible study. Well, he called at 12. I said I want to sleep more. So he called back at 3. Well, I sort of woke up, and then fell asleep again... Eventually I woke up at around 4, read for a while, then went back to sleep yet again until 8. At this point I was thinking, there's no way I could finish the preparation by 10, so I'll need to come back home after the first class. Well, sure, why not. So I went to class and came back. During that process, however, I got quite depressed (for reasons I will not disclose here). So, this highly depressed mind is working against trying to prepare the study...sigh... I went to sleep again, this time for about an hour (out of the 3 hours available to me). MuTao called after I woke up, and that sort of gave me a lift to try and complete the preparation. Great. Well, what ended up happening was that time was running out, and I still haven't completed the preparation and lunch...so I mixed the two together, eventually finishing everything at around 2:23. Well, I have a class at 2:30...wonderful...and obviously I was late for it...sigh...

The Bible study itself went ok, I guess. Not really sure whether they got the point or not. In any case, it's surprising to me how much material can be taught from 1.5 chapters of genealogy. It's great, I think... Francis is still sleeping, I believe... In any case, I don't get many feedbacks, so I don't have much of a clue as to what they're thinking... Oh well.

After the study, there's this huge snowfall that comes together with wind. I pretty much walked backwards on the way to the car with Roger and Aaron. Traffic wasn't good, either... Slow traffic... Slippery traffic... Eventually sent both of them home at 7, stayed at Aaron's for dinner, and got myself home at 8. You see, the Bible study ended at 5:30...that was a long way home, for sure.

I pretty much went to sleep right after I got home (after some icq chat, of course). Eventually got woken up by MuTao's phone call saying he's bored. Oh, great... Well, it's Chinese new year's eve...and apparently you are supposed to do something special there. To me, I really don't care about this "holiday" at all...it's really not important... Anyway, we talked and talked, and I don't remember much of the conversation, and that was it for the day...

Tuesday January 20
The day started off with lots and lots of paper reading. At 4AM. Whee! Why? Just to prepare for supervisor meeting this morning. Later in the morning, I picked up Aaron and company so that they can go to school. Nothing exciting there. Supervisor meeting was ok, I guess. I had trouble explaining something I read a long time ago, but that's ok. I got something else to make up for it. At least now I got more things to read. Nobody came to my office hour, which is good. Prepared for bbs at school, but it is just such a difficult passage to prepare for. I mean, what can you say about genealogies? After class, I was hit by an email from MuTao saying that he is in a lab nearby. I went there, and brought him to my office for him to work. Pretty much stayed until 7 or 8 before going home, at which time both of us were hungry and tired, and he just wanted to go home. Ok, that's fine, so I went on a short grocery shopping and refueling trip, and thus ends the day.

Well, not quite. About refueling... I was running low on fuel since the day before, and always wanted to refuel, but just never got around to do it. Could have done it in the morning after taking the siblings to school, but didn't. Anyway, I thought I would refuel after grocery shopping. I went to the gas station near Sobey's, and guess what, it's 69.9! Wow, that's a pretty low price... So I went in...and found no free spot for me to gas. Too bad, so I went to the side to wait. And while I wait, the price went up to 75.5... How coincidental is that? So I left in search of a better gas station, knowing that any time now the car would just come to a halt... Went to GTO, which has 69.9! Woohoo! And it has a free spot! So I went in, looked at the pump prices, found it really weird...hey, why is the regular more expensive than the premium ones? Then I realized there's this thing on the pump itself saying, sorry, out of order...sigh... So once again, I went to the side to wait. Well, there were just too many cars there, and I would be crazy to just go across the road to get the 75.5 gas from Shell, so I lost patience and went to yet another gas station. Long story short, I eventually gassed at a Sunoco near Chapters, getting screwed with the 75.5 price...sigh... I know, I know, it would have only save me around $3. But...sigh... I added 47L of gas to the tank, which means the tank had only about 2-3 litres of gas remaining...I had no choice but to gas it there. Anyway, the moral of this story: procrastination sucks. By the way, on the way back after having refueled, the GTO went up to 75.2. So, didn't really matter anyway...(at least that's what I tell myself.)

Monday January 19
My chronic dizzy syndrome is back. So hard to focus on the classes...

It's a day of confusion at the classes... Basically I determined that I'm not cut-out for random stuffs, so looks like I'll be going for the deterministic route for PhD...

I put the CD of Rachmaninov Symphony #2 into my CD player, and set it to repeat disc. I think I let it played continuously since 5PM this afternoon, and it's still going. So from my estimates, it must have played the symphony at least 8 times already, and that's not counting the number of times I played it on Saturday, plus Sunday morning. It's just such a nice piece of music...

