The Future Looks Grim.

I did some exercise today, surprise surprise. I'll try to schedule in 3 exercise days per week for next month. Of course I only meant "schedule in" and not actually do it...

Driving alone sucks. Well, at least it's not as interesting.

I like this page about the popular searches of Google. Here are some of the most popular queries (by country) in the 2003 zeitgeist:

United Kingdom --> Prince Charles.
Australia --> Australian Idol.
Japan --> Gundam.
Canada --> Finding Nemo.
The Netherlands --> Spongebob.
Overall --> Britney Spears.

Hmm...Canada and the Netherlands are pretty boring countries, aren't they?

One interesting thing about the skating today: After we were done skating and took off the skates, I find that there is smoke coming out of my socks. Very cartoon kind of way.

Funny how Francis and Roger's reactions upon entering my room were completely different.

So...it ain't over just yet. I have more work to do. But at least it's not a total disaster.

Skating. Pick up letter. Lunch (or rather, passion fruit juice) at Taiwan Small Eat. Roger's visit. Car maintenance. Conestoga Mall. Home. Costco. Home. Rather eventful, I'd say.

I do need to get back into research mode. It's kind of hard, though.

I received a letter today that says...

"The Graduate Affairs Committee has reviewed your performance on the recent First Stage Comprehensive Examination. You did well on the portion in Graph Theory, but were marginal in the Discrete Optimization.

As a result, the committee has decided that you must perform some additional work in Discrete Optimization in order to earn a passing grade in the First Stage Comprehensive. This additional work will consist of your providing complete, clear, and detailed solutions to the Discrete Optimization exam that you took on June 24, 2004...

You must submit your solutions to either of Professors Geelen and Guenin. This must be done no later than 4:00 p.m. on Friday, July 9, 2004."

I'll be doing no school work until Thursday. It has been really tiring. I'm tired of almost everything.

So the C&O Graduate Committee met today to decide the fates of the four comprehensive writers. Most likely everyone will fail, but that's ok.

I'm thinking back to what happened in the past year. Boy, that was quite an incredible, exhiliarating, painful, and disappointing time of my life. I'm also thinking back to what happened in my younger days (like, pre-Waterloo days). Boy, I lived an incredibly boring life.

Finally finished marking the assignment. It wasn't too bad. I had a bad start, so that contributed somehow to my distaste of marking the rest (which are easier to mark). I did accidentally manage to sleep for a few hours, so that's not too bad.

So the Liberals won a minority government, and the pre-election polls were way off. Who knew that statistics doesn't really work?

Still sick. But I'm getting used to it already. At least the eye-drop thing worked.

So there. My career voting record dropped to 0-2. That's why I shouldn't bother to vote in an election. In the end, no matter how hard I think, it doesn't matter.

It's past 11PM now, and I've only marked 2 out of 5 questions on the assignment. Sigh... No sleep for tonight, apparently.

It's pretty sad that the only people that I talked to today are strangers. Election people, grocery cashier, CLT manager...

I've voted. But with a career record of 0-1, it is expected that the candidate that I voted for will not win the seat.

I've been without food for about 21 hours now. Must be the buffet at work.

So I have this assignment to mark...not sure if there's going to be enough time, though.

Boy, these over-the-counter drugs are certainly quite expensive, eh? One small 15 mL of eye liquid costs about $6. Oh, yeah, by the way, this eye liquid thing contains hydrochloride...not knowing much about chemistry, I think this is quite scary...

That was a pretty good buffet at a steakhouse (interesting combination). The ribs are excellent. As usual, I don't like buffets simply because my stomach can't handle them. But it's for Thian-Peng and Sinnie, so that's good.

Election tomorrow. Still don't know whether I will vote or not.

