Sigh...don't feel like writing much today. I'm just sort of depressed over my apparent lack of self-control in many aspects of my life...

Supervisor meeting was fine, as I presented more new stuff. Graeme came by to buy U.S. dollars from me, so the amount of U.S. currency that I have right now is 1 cent. That's great. And then we took pictures of him pretending to teach using a paintbrush...hmm... This gave me an opportunity to bring the camera to school and take pictures of the infamous horse chestnut. Infamous for being the tree in the misleading question in the MYF Amazing Race...

What do you know, I end up writing quite a bit anyway. I really need to remember to write the probabilistic assignment due Thursday.

The bandwidth scare yesterday didn't turn out much, really. Eventually, the bandwidth for the day capped at close to 5GB, well short of the 10GB limit. That's good. Now the bandwidth for today is still rising, currently at around 3GB...hopefully it won't get too high...

Why is it that I always do work on Mondays only, which just happens to be a really bad day for doing work?

Yes, I am quite embarrassed about my obsessions.

I guess I'm pretty depressed over the fact that I'm back to the state of mind where I simply couldn't get anything done. Sure there are lots of things waiting for me to do, but I just couldn't get myself up to do them. Sigh...with this kind of a work ethics, I'm probably never going to go far with this academia thingie...or life...

So now that the web location for the Spring Camp audio files has been officially announced, I'm now obsessed with checking the bandwidth stats for the myf site... It's been growing steadily for the past few hours, and it's already at 4GB for today. The limit is 10GB per day, and it resets at 3AM...so I'm really hoping that 6GB for about 6 hours is enough... Speaking of bandwidth, this proofbypicture.com is getting so little bandwidth it's not even funny. 1MB per day now...ah, maybe I should have uploaded some of those audio files on my website...why didn't I think of that before? Sigh...and now my ResNet bandwidth is too tight for me to transfer those files...that's too bad. And this is probably the paragraph where I mentioned the word "bandwidth" the most number of times in this weblog...

Yes, there is definitely potential for that speedbag...

Congratulations, Aaron! You're now stuck in Waterloo for at least 4 more years! That's just a sign of huge courage!

Here's a transcript of an entire unabridged conversation: "I'm disappointed you didn't say hi the last time," said Feng. "Hello," I said. And that's one of the saddest conversations ever.

The joke so cold that Bobby almost didn't eat his stake: Well, according to the menu at East Side Mario's, the New York steak was preserved for 28 days before being served. So I concluded that in leap years, they preserve it for 29 days.

Final send off to MuTao. May the Lord bless you, buddy. And don't break your back! Literally!

What happened today: wake up, eat, wash, go to Mama Yen's place, watch MuTao pack and stuff, lie down, brought MuTao to my place, showed off some stuff, back to Mama Yen's place, lunch, move things to car, get driven to ground leve, pictures, final goodbyes, back home, sleep, wake up, go to church to pick up Maggie, send her home, back home, sleep some more, wake up, go to Grand China, nobody there, go to church, MYF, long refreshment thingie, final back home, eat dinner (11PM now)... Such a boring day, I'd say. I did manage to solve a probabilistic homework question, though...so...yeah.

We received news that from now on, MYF is being demoted to the basement of the church. That kind of sucks... Yeah, sometimes it does feel like MYF is being despised or something, but that's probably just my imagination.

3 cities, 8 hours, 253.8 kilometres. It was a thunderous drive to London and back, and then to dinner and back. Long day. Before the driving? I was wasting time.

So we had this big dinner at East Side Mario's in honour of MuTao's last day here and Bobby's birthday. Well, as expected, I'll be having a higher weight tomorrow morning. Note to self: don't do the seafood thing again.

Last night, I woke up and went to the washroom about 4-5 times. This after having drank a 1.5L bottle of water within the hours before I first went to sleep. So obviously it wasn't such a good night, but at least I feel better now.

Even more things from the Pittsburgh trip...

I left Waterloo with $200 worth of US money in my wallet. When I came back, I still have $140 US left...plus two pennies (I tried to get rid of as many coins as possible...the toll booths helped a lot). I guess it's all thanks to the organizers for providing free breakfast and lunch...

We were sort of making fun of Tony's repeated use of certain words, like bravado, subtle, and controversial. The first controversial event happened on highway 6 when we were trying to decide if a certain left turn was the correct one. Turned out that it wasn't, so crisis averted. Still, controversial. Anyway, we love Tony and his use of big words.

When we got to the hotel, we were told that there is only valet parking available, so we did that. We parked the car on the first day, and never took it out until the last day, which was when we found out that Nemo had been switched from behind the left-passenger headrest to the right-passenger headrest. Hmm...controversial.