By the way, the Finding Nemo CD was ok. It was missing a few pieces that I really liked in the movie, so that was kind of disappointing.

Things to do for this week...

--> Probabilistic assignment
--> Programming assignment
--> Designs assignment
--> Read papers for supervisor meeting
--> Send in that last form for degree completion
--> OHIP
--> Ask around about housing
--> Scan pictures
--> Prepare yet another difficult kwcacmyfbbs

Whew...finally got it all written out...

Review in reverse...

Sunday January 18
I think this is where we come in for today. I was late for the service, and because of that, I got screwed on the powerpoint. I wasn't informed of a switch of songs, so when I was trying to go to a specific page, I get an unexpected page on the overhead. I went into a panic, of course...after some more flipping around (which the whole congregation had to witness), I finally realized the switch, and got it in with half the song over already. Anyway, the rest of the service went without a hitch. The speaker who went to Kazakhstan was really interesting. I mean, that's a country that I only know on the map, now I get to see some pictures of that place. Nice... The funny thing after the service is having these "parents" dragging the youths to this "pre-marriage councelling" type class. Eventually most of them went in there, but I had this "I need to bring Roger's family home" excuse, so I got away...haha. I mean, I'm not going to get married anyway, right?

MuTao's looking better, I think, but maybe that's just for show. I don't know what's going on with him anymore... Oh well.

Saturday January 17
The day was spent mostly on eating, sleeping, and laundrying. Close to 5PM, MuTao shoot some messages saying that he was in a bad mood...great...just what I need... Anyway, eventually he said something that was so ridiculous (at least from my point of view) that I started to worry about him. During fellowship, however, I have this calling that I should really trust God, a lot more. No need to worry when He is in control. It was really difficult to let go of the worries, though...

Speaking of fellowship, it had yet another strong turnout. With 7 people, my group was the smallest of the night, which I think is great, actually. Finally got to see Eugene and Hansel again. Those two are fun to hang out with. After fellowship, Eugene held this drum lesson of which a ton of people attended, and I only watched from the sideline. I think eventually I heard rumours of "Eugene for prime minister!" type of thing...oh wait, that's just my impression of the reactions of the crowd.

Friday January 16
Went for lunch and shopping for the afternoon with MuTao. It was always fun to do that. I get to be the awkward unfashionable silly-joke-crackin' sidekick for most of the day. I really wanted to bring up some serious topics, which did not materialize, as always. Anyway, I got a stack of photos reprinted, an earphone, and the Finding Nemo soundtrack. He got almost nothing...although he was one small move away from spending $200 on a piece of wardrobe... This was also the first time that I got into the car that he was driving for now. It is a manual transmission thing, so that was interesting. Several ice breaks that hit the windshield really scared him a bit, as it has this huge crack from one side to the other. Overall, though, we were safe and sound.

Coworkers' meeting in the evening. You know, the trouble with having 11 people in a meeting? It feels like there were only 10. I don't know...I for one hate to interrupt people when they talk, which means I didn't get to say much. They just keep on talking and talking continuously...which was amazing, actually... So why was I there? I have no clue... Eventually I just started to distract Francis with the photos...

It was Elaine's birthday, so they decided to do a surprise, not surprisingly enough. And guess what the surprise was? Yup, same thing they pulled almost every time... This time, however, they decided to wait outside the house in the freezing cold while the car is parked in a place not visible from Elaine's room. Well, that turned out to be quite chilling... Anyway, eventually they let us in, and I went and re-park the car to the front of their garage. Smart move, they say, after the party was over. Anyway, the funny part of the night was when Francis curled up in the sofa, trying to sleep. I decided to annoy Francis. Roger decided to tickle Francis' foot, in which I said out loud that Francis is not afraid of the tickles. To this Roger replied, is Francis afraid of pain? I think Francis was trying hard not to laugh out loud for that one...it was just too funny! In other news, I spent some quality time with Aaron, which consists of mainly watching TV, and I now have two bonus trips to pick him up within the next seven days. Nice...

Thursday January 15
Finally sent the thesis in to the grad office. Now I'm only one form away from completing my Master's degree. Woohoo! Well, actually, I was kind of wishing it would be delayed slightly just to give me more time to contemplate what I want to do for PhD. Speaking of which, I finally got to talk to Joseph. I think he is now on top of my list of candidates...