3 cities, 13.5 hours, 4 people, 2 Hamiltonian tours, 7 boxes, 4 luggages, uncountably many little stuffs, 2 strange elevators, 1 Echo to follow and pass and get passed, 2 midnight drugs, 1 big mac, 3 times Elgar's Symphony #2, 2 times Elgar's Symphony #1, 293 kilometres = MuTao's big move part I. It was pretty exhausting, but not bad. Now I'm not a strong person, so I once moved stuffs to a point where I just want to vomit (don't know why...lifting is such a hard thing, you know). And then to see MuTao effortlessly carry these boxes that I struggled with... Anyway, it was a good experience, I think. By the way, as with Roger, that was probably the first time that I was on a highway at 2AM... (Got home at around 2:30.)

I just felt incredibly sad today. Sigh...

Let me know if you would like a gmail account...

So there's this farewell lunch with Sinnie and Thian-Peng thing tomorrow. I generally don't like a large crowd for a meal, but I guess I do need to go. So sad that they're leaving...oh well.

I lost 2kg during these exam times.

Watched a bit of the local election debate thing. It was pretty nasty, and I don't really know what to do now. Oh well.

8 hours, 3 cities, 2 new eyes, 2 entertained guys, 262 kilometres = a guilt-free short trip to Toronto to get Francis a new pair of contacts and back. Other than the horrible traffic on the way there (took 2.5 hours to get from home to Metro Square), it wasn't too bad a trip. Watching Francis put the contacts on was extremely funny. Sure, the trick is to be able to touch your own eyes...how hard can it be? Yeah, really hard. Anyway, on a side note, I do feel like the car is losing its fuel efficiency. I filled the tank there (got 72.5 gas price...yay!), and it usually doesn't take that much fuel to get back to Toronto (difference of about one small section on the fuel metre thingy). Anyway, it's getting close to 20K now, so I presume it's just getting old, that's all. Maintenance coming up on Wednesday.

I mentioned "guilt-free" because now I don't have to take an extracurricular activity like this and worry about having to study for the comprehensive exams. I'm sure this guilt-free thing will be short-lived, but whatever.

I don't know, I feel like I'm losing touch with people that I know. Many times I go, "do I really know you?"

Exam's over. I failed. Very aggravating. Prepare to leave town. End of story. And forget about it.

This would mark the first time that I entered the Grad House. Not too bad of a place, I guess. So Portugal won the game against England. Yeah.

All of a sudden my eyes got a lot better just today. I have no idea what happened. But praise the Lord for everything.

Today's another big day. I'm so not ready for this exam, i.e. I'm so ready to fail.

Plan for after the exam: I don't know. I couldn't think that far ahead.

I'm still very insecure about friendships.

Don't know why I feel so hopeless and helpless, even though both are not true. Also getting very lonely down here, even though this is not true. Sigh...

Looks like I won't have a chance to get a break after the exams are over... Coming up right after the exam: marking assignments and reviewing research. Yikes...

Forgot to mention the extra 1.5 hours for my office hour on Tuesday. That much time (plus a few more minutes) were spent with one student who simply want to get a couple of more marks on his assignment. He just doesn't know how to write a proper proof, and that was frustrating for me to explain that. Anyway, that was a bad experience, and time wasted for no good reason. I wonder in the future, how to kick away students who try to stay for too long... Normally I'm happy to spend more time with the students, but this guy was hard to deal with, and I have an exam to study. Anyway. End of complaint.

Ah, the family arrives.

It's going to be a long long day of studying.

For a moment there last night, I thought I'm getting better with the sickness thingie. Apparently not.

So yesterday was the longest day of the year. Yeah, and it was the longest day of studying for me as well.

It's always sad when I figure out how to do questions of the exam after the exam.

Poor MuTao...

Be careful what you wish for...

Finished matroids. Now onto matchings. Things can only get better from here. Well, maybe not.

Right now, I'm trapped in my room. That's because I will need to stop breathing when I go out the door.

Matroids are harder than I thought. I'm behind schedule on the newly established 4-day studying schedule already. It's definitely going to be a miracle if I pass this second exam.

