Well, presentation slides are done. My presentation starts in about 10 hours. I did absolutely no rehearsal of this, so I don't even know if it's going to be too short or too long (most likely too long). But what I do know is that I'm going to confuse a lot of people.

I think I'm one of those people who are very ambitious, yet those ambitions are rarely done. For example, I was hoping to stay up all night to do all the marking of an assignment, while there is a presentation tomorrow. Nope, not happening. Also, my Bible game used to have a giant puzzle with 48 pieces. Nope, tuned that down to 24. Of course I have lots of other ambitions, like reading some books, stopping procrastination, be in the game show business, just to name a few. All impossible for me...

Alan's girlfriend made a surprise visit this morning, and Alan was speechless. Hehehe...that was pretty funny.

Double-digit temperature. That's...a bit too warm for me there.

That was the best episode of The Amazing Race ever. So awesome. Go brothers!

I did 5 slides today. And figured out something. Feeling slightly more confident about the presentation on Thursday. It's going to be a hard day sitting through 12 presentations...

I was genuinely surprised to find out that there's actually no classes this Friday. I guess that takes care of the Easter Monday mystery...

Laptop keyboard + external PS/2 keyboard works. Now I need to find an USB keyboard and see if I can get three keyboards to work simultaneously. This is for my Biblical Jeopardy project... Also need to find out if cables for connecting to the monitors can be extended simply by adding on more of the same cables.

It does seem like everyone else in the department got NSERC and I didn't...

Alan was sick yesterday, and still is. For a few moments, I thought I got sick as well, but that didn't develop further, so I think I'm fine for now. His parents came here last night to "cheer him up." Nice parents.

I got the poset presentation outline nailed down now, so it's now a question of how to explain it as to confuse as few people in as few places as possible. Also need to wonder if my presentation is going to be too long. And need to write the slides...

What's left for the semester: poset presentation, paper, and homework; approx assignment and project; integer programming marking x 2; Bible games.

Afternoon procrastination games result (which produced shakiness for my body):

Pool: James 2, Francis 2, Me 1.
Foosball: James & I vs. Francis -- 10-6, 10-3.
Francis & I vs. James -- 10-2*.
Francis & James vs. me -- 4-10.

I can see why some might think I'm scary: I complain too much.

I absolutely cannot see how I can pull off the amount of work required of me in the very near future.

6 hours, 5 cities, 4 people, 1 airport, too many wrong turns, too many bad songs, 1 restaurant, 303.9 kilometres = getting Bobby back. This is probably the worst roadtrip in recent memory. With being asked to do Taiwanese car maneuvers, getting my music shut down, and giving wrong directions, I wasn't feeling so good about having Bobby in my car. And by the way, between unpacking the luggage and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, Bobby chose the former. I blame myself for not having any interests in common with these folks. I mean, things like fashion, games, anime, movies, and Taiwanese music don't interest me at all... Anyway, we spent 2 hours trying to find a place for dinner, and after doublebacking several times, we finally got to a place that was almost closing. So we ate fast, and I put way too much cholesterol in my body. (The final slip on black ice was terrifying...)

I'm thinking of a word that describes people who is obsessive with cleanliness. I used to know that word, but now I don't...

Of course I didn't do the work that I'm supposed to do...what else is new?

I have to talk about this seemingly acceptable tradition among the Chinese churches that being late is not that big of a deal. To me, if I arrive late (say to pick someone up or to go to church), then I feel very shameful that I have wasted someone else's time. Perhaps this sentiment is not shared by many of the other people in church. It seems like they are so used to being late that it is excusable, or can get by with a simple "sorry." So much so that it seems like they don't even make an effort to be on time. I find that really offensive. I mean, that to me means that they are not respecting the people who are on time. I'm sure that they would make an effort to go to school or work on time, but just not church activities, and it's really frustrating. I guess I'm just not feeling good that the amount of time I spent waiting for church-related activities in my life is much longer than waiting for school-related activities, or even traffic-related activities...

