Blog from not away...

Ah, home sweet home. For two more nights. Good to be back.

I didn't do my taxes on the plane. Being squeezed in the middle of 3 tiny seats is not exactly a good place to do my taxes. Besides, I had only 3 hours of sleep last night, and I was hungry, despite the "breakfast" they served...

I just have to realize that Christianity is not about a set of rules to follow; it's about a heart to change. (Yeah, I knew this all along, it just never really really sunk in to me...)

So my visit to Vancouver is coming to an end. I'm not sure if it's a sad end or not, but in any case, I've experienced too much here, so might as well leave and experience even more in Waterloo...sigh... Anyway, there was a tour of QE Park once again, this time with Jackson and company (I think there was Rebecca, Taro, May and mesister in the mix). The afternoon was spent mostly at Ginia's house. A lot of time wasted, certainly, but at least I get to see Jason and Joseph, and Mo. So that's nice. Anyway, leaving here. Next time, I'm driving here. If I decide to come back here.

I think I'll be doing my taxes on the plane.

I'm suppose to leave the house in 6 hours, and I still don't want to pack yet. Just too much stuff... And the thought that I need to pack again in one day is not pleasant at all...

See, mom's still mom. She knows (partially) what I was angry about, so things are better now.

Eating with only family is really much more comfortable.

Unfortunately that controversial bill was passed. There were rumours that the PM is going to call an election next week...that would be one week too late, unfortunately.

I discovered the "Game Show Network" today. Good thing I didn't have access to it before, or I would have wasted my life away very very quickly.

I have to deal with the issue of anger today. Not sure how to deal with it at all...

I was flipping through some old memory things. I digged up my grade 9 yearbook and some cards that I saved. Boy, there were some very interesting people and comments there. I have to wonder where are they now? What's happening? It's also heartbreaking that I lost almost all of my contacts from my younger days...

I'm really sick.

Crawling in the "crawl space" is not fun. I don't like throwing things away, even if they have no use whatsoever.

I'm trying to avoid my aunt as much as possible now.

Apparently Rush Hour is a big hit with friends and family here. That's Rush Hour the game, not the real traffic.

Finally got some rest this morning.

I think...eh...well...why am I thinking? Hmm...I don't know...

I'm getting sick.

I think I really want to take tomorrow off. It has been very exhausting. Today's activities include moving mesister's stuffs from her residence back home. Yet another really tiring day.

Might as well mention that during my time here, I would have been in the car travelling for more than 1,000 kilometres (and still counting). And I drove most of that... By the way, gas prices here: 92.9.

Three situations that I find uncomfortable...

Being in a meal with a large number of people (i.e. more than 5). Especially when there are people one layer higher in the family tree.

Being in a talk about girlfriends and marriages and "what should your wife be like"-type topics. Especially when there are people one layer higher in the family tree.

Being asked sensitive questions such as "which part of your body is your favourite?" Especially..........

My energy level has now recovered to its original state, that is to say, still pretty low. At least I have the will to live on...just barely.

As I might have mentioned before, I have trouble expressing my emotions and thoughts. Right now (and for a long time now), I have these paradoxical emotions running in me. I am full of contradictions. I like proof by contradiction.

There are things that can only be done when mom's here. Mostly shopping. Shoes yesterday, jeans today. So what's ahead tomorrow? Possibly space suits, I guess. Or bullet-proof jackets.

Three signs that I saw on the road to Whistler and back...

Point of Interest. (Well, if it's a point of interest, maybe you can tell me a bit more on why they are interesting...)

Interpretive Forest. (Hmm...it should be much better than interpretive dance, I guess.)

Function Junction. (Seriously, they have a conference-type place with this name... I have other ideas of what this should mean, like, it should be a place for bijections, etc....)

Yet another full day trip yesterday. I was really tired the entire day, though, so I wasn't really enjoying this. At least I didn't have to drive... We went to my old school SFU (which is surprisingly beautiful, according to mom), and I think the rest of the day was spent shopping... My feet were really sore after so much walking. We bought a memory card for the digicam, and shoes (mesister needs one, and my mom just said that I should get one as well...so there you go. The ones I got are very similar to the ones I have right now...so hopefully it will be ok...). I have to say, though, I was biting my tongue real hard when shopping at Sport Chek... (I'll leave it at that and won't elaborate here...)

