I have some misgivings about Bobby. I won't say much about it, but those were some uncomfortable moments...

Started to learn to let go of the other people instead of chasing them down all the time. It's hard, but not too bad, I guess. I had some good feelings about yesterday's fellowship. Just some.

Marking is going pretty slowly, as always. Need to finish 2 questions today, and I have only marked 1 question on 6 out of 29 papers.

Finally bought an external hard drive today. It took so long to decide whether I should buy it or not... A few factors that went into consideration: (a) I brought enough money to buy it. (b) It was on sale and had a $40 discount. (c) Among the prices I checked at Future Shop online yesterday, nothing came close to this. (d) I don't need the ink that urgently... So anyway, I got the 160GB hard drive at Costco for $200 (tax not included). Now playing away with it...so interesting to have so much free space... (Oh, yeah, I had to rearrange some electrical equipments to get it plugged in...)

About the last post...Turns out that the kilometreage for the last two weeks is close to 50km. And I added another 50km in today's trip to Costco...

It's pretty warm today, around 20 degrees. Huge wind, which is pretty exciting...

I sent myself back down to the slump of sadness and depression these days. It's just so unavoidable... I absolutely do not understand what is going on in my mind, and that's kind of scary.

Too bad I sort of lost touch with Roger now. I haven't been to his house since my mom's gone. I'm guessing that he's still busy with "hanging out" with a certain friend. The Amazing Race starts soon, so I'll visit more often...hehe.

The car is certainly doing a lot of sitting in the parking lot these days. Let's see...it hit 28K on October 7 (which I didn't record here). When my mom was here, we logged about 1,340 km. Today, the car sits at around 29.3K. So that means for the past two weeks, I drove less than 100 km. Hmm...that sounds so strange.

Yup, I wasted yet another day. I have this excuse that "I need to relax," but that relaxation went a bit too long. Now, graph theory marking and convex opt assignment will keep me occupied...I hope...

There's this student who wanted to get one more mark out of her assignment, which I refused. That cost me about half an hour. Sigh...it would have only been .4% extra for the semester. Not worth the time, certainly not mine, although I am wasting a lot of mine, so...yeah.

Tomorrow: Shopping and marking.

The first official supervisor meeting in 3 weeks went ok. I spent close to 1.5 hours to explain 1.5 pages of the paper, and it's still not finished. Yikes.

One last note about the lunar eclipse...the photos are up now. And for some odd reason, there were these "shadow moons" on many of the photos I took. I'm guessing it's the UV lens that's causing the problem, but I don't really know for sure. Meanwhile, I heard from the news that the big cities around us like Toronto and London were all cloudy during the eclipse, and we got a clear sky here. So lucky, for once.

Francis came this afternoon, supposed to be studying for his exam, but ended up watching television right through. Hmm...

Just briefly went through the pictures of the eclipse. It's pretty disappointing, I have to say. I set the exposure time to be too high in most pictures. The one instance when it looks great is when the eclipse was over... Anyway, I shall sort through more of this later.

Going to school at 8:30AM. So early...too early... (MuTao must be laughing at this statement right now.)

Cereal and milk for breakfast. Hmm...probably going to need to eat soon.

2 hours, 6 degrees, 117 pictures, 1 sore back = 1 nice lunar eclipse. I think I went crazy when I took that many pictures. Back in my mind, I was thinking I should experiment with the settings a little, I guess. People pass by thinking what a lunatic I am (get it? lunar? lunatic? nevermind...). I just hope at least a few pictures turn out well, even better if there's at least a good one in each "phase" of the eclipse... The camera's battery is being recharged right now, so I'll have pictures (or not) later.

Meanwhile, I didn't prepare for supervisor meeting...yikes. Looks like I'll wake up early today to read through the paper once more.

Bonus Oblivious today. Woohoo!

There was a fire alarm here in the residence. I was sleeping, so was Alan, and we were both visibly shaken by the alarm... Initially we weren't going to go out, but eventually we caved. Francis and I went out for dinner and Alan apparently went to his office. Apparently this was a real fire alarm, as the air had some smoky smell to it...

In all likelihood, I will not go to McD's again...that was horrible.