I looked at the mirror and thought to myself, "Who is this guy? Why is he so different on the inside? And the body is so huge..." You know, maybe I should stop talking to myself.

Still sick. It's weird. It goes bad at times, but it goes away at other times...

Congratulations Brad! You made Jeopardy history, and I'm happy that you won. Now go and replace Alex!

Three more things about the trip to Pittsburgh...

Tony brought only one pair of footwear, and it just happens to be a pair of sandals. The story goes, before I picked up Tony at his home, I told him that I would come between 11:00 and 11:20. Well, I arrived at 11:00, and he was sort of panicking and didn't pack properly...oops. So anyway, at the end of Sunday, I was telling Tony about logistics for the next day, where I said you should pack up and come to my room before I leave. He asked when I would be leaving, and I said around 8:15 to 8:20. And I added, it's more likely to be 8:15 than 8:20...hehehe. By the way, wearing sandals at Niagara Falls? Not such a hot idea...but it does keep your feet cool.

On that final day, I needed to drive the car to the university and park on a street right beside the conference meeting place, which is full of coin-operated thingies for parking. When I first entered the street, I saw that every parking spot that I could see was occupied already. So I was panicking a little, and decided the park on the first empty spot that I see. Good thing there was an empty spot there. And then we put in the coins and started walking further down the street towards the conference place. Long and behold, we start to see a bunch of empty spots right beside that place...so, this is yet another proof that the greedy algorithm doesn't work.

The only interactions I had with people not from Waterloo: I shook hands with one of the organizers when I first entered the building. Also, on the last day of the conference, for no reason, I brought the Rush Hour game into the building. This seemed to have interested one of the speakers, and he asked me about it and I explained the game to him. The objective of the game is to get the red car out, and I mentioned that there are indeed very difficult puzzles here. Then he made the comment that no wonder the valet parking won't let us drive the car out of the parking lot...it's too difficult! Then he left... (Boy, I really don't have anything interesting to say about the trip, don't I?)

It was awfully warm today. 24 degrees. I guess that made up for the unusually cool weather recently... Meanwhile, the flowers are in full bloom, and they are beautiful. Too bad I'm just too lazy to bring my camera out and take pictures of them...sigh...

So my parents asked me to get a program confirmation letter so that dad can pay less taxes. I ordered it last Thursday, and they told me I should pick it up today. Well, I called home to see how fast they wanted the letter (as the tax deadline looms), and the parents weren't there... Some time after that, mom called back saying she's home and I should get the letter there within a week. Ok, so I went out, picked up the letter (which the secretary edited and printed right on the spot, which made me think why I had to wait a week anyway), and walked to the post office to mail it. I thought I would send it express, but decided against it after seeing that it costs $35 minimum... So, I sent it by regular mail (just $1.55) and they claim that it can arrive in 7 days. Fair enough. Then I went home only to find a message in the answering machine asking me to fax it home before sending it in..........hmm...too late. Ah well, not really my business anyway. Boy, that was a long and boring story...

I finally got myself going and completed this Spring camp audio webpage thingie. It was hard tedious work, but at least now it's done. They certainly took a lot of audio there...

So there was marking and stuff. I haven't marked a 300-level course in a while, so this isn't too bad. I just have to wonder why Menger's Theorem is so easy to misinterpret by these students...

Back to exercise again after a long break. Casualties: my left arm and my right fingers...

Some new photos posted on the photo gallery. There are pictures of Pittsburgh on the top level, and two new sub-albums under the Waterloo folder.

It appears that the university is paying for the transportation at a rate of around 35 cents per kilometre. With the 1110 kilometres that I had, that works out to around $350. The total gas money I've paid for this trip is $18 American and $30 Canadian, which is roughly $55. So the school is likely to pay me around 6 times the gas money, which is pretty amazing, I think.

I was tired all day long, and having a late lunch didn't help the hours before it.

During the weekend, I thought that Brad would win the Jeopardy tournament. And after seeing two out of the three games in the finals, I believe he's actually going to win. Go Brad!

Three more things about the Pittsburgh trip...

Well, Tony, Jessica, and Carlos have to write the comprehensive exams soon, and they were studying in Pittsburgh and talking about it. I managed to provide some details of my own experience and advice, but it appears that they didn't feel any better from that...I was only telling the truth, of course...like, the exam is hard.