Talked to MuTao for about an hour while he visited me at around noon. This is the first time I've seen him in two days, and glad to know he was still ok, I guess. We did set up for dinner that evening, but when I called him to wake him up, he didn't... To this day, he still claimed that he didn't hear the phone ring... Anyway, I did something that I've never done before: I lend him the key to my room so that he could go there and watch dvd after he was done with school before I was done for school. I guess from my point of view, he's the only one I would lend my key to, actually.

Oh, yeah, Mark came back to Waterloo for the day. Nothing interesting happened, though.

Wednesday January 14
I think we surprised Furino when the 6098A office team teamed up to decide on a presentation topic right after class. Mind you, Furino only handed us a list of topics at the beginning of class...

It wasn't my office hour, but the office was packed for Alex. Of course he didn't prepare for it, so he ended up asking me on a lot of things. It was a fun group of people, I'd say. Very interesting. I think we all had breathing difficulties, though...

I finally made a trip to the grad office, got the thesis checked out, and sent it to the printers. Made 5 copies, drained $75.

The kwcacmyfbbs turned out not too bad. A discussion on murder ended up being a comedy fest, which is something that I did not anticipate... There was all this talk about having only 4 people at that time, and already a murder occurred. When I asked why did Cain kill Abel? One reason given was that he was bored. Well, then someone else answered, wouldn't Cain feel even more bored after killing Abel? I mean, he killed one-quarter of the world population... (Ok, we know that's not true, but it was gravely funny...)

The drive after the Bible study was even more interesting. The weather was so cold, road condition was so bad. Roger, Sibo and I spent about 10 minutes cleaning the car, scraping as hard as possible, and it was still hard to see out the window. The vision from the inside was difficult, since there was ice inside and outside the windshield. And every time I need to check the traffic on the left, I needed to roll down the window... That was kind of funny, I guess... But it really was a long hard ride on snowy roads. It took a total of about 40 minutes just to get Sibo home and Roger to Wendy's with me.

On the weather front, they are calling it the deep freeze. Minus twenty-something temperature with minus thirty-something windchill was interesting...for a little while anyway. Windchill warning eventually stopped on Saturday, I think.

Tuesday January 13
Daphne talked to me just a little during Integer Programming class, and so did Aaron. Aaron asked about who I was with during Saturday's dinner.

Monday January 12
Nothing much happened... Went to Costco with Thian-Peng in the evening (MuTao was too tired). Tried a new route to Costco, and it worked. Nice... Pictures of Niagara Falls? Gorgeous! Unbelievable! I'm amazed those helicopter pictures actually turned out well.

Ok, my mind is screwed up...but I thought that's pretty clear from the get go...

So I finished preparing for this Bible study on murder, and I feel kind of ashamed, because I'm going to say things that I did not even do right...

Ok, guys, how the heck am I supposed to lead a Bible study on murder? That's too tough... And I'm sleepy already...

After being surrounded by so many sick people, I'm finally getting sick. Good timing..........
Didn't find Joseph this morning. Hope to find him tomorrow, though. Time is running out...
Another plan for tomorrow: finish this thesis submission thing already...

Have a meeting with Joseph this morning. Hope things go well...although I highly doubt it.

Interesting things happen...sometimes

Friday morning: Very cool windchill. Arrived to school early to complete the correction (no "s") of the thesis. Sent it in to supervisor. Went to classes.

Friday afternoon: Sat around. Everyone else moving. Just when I was ready to go home, I received an email from supervisor saying that she found mistakes in the correction. I went to her office to explain. It wasn't a mistake. She suggested a way to clarify things. I went off, made the tiny change, sent to her office again, and she signed the paper. Yes, that "thesis acceptance certificate" paper. The paper of all papers in the master's program. So that was exciting. I showed the paper around (even showed it to Ian, who said "so do you feel happy now? does it feel like having a baby?" and of course I said "I have no clue..."), made a photocopy of it, and finally sent it to Bruce, who will get the final signature on it. Nice afternoon.

Friday night: MuTao's gone. I went to the missionary thing with Alice Chen. That was interesting. We stayed a long time after, since Grace was talking to Alice for a long time. The group of us talked behind them, and topics mostly surround the subject of food. Eventually Aaron shared an interesting story with me. That was kind of scary, but ok. He's a good storyteller, I have to say.

By the way, the car made strange loud noises when I tried to start it up. Cold weather must be the reason for that...hopefully.

Saturday morning: Salad for breakfast. Worried about Luke 1:1-4. Finally finished everything. Not sure if it would work.

Saturday noon: I have about an hour left. I thought I would cook something for lunch before going. Then I realized, I really didn't have time to do that. Just then, Sinnie sent a message asking whether or not I have eaten...and that's how I ended up eating a light lunch at Sinnie's. So coincidental...