So my mom decided to give the digicam to mesister... It really is a pretty bad camera, though, so I guess I'm not too disappointed. For some reason, every picture comes out either too bright or too dark. And it has trouble focusing... Oh well, I guess that's what you get for buying things on the airplane...haha.

Sometimes when I'm outside, I just look out and see a lot of people walking and driving around and doing other things. Then I just thought, God knows every one of them. He knows their thoughts, their lives, what they did, what they are going to do, how the individual molecules worked on their bodies, and much much more. And I just go, wow...that's incredible...

I don't know why, but I have a pretty sour attitude these days, and that made the trips a bit unpleasant for myself and others.

Doing a lot of self evaluations lately, and find the list of flaws of myself to be way too long. In particular, I'm very very selfish. I have to wonder, do I have genuine faith? Probably not, eh? Which is so ironic since I was teaching so much about faith in bbs...sigh...

Right now, I have an internal debate on whether or not I should use MSN Messenger. There are a lot of pros (e.g. most of my friends in Vancouver uses it and not icq), but there are a lot of cons as well (e.g. confusing nicknames and running two instant message programs might drain my time). I don't know. Still thinking.

Yet another extremely tiring day yesterday. It started with another trip to downtown and UBC. Getting there all too often these days. Then it's off to Squamish. Well, at least that's the initial plan. When we got there, we thought that it wasn't that far off from Whistler, so we drove there as well. We ended up at Whistler at around 4, walked around for a bit, and left at around 4:30. Probably the shortest visit by anyone to Whistler, ever, but we do have a reason for getting back so soon: we needed to make it to the 6:30 Sunday service on Saturday. It just happens that we barely made it to church with 5 minutes to spare. Very good timing! By the way, the road between Vancouver and Whistler is one that is extremely windy, having corkscrewy turns all the time. Also, that was around 130km. Also, that is the most dangerous road in British Columbia (as far as I know). So I was doing a lot of reckless driving there (and everybody passed me, for some reason). I was also reminded that I drove on that road before once, and that took 3 hours. So 6 years of experience shaved off 1 hour of driving time...hmm... I should mention that it was not all driving, of course. We did make short stops at Shannon Falls, an out-of-the-way place in Squamish (it is a really small town), some viewpoint, and Whistler, of course (there were a ton of people there). We also managed to eat lunch opposite Shannon Falls, and that was pretty nice.

The church sermon yesterday on the first eleven verses of Romans 2 was one of the big things that I was thinking about a lot lately. Still, lots of questions remain. What does it mean to be "judging others"? Is it never right to point out another brother or sister's mistake? What if his or her actions really hurt me? Should I mention that? Or maybe I want to do that because I am selfish? Or maybe doing that would make no difference anyway, so that's why we were taught not to do that? I don't know... Anyway, very challenging sermon, certainly.

During lunch yesterday, I realize something. I'm desiring a lot of things that I was (unknowingly) lacking when I was younger. I'll leave it at that and won't elaborate here.

Mesister's recital is over. It was, according to many, a fantastic concert. Praise the Lord for leading her through everything. Now she's relaxed (I think), so that's good. I'll be bringing a copy of the CD and video tape.

It was an extremely exhaustive day, I have to say. My whole body is sort of aching right now.

Losing contacts in Vancouver may not be such a good idea, apparently.

(Change Title?) Really tiring morning taking a guest around town. Places visited: Kitsilano Beach, Gastown Steam Clock, Stanley Park, Cleveland Dam, Fish Hatcheries, Ambleside Park, and Park Royal Mall. Hiking between the dam and the hatcheries was very very hard. At least I got some exercise, eh? It's also interesting how I've never been to two of these places... I felt like a stranger... Oh, yeah, it was raining hard this morning...so, nice day for a city tour. Too bad it turned sunny pretty quickly... Well, 1 more hour, and I'm off to mesister's pre-recital thing. Hope I can survive the day.

I'm thinking of writing a private log entitled "Confession of a Confused Christian." (If you don't count the "of a", then it is an alliteration...)

I just want to go home.

So mom decided to suddenly buy a digital camera on the plane. Typical spontaneous mom moment, at least for my mom. It's pretty cheap (relatively speaking), but unfortunately, I don't like the picture quality that it produces. That's too bad...

I'm not sure if this is the best way to say it, but it feels odd when people are saying, "we won't screw you right now, but we will in two months..."

