Can I say that I'm really really angry right now? Because Roger's refusal to answer his cell phone (which he claims that he didn't hear, which I don't believe), this caused a series of complicated events in which I was woken by a call at 1AM, and now I couldn't sleep... All this on the night before my big trip, when I'm supposed to get a lot of sleep...

So now for sure I'm going to be sick on the airplane, since Bobby will be driving me to Toronto instead of Roger, and Bobby is really sick right now...sigh........... And by the way, Mama Yen should seriously consider taking the car keys away from Roger. This is getting ridiculous.

It's the end of the year, and looking back (ever so briefly), I find 2004 to be too much to handle for me. Dare I wish that 2005 would be better?

I'm absolutely not ready to go to Taiwan. For one, I haven't packed yet. Also, I don't know how I'm going to spend New Year's Eve in Vancouver. And, I'm tired of flying, as I just did that less than a week ago... I feel like I'm going to have some kind of a culture shock... Now I take the risky thing and go to sleep while I haven't started packing yet. Long long day tomorrow. And the day after. At least I know for sure that I'm going to get a passport...

Spent half the day with Francis and Maggie and her mom, moving stuffs and watching TV and playing the River Crossings game. They find it easy until #26, and after they had a long struggle, I came in and solved it shortly after. Of course it's not fair to say that since I played that before, but then that was a long time ago, and certainly I wouldn't remember it...

No luck in keeping Nemo, as mom wants it. Oh well...

12 hours, 3 cities, 4 people, 3 familiar faces in unfamiliar lands, 1 nemo, 2 dories, 1 nervous passport office, 9 plane tickets, 30 dumplings, 3 cups of bubble tea, a million mentions of McDonald's, 280.8 kilometres = one extra productive yet extremely tiring and stomach-torturing trip to Toronto. This is the first time that I ventured into Toronto downtown since last December, and this time wasn't too bad. Found free parking (though later I found out that it's for buses only). The passport office people are really nice, at least a lot nicer than the one in Vancouver. I had some nervous moments when they say they may not get it done by Dec 31, but then it all got sorted out somehow. Bumped into Aaron's mom and dad there, surprisingly enough. Visited Eaton Centre next, briefly. Not before we bumped into Jeison, though, which is yet another surprise. Then the travel agent. And two hours later, I got flights to Taiwan and back (though the return trip is a bit late...will work on getting earlier flights). Maybe that is my style of buying things: when I was buying a car, we went into a dealer and five hours later, we drove a car out... Then off to the mundane and boring Metro Square and PacMall for shopping and waiting and eating and then back home. Very exhausting experience, which is compounded by the fact that I didn't eat between 8AM and 7PM. Now I have 1 day to pack and get everything "taken care of" (not in a kingly sense) and I'll run away again the day after.

Schedule: I leave Dec 31, stay overnight in Vancouver, and get to Taiwan in the afternoon of Jan 2. I leave Taiwan Jan 13 (although I would have liked it to be earlier), and arrive in Toronto on the same day. So I spent around $2,600 in plane tickets this month.

There is this big 15-week tournament for Jeopardy. Apparently they are going to have some 100+ "great" contestants from the past to compete for the right to play against Ken Jennings. I really don't like this idea. It just seems that they are just trying to milk this Ken Jennings thing a bit too much. I mean, it's over, and they should just get over it. Besides, this makes Ken look like some kind of deity or something...which is not good.

Called the passport office this morning, and nobody answered. So I presume that they were not open today, so I wasted another day. This is getting really depressing...

Tomorrow, trip to Toronto to get that passport done at whatever cost. Well, not really, I do have a monetary limit. Got my car now, so that's not bad, I guess.

I was sleeping this afternoon, and close to the end of it, I heard some rumblings outside, like if someone came into the suite or something. I was a bit concerned, obviously, but ended up thinking that it's probably the neighbours next doors or the carpet cleaning guy on the hallway. When I woke up a few minutes later, I went out the door, and find Alan walking out of the washroom. Imagine my surprise to that...boy, that was totally unexpected. So he had a friend's wedding in Cambridge and came by to pick up some stuff, and he was dressed in this wonderful suit. We had a chat, and then he was gone. Minutes later, somebody knocked on the door and opened. And they were his father and brother, looking for him. His brother certainly looks pretty young to me... Anyway, that's that for the surprise of the day.

