Just got to Roger's place a few moments ago, to find Roger still in here to my surprise. So apparently he's taking a late shuttle (operated by Michael) to Wonderland. Anyway, the last moments in CLT were nice, talking to Andrei and stuff. Boy, I really got a lot of things...the car barely has space for me to drive in. Anyway, I'm here, and I'll have a new place to stay tomorrow (although I've heard that it's still in construction...).

Apparently Francis called for me and didn't want to talk to me...weird.

What to do today? I don't know...scan photos, maybe? Or watch the tape? Or just sleep? Or...gasp...research? (And yes, I do realize that my writing is getting pretty boring, but being restricted by my implied 3-paragraph-per-post rule isn't easy...)

My last post from CLT. This day came so quickly...always dreaded this twice-moving. It's kind of hard to see that I have so much stuff...really need to get rid of some, which is what I wanted to do but didn't. Oh well.

The moon was beautiful last night and this morning. It's so round, so bright, even at around 7AM. Took some pictures which will not turn out well, but that's ok. Maybe the telephoto lens would help..........

It's about 9AM, and I'm tired already...sigh...

Looks like I'll have an estimated 16 boxes/suitcases/bags/safes for the move. Yikes. That's too much... And I always surprise myself with the number of new clothes that I have in the closet. One more night to go. I won't miss ya, CLT, unless St. Paul's sucks.

The Stratford pictures are out today. They're not too bad, I guess. Some lighting errors. And I look extremely bad. Really need to get my body's volumn down quite a bit...

Seriously, I think I have a mental problem.

3 cities, 5 hours, 45 kilograms of stuff, 2 broken elevators, 1 poutine, 2 slices of pizza, 24 pictures, ?? kilometres. Next time I see MuTao will be on Sunday when he moves to London. I have mentioned this before, but driving does seem incredibly effortless with a good friend to talk to beside you...

So the Olympics is over, and...well, I still don't care much about it. There's going to be more political discussions on the low Canadian medal count, but that's most likely going nowhere. And what's up with that mascot?

There are simply too many fruitflies here. Good thing I'm moving out soon. In other notes, no insurance thingie. Looks like I'll be calling after I make the move.

People change, even throughout the day. And that scares me. I'm afraid of people, always thinking that I'm offending them. Of course that means I always feel that I'm saying the wrong things. I try to fulfill people's requests as much as I can, and feel terrible when I can't.

Today: continue to pack, send MuTao back, deal with insurance thingie.
Tomorrow: last chance to pack and move, clean this place up, Amazing Race.
The day after: move in to new place, go to Toronto with Roger driving the Echo.
Rest of the week: change of address madness and massive research. Or, partying at the new place.

Not many people were fooled by the egg roll box. Too bad. But it's ok, since the main purpose of sending it in is to get rid of junk from my place.

My internet's back, surprisingly. Guess the IST people aren't that dumb...

The Ginger farewell dinner hot pot (which has almost nothing to do with Ginger, quite frankly) was surprisingly pleasant. At least everyone (except possibly me) put on a pleasant face for the evening. I finally finished the entire Rush Hour set, ending my Rush Hour career. We played Scrabble (oh alright, I'm a board game freak)...
Game 1: Ginger 65, Ed 104, Me 107, MuTao 71.
Game 2: MuTao 109, Me 131, Roger 74, Ginger 90.
Of course then I revealed that we were playing under modified rules, and Roger would have been in at least 3rd place if we played like that. He is awarded the most efficient player of all time, finishing his letters every game he played (which is 2). Ginger played Scrabble instead of doing the work report, claiming that Scrabble is more addictive... Longest words: Solder, Ladies (very smart play by Roger). Highest scoring word: Fixes (with triple letter score on X). "Oh of course I knew that was a word" words: Get, Ago. And looks like Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly are heading into the garbage dumps...

Obviously happiness is temporary, but I didn't know that it lasts only a few seconds.

I had a pretty sour attitude at Ginger's farewell not-so-surprise party. I guess I simply didn't want to be there. I was sleepy as well, so that didn't make it any better. I left early, which was a pretty good idea, actually, since they went all the way till 6 or something like that... Anyway.

I think God woke me up this morning at 4. Basically I got a chance to download the powerpoint file from Roger at that time, and that's good, since my internet is cut off at around 7... (I'm, of course, not going to do anything about getting the connection back, and leave the problem for the next occupants...) Of course I did other bad things between 4 and 6, but that's not relevant.