I think I complain too much. Maybe I should start being more thankful.

Sedated. That's the perfect word to describe my current behaviour, at least from the observers point of view.

I wish I could be back in Waterloo now...yikes.

I've been here for a week now, and I still wake up at 5AM...sigh...

I'm reading from this book Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey at a great pace. Very interesting book (for the most part anyway). There are these comparisons between ideal and reality, politics and religion, sin and love. Food for thought.

Finally got on the online banking bandwagon, and did something I've never done before: stop payment to a cheque. Costs $10, but I think it's going to be worth it... It's my screw up, after all... I really don't want to have $4,000 of credit for my credit card, and leave my bank account worthless.

Interesting how MuTao called twenty minutes before I was set to call him... We think alike, apparently.

Man, CIBC sucks...at least in this case, they do. How can the CIBC VISA people cash a cheque worth more than $3,000 that is made out to University of Waterloo? Sigh... Now I'm running out of money, because UW is going to cash this cheque worth more than $3,000 as well! Yikes... Well, at least the credit limit on my VISA card is now huge...and I don't have to pay anything for a while, I guess.

I have just two more proofs to write before I send it off to supervisor...and, of course, they are the hardest proofs to write (not the hardest proof to understand, but it's just difficult to write).

Mom's coming today, so days of quasi-solitude are gone.

In general, it does feel like the pace of traffic in Vancouver is slightly slower than the east. Or maybe it's just me.

So you know what they say about people who don't have a strong fatherly figure in their childhoods? Yeah.

Is icq working at all?

I don't know why, but I have this sense of numbness inside me. Just couldn't go on with anything...

Is it bad that I have found possibly two mistakes in a published paper?

Finally experienced Vancouver's rush hour. Much better than Toronto's.

Dining alone is not really a good idea. It was pretty boring, even if the food is great.

The search for Costco in Richmond was kind of funny. The only piece of information I know about the location of Costco is that it is on Bridgeport. Well, I turned right on Bridgeport from No. 3 Road, and essentially drove to the end of Bridgeport without finding it. So of course I turned back, and find that it was located just a step or two from No. 3 Road... Don't want to extend this to a metaphor for my life, but it is possible...

Watching television while eating dinner? Wow, that's such a luxury...

I think I'm not adjusting to the time difference well...I still wake up at around 5, and go to sleep at around 10. Mind you, this is still an hour later than what it used to be...but it's not a swift adjustment that's for sure...

Not sure if this is a good thing to put here, but I am having diahrrea for two days in a row now. What is the cause? I don't know...maybe the food is too luxurious? Maybe the air is too clean? Or maybe my intestines decided that they haven't caused this in a while, why not now?

I'm using some of this time of mostly solitude to re-evaluate my faith, which I have very little or none. Hopefully something good comes out of it.

I don't know why, but I am a bit more willing to work here than in Waterloo. Possible reasons: less human distraction, larger space (hence less claustrophobic), no need to cook... Of course I know that this won't last, but now I think that changing environments does have an effect.

Boy, those designs marks are way too high...I don't even think I deserve those marks...

Looks like the flurry of emails I received has died down...getting pretty boring.

Wow...I actually did some work today...amazing.

Queen Elizabeth Park does look a bit boring after my second visit in three days.

So the question "do you worship created things" was raised yesterday after the sermon. I have to say, unfortunately, the answer is yes...not good.

So that was a pretty long day...with an old-fashioned lunch in Richmond, burnt turn signal, a lot of bad driving, some younger-than-it-used-to-be fellowship, a Mo, a Sunday service on Saturday, and a visit to Totem Park. Only minor exhaustion, I guess, if by that I mean "almost closed my eyes during the last two legs of driving..."

The traffic lights in this area are so bright! I mean, really really really bright. I feel bad about people living near these lights...they might disturb the sleep...

So it's Sunday, and I'm not supposed to go to church...so weird, man...haha.

I have this sense that I'm living in luxury (excellent food, large space, huge room etc.), but at the same time I am quite lonely. Sucks to be a shy person and not be able to talk to cousin Solomon. I guess having larger space is not the solution to my problem, which is apparently the claustrophobia of the mind.

I keep forgetting that here in Vancouver, every traffic light has this button for the pedestrians to hit when crossing the road in order for the pedestrian light to go on for at least a while. I used to find this incredibly useful, now I find it a bit annoying. I got stuck in the middle of the traffic today... Speaking of traffic, it's great to know that the car is fine, on both sides of the continent.