Bad news: I wasted today to television and internet. I was planning on doing some research, but the little research done on the internet yields one possible paper that had proved something that I'm researching on. Hmm...still couldn't find that paper, though, just an abstract.

Good news: I found out that I don't need proof of registration of the university to apply for the passport. Woohoo! Also I heard that it is possible to get the passport done in one day. So that opens up the possibility that I'm leaving this week... (The sort of bad news in the mix here is that the passport office may not be open until Wednesday, meaning possibly one more day to waste.) Meanwhile, I have completed a template for the church's PowerPoint thing during the service. Looks nice, I think. Don't know how the other people might think of it, though...

Strange news: I finally got the guts to get my own website. Finding a cool domain name was really hard, as most of them were taken. Even nlogn.com was taken... I had a list of about 12 possible domain names, and ended up using one that I think I'm ok with. So, this blog will be moved soon... Oh yeah, I purchased the 2-year plan, betting on the company to not disappear, and on the Canadian dollar to not get any stronger.

On Christmas Eve, my grandfather passed away...

On Christmas Day, there was snow in southern US, including Texas...

On Boxing Day, a giant quake hit the Indian Ocean, causing tsunamis that killed at least 11,000... This has been a weird and tragic Christmas season, I think. Especially the tsunami...wow...that was really hard to swallow.

3...2...1...LAUNCH!!! Finally got it done.

So yesterday was Boxing Day, and I wasn't feeling particularly violent... Of course what did I do during Boxing Day? I went shopping! Therefore becoming part of the statistic that 1 in 4 Canadians go shopping today... But first, church. Then, I had to face my fears. Like, fear of traffic jam (which was there, though it was caused by a traffic accident, not by a large volumn of traffic), fear of a lack of parking spaces (which was there, though we attempted the "find the farthest parking spot first" strategy, and worked), and fear of a sea of people (which was there, definitely). I do all this so that the other 4 people will stop saying "what will we do next?" Hehehe... I got a penguins calendar (though these people laugh at me for that), but didn't get a pair of gloves that I needed to replace the current gloves made out of wool in New Zealand. Oh well. Anyway, driving Francis' car was a bit hard, driving on snow was even harder, and having not driven for more than a week didn't help. By the way, the temperature while I was outside was around -11 with windchill of -17. After having experienced Saskatoon, this felt...warm. Seriously.

I was only thinking about staying in Taiwan for 2 or 3 days, but now the family wants me to stay for at least a week...boy, it is going to be so hard to catch up to the classes if I do that...

Shortest Christmas Ever (in my life)

What could have been a 26-hour Christmas ended up a bit short at 23 hours. But that's ok, I'm safe and sound, back in Waterloo now. Boy, they do have a ton of snow here. There's snow stacked a metre high (or it seems) everywhere. And it was snowing. Ah, the White Christmas that people were looking for. I got it in both Saskatchewan and Ontario...woo!

About the plane from Saskatoon to Toronto... Well, the most interesting thing happened right after they passed out the orange juice. I made a little prayer for it, and the guy beside me caught it, and started talking to me about the Lord. Turns out that he's a guy who does a lot of missionary work, and went to places like Chile, Cote d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe, and Germany. He sounds like a genuine Christian, and we had a wonderful short chat in the Saskatoon-Regina leg of the ride. He seemed a bit shocked that I'm only 24, thinking that I should be married or something...hmm... Anyway, the Regina-Toronto leg was mostly sleeping, or rather, trying to sleep. Too bad I didn't learn his name or anything and went off. Oh well. First time somebody talked to me for that long on a plane ride, and it is indeed a very interesting experience. The plane ride was smooth most of the way, and the plane was almost packed, which is kind of surprising to me. Also surprising is how many people only took the ride from Saskatoon to Regina, which seems like a pretty short distance to me. Also more surprising is that the plane ticket says that we get complementary meal, but we have to purchase meals...maybe that's a good ground for a complaint? I was sort of counting on that meal for lunch... Anyway, I did basically nothing on the plane, though... Good to be back home now. Prepare for the obstacles ahead.

Well, that certainly was a pretty tiring Christmas. Need to get some rest before getting back to work. Not before Trading Spaces, though...hehe. And now it's time to ask the important question: Dude, where's my car?