Toll booth funnies: When we first entered the U.S., there were greeted almost immediately by two toll booths, each wanting to collect 75 cents from us. At the first toll booth, none of us in the car had any small change, so I showed the lady a $20 bill. She asked if we have anything smaller, and we said no. She then asked if we have Canadian money, and we said yes, and I flipped through the car to find a looney. When she received it, she said, "oh, I only need a nickel...but anyway, you go." And we were like, hmm...........very strange...I think we got ripped off. So then at the second toll booth (about 10km later), we prepared 4 Canadian quarters. We asked if they would accept Canadian money, and he said yes. So we gave him the four quarters. But he said he only needed 3, so he returned one to me. But I accidentally dropped it, so he just gave me another quarter back, and we left. We then saw him picking up the dropped quarter...

Sunday evening, I was feeling sick, so when the guys decided to go to downtown, I decided to stay in the hotel room. I watched TV. Turns out that they went to Mt. Washington instead, which is the place that I really wanted to go...but it was raining, so I'm not sure if I made the right decision to stay in the room.

Back to Waterloo!

Or "Waterlo" as my nametag suggests... Finally back here now, and it has been very exhausting. Today's trip started at around 12:40PM, and ended at 10:16PM, so roughly 10 hours. I'm glad I had Tony & Jessica on my car, as they provided the necessary chats to keep myself awake. Even when they were sleeping, there were some comedy there...(well, actually, I was more sleepy when they were sleepy, but became suddently awake when they woke up.) Good trip, I think, and now I'm happy that I have done this long-distance driving thingie. One more thing that I can do.

Oh yeah, I should say this... 2 countries, 3 cities, 83 hours, 1110.4 kilometres.

We detoured slightly through Niagara Falls to provide Tony with his first trip to the falls. Impressive, he said. And I get to do the first crossing of Rainbow Bridge. Wasn't such a good view, but it was ok. Conversation (approximately) with the customs officer:

Officer: Citizenship?
Me: Canadians. (Handed over the identifications.)
Officer: Where do you all live in Canada?
Me: Waterloo.
Officer: How long were you in the U.S.?
Me: 3 days.
Officer: Where did you go?
Me: Pittsburgh.
Officer: For what purpose?
Me: Conference.
Officer: What kind of conference?
Me: Mathematics.
Officer: Oh! So you are all from the University of Waterloo?
Me: Yes.
Officer: Are you guys masters students?
Me: We're all PhD students.
Officer: Wow...I know someone who worked here who is a student from Waterloo...Nice!
Me: ...ok...
Officer: So did you bring anything from the U.S.?
Me: No.
Officer: Ok, there you go (handed me the identifications). Have a nice day!

And the three of us were laughing really hard about it...

Last day in Pittsburgh here. A little bit worried about the long weekend return traffic, but it should be fine. Hope to get back home by midnight.

Still sick, not good.

One more hour of talk and we're done with it! Wooooo!

There's this gas station right outside the window of my hotel, and one thing that I'm impressed by is the fact that for 3 days, the gas price hasn't changed. Amazing.

Yesterday before the second talk, one of the organizer said something like "we continue the random hijacking of extremal graph theory." (Extremal graph theory is the subject of the conference, and the first two talks were on random graphs.) So anyway, being in the U.S., that sentence should have been spoken with more care...I mean, "hijacking" and "extremal" in the same sentence? Yikes... On that note, I have to say that I enjoyed the last three talks from yesterday. They were the only ones that made some sort of sense...

I'm enjoying the time that I'm having with Tony, Carlos, Jessica, and Graeme. I just don't feel like talking to new people, as much as I want to, I just couldn't do it... In any case, I enjoyed the company of the Waterloo students group.

Greetings From Pittsburgh!

Well, here I am, back in the United States after who knows how long... The drive yesterday wasn't too bad, actually, it's easier than I
thought. 6 hours, about 550 kilometres, and 2 breaks. I think my right wrist and knee have problems, but nothing major, I think.

Sat through a morning of talks. Not too bad. I didn't fall asleep, that's for sure.

More details later, as I'm using a public terminal with people all around me...hehehe. Nice city, I think.

Boy, 1:42AM, and I'm still up, eh? It's been a long long night. Not to mention the long long drive coming soon.

I guess me failing to be vigilent in my prayers have somehow led to these disasterous events. Me bad. And yes, it has been very difficult to pray.

Still need to wash my hair. So that means still a while before I go to sleep. It's going to be a very quick morning once I wake up...

I'm having a strange pain from my right shoulder, possibly a minor dislocation. This isn't good for the long-distance driving tomorrow, isn't it?