Where's Mo?

Three things about flowers at Queen Elizabeth Park...

They look great.

They smell great.

They sound great.

Rerun of the 10 Intermediate levels of Rush Hour 3: 13 minutes and 27 seconds. Faster than the original, apparently. (Yeah, it's only my first day here, and I'm already resorting to this as entertainment...)

Two maybe-strange-but-I-have-not-seen-such things about my short trip to Oakridge Mall just to sort out my blunders: The postal office is in The Bay, and the CIBC ATM machine is outdoors...

I think I made too many posts today already, and the day's not even half-over yet...so I'll slow down a bit. Maybe.

I am stupid. Or at least I don't work well under time constraint. I was writing two cheques yesterday morning, one for CIBC, one for the University of Waterloo. Guess what, I accidentally put the cheques in the wrong envelopes! Thankfully UW just contacted me about this error so I have time to fix it now. Now CIBC is probably wondering who would be so dumb as to send a cheque worth more than $3000 to an account owing about $600...

The old car that we have here is really really low. And slow, too. But then that's probably just me.

While I was driving and listening to CBC radio (there is no CD player on my car...sigh...), the host says something about the upcoming song is top 2 among music that shouldn't be played while driving. It was Verdi's Requiem. At first I didn't believe that, but then when I got to my destination, I realized, wow, I was driving pretty fast just now... So they are right, after all. By the way, the number 1 music that shouldn't be played is supposedly the Ride of the Valkyrie by Wagner.

Three things about the first 12 hours here...

I already want to go back to Waterloo...how ironic.

Gas prices here: 89.9. Apparently 79 is the local minima around here...now I feel stupid complaining about a 75 in Waterloo...

One good thing: the place here is really really really close to Queen Elizabeth Park. I can basically walk there in no time. That's great, since parking there costs a lot and I didn't have a lot of chances to go to the highest park in the city of Vancouver...

Three things about the pre-flight experience...

So there are these moving sidewalks in the terminal. I was standing on one of them. While near the end of the walkway, one guy came walking by, turned his head towards me and said (in a good-humoured way) "Walk! Walk! Aren't you afraid of walking?" (something like that). And then one second later, his foot got sort of caught by the end of the walkway, and almost tripped. Then he said "that was scary, wasn't it?" And I laughed and laughed...

So I met Jack in the waiting area. We talked for a while, and we talked about everything except spiritual stuff. Sigh...

The reason why the plane is delayed for more than an hour: Apparently one of the buttons on the plane is not working, and they couldn't fix it. So, they provided a replacement airplane for us. I wonder if that button is really important, though... And by the way, the replacement airplane is not really good, I think. It seems pretty old, and seats are smaller than the usual AC that I know of...

I should mention that the day started at 5:30AM, and now it's 3:15AM (12:15AM Vancouver time)...I think I slept about an hour intermittently on the plane. And it's time for me to sleep...

The alphabet according to Toronto Airport Terminal 1: ABCDEFGHHJK... It is a beautiful terminal, though.

I feel like a stranger in a strange land...

Blog from far far away...

I'm now in Vancouver! The flight wasn't so much of a pleasant experience, though. More than one hour's delay, crowded plane, didn't get a drink for the food, cold food, hard to sleep. But, that's over, and I'm here. This seem like such a foreign place...haha.

Hopefully my car's still ok...

My laptop doesn't connect to the internet here, so unfortuntely I can't be on icq very often. I do email, though...

Last post from Waterloo in a while. Plane leaves in about 5 hours.

Just had a great shopping trip where I spent a lot of money without getting anything! Woohoo! Haha...

Furino got surprised by a day-long meeting, so he was forced to "trust me" on the project. Now if everyone would "trust me" on everything, then things would be so much smoother, eh? Well, maybe not.

Hmm...even 7:30AM is too early for Furino...

Hanging out at a nearly-empty St. Jerome was sort-of interesting, with me playing music on my computer and stuff.

Book recall. That's something that I'm afraid of.

I thought this is a pretty easy Final Jeopardy clue, but apparently nobody on the show got it...then again, it's probably just me...
Category: Biblical Journeys.
Answer: Two names....a man journeying and his country of destination in both Genesis 39 and Matthew 2.