My cross-country tour came to a screeching halt as I now head back to Waterloo to prepare for the trip to Taiwan. It's pretty sad, but it had to be done. And there are so many obstacles ahead of me, including getting an expired passport renewed, which apparently requires a proof of registration from the university, which is hard to get now since the university is closed. Anyway, God willing, it can be done.

That was a pretty jam-packed Christmas Eve, I think. There's this trip to another person's house where he had two little children who played with me while the others went to practice for the night's candlelight service. Boy are those two active ones...still pretty fun, though. Troubleshooting the guy's computer wasn't. Anyway, then there's this rush to change the plane tickets and then go to church for the service. It was short, so ok. There was a nice dinner afterwards (surprisingly something's actually open on Christmas Eve). After that, supposedly there was going to be carol singing at two places, but I went with Simon's van, and he got lost. We missed the first location, and after running around, we get into the pastor's car and went to the second location, and by the time we got to the second location, they were done. So yeah, we missed both. But squeezing with Simon and Tony in the back of the pastor's car was fun, though. Visited one final location with the nice display, and came home, skidding along the way. But not for long, as we headed out once more to get some shots of the night scene from "the bridge"... And now I'm back, and it's Christmas Day, so Merry Christmas to you, whoever you are!

Here's what hit me about the carol Silent Night tonight: the line "Sleep in heavenly peace." So appropriate for my grandfather, eh?

My grandfather died 1 hour and 49 minutes ago at 10:41AM December 24 2004 in Taiwan.

Something that I've not seen elsewhere: at every long term parking spot, there's an electric socket for you to plug in to one end of a wire, and plug the other end of the wire to your car. Apparently this would reduce the chance of the car stalling under cold weather...

Guess what we did on the busiest shopping day of the year... We went shopping! It was really tiring, though...but TP&S got me a Christmas present. Weeeeeeee!

Completed the website last night, well, not really completed, but at least I got enough to launch it without embarrassing myself. It's still under private review, but it should be in the public domain soon.

Briefly experienced -31 temperature with -42 windchill last night (or rather, early this morning). I have to say, my nose feel funny when I'm outside...

So why was I outside at 1AM in the morning? Because last night's dumpling night ended at around that time! Started a bit late, at around 9PM, and then after all the grinding and cutting and stuffing and eating, it was (almost) all in our stomachs. Pretty good night, though.

The sad news from yesterday does weigh me down sometimes, whenever I think about it.

I guess I'm no longer surprised with the -25 temperature and -37 windchill, but boy it's still pretty tough to walk outside, even if I'm just walking a very short distance to the car right in front of me... I had Subway for breakfast, McD's for lunch, and going to have dumplings for dinner, all requiring walking outside..........

Just heard the news that my grandfather is close to dying now. I knew this would happen when I decided not to go to Taiwan this Christmas...sigh...so sad.

Spent a bit of time doing the website again. It's near completion, as in there's enough to keep people occupied for more than 5 minutes, provided that they like to read English and look at pictures. There are still a lot of things that I want to add, but I guess those are for later.

I find that I'm still very much emotionally involved with a select few people. Don't know why my mood can sway so much by so little. It's really draining. Attempted to talk to two people through msn. (oh yeah, I started using msn a couple of days ago. Shocking, I know.) One didn't respond, and the other sounded awful.

I did indeed get a chance to watch the Race tonight, thanks to TP's friend Rong Wang. It ended with a surprising "To be continued..." which is kind of disappointing in an episode that was not really good to begin with. They did go to Hungary, though, and Budapest looked wonderful.

Visited the University of Saskatchewan today. It was pretty old-fashioned-typed place. Old and new buildings mingle together. The most spectacular building is one built for the agricultural department, not surprisingly enough, I guess. It basically has glass all around, and there are pretty things in there. There are atriums that connect (almost?) all the buildings, so that's kind of nice. We don't get that in Waterloo...at least not in an obvious way... Nice place. Cold, but nice.

Today is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. But apparently yesterday got the shorter day by 1 minute, so I don't know what's going on. Anyway, here in Saskatoon, the official time for sunrise yesterday was 9:13AM, and the time for sunset was 4:56PM, making the day 7 hours and 43 minutes. Waterloo's day is longer, though: sunrise 7:51AM, sunset 4:48PM, making the day 8 hours and 57 minutes. In any case, winter begins!