Plane tickets to Vancouver are too expensive these days.

Cleaning up the desk slightly does improve the motivation for studying...slightly. Now all I need is to throw this laptop and the bed out the window to minimize distractibility.

Mom called to ask me to take on a sport that I like after I'm healed from this sickness, and bring MuTao along. Well, not sure if I can really do that...

I think I'm pretty much screwed for the exam on Thursday..........

It was quite difficult in deciding to skip the WPC test yesterday. But I guess it was sort of worth it. Maybe.

I'm almost sick and tired of the taste of hot water.

Skating. Yay! Ingrid. Boo! I don't know why people do this...the more I wish they won't do something, the more they do it. The moment Ingrid showed up, I almost just bolted out of there. It was embarrassing. Oh well. Anyway, still about the same as last time. Sore back. Fell once when I was trying to catch Roger. Trying to relax but couldn't. Francis not happy.

It's strange. When I'm on the ice, my sickness seems to just go away. Off the ice, the stuffy runny nose and coughs just come right back. Weird.

Convocation. Ok. At least I wasn't too depressed.

Still sick. Don't know why.

There's something wrong with my eyes.

First comp's over. Painfully over. I really wanted to book that plane ticket right after the exam's over, but after comparing notes with the other exam writers, I thought I didn't do too badly. Well, maybe they will just fail us all. Anyway, going to be desperate for the next comp, that's for sure. And knowing that 3 out of 8 comp writers last year failed just before the exam? Doesn't really help...

I knew this was going to happen...I thought Ramsey theory was too easy, so I overlooked it. And it appeared on the exam. And I couldn't do it.

Got a nice visit from Francis today. Now where the heck is MuTao?

Ok, here we go. Today's a big day. Sort of. I had my dumpling breakfast. I had my entertainment. I had my hot shower (which turned cold after a while). I'm all set...to fail.

I walked in the rain yesterday. Without an umbrella. The umbrella was in Quebec. Hoping not to do it again today. God permitting.

So there's this guy who won 12 times on Jeopardy. Not sure what to make of this.

Finished reading the book "Your God is Too Safe" today. It's a pretty good one, though it uses lots of big words that I don't understand. The author hits many spots right on, such as wounds that heal, confession of sin with others, and joy as a discipline. But there is also too many metaphors...(well, that's bad for me since I'm not the metaphoric poetic artsy type person). Anyway, God is not safe, but He's good.

Today is cram everything graph-wise into my head day. Tomorrow is spill everything I crammed onto the exam day. The day after is flush out everything I crammed in day. The day after the day after is cram everything optimization-wise into my head day. And this will last for about 4 days, after which we'll start this cycle of destruction again. Sigh...

If all of planar graphs, flows and slightly hard algebraic graph theory appear on the exam, then I'll book a ticket out of Waterloo tomorrow.

I'm in a state of panic and light-headedness. Panic for the obvious reasons. Light-headedness because of the sickness thing. I sleep a lot, that's for sure. My eyes are still bad, though...

If things went as planned, my car is currently as far east as it has ever been. Too bad I'm not in it.

Trying desperately to suppress the usual bad thoughts these days. It's hard.

Got a new key, got internet at home back, got back to sleep. Still sick, though, but that's ok. I'm supposed to be joyful, as The Book says.

Doing laundry while raining? Not a good idea.

So Roger won't be watching basketball for a year. I think his mom might be slightly happy.

Ah, the Lord is pretty funny. Just when I thought that I would be able to concentrate on studying when MuTao's gone, He brings me things like a virus, a broken key, and a lost internet connection. Oh well, does that mean that I'm destined to fail the exams?

Algebraic graph theory sucks.

So that was a pretty disturbing evening...

I'm feeling very weak right now (well, that's not a surprise, but with being sick and stuff, it's especially bad). Wobbly head, feel like the entire body is going fall apart anytime. Oh well. There is an exam coming in 3 days. But that's only an exam, right?