Saturday afternoon: Arrived at the special afternoon-version of MYF, and was greeted by a crowd of more than 30. Surprise! That was quite incredible... The afternoon went on without a hitch, I think. Several interesting things with the Luke 1:1-4 thing. At first, Paul and May have no idea what they were supposed to do, even though I gave them a sheet with materials on it. Eventually we got that cleared up. Ingrid didn't read it beforehand, so she was doing some improvisation, apparently. I gave her the sheet just prior to the start of the groups, and she told me that she looked at the English, tried to translate it in weird Chinese, and finally gave up and simply read the English portion. Little did she know that the Chinese version is on the back of the sheet...sigh.......... My group was kind of quiet, which was expected. So quiet that they couldn't even hear what I was saying... In any case, the most interesting part: I met Michael. Not just any Michael, that Michael. The Michael from the youth group back west. The Michael that we used to call "Middle Michael" because he was second oldest among the three Michaels there. The Michael that disappeared a few years ago. The Michael that I really liked. And now, he's the Michael who is a friend of Elaine, and we finally met again here. That was quite a surprise, actually, and I laughed about it, finding it just incredibly amazing. I started talking to him with "Have I seen you before?" and he responded "Yes." Haha! It is a small world after all...well, it is a small world when God is at work. This connection with the past is (probably) the third one in Waterloo so far. The first one being that May knew Benson. The second one being that my mom actually met MuTao's mom before MuTao even got back to Taiwan and met my mom. These coincidences were so incredibly amazing...

During refreshment, most of the chat time went to Aaron and MuTao, not surprisingly. Aaron told me yet another story. I like his stories.

Saturday night: Peter and Andrew were here, did I mention that? So we all decided to go out to eat. Great. Amount of time to decide on where to go turned out to be almost greater than the amount of time we ate. Finally decided on a Thai-Viet place. It was really interesting to sit at the end of a long row of tables that basically held 18 people. Long tunnel, sort of. I even met Aaron and Kerri there! No, not that Aaron...the Aaron from school. He said my name first, I turned around, and there they were. I totally didn't see them when I first got there. Anyway, our long table group had a good time, I think. I was talking mostly with Andrew, Roger, Mary and Ingrid. Don't remember much of our talk, except Andrew's going away again... The night ended sort of abruptly, and didn't get to talk to Peter much. Oh well, there's always next time, eh?

(Might as well mention here, temperature of -25 to -9 for Saturday. Still chilly, but much better. Walking out with only a shirt on? So cool...as long as the shirt doesn't touch the skin...)

Sunday morning: Church at 11:15? So weird... Sat next to Aaron. I wasn't really paying attention to the service, which sort of prompted the post below. Snow all day today, by the way.

Anyway, that's about it for what I want to say. Hoping for a good decisive week ahead. Not sure if I can handle it...

My stomach feels quite queasy right now, and it's not because I ate bad food. It's more of a "I can't face the future" type of feeling. The causes: lukewarm worship, brothers Bible study, MuTao, paper reading, PhD supervision, future housing, loneliness, courses, and apparently much more.

Yesterday, -24 to -16. Interesting weather...

Lots of stuffs happening yesterday and today...will fill in details later, I hope...

Woohoo! -23 degrees, windchill -32, and I experienced it first hand. It was really cool...(get it?) During the walk from home to school, I have this small area on both sides of the cheek that is the only part of the entire body that is exposed to air. Well, by the time, I arrived inside, those small areas are basically frozen. There is an interesting feeling to it, actually... Anyway, that's the fun for the day. Oh, and I need warmer pants..........

4 hours, 3 cities, 226km, 4 washroom breaks = the return of MuTao... He needs new socks.

So, what did I do when the windchill warning is up? I ran around all night long... And boy, was that cold!!! It was ok, though...just don't put my hand out for too long, I'll be fine. MuTao's back, so I have more of an outdoor life again, I guess... Started with a drive to Dave's place, a light dinner (even though it's the second meal of the day, and the first meal consists of KD only), MuTao gets gas, back to MuTao's house to get stuffs from mom, then off to Sobeys for light groceries, run around the plaza in the cold for fun (just me, of course), and back home. Tired. Legs are not working anymore. Anyway, it was a worrisome fun night. Oh, did I mention that we drive two cars? So environmentally friendly, isn't it?

For the stalking type person: a record of my year's reading is linked on the right hand side. Don't read too much into it. (Get it? Haha...not funny...)