Yesterday was basically waiting-for-Thian-Peng-to-finish-his-final-exam day before 5PM. I didn't do anything productive of sorts, actually. After 5, it was off to a buffet dinner in Sutherland with 7 people. Oops, shouldn't have ate something at 3... It was an excellent dinner, I was too full, as usual with buffets. This group of people really is a lively bunch. I had a good time, I think. It was pretty funny how the four of us got the senior's discount by accident, and the three of us didn't. It was very cold outside, though, with blowing snow.

Looks like there's a good chance that I can still watch Race today. Woo!

Boy do we have some dramatic weather, both here in Saskatoon and back in Waterloo (according to the weather page anyway). Here in Saskatoon, we had 7 degrees yesterday, which, as you recall, was -16 the day before. Right now, though, the wind is howling outside, bringing in cold air from the north, and temperature is dropping at a dramatic rate. Dramatic would be an understatement, actually. You can see the progression of the last three hours here:

6AM: 1 degree, wind NWN 37 gusting to 50, no windchill...
7AM: -8 degree, wind N 42 gusting to 61, windchill -18.
8AM: -13 degree, wind N 42 gusting to 65, windchill -25.

Waterloo is doing no better, perhaps worse, actually. The temperature dropped from 0 to -27 in about 24 hours, with windchill of around -30. I suppose I was planning on getting extreme winter condition in Saskatoon, but looks like Waterloo got the better deal... In any case, official winter starts tomorrow.

Yesterday was slightly exhausting, but not quite... Started with an early trip to church for the special Christmas celebration service thingie. Dad called before anyone else came in, and I did indeed forget that it was dad's birthday...so...happy birthday, dad! Service started, there were lots of special presentations, and I get to play with a PowerPoint remote pointer thingie...weeeeeee! In the evening, there was this big Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I had a good time, and a good meal, even though I got really really REALLY hungry before the food arrived. And I learned a few more names, too, like Calvin, Chia-Shin (and apparently he's my long lost twin brother, paternal, not identical), Bobo, Shen Tong, and Alex. They're all really nice, and made great efforts at having conversations with me. Too bad I'm leaving in 5 days... I did take a ton of photos, some of which are online now.

My travelling motto for this trip: moving across the country, one province at a time. (Sounds just like what a federal politician would say...)

I'm happy to have done something productive here, even if it's just a little. Created one more page for the kwcacmyf project.

Hmm...no bandwidth limit...

Had a walk outside into downtown Saskatoon, and boy was it cold out here. According to the weather site, it's -16 with windchill of -25. My legs and my thighs got really tingly and lost a bit of their senses... It's quite interesting to experience this kind of thing this early in the season.

It's very common here to see a funeral home next to a seniors' apartment. And according to Thian-Peng, the business at the funeral home next door is pretty good...

The Race actually starts an hour early next week, so that means my pre-programmed vcr won't record it...sigh...

Ok, I got my luggage, and I was happy. Now typing away on my own laptop...weeeeeee!

Had a nice walk along the South Saskatchewan River nearby. The view was pretty good, actually. I have posted a few photos up already. Half way through, though, I got a pretty big headache. It was 5 degrees (quite warm for this time of year, I guess), but the wind was strong so apparently that affected my head somehow. When I got home, I got really really dizzy... Still, a very nice walk. I should take some night shots before I leave.

I attended their fellowship here. And boy are they a lively bunch. We visited a seniors apartment, and basically had some activities with them. It was really nice to see all of them be so kind and talk to these seniors. The main language was Cantonese, however, so I really didn't understand much... Anyway, the most important thing I remembered was how some people who just be so willing to talk to me and stuff. For now, though, all I remembered were Simon, Colin, and Adrian. Ok, I'm bad with faces...but I shall do better next time.

Greetings from Saskatoon!

Summary of travel: 4 hours of flight, 8 hours of travelling and waiting, 4 cities, 3 provinces, 2 drinks, 3 small packs of snacks, 4 boarding passes, 2 missing luggage. Next time, I'll take a direct flight (if money permits).

So, now that I'm in Saskatoon, what do I think about the city? Well, from the air, it looks just like Winnipeg with the quasi-rectangular lands and stuff. Inside the city, it looks just like another ordinary city to me... But it was really nice to see Safeway again. Haven't seen one in a while...