Yeah, I have a hard time trying to study for the exams.

Goodbye, car. Hope you come back in one piece. Bon voyage.

So the key to my front door is broken. This is where I need keyless entry...

There's that tornado thing again...too bad I didn't see one.

Still sick. Not good. Exam in 4 days. Yikes.

Late post from Saturday: 9 hours, 3 to go, 2 back, 1 old dude, 4000 square bums, 0 free will, too many animal stories, 233 kilometres = the trip to Stephen Tong's evangelical event. I sort of like his no-nonsense kind of approach, actually. I don't remember much from the talk, but it was good.

Finally put in the final nail in MuTao's big trip. It's going to be so exciting...to see the pictures.

Skating today. Fell down too many times, but not as bad as last time. Just some temporary sore knee. I'm starting to get a hang of it now. At least my right skate can glide slightly better. But I think my poor balance is going to haunt me for a while. By the way, that was a lot of exercise. I can still feel the pain.

Congratulations, car, for hitting the not-so-special 14K two days ago! You hit it right next to the Homer Watson exit on Highway 7 while MuTao was on his way to pick up Ginger. That's 34 days for this 2K. Longer than I thought, actually. Anyway, you are off to the big trip of your life!

I don't think I'll be voting in this federal election. I thought about it for a while now, and I concluded that I don't like to support any of these candidates for government.

Ah, Toronto. Haven't been there in a long time. Now I'll make a short visit...hopefully I still know how to drive.

I want to study, but I'm too tired.
I want to sleep, but the virus is still there.
I want to do sports, but my body can't handle it.
I want to talk to people, but I don't know what to talk about.
I want to escape, but there's nowhere to go.
I want to pray, but I don't know how.
I want to be better, but I keep getting worse.
I want to make friends, but the wall around me keeps growing.
I want to be honest, but I'm too afraid.
I want to be happy, but I simply can't be.
Nothing that I want can be realized.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

A couple of Canadian trivia questions that may have surprising answers:
Which Canadian province has the highest population density?
Since Pierre Trudeau, how many Canadian prime ministers are not Catholic?

Bad timing. I'm good at that.

The day started with an innocent trip to the office. I ended up agreeing to stay until 5PM. Probably the longest day in school for this semester (well, actually, the 2nd longest day). Well, I guess an extra 5 Rush Hour puzzles and group study on graph theory exam.

Headache still abounds. Sickness better, but not completely healed.

I have a tendency to make myself sad for some reason.

First comp in one week. Scary. Too much anxiety. Still far far behind on the studying, of course.

Planning for MuTao's big trip was a lot of fun. Maybe I should plan a trip for myself some day...in the distant future...far far away. Ah, there I go with the Shrek 2 reference again.

I gave away another 3 marks in my bonus office hour today. I'm still incredibly incredibly soft. Take advantage of it while it lasts, people.

So I was operating powerpoint for the songs this evening at church. One funny thing was that when I felt the urge to cough, I turned aside and did that. But at the same time, my elbow hit the space bar... Good thing I had good recovery. Oh well, maybe it's not that funny.

My blood pressure: 78-120. Not bad. I thought it would be higher, but this is fine.

Still sick. Still hot. Still headache. Still slacking.

Sick. Headache. Exam. Procrastination. Such good timing...

We got personal leather jumbo sofa for today's bbs in CG. Nice. Except it was a bit too hot.

It is too hot out there. 30 degrees for today. Just one more day...just one more day...

Got up to 27 degrees today. Super warm.

Lots of ants in the house.

Marking is finally done. Won't get another one until 2 weeks later...whew...

I'm sick. Not good timing. Especially when I need to mark really creative assignments.

So in CG's piano rooms, there are these curtains hanging off the ceiling. The thing is, behind these curtains are just ordinary brick wall. I don't know why I find that funny. Perhaps they cater to those who are claustrophobic.

Cellphone?