Started doing the approx scribe paper thingie, and had some serious LaTeX hiccups to start. Basically Jochen used some packages that I didn't have, so then I tried to update the packages, but in the process I find LaTeX doesn't compile anymore (error code 53...), so eventually I had to basically upgrade the MiKTeX system. Now it's working just fine, but that got me into wasting more time.

Let's just hope that for tonight, I can just go to the airport and come back...

Not happy today. Aaron didn't show up, I wasted my time, people arrived very late, and I just had enough. So I sat alone in the Easter musical, not thinking much about Easter at all. I guess if nobody notices, then it's fine.

I think I'm desensitized to the whole Easter thingie...

Tomorrow, more driving. And I need to start some work, but I just don't feel like doing anything.

9 hours, 4 cities, 4 malls, 0 sushi (thankfully), 1 bowl of congee, 271.8 kilometres. That place (I think it's called "King Congee") just beside T&T Promenade is great. Relatively cheap food, and very generous portions. Will return again, hopefully.

I'm still sad that Easter Monday isn't a holiday here..........

Emergency took me to school to post a sign. Hope that didn't cause too much trouble... I got a hardcover book for $1.50 in the UW book sale on the side (retail $36.50), so that's not bad.

The geese are back. And the season of green stuffs starts...

Still very much overwhelmed with stuff. Just stuff.

Two Canadians made it to the next round of Jeopardy's tournament. Good job!

Inching ever so closely to finish the marking of the first assignment. And yes, it's near the end of the semester.

Now I got a whole new perspective when I watch shows like TC and TUF. Well, just a little new perspective, I guess.

I have to re-think about the Bible games that I'm supposed to do next Saturday. My plan is a bit too ambitious, and might not be possible to program in one day...and given the crazy schedule that I have, one day is all I've got.

First day of Spring, and we got snow! Weeeeeeeeee! Hope this lasts...

Finally finally finally got a haircut! Last time was more than 3 months ago...and no wonder I was getting very irritated with my hair.

Tonight's episode of TC is so sad...

Skating. My back didn't hurt as much as before, which is a good sign. Pizza Hut. Ate about 10 small slices. Very full. Sleep. Fellowship. Snow. Lots of snow. Yiwen. WeiXiang. Home.

Thinking about a lot of questions. Questions about whether my intense interest contradicts Christianity; whether I have so desensitized to guilt that I don't feel it anymore or it is indeed ok; whether I should continue the PhD study or not as it is certainly getting uninteresting; and lots more.

I don't know why people find me scary (or at least that's what I heard)...ok, I guess I can sort of see why...if I were them, I wouldn't approach me either.

Got the NSERC letter today. It's negative. No scholarship for me. Just makes me think that the whole ordeal last October was totally wasted...it's going to be hard to get motivated to apply again.

Had another exercise session today, with a bit of blood and sweat flowing around (and I'm not kidding when I say this literally).

Funniest thing today:
A student points to the blackboard and asks: "What is that?"
Professor's answer: "Exactly that."

Apparently I do have a way of covering up my screw-ups...especially with today's project check-up thingie. I really didn't even finish reading half the paper, only reading the theorems, made an outline, and he's happy.

I have a zit that has grown on an unfortunate part of my body...let's just say that sitting down wasn't as it used to be...

The sense of hopelessness remains.

The gum beside the lower left wisdom tooth is swelling and hurting. Hope it's gone soon...

Still feel incredibly pressured from everything...too many things to do, and I'm too lazy. Spending a night and a morning to try and figure out why j=k isn't really productive, but that was a hard paper.

Got The Incredibles DVD yesterday. Wooooooooooo! I watched the first 30 minutes already, and it's a lot funnier this time around.

The rest of this cinderella birthday story goes as follows: After waking up from sleep (3 hours), had lunch, made a phone call, TV, internet, played a bit of Riven, Alan asked about the legos (he's a big fan), more TV, tried to read a paper (figured out 10 lines, and got stuck on the next one), and a dinner. TV shows that I watched (in abbreviated form): WYWO, WWTBAM, J!, IDA, ITCwRA, MBs, and a fine fine episode of TUF. Overall, a pretty bad and depressing start to the second quarter-century of my life (presuming that it lasts all of the quarter).

Man, I have so many criticisms about how people deal with birthdays...I shall try to forget about them.