Got the assignment 2 solutions in convex opt today (without getting my assignment back), and I was just shaking my head when I saw it. Man, I did so bad...

Seriously thinking about registering a domain name and get myself a website of sorts so that I can show off some things online. Of course this won't happen until I think of a better domain name than arboricity.com (such a dorky name). And of course, I've had seriously thinkings on other things which never came true (e.g. PS2)...

Read this paper again, which is the one where I found a mistake during supervisor meeting. Well, turns out that it was my mistake as I misread the statement of a theorem. So now this proof is a bit more complex than I first thought, and it is already complex enough. This makes me like the paper a lot less.

Just let out another "hey" to Alan. I live such a pathetic life.

I pretty much wasted today to sleeping, eating, internet, and television. Yikes. I don't know, it's kind of hard to recover from a deep slump. Anyway, started to do some thinking in the research department, which I haven't done for more than two weeks now.

As always, very little human contact today. The only things I've said to anybody are "hey" and "see ya" to Alan... So sad.

It's bad that I have lots of addictions...

I am such a dork. Everything that I say seems to be all wrong.

My right shoulder hurts. Don't know why. Then again, a lot of the parts of my body hurt at various times, so maybe it's just me getting old.

Changed the style of my desktop wallpaper today, and I try to hide it as much as possible...

Just trying to relax today. Slept a bit more, twice. Had lunch at Sunshine once again. Watched lots of game shows on television (especially good that it's Monday night because there's Oblivious). Did some crosswords (it's funny how I would come up with something new every time, even though I've been doing the same crossword puzzle for a year). Just hope that I can start working again tomorrow...speaking of which, another assignment will come in on Friday.

It always happens that way, eh? Once I start to relax, my morality metre plunges.

I don't really understand what's going on in convex opt anymore.

Finally finished the marking! Woohoo! Look at the time...it's so late...but I shouldn't complain, Alan didn't even sleep last night and he just came back about an hour ago. Yikes. Anyway, I tried my best to be fair, but that is so hard to mark. On the other hand, now I can recite a proof of the Tutte-Berge formula from Tutte's theorem in 5 seconds.

Internet is so slow in the evening...

Tomorrow (i.e. today): Go to school to hand in the marked assignments, come back to sleep, go to school to go to class, come back to sleep. That is my sad circle of life...

Went out for a late cheap dinner last night in celebration of Michael's convocation. Well, the dinner mostly had nothing to do with Michael and more to do with Bobby and Francis wanting to have some food. In any case, good dinner.

The five of us were thinking, since it was around 12AM when we got home, how many of us would be late for today's service. Well, I came in first (by a hair, apparently), Francis came in second, Bobby was third (and late), Roger was fourth (and late), and Michael didn't come in at all (and is therefore eliminated).

Quietly putting another blog under my belt.

Internet is back early! Woohoo! Too bad that gives me more distractions from marking... Oh well, going to church soon anyway. Oh yeah, marking is progressing at a very slow pace. It takes around 7 minutes to mark one question of one paper. At this rate, this question will be completed in 3.5 hours, not including breaks...yikes.

I don't know...solitude is not bad on occasions.

Just had an idea where I would just take a weekend and fly to a city that I've never been to (say, Charlottetown or Whitehorse), stay for a couple of days and fly back. Sounds like a great idea...a good way to waste money, too.

Alright, I'm going to cut myself (with the help of the cut of the internet soon) from the outside world for about 20 hours. Hopefully I won't go crazy. Even better, hopefully I can do some work...

Just printed some pictures on photo paper. I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed with the colour on these print outs. They just look weird...or maybe I need to use other programs to print them...I don't know.

It's a shame that if we consider each person's interests as a set, the intersections of my set with most of the people around me are all nearly empty; certainly with no interior. No wonder I'm being looked at as an incredibly weird person...at least that's my guess.

Just flipping through this National Geographic Expeditions website. Boy, I really want to just go on all of them...unfortunately, not enough money for that, not even one. Oh well, I can always dream...sort of.

I think marking will go a lot smoother tomorrow when I have no internet. Meanwhile, I didn't do a thing today.

Of course I can just pick up the phone and start calling people, but, again, I would have no idea what I would talk about. Thus, my journey back to my own cocoon continues.