Looks like I really have to give up on the WPC qualifying thing. I don't think I can escape the convocation that fast... Oh well, I guess there's always next year (well, maybe not, but I can only hope).

Hamilton tours are fun.

11 days until the first comp. Yikes. Lightly considering whether I should go to Toronto this coming Saturday or not. But it looks like I will go. I'm very soft.

So I saw National Spelling Bee on TSN. Ok, spelling bee is nice, but on TSN? Really? Anyway, it was hard with words like tichodrome and sarwan (meaning "camel driver," which is a word I can hardly find on the internet to begin with). Poor kids.

Just started the process of baking, which is something I have not done for about two years now. Hopefully the chicken drumsticks are doing well. (Instant update: the chicken is excellent. Success!)

Perhaps most people find me untouchable and trying to hide from me as much as possible. I don't know. Oh well, it doesn't really matter anyway. Just an observation.

Skating. Yay! Falling. Boo! So yeah, that was pretty good. Painful on the feet and the left hand (such an odd combination), but otherwise ok. Looks like this is going to be a weekly event. I do have to say, though, having poor balance really doesn't help...

"Once upon a time, there was a place far far away, where there is a chance that my dream will come true." Ha! Impossible.

Actually, splitting the marking to one question a day isn't that bad...just something to get through for the day before doing anything else. Questions that elicit creative answers, however, are painful.

The shaing thing wasn't too bad, I think. Originally I was going to talk about problems with prayers, and just state the problems without giving the answers. But that might have been a bit negative and dangerous, so I went the conservative way.

It's too hard to study. But that's just a minor problem compared to my other ones.

I have a pretty stiff neck recently. Don't know why.

I just experienced something that I haven't experienced for a while (at least for a month or two). I was so hungry that my whole body was shaking really badly. Good thing I have food in the house.

The problem with Ramsey's theorem is that the proof is so easy (yet so tedious to write down) that it is very easy for me to just overlook it.

Poor Roger.

It's so difficult to be productive.

I don't like what I'm going to share tonight...but it's supposed to be short, so it should be ok. I hope.

Having a TV in the house turns out to be a very very bad idea...

Just drank this strawberry-banana Yop. It tastes pretty good. Strangely, though, it tastes quite different from last time. Perhaps those ones were really spoiled...I mean, taking yogurt from Toronto back here with traffic jam was probably not a good idea.

I don't know what I'm going to say tomorrow in the devotional sharing thing. Actually, I have several things in mind, but none seem to be good choices...

Wasting time. That's what I'm good at. Too bad it isn't rewardable.

I simply couldn't make myself study for the exams. I don't know why. This sucks.

I'm just a stubborn little boy. Then again, mom knew that a long time ago.

Those graph theory students are getting a wee bit too creative...

Doing laundry is tedious.

It's funny how some random person found my picture... Google must be working extra hard these days.

I wasted yet another day. How many more can I waste? Pretty much none...

Early morning rise. Wanted to take a walk. Found the sunrise spectacular. Ran home to get the camera. Unfortunately the spectacularness disappeared when returned. So took pictures of ducks. Or geese. Or whatever those animals are. Oh well.

Running over a squirrel with a car yesterday was disgustingly funny. The squirrel faked a left and went right, and went under the wheel. It just sounds like a balloon pop, that's all.

I'm still the same old self. Nothing changed. Sigh...

I have a headache this big. No, bigger. No, it's a real one. Like, my head really hurts.

What is it with this limited choices in VCRs? I mean, sure, DVD is catching on, but I need to record and watch that television program.

6 people in my office hour today. 2 of them asked for additional marks, and I gave in. Yeah, I'm still too soft.

17 days till the first comprehensive. Yikes.

Funny that just after I read something about fasting, I went to eat dinner.

Supervisor meeting over. It was a difficult difficult proof to present. Good thing I get to sort of concentrate on the exams now. Sort of. Still markings to do this week. Yikes. I say yikes a lot, don't I?