Ok, here I am, waiting for my luggage to arrive, typing away on Thian-Peng's PowerBook G4 (which looks nice, actually). Things are fine so far. No TV here, so looks like I'll be missing the Race this week. Too bad.

The Travel...Part II

More Winnipeg: So...what do I think about Winnipeg? Well, I've only spent a few minutes on the ground, so I didn't get much of an impression there. But I did see some of it on the sky. The part where the city sits on looks like any other ordinary city, I guess. But the surrounding is the more interesting part. I see lots of quasi-rectangular divisions of land, each mostly white with some black portions here and there. Apparently the white is the snow, and the black is the forest. And it just seems to be like that for quite an expanse of land. It was an interesting sight, that's all I need to say. And it was cold.

Flight to Saskatoon: The aircraft was a Bombardier Dash 8, one of those twin-enging thingies. I got a window seat (nice!) with nobody beside me (even nicer!). I had a great time enjoying the view. From what I saw, I figured that the plane was flying pretty low, and very very slow. It just seemed like the ground didn't move much at all. The most interesting thing I find was that we flew over Lake Winnipeg, and it was frozen. And beautiful, too. I don't know how to describe it...it was just one of those very interesting sights to see. The flight went relatively calm, though a bit noisy, but that's just fine.

Saskatoon: I don't know when I arrived, but it should be around 5:15 or so. I got to do the "walk on the tarmac" thing again, and this time, I picked up my camera a took three shots: the sunset, the plane, and the airport. Nice small airport for such a city. I saw Sinnie right after I went in the public area. And then her pastor Miranda. And then after a while, one of the Air Canada people, who informed me that my luggages were still in Winnipeg...tight connection and stuff. Ok, interesting, first time this has happened... So now I go to Sinnie's home without my luggage.

The Travel...

Waterloo: I had a nice long chat with Alan before Roger arrived during which Alan was constantly yawning. Pretty funny. In any case, I left home at around 10:45.

Toronto: Arrived at around 11:45. Checked in at the counter, and was told that there was no seat for the first flight to Winnipeg. Great. And I'll be called up at the gate. Ok, interesting. At the gate, eventually I got called and got a nice aisle seat, though it really didn't matter as I didn't go to the washroom (the only reason to be on an aisle seat). The flight was delayed, so that would make a really interesting connection in Winnipeg. On the flight, there were a group of soldiers (at least they dressed like soldiers), and people were generally excited while I remain silent. It really bogs well when I arrived at my seat and the people beside me said (amongst themselves) that they wish my seat would have been empty...hmm...not really a good first impression there... Anyway, the flight was pretty bumpy initially, but pretty smooth afterwards.

Winnipeg: Arrived at around 2:45 local time. The connecting flight leaves at 2:55. The captain even asked everyone to remain seated and let the 8 people connecting to Saskatoon off the plane first. That was slightly embarrassing as I rushed to the front. Anyway, off the gate, I followed another guy straight. We were supposed to get to gate U while the plane I got off of parked at gate T. So it really didn't occur to us that the gate is right next doors... We both went quite a bit before realizing that the letters are going backwards, and then found myself pretty stupid when I look back and see the big U besides the T (so obvious, isn't it?). So we ran overthere and caught the plane. The plane was a small one, and we needed to walk on the tarmac to the plane. It was cold. -13, I heard. But that was really cool...walking on the tarmac toward the plane. Too bad I didn't take a picture of that. And not long after we board the plane, we were off.

Ok, last post from Waterloo for now. Today: more scanning, and that's about it. Struggled over how to do the kwcacmyf website, so I did nothing about it. Had a haircut, nice as usual. Francis came and watched TV and some graph theory on the side. Went off to Future Shop and Wendy's afterwards, and now here I am typing my life away. Got some new luggages from Roger's, so that's not bad. I started packing not long ago, so looks like it'll another last-minute thing, not surprisingly. Really tired right now, so probably going to sleep soon.

Tomorrow: More packing, sending tuition away, and off to another whirlwind adventure with Donkey and Shrek (oh...oops, wrong show). If all goes well, I shall arrive in Saskatoon by 5PM. Woohoo!

Just need to remind myself that the Toronto trip on Saturday was 292.7km and 13 hours (including fellowship). It would be 10 hours not including fellowship. Oh yeah, mom's stuff arrived today, which is pretty good timing, I'd say. Too bad I'll need to leave those pants behind...