I suck at traveling light.

Sorry, Francis! I think I was a bit over the top yesterday... Hope you have a good exam. (Then again, you probably don't read this...so why am I writing this?)

No more Mongolian Grill for me.

During dinner today, all of a sudden there is this deep sense of emptiness coming into my heart. There's a sense of "why am I involved in this? I can't join the conversations...even if I can, the conversations would be pointless..."

After leading one semester of bbs, I just get more and more confused about the subject of faith. I don't think I understand it anymore...

Ideally, I would like to do all of the following in the next 30 hours: pay bills, wash clothes, pack luggage, clean up food, do some research, bbs, pick up tripod, pick up photo, email to get residence extension, do the bell form, small code demo, clean up room, make cheque deposits, and much more, apparently.

Why am I going to Vancouver this early? I don't know...

I don't think carrying 4 pieces of luggage is a good idea...

I have no idea how to pack...both for the trip to Vancouver, and for the move...I wish there is a teletransporter...

Yet another rushed bbs today...

I think I have trouble talking to people about serious stuff, eh? Everything I say gets turned into a joke by me...

The rerun through the 10 Expert cards in the original Rush Hour took 31 minutes and 15 seconds. Quite a bit longer, eh? Card number 31 is still very difficult. Card number 39 is difficult as well. Card number 40 is surprisingly easy considering that it took a long time for me to get it last time around...

Woohoo! New visitor to my place! Too bad I won't live here for long...

I have a tendency to procrastinate when I cannot afford to...

Note to self: need to put things on the web soon...

2 days til Vancouver.

Finally the hefty visa bill arrived. And it is quite hefty. And it came on the same day the hefty tuition bill arrived. Much more hefty, I'd say. It's a hefty day.

Designs project: done. Sort of. Still need to show off the programs at 7:30AM on Thursday. Then I'll be done.

Supervisor meeting: done. Sort of. For this term. Still lots of things to do, though.

Signing my life away: done. Handed in St. Paul's contract. Will be staying there from September 2004 until at least August 2005. Scary, eh?

Congratulations, car, for hitting the monumental, gigantic, unbelievable, history-making, digit-adding 10,000km! Woohoo! You hit it on Keats Way near University when you were performing the honour of taking MuTao to his Music 271 final exam in Conrad Grebel. And now, you are officially an old car... On a minor news, that's 27 days for this K. Slightly faster than before.

Onto the project...I have no will to write it at all...sigh...

My hefty visa bill still hasn't arrived, which is quite weird...

Project deadline coming real soon...like, in about 24 hours...still not sure how to write these things up...

It's really painful when I couldn't do something that I would like to do, eh?

The beauty of a joke (especially cold ones) is in its precise wording, timing, and delivery. Even a slightly changed word makes a big difference. The precise answer to the joke 3 posts ago is supposed to be "These are a bunch of mixed-up kids..."

It sucks to be me...

I think the human mind is programmed to automatically look on the dark side, not the bright one. Or maybe it's just me.

It's one of those days when I'm simply not motivated to do anything when everything has to be done soon...

I have essentially lost my will to do any work...I'm just tired...need...to...get...out...of...here...

The rerun at the 10 advanced cards from the original Rush Hour took a bit longer than the intermediate cards: 18 minutes and 38 seconds.

Error update: 1371272. Despite the new discovery, the error is going down at an incredibly slow pace... I got until tomorrow, and then I'm writing the project, send it in, and forget about it.

I have a hard time figuring out words being sang in a song when there was no captioning...maybe it's just me.

Thank you, Mongolian Grill, for not having enough servers! I don't think my stomach would have take it after having a big breakfast...

Oh, by the way, happy Easter! What do the chickens say when they see scrambled eggs?

It's nice to take these breaks from the boredom of writing. For example, going off for a two-hour shopping trip, running these addictive Hadamard 428 programs, and replaying the 10 intermediate cards from the original Rush Hour in 14 minutes and 10 seconds (which include the time it took to set up the grids). Of course too many breaks may be hurtful, as I am getting sleepy already, but at least they keep my sanity intact.

Speaking of sanity, I find that my mood is often following MuTao's mood...is that a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, after all, Paul did say, "Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down"...so..........

I'm now very confused about Christian living..........not much is making sense...I don't have all the answers...actually, I have very little answers...so, I don't know...