Francis dropped the bomb that his father is bringing him back to Toronto today, squashing Roger's hopes of going there. At least I got some rest out of it... Too bad I still need to go to Hamilton later this evening.

6 boxes (plus an "ice box") went off to the Yen's in torrential rain. Nifty.

I guess I'm being ignored because I ignore people. I'm such a selfish person.

Meanwhile, I'm just sad.

Hmm...people have very strange ideas about me...then again, that's sort of expected.

Got a surprise visit from Francis, who helped me pack a lot of stuffs. Thanks! I don't think I could have done it otherwise. Of course his purpose of coming here wasn't packing..........

The weather is just horrifyingly humid and hot since yesterday. A bit hard to breathe, and I get agitated very easily. This is the sort of weather that I really couldn't live with. -40 temperature is fine, but not +30.

5 cities, 11 hours, 2 broken glasses, 1 long haircut, 1 huge storm, 6 bread, 400 dollars for the telephoto lens, 0 lens bought, 1 forgotten bag of dirty laundry, 90 frames of bowling, 10 strikes (3 mine), 16 spares (3 mine), 1 turkey, 4 pig feet, 2 without spicy stuffs, 1 sad conversation, 75.5 gas (79.9 Waterloo), 1 computer moved, 336.6 kilometres. So, here's the deal. For 400 dollars, I can either buy a telephoto lens, or buy PS2. Now, what should I do? I don't know. I think the conclusion was that I should save the money, but I don't really know if that will happen...hehe.

So there was bowling, and that was great, especially since we arrived at 5 to take advantage of the cheap prices (and of course Francis paid for it)...
Round 1: Francis 125, MuTao 105, Me 91. So Francis won, and MuTao was bitter.
Round 2: Francis 79, MuTao 155, Me 91. So MuTao won, broke the 150 barrier, and gotten his revenge. I, meanwhile, beat Francis, and that was a great accomplishment...hehe. Also considering that I was at 36 in frame 7, it was a huge come back, especially with two strikes in a row on frames 8 and 9.
Round 3: Francis 94, MuTao 109, Me 60. Everyone's tired, but MuTao still managed to break 100 and won.
So, everyone got his personal best here (during Olympic week, oddly enough), and it's all good. And by the way, I like the 12-lb ball.

Congratulations, car, for hitting the I-ran-out-of-adjectives 26K yesterday! You hit it about 2 kilometres past the Dundas & Franklin intersection on Dundas, a little bit past Branchton Road, in Cambridge. That's 16 days for these 2K...yikes. At your next celebration, we're sending you to maintenance...

Tried to pack, but stopped after a little while. It's just such a mundane job...and besides, I don't have suitable boxes for use right now...

Boy, it's so nice to walk outside tonight, with the comfortable temperature and wind. Too bad it's still pretty hot in the room, which I don't know why.

So what does it mean when God doesn't answer prayers? Especially the one which I've been praying for about 10 years? Why all the tormenting of the soul?

Feeling quite sluggish today. Always want to just go to sleep. Maybe it's the weather, which was hot yesterday, cooled down slightly today, but my room is still freaking warm. Or maybe it's because I'm a bit sick. I always get sick during hot weather for some odd reason...

I'm too old to do these childish things that I've not done before...sigh...

Meanwhile, the insurance paper is still not here; I still need to pack; couldn't solve #38 of River Crossing, which I've been trying for several days now; getting further and further away from the Lord; and the weather's getting hotter. Such a good day for complaining.

So there was this meeting last Sunday. It went so badly that I basically lost my patience, and used the "I need to go to the washroom" excuse to temporarily get out of it (of course I did need to use the washroom, but that's not important). This is another sign that I shouldn't be doing this, and thankfully I won't be doing this again! Woohoo!

I'm slightly worried that the insurance thing hasn't arrived in the mail yet...

Back down to the vortex of sinfulness. Sigh...

8 hours, 3 cities, 1 game of Scrabble, 2 returned friends, 1 forgotten return-key, 4 new pieces of wardrobe, 2 years of an Echo's license, 15 chicken drumsticks, 1 still-depressed soul, 161.3 kilometres. Well, Roger wished that MuTao could have stayed until Sunday, but I guess no luck there.