Quasi-Completion of the Thesis

In other news, the two readers of the thesis have completed their reading. Surprisingly to me, they are both happy with it, and only one minor change is required. Compared to stories from other people where they get 25-page reports on their thesis and essay, this is pretty good! Well, now I have to really worry about PhD, eh?

Just re-read my parents' letter from last April. It's sad when almost everybody (including my parents) has these grand ideas about me that are just...not true...

Blowing snow yesterday. Harsh weather. And I just happen to decide to take 4 one-way trips from home to school...sigh... I blame the lack of quality C&D food for that.

Courses: so far, so weird.

What exactly am I supposed to be doing this semester anyway?

-13 degrees, -24 windchill...whee!

So, Aaron's birthday is today. I got him a picture of him, my sister and I on photo-quality paper as his present. And I thought that's about all there is. Well, turns out that the other members of the fellowship remembered about Aaron's birthday, and decided to do a surprise. Yikes! Again? Anyway, long story short, we ended up surprising Aaron by singing that classic song in front of the door while he opened it. And we stayed until 9. That was fun, though, the four of us sitting on Aaron's bed, staring at the computer monitor...

I started new blogs that record my daily readings (should be a long one) and exercises (should be a short one). Maybe I'll make one of them public some day...

I like how this "title" thing look on the post below. Maybe I'll utilize it more often. Then again, usually my posts are a smorgasbord of different topics, so it might be difficult to do it.

Tomorrow, the first day of school of the year, and the first time that I may be taking courses in 8 months. I have a full schedule as well: Design course at 10.5, Graph minors course at 11.5, and a random course at 2.5. No, not just any random course, but a course on randomized methods.

Christmas vacation review...

It's the end of the Christmas vacation, and it's time to evaluate what exactly did I do during this long period of time.

I'll start with the sad thing: I still haven't decided on a subject to study for the PhD. I'm still a bit interested in everything, and that's causing too much trouble right now. I prayed a lot (I think), and a lot of people prayed as well. I guess I just need to wait a bit more...

I scanned 4 out of 11 stacks of pictures. I did two yesterday, and two the day before. How about that for procrastination? Two more stacks are in the processing labs, and should be available soon. Each stack takes around 1.5 hours to scan, edit, and upload, so I should expect around 13.5 more hours of work on this... Time to consider digicam? Nah...I'll wait until my mom breaks this camera.

Having my sister here had its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, I get out of my room more often, and travel to many places. More people talk to me when my sister's here. On the minus side, I think it somewhat delayed my work here. Also, I was (and still am) in a very deep spiritual low, so it wasn't really pleasant to pretend everything's all right.

I think I have bonded with the brothers more now. I feel that I can really talk to many of these people freely. That's a good thing, I think. Too bad I still have difficulty bringing up Christian topics when in conversation. Not even one tiny bit...

Having read a good portion of the book Authentic Faith had really reminded me of many difficult aspects of being a Christian. I think at many points I just go, well, I might considering quitting... But no, that's not going to happen. Also today's sermon has something to do with it as well. I am once again reminded how the past month or so have been really heavily "flesh-pleasing" rather than "spirit-pleasing"... Need to get back to the basics of Christianity, I think. Fast.

Ah, the return of snow. Just in time for the start of school, eh? (And considering that it was 12 degrees yesterday? Amazing...)

Weight check: Me -- 160. Francis -- 135. Roger -- less than 120. Sigh... I weigh one bag of salt more than Roger...
Honourable mention: Francis' leather jacket -- 5.

So I read this book Authentic Faith, and it really challenged me quite a bit. So what am I going to do about it? Most likely nothing. Maybe I'll tell people to read it. Maybe I'll have different thoughts about things. But in reality, I'm probably not going to change. That's a big problem I have: I keep learning and learning and learning, and never put what I learn to practice. I know I often joked about my motto being "I'm a theorist, not a practitioner." In reality, that's actually one of my biggest problems.

Minor note: I finally decided to change my wallpaper. This sunset at Spanish Banks Beach is just too good to pass up.

Internet's back! Finally! That was a horrifying 24 hours...

Ah, it's the new year already. Nothing special...just yet another day, I guess. With school starting soon, here are a list of things that I should try to do...

--> Fill in the details of some blog posts.
--> Scan pictures. Lots of them.
--> Read a bit more of Authentic Faith.
--> Put the snow-pad-thingy into the car.
--> Do the grouping thing.
--> Get a parking pass.
--> Cook a big meal.
--> Search for info for MuTao and Francis.
--> Read papers from profs.
--> Pray. Lots of it.