Today: Some more scanning and website writing. Francis came to study graph theory, which ended up with the usual, i.e. lots of television watching and very little graph theory. Night spent at Roger's, lots more television... Speaking of television, I'm now hooked on Jimmy Neutron. A bit late in the game, I guess, but it's such a cool show.

This morning when I went out to drive, I find about 3-5cm of ice on my car. It took a long time to get it off... It would have been a lot easier if it was just snow, but it really was ice. And I've only parked for two days. Anyway, today is uncharacteristically cold with temperature of -9 with windchill as low as -17. Cool. I like this stuff.

I just feel tired and sad right now, without reason...quite strange, I would say.

A brief review of what went on...

Saturday: Went to Toronto in the snow and back. Bought lots of things, very little of which I kept. Rushed (and was late) to the Bible games in the evening. A smashing success... Made people wonder if I really should be in the game show business...

Sunday: Church in the morning, sleep in the afternoon, and do nothing at night.

Monday: Laundry, creating webpages, finally figured out how to send form email through php, scanned a ton of pictures (even though there is still more tons left). Ah, life after school is over. Finally doing things that I needed to do for a while...

This morning, got to office, and then the fire alarm sounded. "Tis the season..." said supervisor. Then the supervisor meeting this morning was ok, I guess. And after that, I'm done for the year! (other than the on-going free-thinking research stuff...) Cleaned my desk in the office after I went back, and then went out to lunch with Francis, and then home.

And then I had a 4-hour whirlwind tour around the KW area. The route went as follows: First to the Gospel Shop, then the OHIP office (finally got this done), Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Costco, Futureshop, Conestoga, Futureshop again, and then back home. On the way, I bought a few prizes for tomorrow's game, and gave up on buying MYST and PS2 (for now).

Congratulations, car, for hitting the triple-monumentally-gigantic 30K! Woo...round number...sort of... You hit it yesterday on Northfield, close to the intersection between Bearinger and Westmount (the new intersection, by the way), on the way to Sobey's for groceries. This time, it took a whooping 63 days to get these 2K...wow...slow days.

So there was this exam in the morning... I did horrible, thinking that I probably scored 15 out of 60 points. Then again, other people complained a lot about this exam as well, so I think I should be fine...just get a 60 for the semester (which seems like a distant dream) and I can go on. The four of us spent some time at the Grad House afterwards for some relaxing chat. Not bad. One supervisor meeting tomorrow and I should be done for the year...

Finally got some necessary shopping done today. Otherwise I would have ran out of food very soon.

So they are planning Shrek 3 and Shrek 4...amazing. I don't know how they can continue on with the storyline... Ah, that reminds me, I should go through the Shrek 2 commentary on the DVD some time.

Still studying hard, sort of. Well, actually, I sort of gave up mentally already. I look at my notes, the assignment solutions, and all I see are a bunch of English, Greek and Arabic letters plus some symbols scrambled up into something that really doesn't make much sense to me. This takes the meaning of the phrase "It's all Greek to me" to a new level, I guess. In any case, exam will be over in about 12 hours, so I'll be happy then, pass or fail. Right now I'm not too nervous since, well, I don't expect to do well anyway.

Bye, Eddie! It's been great to know you.

Mixed within the studies are thoughts about the I-have-nothing-to-say supervisor meeting, the I-don't-know-when-I'll-be-going trip to Toronto, the I-wonder-if-they-will-freak-out game on Saturday, and the I-must-be-going-crazy trip across Canada starting next Thursday.

There is this really really REALLY strong wind going on outside. It's been like that for a few hours now. When I got to Roger's place, the wind was so strong that I could barely walk. Very fun experience, though.

I feel like I'm going to go into the convex exam blind...I don't know what's going on in the course notes...

Finished reading the book "The Gloves" today. Good book. I like it a lot.

Bobby finished his thesis presentation today and he wanted to go out for dinner, so we went for wings. He's really jumpy today... In any case, waited about half an hour for a table, then I ate 12 wings (Francis 14 and Bobby 16). 12 is already too much for me, though...

There's big snow today! Woohoo! And I put on the second layer of the big jacket today. It was quite warm...too warm, in fact. Heavy rain tomorrow, maybe I'll take off that second layer again...

I tried to study for the exam, but really couldn't do it...it's just too hard...sigh...