I see yet another busy week. This just never ends.

I guess this is my midday birthday post. I'm extremely tired. Greeted with bad news from the poset class: I actually have to do some work for Thursday's project checkup... Then the approx class was a sleepy one, I didn't even tried to listen. Got so tired that there was this ADD-type thing from me...sad morning, I guess. Bringing the camera to school didn't do much of anything, no pictures of significance. Ok, that's about it for the morning. Now going to sleep and hopefully wake up.

The Incredibles DVD will be released tomorrow. Weeeeeeeee!

Really want to take off and drive somewhere. The weather is beautiful out there. Too bad I don't have the energy to do that...

Yesterday: The light headache was gone. Prepared for the Bible study for the entire day, even though I promised myself some time to work on approx homework. I tried the stay-together-then-divide method, but what I got was mostly silence after my questions. I don't know...maybe my questions are too hard or something, or maybe my reasonings are too weird. Anyway, wasn't feeling good about it, but oh well. Met a new guy, Raymond. Nice guy. Late dinner in the evening. James is opening up quite nicely. "Dramatic irony" as he asked what Aaron was doing at my place, play ball? Too full for the dinner, but it was nice, I think. Got Puss in Boots poster, and it's on the wall now. Pretty funny to look at it every time I go into my room.

Today: Woke up early so that I can arrive at Alice's place at 8, and then Tony's at 8:20, and then church by 8:30. Well, I did arrive at Alice's place at 8, but then I arrived at Tony's at around 8:10, and then church at 8:26. After church, sent Tony home, cooked a light meal, and then off to school at 11. Spent time with Berkant on the approx assignment. Good start, but very frustrating afterwards. We "solved" 3 out of 5. Mostly I would start an argument, get stuck, and then he would finish it. Nice work. We went to Tim's for this lunch-dinner thingie (it was about 5). Got a call from Graeme as well. Funniest thing: he didn't recognize Berkant's voice and asked for me...hehe.

Yes, I do watch The Contender. Good show tonight.

Pre-Birthday Hazards

It's still pretty sad that one year later, people still care about my birthday more than I do. Looking back at last night, I just have to wonder, these people really don't know me, aren't they? If you want to celebrate a birthday, I think the best thing you can do is to conform to the birthdayee's wishes. Sorry for everyone to get into that much trouble to have me slipped from the backdoor and sort of failed in the escape. Really, most of you hated this "non-surprising surprise," so why would you do that to me?

Mom called this morning and she had a bunch of people sing happy birthday through the phone. Well, I do share my birthday with my grandmother's, so they were gathering for her birthday. I guess that might be the first time in ages, and certainly the first time that so many relatives there would sing to me.

I guess Graeme will never figure out the exact date of my birthday...hehe.

In a world that is all talk and no action, it is quite refreshing to see Aaron step up to the plate.

Current weight: 86kg, or 180lbs. Really scary...

Sorry, Roger, for getting you into so much trouble...

So the overnighter for the poset homework last night didn't really last that long. I stopped at around 1.5AM, which is earlier than expected. Then again, I gave up on a couple of questions, and didn't bother to justify an important detail in another question, so that was not good. Got the midterm back today (finally, though I wasn't looking forward to it). David said that he adjusted the marks so that they are all in the 80s and the 90s (not in the chronological sense), with most in the 90s. Well, I got 91. So that's like close to the bottom of the pile. I guess that's not too bad...I got perfect on the "style" category, though...and that's the only "question" that I got full marks for...

I'm quite giddy for the afternoon and evening. I did some "intense" exercises (surprise!), intense as in I actually sweat quite a bit. Sure my head was a little banged up, but that was super fun. A life long dream come true. Does that mean that I'm going to die soon?

The Bible study that I'm supposed to prepare for isn't going well.

Not happy about the prolonged Bible study tonight. Shouldn't have attended.

Not happy about my continual procrastination on everything. Shouldn't have started so late.

Not happy about the lack of channels to vent my frustrations.

Somebody needs to brainwash me with the notion of "Don't Panic!" Seriously, I don't think I've ever been so overwhelmed with work and such a tight schedule before.