I feel awfully sick about myself right now. Just couldn't control my behaviour. Sigh...

On Wednesday's Final Jeopardy, they have this clue on Biblical Weights and Measures: As described in the Bible, the total volume of this was 450,000 cubic cubits. The contestants are kids, so maybe that's one reason nobody got it right...

Next time, when I go out to meals with Bobby and Francis, make sure that my class starts soon...

Finally finished marking another question, this time done while watching 3 straight hours of MXC. Hmm...

Still being tired for no reason.

Getting towards the end of October already, eh? Time flies so fast...and Alan agrees. He had spent long hours in his office all week long...poor Alan. Now he's in Toronto.

I have to realize that having human contact is a precious thing. It's pretty sad that I'm all alone again.

The drive for marking was remarkably down. Now I just feel tired all the time, and want to go to sleep. Hoping to get two questions marked today, but even that seems unlikely now.

From sending an email to my gmail account to having the gmail notifier tell me that there is new mail takes 30 seconds. Meanwhile, I still have 5 gmail invites to give away.

There was a short episode where supervisor wants to look at the assignments in the morning, so I sent them in. Later when I got them back, I said that I'll try to get them done by tomorrow. And then she said, "that would be very heroic of you." Hehe... Anyway, I guess that takes the pressure off a bit. And also, I don't think I'll be marking in the office soon..........

Just as an advanced notice, I won't have internet on Saturday. Maybe Sunday as well.

Took some pictures of this foggy day in the morning and in the evening. Many of them turn out bad, but a couple turn out very well. I put them here.

Right now, i don't know why, I just feel super super depressed.

Finiahed all but 2 parts of the convex opt assignment. Certainly much better than it would have been if I handed in on Monday. I'll start early next time...yeah, like that's possible.

Haven't seen Alan in a while. He always came home so late, like this morning I heard him came in and it was around 4AM. Yikes. He did install some light-sensitive lights, so that's pretty cool. On a non-related note, there was no hot water this morning, so I didn't take a shower. Oops.

Yet another crazy crazy day. Started a bit late, though, as I slept until about 11.5AM (but I did wake up at around 7 for a few hours). The search for homework solutions was sort of fruitful, thanks to Shengjun. I now have 8.5 out 9 questions. Not sure if I want to do that .5 tomorrow morning... Meanwhile, there was supposed to be marking being done. I finally finished marking 1 question. That took a net total of 2 hours and 24 minutes to complete. In reality, the marking spanned more than 26 hours. 4 more questions to go...yikes.

Marking and television should not mix. So do writing assignment and television.

You know, being in a cocoon isn't too bad. Especially during busy days like these. Or maybe not. I don't know.

There was a giant panic, and then a reprieve. Panic since there was no way that I can do this convex opt assignment to get a passable grade. Reprieve since the instructor extended the due date by 2 days in class. Whew... Now, a giant sleep.

Thinking of getting an USB hard drive. Not sure I want to spend that much money, though.

It's a shame that there was such a pretty sunrise this morning, and the lounge that gives access to the patio was locked. Sigh...

I am extremely frustrated with the convex opt assignment right now. It's really too bad that I don't have a good background in analysis and linear algebra.

Cooking chicken drumsticks right now. This is the last batch of drumsticks from the beginning of the semester. Need to do this in order to make room for the freezer, which is now stuffed with too many dumplings.

I have very limited human contact today. Sigh...

First snow of the season. Woohoo!

Bumped into Justin and talked for a short while in church. Good to see him again.

Going to try to do a 2-week assignment in 1 night. Hmm...

I'm trying to see if I will keep up with this new photo blog thingie. They are not full-size photos, though, so it may not look so good.

Seriously, is it really that coincidental that suddenly a non-trivial number of people just dropped out of the fellowship in the same week? I don't know...God is funny.

Met Furino briefly in the St. Jerome's parking lot when I walked to SLC today. He still remembers that I asked for reference, and when I told him that it's a bit too late, he said that he's basically useless to me right now. Hehe.

Crazy day. It seemed that the MYF event to Stratford was falling apart, even days before today. People just keep dropping out of it along the way. Even today, Francis suddenly had to drop out as well. And I had already prepared two programs for this event, one for the Stratford event and one for the backup indoor event. So that was pretty depressing. Anyway, it turned out to be not too bad, I guess. Just have a sense of overwhelmingness about it all.