A test run of the game showed that (1) the game is harder than I thought; (2) the game may run a lot longer than I thought; (3) the game may run a lot fewer questions than I thought; and (4) Ingrid is not a good poker player. Well, the only thing I can do now is the pray that the team would do good.

Well, tomorrow's the big day. Much prayer needed.

From today's episode of Jimmy Neutron where they were doing a play called "MacBeth in Space"...

Sheen: Who is MacBeth?
Carl: I don't know, some guy with a girl's last name.

I cleaned up (sort of) the interior of my car, and here are ten things found in there that mostly don't belong to me...

• Lots of coins.
• Lots of paper.
• A paper clip.
• Lots of pens.
• A nice waterbottle.
• Two bottled waters.
• A dead battery.
• Two tennis balls.
• A Tim Horton's coffee cup.
• A piece of dried gum (and if I find out whoever put the gum inside the small storage area under the passenger arm rest, that person will be banned from my car...).

A quick shopping trip this morning revealed that...American money smells pretty bad...three maps for one trip may be a bit too many...and so long, and thanks for all the fish! Well, just that one...

This game thing that I've worked on today...well, it's surprisingly frustrating for me, as I couldn't seem to be able to choose which questions to use. I just couldn't find suitable questions, or questions that I like... Anyway, I reduced the expected number of questions by 10, and hopefully this game won't be a disaster. Even so, I won't be there to witness it, so I guess it should be fine. Also, using PowerPoint to display the questions is a bit of a drag. Haven't done this in a while. The good thing about using PP is that it looks a lot better than using VB. However, it's static, so you can't do fancy VB things like keeping score and randomize the order etc. I have always wished the best of two worlds, but that's apparently not happening...

Wow...I'm actually going to Pittsburgh in less than two days...yikes.

When talking to family, I have this strategy for answering questions where they expected a "yes" and I wanted to say "no." What I do is I just make some non-committal noise so that they assumed that I said yes while what I really said was no. Does it work? I don't really know...

For some reason, my dreams are usually far more organized, creative, and sensational than my everyday thoughts... I just had one where two seemingly unrelated stories linked together perfectly at the end. It's a strange thing.

For today: work on the game at Spring Camp that I'm not going to...

If someone could read my mind, he must find it very disturbing.

MYF Amazing Race (Part III)

One anecdote I forgot to mention in the first leg of the Race. After I checked my mailbox, I came downstairs, and the phone rang when I was close to the third floor. It was Ed asking about what the heck is that tree thing. As I was on the phone, I kept on walking and went in the third floor, only to see Ed at the end of the hallway talking on the phone with me. He didn't notice me, I believe, but I can hear him loud and clear (both through the phone, and through reality). Eventually when we ended the conversation, he went one direction, and I went the other, and he probably never knew I was that close by...

At the pit stop, the rain started falling, and I was slightly worried, but not too much. The eliminated team, Roger & Jessie was forced to do public service and became the clue givers for parts of the second leg. I quickly went through the instructions to them (in fairly low voice so others couldn't hear me) and they seemed to understand what I was saying (such a surprise, I think), and then they were off with Francis to set up. Because of the Daisy & Michael delay, the original 30-minute pit stop went to 50 minutes for the Ingrid et al. team. And because I was pretty anxious and didn't want the gap between the teams to prolong, we all agreed to release everyone else 5 minutes earlier. And then because I was really bored, I released the last two teams another 3 minutes earlier... So, Ingrid et al. left at 3:40PM. Ed et al. left at 3:46PM. Steven & May and Daisy & Michael left at 3:50PM.

The first clue of the second leg asks the teams to go to RCH and find a bunch of envelopes, each with one word. This would form a verse in Luke. They have to figure out the source of this verse, and enter an internet address using this information to find their next clue. The verse (in Chinese) that they are supposed to figure out is "Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last." Note this verse, as we will come back to it at the end of the Race. This is Luke 13:30, so they had to enter race.kwcacmyf.org/13/30/. Easy, right? Well, when I thought about this clue kind of clue a long time ago, I thought it was pretty innovative...now I just felt like it was just another clue...hehehe. After I have released the last team, I followed them to RCH, and once there, Ingrid et al. had already finished the task and was ready to go to Waterloo Park. So that took them about 13-15 minutes, which was pretty quick. I let them went ahead of me to the Bandshell, where they would get their next clue from the patiently-waiting Roger.

Managed to squeak by supervisor meeting today. I found a wrong theorem in a paper yesterday, so that sort of took up most of the time.

My desk is a mess.

I had my first office hour since who knows when. Two people came. It was ok.