So yeah, we finally played Scrabble. And MuTao won...hehe. Scores: MuTao 271, Me 258. Longest word: Inward. Highest-scoring word: Snub (with S attached to Tac at a triple word score). Questionable word: Quoil.

I'm in a food-clearing stage. Trying to consume as much of the remaining food supply as possible. I think I'll pass on the 11 beef sirloin burgers...

So rumor has it that Paul and May are back. Hahahahaha....

One week till St. Paul. Slightly excited about that, although the prospect of moving doesn't really thrill me that much.

Forgot to mention the bonus chicken wings night on Monday. Finally we got more than 2 people for the wings, although I'm mostly absent from the chatter.

I'm now kicking myself in the head (metaphorically, obviously) for misunderstanding MuTao and missing out on playing Scrabble. And why am I so disappointed over such a trivial tiny little thing? I don't know.

There's a huge typhoon in Taiwan which is another thing I'm missing out on. At least they got something going for them...

I have trouble figuring out people.

Francis, Roger and I played Scrabble at the Saturday-night teahouse, and we thought that was fun, so I bought it the next day. A total of 3 games were played. Longest word: Hermitage, which we didn't even know the meaning of beforehand. Highest scoring word (I think): Quay (with triple word score, woohoo!).
Saturday night scores: Francis 113, Roger 119, Me 106. So Roger wins, and proves Matthew 20:16 to be correct.
Sunday afternoon game 1: Francis 243, Me 247. So I win, by a hair. Well, 4 hairs.
Sunday afternoon game 2: Francis 183, Me 292. So I win again, this time causing great annoyance for Francis, which is pretty funny.

I do feel bad that because I love these board games, I'm sort of dragging people to come play with me... Oh well, I guess I should restrain myself a bit.

Watching Francis and Roger repeatedly compete for shotgun was absurdly amusing to me.

(Friday) The car hit the normally-we-don't-celebrate-it-but-this-is-so-wheel-of-fortune-type-important-number of 25,000 kilometres while I was on my way to Toronto. The hit occurred about 1 kilometre pass James Snow Parkway exit, right about the truck inspection station, in Halton Hills.

(Saturday) 13 hours (well, only 5 of those hours are tripping, rest are in fellowship), 3 cities (1 new), 1 pretty river, 9 people, 1 shotgun, 7 went the long way for McD's, 2 went the smart way for Italian, 1 serious injury (as in losing-half-your-pants injury), 0 plays, 1 detour, 144.4 kilometres. There's not much in Stratford, but it does look pretty good. The thing about being in a new place for me is that I constantly think about how to play the amazing race here...and I got a few ideas here and there that are just pretty dumb. Anyway, spent a lot of time with Roger here, which is good.

(Sunday) 7 hours, 6 cities, 6 people, 1 car, 1 shotgun, 2 inconspicuous haircuts, 3 wandering souls, 0 frames of bowling, 5 bowls of noodles, 3 bubble teas, 3 McD meals, 77.2 gas (81.9 Waterloo), 313.8 kilometres. I scored almost 900 kilometres just for this weekend...scary, eh? Anyway, driving was a good exercise (albeit a bit environmentally unfriendly). Francis' back, MuTao's back, it's all good.

10.5 hours, 4 cities, 2 people, 1 new lense, 1 CD, 1 webcam, 2 sundaes, 1 shocking secret, 77.2 gas (81.9 Waterloo), 30 dumplings, 1 underpriced dinner, 1 take-home box, 1 stayover, 273.4 kilometres. The penultimate trip to Toronto this semester. During dinner, I accidentally ordered so much that we were wondering, "where's MuTao when you need him?" The traffic to Toronto was pretty horrific, though. "Highway 401 is very slow" as the sign says...

Going to Stratford today, I think. Woo...new city... Busy busy weekend.

I read one of the hardest things to read a couple of nights ago. It was a small section on concussions. The descriptions are so graphic that I really couldn't finish reading that short section, and went directly to sleep. Later in the morning, I tried valiantly to finish reading it, and did. But it was hard...

Tried to jump rope. Was hoping to jump for 3 minutes straight (slowly, of course), but I couldn't continue past 80 seconds. Oops.