Had a ride with Peter to Guelph and back to see the trees. Well, we didn't see much, but it was a good trip. Downloading pictures now. Hope they don't turn out too badly. I would say the whole point of the trip (which we didn't know) was to chase the rain, eventually caught up with a pretty rainbow. We had a sunny ride back, which was a bit too late, but that's ok.

I need a break. Desperately.

(For some odd reason, this post was gone...anyway, I'll try to recover what I wrote, I guess.)

Some blinding fog, some lectures, some police with guns, some airport window shopping (for me anyway), and my mom left Canada. I have mixed emotions, which are hard to decipher.

(I really don't remember what else I wrote on that day...so yeah.)

Elora Gorge was not too bad. The leaves didn't change colours there, though, so that was kind of disappointing. Mom liked it, so I guess that's good.

Read something that tells me that I can charge my camera battery anytime I want and it would be fine. Great! Good thing I didn't buy another one.

Really don't know what was going on with the convex opt thing. I got my first assignment back, which was pretty bad, but that's because I skipped one big question. Next assignment due on Monday, and I have no idea how to do it. Cancelled supervisor meeting tomorrow, but the marking madness begins Friday. Mom's last day here is tomorrow, so life will return to normal soon...hopefully better...

Playing Monopoly was both sort-of fun and absolutely tedious. I mean, it's a game that is based on nearly 100% dumb luck. So anyway, we played for 3 hours, Maggie won, Bobby 2nd, Francis 3rd, Me last, and Francis' mom called twice.

A trip to Costco in the morning, a nap and a visit from Francis in the afternoon. Last sunny day today.

I am just absolutely stressed out.

Boy, that camera's battery certainly kept on going and going even after the "low battery" warning.

Oblivious is just one of the funniest shows that I've watched on TV.

An semi-off day tomorrow. Niagara Falls off the schedule and is replaced by a visit to Costco (which I will participate in) and some houses (which I will not participate in). Need to remind myself to email supervisor to call off the meeting this week, and start doing that bizarre homework.

Since when did Pizza Hut become such a big attraction?

I really don't want to dip my hands into the realm of real estate.

Having no public washroom that is open in Stratford is really really difficult to handle.

Yet another exhausting day. My lower body is pretty much in limb. After the good dinner, my stomach went bad. All the while, my brain is swirling into sleep mode. So essentially my entire body was not working.

Starting to attach to people again. Need to stop doing that. Painful memories.

With 3 moms and 6 kids on the trip, it's certainly surprising that it's the 3 moms that made the most noise.

These are long and tiring days.

After downloading the photos from the new camera, I have to say that I wasn't really happy with it right now. Maybe I'm still not familiar with how to operate it. The lighting is off for some pictures.

Today: Toronto. Not sure what's going to happen, but we'll see.

Mom's here.

There were huge winds last night, and I'm just afraid that they might just blow away the pretty leaves that we're having here.

Roger seems happier, I think. Francis simply couldn't keep a secret, which is pretty obvious, I guess. Meanwhile, it's a busy morning as I try to finish up the preparation of the Bible study, and download the pictures from the new digital camera to my harddrive (which requires cleaning up my harddrive first).

Finally finished reading this crazy paper, and there's still a part at the end that I still couldn't figure out. The thing with this paper is that the writing is quite condensed, not a lot of details, organization is poor (there are ways to rearrange it so that things would flow so much better), and quite frankly a lot of weird proof techniques (like, they use proof by contradiction when it could have been be proved straight out, sort of). Anyway, that's it for the preparation of the supervisor meeting. Now I just wait for my dinner to be ready.

Mom just called not long ago saying that she's at the airport gate ready to board the plane. Less than 24 hours later, she'll be here. And I won't be able to do a thing for a week. And that's pretty bad considering that I have no clue (really) what's going on in the convex opt class (with scary things like continuous, compactness, and bilinearity). Anyway, the plan is to have a trip a day from Saturday to Tuesday. Let's see how that's going to happen.