Boy, I thought it would be easy to write something that I'm very interested in...guess not. I blame the difficulty in wording the definitions related to monotone paths.

The read on Martin Luther King Jr. in the book Soul Survivor last night was really enlightening and yet very very challenging.

Just 5 more days, and I'm out of Waterloo...sounds so scary...

Wow...sent mesister an email, and she replied within 1 minute...I think that's the fastest response from anyone ever...(except for the automatic-response emails). Need more prayers for her.

I wonder if the new place allows me to jump rope...

Error update: 1384184. I know, it's down by only about 13000 from last night, but it still feels like a huge step...of course now it's going to get harder and harder to drive this error down.

To be honest, I'm not at all sad about leaving this current residence. As much as it is really good, I think I'm a bit tired of staying in this "luxurious prisonhouse"... Staying in my room alone is not really healthy, as I have found out. But then again, in Columbia Lake, I'll have to share a tiny space with 3 other people, maybe that would be too crowded... So what's good about St. Paul's? I don't know...I'll need to share an even tinier space, but this time with only one other person. Just hoping dearly that this other person would be good... Anyway, too many thoughts on living places when these are all temporary locations. Need to look up.

I need to remind myself (among this time of madness) to get a ride to the airport on Thursday...actually, it wouldn't be too bad to take the bus... I will be going to the new Terminal 1, though, so looking forward to that...

I like these creative questions...one ended up on Street Smarts: "In mailing addresses, what do the letters AVE stand for?" (I'm sorry to say that it took me a while to figure out the answer.) Obviously no street sillies answered this one correctly...

Congratulations, Roger! You have witnessed your faith in front of the world. That is wonderful! Congrats, again!

E-N-T-H-U-S-I-A-S-M. Something that I don't have, of course.

5 hours of marking today, making it a Good Friday...ah, not funny. Oh well. At least it's better than I thought: I get to mark the "easy" complementary slackness question, and there are other people still marking when I left there. So, all in all, not too bad. Just tired.

Reading update: Finished the book "Heaven: Your Real Home" by Joni Eareckson Tada today. Starting to read the new book "Soul Survivor" by Philip Yancey.

Oh yeah, I should mention that there was a false alarm in my residence today. Good thing the weather's not too bad outside, but certainly my ears hurt a lot... 2 fire alarms in 3 days...hmm... The funny thing is, when the firefighter comes here, the first thing they ask was "is there an exam in there?" Haha! They must be really busy these days...

Historic moment (sort of): So for my Hadamard 428 project, the basic idea is to start with a random matrix, compute its "error" (which is how close it is to a real Hadamard matrix), and trying to reduce that error. For a long long time, I could push the error down to about 1.42 million. In the past couple of days, I got it down to about 1.414 mill. Just today, I implemented a new idea listed in a post before, and I got it down to 1410752, and that's as far down as I could get it with this new program. So it just seems that it would never go below 1.4 mill. That is, until I applied the first algorithm once more, and in 20 minutes, the error goes down to 1397880! And it's still dropping! Amazing! Ok, I now have high hopes for this project...

I sometimes ask myself: "If I die today, would I go to heaven?" And often my answer is, "I'm not sure." And that's just disbelieving God, isn't it? Sigh... God tells me that whoever believes in Jesus will have eternal life, and essentially what I'm saying is, maybe that's not true? That's bad..........need to work on that.

It's pretty sad that I often reduce Christianity to mere intellectual exercises...

Once again, I'm having a hard time in exercising forgiveness...may the Lord help me...

I like this question from final jeopardy today, particularly because I got it right...
Category: Islands
Answer: 1200 miles from the nearest continent, it entered history because of its isolation (see map).


Here's a Bible question that nearly everybody who answered got wrong (which includes everyone at the Luke game), even if he has seen it before:
Question: In what type of location did Jesus officially pick his twelve disciples?
Choices: On the mountain, on the plains, by the sea, on a boat.

Roger's the funny guy in bbs... Yesterday, we had a discussion of how God took Abram under the stars to show him how his descendents will be like. Well, upon the statement that "God walked with Abram under the stars," Roger said "how romantic!" Haha! Exactly.

I can't believe I'll be flying in less than a week...and still so much to do in between! Sigh...

The error is still dropping, although at an extremely slow pace. I have probably until Monday to see what the program can produce here.