Here's how my memory has failed pretty badly. We had chicken wings again tonight, and good times were had. But for some odd reason, I kept on thinking that the last time we did this was two weeks ago. Turns out it was last week... Hmm...and I wasted so much time this week...didn't really know that time goes that slowly.

There's a Bible study to help out coming up real soon...and I realize that my heart wasn't much in the Bible anymore... That's pretty sad.

I had a dream during this afternoon's short and intense nap about me being in Taiwan. Not surprisingly, this turned into a nightmare, and I woke up just in time to go get Roger.

Still can't believe that I'll need to move in less than two weeks...it's so fast. Glad to be out of here, though.

So there's yet another coworkers meeting coming up on Sunday...yikes. Not sure what to do there. The email I sent out regarding this received mixed reviews, though. Yeah, it was a crazy email.

35 hours (sort of) (11 of those hours were spent at home, but anyway), 4 cities, 2 trips to Hamilton, 1 real micrometre, 4 free meals, too many hours on the television, 333.0 kilometres. I think we are one of the boringest people around...haha. Anyway, add 2 hours, 24.0 kilometres and 2 bubble teas for the rescue of Roger right after I got home from Hamilton. It was pretty funny, actually. The timing was impeccable as well. The bubble tea was surprisingly good, actually, so maybe I shouldn't have quit so soon, eh?

Played Trivial Pursuit with MuTao, and he won...haha. We played under our own "modified rules" that he would win when he gets 2 wedges before I get 6. Well, when he got his 2, I only have 3, so he won... We continued playing, and eventually I got my 6, and at that time, he still had only 2. As usual, I kept answering his questions correctly, and not my own ones (or at least very few of them). It was fun, of course. Too bad this won't happen often... Sameple answers: PT Cruiser, dogs, Bill Clinton, India, Martina Hingis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ted Kaczynski, sunlight, Martha Stewart, and Tic Tac Toe.

According to news, this is the coldest summer in 12 years. Well, that suits me just fine.

Three ways to waste time...

Sit around.

Walk around.

Watch television.

By the way...

...I made a quick trip to Hamilton and Burlington and finally got ourselves a micrometre.

...Roger seems happy whenever MuTao's here.

...I just have to make sure that everything depresses me.

Wow...who knew that a highly annoying team can actually be eliminated on The Amazing Race? Glad to know that I'm actually cool with the final five teams this time around... Anyway, that was a race that got a bit scary, which was not fun to watch.

I don't think I care much about the Olympics, quite frankly. They are just a bunch of mostly younger-than-me kids performing some strange gestures with their body. Here's a strange quote from a member of the losing Canadian swimming relay team: "I'm not really disappointed. Well, I am, but I'm not."

I'm dropping further down the vortex of depression. This time due to the phone calls from home. I don't know...I think my attitudes toward my family are pretty horrible.

So all of a sudden, mom decided to come here soon...not sure if I want to take that as good news or bad news... (Instant update: Mom's not coming. No space on the planes. And once again, she wants me to go back...sigh...)

Research is going pretty badly. Who knew that caterpillars are that hard to study?

Apparently my family back there (especially in Tainan) has lots of connections with people here. Another connection discovered yesterday was that Roger's mom was a Tainanese, and she knew about the photography studio that my granddad opened. Now my mom and his mom are about the same age, and his mom used to live on the same street as my mom. So there is a small chance that they have met before. I guess we'll see soon...

According to Aaron, I got taller............nah, I don't think it's true. I'm too old for this.

Oh yeah, my phone connection is back on now. Feel free to call like you didn't use to.

Went to school briefly today just to take care of the final marks for the course I'm TAing this term. The average marks for these students are so consistent that it's kind of scary. In any case, that's done, and next term I get the crazy job of TAing for 642, which is graph theory that is 2 levels up from the current course...

7 hours, 4 cities, 2 gorgeous rainbows, 3 pairs of gloves, 4 people, 1 overpriced piece of plastic, 1 overpriced dinner, 77.5 gas (85.5 Waterloo), 0 frames of bowling, 4 bubble teas, 2 colours in several animations, 1 rabbit, 279.5 kilometres. For once, we didn't make it to PacMall due to Hours of Operation. Anyway, fun and scary times were had. Fun because my right arm was sore (so do a lot of my other body parts), scary when we saw the bill for the dinner. Just don't let Aaron's mom know about it. The ironic thing about this dinner was that slightly earlier, we passed through a hot pot place with a price tag of about $17 per person, and I went "hmm...not sure if I'm able to put down that much money..." I think I'll stop drinking bubble teas for a while.