Oh, yeah, and I still have a Bible study to prepare. Anyone wants to be a Good Samaritan and prepare the study on the story of the Good Samaritan for me?

Received three pieces of mail today: One is the boring Bell mail, which always tells me that I owe $0.00; one is CIBC VISA bill, which is good because now I know they actually changed my address; the third one is my new driver's licens, which means that now I have 3 DL's to show off with.

There's only one thing that I had to do today, which is to finish reading a paper, and I just couldn't do it in the morning or afternoon. Sigh...procrastination still reigns.

I still find myself really really tired almost all the time. People keep saying that I need exercise, but I just can't do it.

Got a haircut yesterday. The place raised the price to $13, but it's ok, they do a great job. Francis visited for close to 11 hours, doing the "homework + television" combo. His mom wants to steal my telelvision now. For some reason his mom asks about The Price is Right. Anyway, it was pretty tiring, and I'm not sure Alan was happy about seeing Francis here. And I did nothing for the day.

Mom's coming soon...I think the car is going to pack about 1.7K for the week.

There's something wrong with Roger. He just seem annoyed by me, at least that's the impression I get from the phone calls and the brief visit. He's still not trying to find work, though I think that's not it.

So the Bruch Richter scare was short-lived as we found out that it was Marg's fault. Ah, what a relief.

So apparently I'm doing the Bible study this weekend...hmm...this is so that Francis doesn't have to do anything. Meanwhile, mom is coming real soon. I don't know if I can deal with all these... Second meanwhile, Roger doesn't sound good on the phone.

I do find myself to be ever-so-slightly happier these days, though I still attempt to throw myself down into the dark void of depression.

3 cities (ok, I'm counting the Ingersoll service centre as one of the cities...), 11 hours, 6 shops, 2 subs, 3 new CDs, 1 new belt, 5 plates for dinner, 286.0 kilometres = a shopping trip in London. The drive there was a bit terrifying as the car jerks left and right (sometimes wildly) due to the huge wind. It was smooth sailing once I got there, though. The total drive to UWO is about 90 minutes, with 20 spent inside the city of London. Large city, apparently.

Now Marg tells me that Bruce Richter hasn't sent in the reference...yikes.

Mom is coming in 3 days. Still haven't planned out her stay here yet...hmm...spontaneity may be required once she lands.

Yesterday morning when I got to my car, I saw frost. This would be the first of the season, then. Yay, winter!

I slept a lot these days. Just generally tired. Don't know why.

Car maintenance goes next Friday at 11AM. Looks like I'll be about 2K over the "next maintenance due by" kilometreage.

Came back from a week of madness, and it finally ended, temporarily. Today was a full full day, beginning with the dash to get the assignment done, then get the script for Bobby and Francis done, then go to class, then rush home to get the programming done, then rush to church to get find out big problems with the program, then finally done the games and it was beyond excellent! I had a wonderful time doing the games, and I think the congregation did, too. I am still absolutely amazed at how quickly and how accurately they solved those light riddles, even ones that I thought were just incredibly hard. Anyway, people are generally positive about it, so I feel better and more relaxed now. Man, and consider that I had only 4 hours of sleep, and the things I had to go through...wow. Now, I go to sleep. Soon. Maybe I should pursue a career in the game show business. I guess I'll say more about the games later. Thank the Lord for everything that has happened.

Going to London tomorrow, yay! So far, only 3 people know about it.

Ok, now I start to feel a bit of a dry throat.

Just finished typing up the homework questions that I know how to do (or Googled up, embarrassingly enough). I'm now borderlining delusional and my head is pretty dizzy. Nifty... Still 1.5 questions left. Don't know how much I will do. There's a game that I have to prepare for 7:30. Yikes.

Roger quit his job and came to my place. As always, nothing happened. Still don't know why he chose my place, but it was quite an honour to be his choice of visit. Of course, my place is probably the boringest place in Waterloo.

Hmm...I haven't made a post about having handed in the NSERC application this morning at around 11:30AM, even though it felt like it was done a long long time ago? Well, it was quite an eventful morning to get the application handed it, like some last minute revisions from the supervisor and the printer that did not cooperate. Anyway, it's done, so I'll move on. Funny how supervisor says when you do these things, you just have to hold your noses and just get it done.