Staying at home for too long is not good.

The program is now working! Woohoo! I find it insane that I can watch the output of the program for minutes without doing anything...and all I was looking for was for the "total error" to go down...sometimes by as little as 8 (when the current total error is about 1.4 million). Now I know why some people play the stock market thingy...

I have absolutely no discipline. I'm back on icq now. I guess I should tell you the reason why I initially decided to quit icq...well, maybe I shouldn't say.

To quote Dory: "Yes, trust. It's what friends do." (I have to say, I'm more like Marlin...and please, no Marlin-Martin jokes...)

Just saw one of the funniest username on a messageboard: "YourDensity"...

My new program doesn't work...sigh...

Post-Rush-Hour-Comment: My hands feel so awkward about not moving those little cars...

I am a Rush Hour Grand Master!!! Of course I still have no idea how #40 was solved...that was just really hard! In any case, time to replay the first set of cards, I guess.

List of utterly trivial things to do: email Furino for some questions; email to get permission to stay here until May 2nd; hand in St. Paul contract (and signing away a year of my life there); take taxes form; pay visa bill (supposed to come soon with a hefty bill); change of address; Bell form.

List of eternally-speaking trivial things to do: Hadamard 428 programming & project write-up; writing a lengthy thing on monotone paths; good marking on Good Friday; packing and covering.

We had a long bbs today. It was a bit hard to start, but turned out ok. I really loved it how God would put his own reputation at stake just to make a covenant with Abram. It's awesome. Still, though, I was a bit emotionless in going through the material...still quite unstable at this point.

This recent Hadamard 428 run just keeps on dropping the error...amazing...it's at an all-time low, and still running (been running for about 11 hours now).

I think I'll stick with my less-icq guideline...at least for another day.

Three things from James...

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. (emphasis mine)

Anyone who sets himself up as "religious" by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air.

Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?

I'm an idiot. That's not a surprise.

I don't think I know how to pray anymore... That reminds me of this: "Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans."

This probably won't last long...

For those who cared, I have made a decision to not go on icq as often as I am now. If for some reason you would like to talk to me, please email or phone (I do check these very frequently). Or send an icq offline message, since I think I'll be checking those messages every time I reboot my computer (and then shut down icq immediately afterwards). I don't know how long this will go on, maybe a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, I don't know. So bare with me while I adjust to these changes...

I am too emotionally unstable to do the bbs today, but I'm going to press on anyway. Need lots of prayers on this, please.

Tonight: write another program, and time permitting, write one section on monotone paths. Yeah, keeping myself occupied so as not to think too much about the real serious issues in life. Yeah, I know, escapism, not good.

Once again, I feel so inadequate to lead the bbs, as I will be teaching things that I have trouble following... It's tough...like that father whose son is possessed, I want to say, "I believe! Help me with my unbelief!"

I felt a bit better now that I had some honest conversations where I simply stated my personal feelings (no, it's not nothing personal). I'm still very hurt, though. Why such hostile initial reactions? I don't know... I'll just have to forget about the bad things, and remember the good...that's going to be hard.

Good night, and may the Lord bless you.

For some reason I really wanted to go to a concert in Toronto this Thursday...but then I thought about driving to Toronto just for a concert...and I thought about who I should take with me to the concert...and I thought about why am I thinking about this...and I stopped thinking about it. So, in essense, no concert on Thursday.

My current situation reminds me of the story of the prodigal son. Boy, waiting for the return of a "prodigal son" so-to-speak is excruciating... Don't know why, but right now would be a good time for some human contact...

To quote Marlin: "Can sombody give me directions?!"

Fire alarm at 12 today. You know what, fire alarms may just be the way to go in order to get people socialized...

As a follow up to something 5 posts ago...unfortunately, I failed... I fell into sin again...sigh...

Jackson came by the office today, with new friends.

Hadamard 428 project update...

Good news: I made a clique-searching program. It's surprisingly easy to do, actually... I still don't know why my code worked. (Actually, I'm not even sure that my code worked correctly...)

Bad news: The clique-searching program is supposed to search for "mutually orthogonal" rows in the matrix generated by my previous program. Well, turns out that I got 11 rows in total (out of 428). So, no improvement over my previous previous program, then...sigh...

Next on the list: Implement the 8-element swap thingy. This is going to be so exciting................yeah.

Of course nobody should care about me...