There was exercise done before the trip, though, surprisingly enough. A bunch of people went rollerblading, and because I don't like having too many wheels, I went biking. Not long after we started, however, the rain started to fall. It was pretty light to begin with, and I looked at that one piece of dark cloud on the sky and concluded that it's not going to rain further down in the trail. Like the number that I'm always thinking of, I'm wrong. The rain got super duper heavy. At many points, the raindrops were so sharp that it really hurts when they hit my arms. In any case, I was obviously soaked and drained (hmm...pun?) for the 8km ride. It wasn't fun at all, and my legs are not working properly as of right now. Being totally wet was not a good feeling, but changing into dry wardrobe long afterwards felt incredibly good.

I think these days, God is using people around me to tell me this: "welcome to the life of being normal." And that is one reason why I've had such a hard time living recently.

Look at them. Jumping around. Running here and there. Making strange hand movements. So energetic. So vibrant. So unlike me.

Yeah, still as depressed as ever, even though I don't feel much of it. Maybe I'm simply desensitized about it already. Feeling numb, certainly.

I get injured two weeks in a row, both due to basketball, both due to Aaron, and both while I'm not playing... Sigh... (Oh alright, so this week's bump wasn't too bad.)

Looks like I'll have to look for other people to play board games with...sigh...

Everyone else gets stronger and stronger while I feel weaker and weaker.

So they had this practice thing after myf today, and I found a way to get out earlier...nice.

Scored a television and a cellphone from Keane today, which I will get at the beginning of September. Still not sure about the cellphone thing, but several signs led me to accepting it anyway: (1) My mom wants me to have one for a while; (2) My phone got disconnected today; (3) I've been touching too many things that I've told myself that I shouldn't touch (including WinXP), so why not one more...

So, after Newman picked up the exams, I went off to Roger's unexpectantly. Roger was sleeping, sort of. I made a phone call to Francis, who was at Conestoga, so I decided to go there as well. Upon hearing this, Roger, sort of sleeping, shouted "I want to go as well!" So we went. Francis spent a lot of money (unrelatively speaking), and went back to Roger's to watch Olympics stuff, laugh at Francis while he played the Rush Hour thingie, and ate 28 dumplings. Ok, that's about it for the day. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there Francis put on his new inline skates and put them to use on a Wendy's parking lot. He fell within the first 10 seconds. He got some bruises on his right elbow, but don't tell his mom about it.

I really don't know what I'm doing.

The marking of 73 papers took 2 hours 18 minutes and 18 seconds in net marking time. In reality, including many breaks, it took me from 11PM to 3AM. One interesting line in a student's solution: "Adding back v creates a non-planar graph which is non-planar."

For some odd (and most likely stupid) reasons, my phone is cut off. In fact, all the phones in CLT are cut off... Apparently they think this is the end of the semester, so nobody would live here anymore. Hmm... I never really trusted those housing people. And really bad timing for the cutoff, too, as the other TA is supposed to phone me to pick up the exams... Anyway, if you want to reach me, try icq, email, Roger's home phone, or Francis' cell.

Meanwhile, I don't know what I'm going to do for this weekend.

I just found out that I have $5.25 in Canadian Tire Money...more than I thought, certainly.

Trying to decide whether or not I will make 2 trips to Toronto next weekend. Or maybe 3 trips.

70+ exam papers weigh 6 pounds.

So the big event today was this proctoring of an exam, which I arrived a bit late (I thought that arriving about 10 minutes before would suffice...turns out everyone else was there a long time ago). It was pretty painful. To begin with, I didn't have enough interesting material to read. I brought some papers, and then hit a block on each one of them, and I stopped reading them. I was trying some freestyle thinking, but that didn't go well, either. At about the half-way mark, a proctor's worst nightmare occurred: fire alarm. Sigh... So, everyone went out, unhappy about it at all, with the instructor trying hard to keep everyone quiet. Eventually I had to escort someone to the washroom in a building next doors. That was surprisingly hard to find, and we were walking pretty fast, so at the end of it, I was exhausted. Anyway, so then we went back in. It was eventless after that, so not bad. Mike and I started playing with those name cards. I put them on the table in a way that matches up where the students sat. When a student handed in a paper, we turned the card over. So we were playing a game of name card bingo... We were off by two in two of the lines, though, so we didn't win. So, that was the exam. And now I have a giant stack of paper to mark by 10AM tomorrow. And by the way, carrying the stack home by hand was not easy. I didn't really appreciate how heavy 70+ exams could weigh...