Man, why does everyone else get to have all the fun?

TV and math don't mix well.

One good thing I did today was that I visited David Wagner for help. First thing he said: "everyone else is getting an extension til Friday, would you like to take one?" Sigh of relief for me. Later, on the topic of why we always start doing the assignments late, he said: "my course is more important than anything else," to which I replied "of course." That drew a big laugh from him...hehe. After IP class, I went to the instructor (as usual), and I drew another laugh when I said, "I hope you didn't mark any assignment...because I didn't." Man, I'm good at comedies today.

There was a supervisor meeting, which I sort of didn't do much... I did some work today, i.e. finally figured out the approximation paper for scribing. I do not trust probabilistic arguments at all.

I find it funny that English is not an official language of the mighty United States.

That's way too much television in one night...yikes. And I solved no homework questions while watching...I guess that's not a surprise.

There was a flash freeze warning tonight, and indeed the temperature dropped from 5 to -10 in five hours (7-11PM)... It was really warm this morning, and the snow was melting, and now the melted thing will turn into ice. More slipping and sliding tomorrow morning, then.

My attempt at stopping myself from slacking off failed once again. Sigh...

There were big earthquakes in Taiwan, but nobody here's talking about it, so I didn't know about it until my mom called... Ah, earthquakes...something that scared me while I was back there...

I did do some work, albeit just a little. I figured out something about the approx alg paper that I'm supposed to write about soon. It's very tricky to figure out what's going on, and I still have some things that may or may not need to be figured out, so there.

Sigh...nobody gets to see the new toys...

First Kermin, and now Keith Williams...sigh...both built a big lead at the end of Double Jeopardy, both failed to come up with a correct response in Final Jeopardy, and lost. Really heartbreaking...man, when will the College champions get a break?

I did some copies of stuff from CDs to the external hard drive. So far, 4GB worth of stuff has been processed. There should be about 10 more GBs...

See, I can live without cell phones. (and palms, and PS2s, and data projectors, and heavy bags...well, maybe not the last one.)

There's a TV show on Discovery that examines airplane crashes, and this is a weird one. The plane started to run out of fuel, so the pilot called the air control centre. The pilot is Spanish, and the English word that the pilot used is "priority." Turns out that later the airline blamed the air traffic controllers for not doing enough, and the air traffic controllers blamed the pilot for using the word "priority" instead of "emergency." So then a surviving passenger says this: "In our language, the word for 'priority' means first. We don't know that something at priority can be waited." This "confusion" (which I think is really the air traffic controllers' bad excuse) cost about 80 lives. So sad...

Of course I wasted the day. What else can I do? Didn't get Aaron here, so that's kind of disappointing. Next Friday it is, then...

Today marks the 11th anniversary from the time I became a landed immigrant of Canada.

I get so tired even though I didn't do any work...this is really sad...

Coming up: at least 5 papers to read, 3 assignments to write, 2 assignments to mark, 2 projects, plus research. All I can say is, please pray for me...this is scary...

The Bible study is too late...and too tiresome...

Just completed a massive cleaning of my room. It looks way better now. One note: taking out recycling in a cold evening in slippers is not such a hot idea. Cold feet, that's all I can say. Here are a couple of perfect-for-Trading-Spaces-except-there-are-no-lit-candles pictures of the cleaned room. I don't have the "before" pictures for comparison since, well, I wasn't expecting to clean this much at the beginning.

I did the cleaning because I can't get any work done. I was hoping that a cleaner room would yield higher productivity. We'll see... Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of work ahead, as usual.

"Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words." -- 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Woohoo! More leather! I'm so happy...for now...

Congratulations, car, for hitting the used-to-be-millionaire-significant 32K! You hit it on the highway 8 and 401 connector, beyond the Fairway exit and before the Costco exit. You were performing the duty of taking mama Yen and Maggie to Costco. Congratulations, once again! It's been 81 days since your last congratulations, so I congratulate you one more time!

That was a much better Race episode than the entire last season. So little yelling, so much more locations, and so much more stupidity (sorry to say)... And the best first-episode finish ever, perhaps the closest finish of all time!