I see a really lonely week ahead...

At least I got the boring stuffs to keep me occupied...man, I really need to stop thinking. It gets me into a depression, and not of the tropical kind.

Instant update...

My pain? Still here...

My sister? Much better...

Funny how God would arrange her call to me just when I'm at my loneliest moments...

I am in so much pain right now...so many contradictory items in my mind.

My sister is in a lot of pain as well...due to final exams, apparently.

As always, just when I'm the most free, I'm the most alone...

Exam finally over! Woohoo! So glad that my memory is still there. I barely hung on to bits and pieces of the proofs to come up with many of the answers... Barely. Thank God for keeping me sane.

Need to be extra careful not to fall into sin again... Maybe I'll start preparing the bbs early...hahaha...not possible.

Now what?

I don't think I have been so unprepared for a final exam...at least in the last year... Looks like I'll bomb the closed-book half of the exam and focus on the open-book half of the exam. Oh well, 20% of the term grade down the drain...

Rush Hour gives intermittent seconds of distraction throughout the night of study. Of course I also slept for a while...4 + 2 hours...

I guess not many people cared about mental health...not even mom. Then again, even if she had asked, I wouldn't have said anything, of course.

I had this incredibly sad dream. I was at a hotel, very tired, and trying to go to my room and rest. Well, after a long long, struggle, I finally got to my room. But just when I was about to rest, I woke up............sigh... That's a good metaphor for a lot of things in my life, apparently.

I saw Wesley in church today. Excellent.

Pulling an all-nighter before the exam might not be a good idea...

Losing faith...feeling dejected...simply couldn't just walk away...not good. (And this is an understatement.)

Tomorrow I'll be facing my first written exam in 16 months. Scary.

Ah, missed a party.

Ah, the days of junk-free email for my waterloo account is over...it took only 19 months.

Integer programming is hard...

Rush Hour 3 is easy...

Three things to pass the day...

Me.

Integer programming.

Rush Hour 3.

Snow! Woohoo!

One less hour! Boo!

Eugene's place! Whee!

6 hours, 3 cities, too much unchartered territories, 278 kilometers = 2 happy campers.

University of Western Ontario is beautiful. City of London? Not so much...haha.

I know that happiness don't last long, but I'll take it whenever that happens.

Eddie's been roaming around, eh? Nice...

Good long dinner (and line up) last night. I enjoyed it very much.

How coincidental is it that there's fog outside right now, and I'm going to London?

Simplex is not supposed to be done by hand...

Woohoo! Got admission offer for St. Paul's residence! Now I just have to wonder if they will get it completed on time... Also I have to decide whether or not I will go for 2 terms or 3 terms...hmm... Also, what does it mean by "All residents of The Graduate Apartments at St. Paul's are expected to participate in the common intellectual and social life of the community in the building"...?

I think I may be able to break another personal record tomorrow, by going as south as I have ever been in Canada. If I do that, then the room for breaking the same record will get a bit smaller...but still, a record is a record is a record.

How scary is this? I even dreamed about working on the integer programming assignment...

Last day to slack off...

Lots of rain these days.

Right now, I think my mind is going crazy once again...so, hang on.............

I don't know...I can't even concentrate on doing this supposedly easy assignment...kept on getting sidetracked by bad thoughts...

Visited two new places today: a Japanese restaurant on King, and a Chinese supermarket that looks dead...

Just read an article on how the Canadian court rules that file sharing over the internet is legal. They say that the file-sharers simply put their personal copy of copyright material on their computers. They compare this to having a photocopier in the library. Those judges are pretty clever, eh? Of course nobody shares any music that I like, so why did I even bother? Really, try finding Prokofiev Symphony #7...

One thing I need to learn pretty quickly is forgiveness. I think I have mentioned this before... Essentially I used to think of myself as someone who would never get offended no matter what others say or do, and I would always forget very quickly. Well, now I realize that it's simply not true. And I'm finding out the hard way how difficult it is to forgive. Need prayers on this.

Do I see a video bbs coming next week?

How scary is this? I even dreamed about working on the Hadamard 428 project...

Integer programming final looks pretty scary right now...

I think I didn't put this down before...it's another quote from Bruce Richter. So he was talking about graph drawings, and he was drawing an arc between vertex x and vertex y. Then he asked "what can you tell me about this arc?...well, it's got two of every kind of animal..."