In other news, the Olympics started. Ah, I don't really care. Maybe I'll read the news here and there, but that's about it.

The River Crossing puzzle is a wee bit too easy, I think. I'm at the half-way mark of the first set of cards.

Just came back from wings night with Roger. For once, Roger was the suicidal one instead of me...haha. So far, my stomach is still good. Anyway, I had a good time. Kept my mind off the disturbing things.

I have shoulder problems. Strange. I'm not even tense.

I think I may be both a sadist and a masochist..........

I obviously have some misgivings about basketball, but a lot of people like it, apparently, so I won't say much. So the guys asked me to play last Sunday. As much as I was bored, I refused to play for fear of being a liability and ruin the fun of it for everyone, which has always happened whenever I played.

I know people are being humble or something like that, but sometimes it just feels bad to hear others say that. Things like mesister saying how badly she plays the violin. We often cautioned her not to say that because that would make others think, "hmm...if you are bad at it, then how good are we?" Anyway, I know that I do that a lot, and often I feel that is true, but it may have made others feel bad about it... Of course boasting about our own talents is no good, either...so there's this fine delicate line to walk...

Funny question in Trivial Pursuit: In the theme song of Animaniacs, what animal is Yakko yakking to when the songs gets to the part "and Yakko yaks"?

Well, not surprisingly, I just wasted another day. Well, I did complete a small project that started back in June, which involved picking up something and mailing it. Going for chicken wings with Roger later. Hope my stomach can take it this time. Other than that, very little research done, and very little time spent with God.

If life is a game, then I think I lost.

So, apparently the folks back in Taiwan are doing well. Good to know mesister has about 8 students now. And for once they didn't mention golf or forcing me to go there in a phone call.

13 hours, 5 cities, 10 stores, 1 chair, 3 forms, 1 fake micrometre, 0 micrometre, 75.1 gas in Flamborough (82 Waterloo), 2 trips to Hamilton, 1 giant cheque, 343.7 kilometres = getting MuTao here and back and everywhere in between yesterday. Got lots of things done for the day, so not bad. Just tired. Interesting thing is we finally found some service person who actually knows what a micrometre is... Good job, Sam!

Congratulations, car, for hitting the not-so-landmark-ish-because-I-screwed-up-on-the-maintenance-schedule 24K! You hit it in the middle of nowhere about 3 kilometres beyond Peter's Corner on Highway 8 while we were on our way to send MuTao back to Hamilton yesterday. That's 17 days for these 2K...hmm.........getting up there real quick, eh?

You know those old people always regret not having done something while they were young? Well, I already have several...and I'm not that old...sigh...

That was a fun and silly call to the car insurance people. In any case, the insurance costs $2,141 this year, slightly lower than last year. Woohoo! Of course this time, I'm paying for it instead of my parents...

I swallowed 30 dumplings at the Yens tonight. I think it's around 1kg's worth of dumpling, which made me really really full. Good thing it's no caviar, though.

That was a pretty funny race, eh? As usual, my head feels so heavy during and after watching it...not as heavy as before, though, so at least I'm improving.

That was a pretty short supervisor meeting. Not because I didn't do much, but because supervisor has another meeting 30 minutes from the time I arrive. I told her about the proof that I fixed. Originally I thought it's going to be so short that she will ask for something else. Turns out that I have a flaw in my proof, so we both tried to fix it. After that's done, 30 minutes are up, and I'm out of there. So I already have something for next week...hehe.

Want to mention that we played Trivial Pursuit on Sunday. We had three teams, I'm one, Francis is one, and Elaine, Ginger, Maggie form the third team. Roger was our wise man. It was lots of fun, actually. Definitely lots of misses since the questions are too hard. I kept on answering other people's questions correctly, and not my own questions... Francis drew first blood as he was the first one to get a question right. Eventually due to time constraint, I won. Woohoo! Very glad that I can play this. Sample answers: One, Bushy, Ecuador, television, Friends, beer, Mt. St. Helens, Dracula, yellow fever, Danny Bonaduce, Bart Simpson, and the winning answer of Brazil. We'll play again soon, hopefully.