I completed the marking last night without much of an overnight marathon, which is quite surprising, actually. So, now, I'm finished with my TA work for the year! Woohoo!

I did indeed go into church and bolt out of it yesterday without much conversation except very short ones with the pastor's wife and Francis' mom. And I should mention that for the first time, I ignored some cell phone calls... I don't know why I'm still bothered by this.

I can either relax and go for some necessary shopping and stuff, or start studying for the exam on Thursday. Hmm...tough choice...

So I willingly skipped the fellowship today. For one, I need to keep going with the marking, and it will be tough to meet the deadline. But the real reason is, quite frankly, I don't want to face the people, or, at least, a couple of people, for now. Maybe I just think too much, because I really don't need to be bothered by such a tiny little annoyance for so long. Anyway, tomorrow, I go to church service, and bolt out of it right after.

So, I'm thinking, my ideology on theology is apparently quite different from a lot of people. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Well, I know there's something wrong with me, but that's not it. And it's hard to be, say, on one hand, appear to be this good Christian, when on the other hand, my life sucks. Anyway.

For some reason, I feel like I'm going to die before the end of the year, and nobody will care (which is just fine). Of course that's only because I have this giant headache.

Yesterday on Jeopardy!, there was this very clever category called "Groups." The clues seem to have no relationship with the category at all, until after the last clue (which nobody got) in which Alex reveals that the correct responses to the clues, in order, are species, family, order, class, and finally kingdom. Too bad nobody caught that... I find it quite ingenius.

Photo printer is now on the imaginary list which included data projectors, PS2, and Palm.

Toronto next Friday? I'm planning on a (possibly controversial) Bible game for next Saturday, so I'll need to get some shopping done after the exam. I don't know how people will react to this...

Spent a day yesterday at school to mark one question...really slow, and it's the easiest question on the assignment...sigh...

Well, Francis has created the template for the kwcacmyf site now. It looks pretty neat, actually. Now I just have to provide the content...hmm...not sure I'm going to have time for that until next Friday...

I'm still very much troubled with a lot of things.

The church is not a building, it is a body of people who belong to Christ. The sanctuary is not sacred, it's the heart of the people that is sacred. The law leads to death, love leads to life. Too much focus on the former leads to the loss of the latter. Don't be a Pharisee and nit-pick your way through life. Be a Christian and enjoy the life that God has blessed you with.

I'm tired of this. I want to skip this weekend's events. And screw this new website design. All they're going to do is complain.

I have attended Bobby's little talk yesterday afternoon. It was ok, I guess. Saw some familiar people in the cryptography department of things. Of course I knew nothing of what he's talked about...

Funny Jeopardy moment today. The clue: "This body part changes its size, depending on the light." The guy's response: "What is.........nose?" Yikes. On Millionaire, this fabulous lady said "I'm not here for the money, I'm here for the experience." So it was absolutely marvelous that she got the $250,000. Too bad she decided to guess on the $500,000 question, and lost 90% of her earnings...(I guess that's the most amount of money lost on Millionaire ever...)

Francis designed a template that is actually workable for the kwcacmyf site. Not bad. Meanwhile, someone's complaining about the gallery over petty little things...sigh...

Oh yeah, I wasted the day. Didn't do any marking. Probably going to school tomorrow to get going. Meanwhile, the new prof that I will TA for next term emailed me. Nice.

Haven't had a chance to sleep in late and stay at home for the morning in a while now. And that's a nice tiny break from the norm.

Did some work on the kwcacmyf website, although it's not up there just yet. I think my design skills are pretty bad. I had enlisted Francis to do some graphics work, and he did some really nice things, but I just don't know how to use them. Seems like however I put it on a page, it looks strange. And the colouring is just frustrating for me. I'm not good at picking colours (as evident in how I dress). Anyway, a long way to go.

Guess what, the person that beat Ken Jennings? She didn't even win the next game...

Snow! Lots of it this morning. Took some pictures, but they didn't turn out well. But I did get a picture from last week up in the Daily Bulletin. Second time! Wee!

The race to get convex assignment written was hard. In the end, though, I skipped one question and had about an hour to spare. It was ok, I guess. And today was the last day for convex class, so no more class for 2004. Wee! Next stop: assignment marking and exam studying...

You know, I don't know why I like what I like...and be tortured by what I like...