Quoting from what I just read: "Training was supposed to be a struggle. If it was fun, everyone would do it."

Boy, I have so many distractions around here. There's a book called Next Door Savior by Max Lucado. Not exactly enjoying that book, but it's at my bedside nonetheless. There's The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's another book which tells the story of the author's road to the Golden Gloves while he was 33. So far it's a pretty good read. Then there's that River Crossing puzzle game, which is actually more complicated than I first thought. And of course there are those two board games now located at the Yen's. So, in conclusion, not much research was done this week.

To quote from Maggie (translated version) about what her siblings done on Saturday night: "They're crazy, they're crazy, they're crazy!" Yeah, they went off to Niagara Falls at 9PM and back at 4AM. And they took the long route back via Toronto. The goal: take care a dog and bring back PS2. Well, I don't know how the dog was doing, but we didn't really do much on that PS2. At least the graphics looked pretty good on that one game that Roger played... Anyway, I really wished I had gone on that trip as well, but I knew I would be really really really tired, so I played Monopoly instead. So, in conclusion, a dog is worth 400 kilometres.

About the leg injury...it happened over really really stupid circumstances. I was standing on a basketball for a brief moment, and Aaron saw that. Then Aaron asked me if I can do that again, this time standing on it for 2 seconds. I thought, that's fine, and I did that. I put my left foot on, and when I tried to put my right foot on, I slipped and fell in an awkward position. So, yeah, my right leg is now injured. Last time it was the left leg, now the right...sigh... So, in conclusion, never trust Aaron.

(This trip took place on Saturday August 7.) 8 hours, 4 cities, 6 people, 615-dollar cell phone, 1 giant buffet lunch, 2 plates for me, 1 aching stomach, 100 frames of bowling, 1 spare for me, 0 strikes, 268.1 kilometres. The aim of this trip was to let Roger get a cellphone of his dream. His friend Jason came along. Good trip, albeit surprisingly tiring. Two trips to Toronto and back within a 28-hour time frame wasn't easy.

Bowling scores:
Round 1: Francis 103, Roger 91, Me 63, Mama Yen 109. So Mama Yen won, and Francis broke 100 for the first time in all of our bowling history.
Round 2: Francis 76, Roger/Jason 65, Me 55, Mama Yen 82. Everyone's a bit off, but Mama Yen won again.
Conclusion: Mama Yen rocks. I am just horrible at this game. It's time to change sports...hmm...let's see, can I change it to another sport that begins with b and the objective is knocking down stuffs as well?
For comparison, see the scores in July and in May.

Back to the Yen house in the evening. Played Monopoly with Maggie and Mama Yen for 3 hours. And guess what, Mama Yen won. Maggie lost. It was a lot of fun, actually. Every single property was sold, and the highest rent was at $700 (which is the money I set aside just for this purpose, and then landed on it).

I've got lots to say, but I'll wait until later when I have sort of recovered from general exhaustion. But for now, these three things: I got a sports injury (my right leg) even though I didn't do any exercise today.

Board games rock.

I did nearly no research this week.

10 hours, 4 cities, 10 tools, 74.5 gas in Hamilton, 79.3 gas in Toronto (81.9 in Waterloo), 2 sundaes, 3 ordinary malls, 7 lychee jello thingies, 3 strange glass pops, 320.9 kilometres = first getting to Hamilton to buy tools with MuTao, then getting to Toronto to get Francis to tell more secrets. For some odd reason, I felt nimbly, jumping around like if there was little gravity. Earliest return time ever, I think. Left Toronto at around 8pm. And after enjoying more than a month of cheap gas in Toronto, I finally got screwed by the gas prices! Woohoo! So yeah, I only filled up $10 in Hamilton, even though I had a slight inclination to fill it up. Too bad. Lost only about $2, though, so that's not exactly horrific.

Received the books from Amazon moments before I left for Hamilton. I like these books...hehe.

Today: yet another trip to Toronto. Woohoo! And we get to see Roger spend a lot of money! I have to wonder, though, other than a cell phone, is there any other "common" items whose cost/volumn ratio is so high? It's too bad that MuTao's not coming, though...so the chances of playing Trivial Pursuit today? Almost nil.

Went for a short walk beside Columbia Lake late today (because I was very very depressed). The sunset was gorgeous. And I started seriously considering making a trivial pursuit-type Biblical board game. I've always wanted to do one, but my recent purchase of these board games resurrected this interest. I guess for the first release, I'll be modest and produce only 250 question cards. I have already created about 5 cards, so at this rate I should finish the first release by the end of the year.

I am so slacking off on research stuff...

Looks to be a weekend of fun and games and lots of travel. And, of course, no research.

Once again, I wasted the day. Sigh...

It would be fun to do two trips to Toronto within a 24-hour period. I just hope that I don't need to do a third one within the next 24-hours.

My mind is still being tormented.

I did a bit of "guilty spending" today (i.e. I felt guilty after buying them). I bought two board games: Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. Together with yesterday's River Crossing puzzle game, I spent $115 on these recreational stuffs. My hope is that they get used..........

Looked at TVs and PS2s and stuffs at a few places today. I think I like the LCD TV's...but I don't know why. Of course I probably won't have a chance to buy any of these things, unless I won the lottery or something, which is impossible since I don't play the lottery. Oh well. Actually, PS2 does have a chance of being purchased. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I'm still mentally insane.

Thinking of buying Trivial Pursuit. Then again, I don't think anyone else would play with me...so, not sure. By the way, I don't know why my shopping list has grown so much.

I shall waste today's time to mindless activities. Sigh...

I wish I would use my "creativity" toward research stuffs rather than the other bad stuffs.

As expected, nobody else showed up for bbs. So I now dissolve the bbs for this semester and declare it an endangered species.

My answering machine was full...this is the first time that it happened. Usually I clear out my messages at the beginning of semester, but this time I have to do it now... Got 39 messages in total. Got rid of 10. Among these 10, MuTao's in front of my mom 7 to 3.

Spent a lot of time at Roger's today. Brought Rush Hour there, and Maggie played all the way up to 25 all by herself. Incredible. Of course Ginger then took over and got to 30 (I think). They are addicted. And then there's a good race on TV (not a really good ending...Phil sounded a bit mean...). And then I broke Roger's record on pinball, and I'm still on my first ball (of course I earned some restarts). For some reason, it's so hard to lose on his computer. Anyway, my score is 3 times Roger's record...

The weather is pretty hot today. It is so hot that when I was walking to and from school, I got angry because of it. Of course there are other reasons for getting angry, but I won't go into that.

Long supervisor meeting today. Wasn't too bad considering that I essentially did all the reading in one night and one basketball watching session. And we found some possible faults with a paper, so that just goes to show how reliable these mathematical papers are...

Bought a new puzzle game today. Don't know why, though. There's bbs coming up, but probably nobody's going to come, except myself.

6 hours, 3 cities, 5 fake soccer games, 1 nice dinner, 143.6 kilometres = 1 quick trip to Roger's, Hamilton, and back.

Yeah, I'm still a giant chicken. I can't talk to people about serious stuffs, apparently. And I'm growing older and older, and time is running out to do things that I've always wanted to do...

I guess the reason why I have the idea of buying a PS2 is that I would like to play one of those games...

So there was skating yesterday (and other stuffs, but those are not important, like watching basketball while researching on k-grids and going to Roger's place and waited a long time before going in and church in the morning). MuTao skated for the first time, and he is already faster than me...man, this guy's athletic ability is amazing. He beats me in every sport so far. Hmm...need to think of other sports that I can actually do better than him... Anyway, not many people were on the ice this time, so it wasn't too bad.

We played 2+ hours of Biblical monopoly board game. Nobody understood the rules or anything else in the game, so we just played our own version of it. Now this is supposed to be a Christian game, but the way we played eventually was so un-Christian-like that it was funny. We played the game where we never made the original money back, we always want others to step on our "land" and "church" in order to collect "donations" which we did not give with joy in our heart, we never read the Biblical part of the playing cards and go straight to how many steps we should go and how much money we should get or lose, we think temptations are funny, and we changed rules hoping that people would run out of money sooner and go take showers and stuff. Anyway, it was exhausting and painful to sit on the floor playing like that. Next time, I buy the real Monopoly game.

I think I might have transfered some of my body odor to Roger's bed and sort-of-taller-than-MuTao pillow...