In The Incredibles, Helen said to Bob, "You are one distracted guy." I think that applies to me. I just couldn't concentrate on what I need to do (i.e. research and writing). Instead, my mind keeps on wandering to other things (e.g. game shows).

Truth be told, I feel like I'm just a giant hypocrite. I would like my fellow Christians to grow spiritually and be more concerned about following God. Thing is, I myself is in a spiritual slump that's kind of hard to dig out...

Ah, Alfonso. I'll miss you on TV.

MYF Amazing Race (Part II)

Once the teams found my mailbox, they were treated to the first detour of the Race. A detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons (hehehe...getting my Phil impression going here). In this detour, teams need to choose between Search on Foot and Search by Hand. In both choices, they need to answer four numerical questions, add up the answers, and find a lock to unlock it using the sum. The foot option has four questions about the campus, and the hand option has four questions about the Bible.

Having no problem with this detour is team Ingrid et al. who searched by hand and arrived to the pit stop at 2:50PM. They are team number one, and received a small prize. They were directed to the C&D for some bottled water (keep that in mind). I have to wait a while before another team arrived at the pit stop. Team number two is Ed et al., who searched on foot, sort of. They didn't search for the tree question; they just guessed at an answer and kept trying numbers around it on the lock, and eventually opened it. They checked in at 3:01PM. I have to wait another while to get two teams coming to me at once. Team number three is Steven & May (yay! come from behind!) and team number four is Roger & Jessie. They both searched by hand and checked in at 3:08PM.

So this means that the last team to arrive is Daisy & Michael, who had a lot of trouble doing the foot option, and eventually had to switch to the hand option. They arrived at 3:25PM, and were eliminated...but wait! There's a twist! Roger & Jessie decided to quit (supposedly on being too tired), and Daisy & Michael agreed to continue, so Roger & Jessie were eliminated. Hehehe...so, there's the first leg. As a postscript, Daisy & Michael questioned me on the foot detour, and eventually led to a problem with the tree question. We then found out that it turned out there are two graduating years that donated the same type of tree, and they went for the one that I didn't know of. My mistake. So, they were a bit furious over that, but it's ok, they're still in the Race. Sorry Daisy & Michael!

Highly pessimistic (again) about tomorrow's supervisor meeting. I spent way too much time on the Race last week...

A bit worried about the driving to Pittsburgh. But it should be fine. I don't know which maps to bring...I probably need that Streets & Trips thingie.

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?" -- Matthew 6:23-24.

MYF Amazing Race (Part I)

It all started with the grueling team division and rules meeting. 11 contestants showed up (later added 2 more), and who knew that dividing 13 people into 5 groups would be that hard? And also, lots of people don't understand the rules at all...so, a problematic start. Anyway, here are the teams:

Daisy & Michael
Roger & Jessie
Ingrid, James, Clarence & Christina
Laura, Louise & Ed
Steven & May

After that, we moved into the SLC courtyard, which is the starting line of the race. They left at 2:13PM, and their first clue instructed them to find five landmarks around the UW campus to collect pieces of a clue. They ran, despite me telling them it's better to walk... That clue tells them to find Francis in the 2nd floor of Dana Porter Library. One interesting anecdote here is that Ed's team found some orientation leader type of guy, who prompty told them where each of these landmarks are...so there's some authentic Amazing Racing right there. Order of arrival to Francis: Ed et al., Ingrid et al., Daisy & Michael, Roger & Jessie, and finally Steven & May. Surprisingly, nobody went for the time bonus, which is just searching for a book in the library. So they all went to my mailbox (hehehe) for the next clue.

Now "behind the scenes," right after the contestants left the starting line, I went straight to MC 3rd floor to do some more organizational stuffs. After I've done that, I wondered if teams have gotten to my mailbox yet, so I went up to check it. And two envelopes were already gone! So that was pretty quick, I thought. Then I hurried downstairs to wait at the first pit stop, which is the patio at MC 3rd floor. Once there, I found several teams running into the MC building, and I took photos of them without them knowing that I was up there. I thought that was pretty funny, doing a little bit of spying myself.

I did the post-race clean-up after church service this morning. I think all but around 7 envelopes were accounted for, so that's not too bad. The most interesting thing I found is that when the ink cartridges for my printer claimed to be water-proof? They're right! The ink just stayed on despite having rain poured all over the envelopes and clues. But that leads to the question, why would an ink be water-proof when really you have no use for wet paper anyway?

Got some quality sleep last night and this afternoon, so I'm sort of recovered a bit. Still having some difficulty with walking, but that's going to past soon, I hope.

Wooooooo...4 CDs...

It was a long day. Started with panicking and frustrating over the Race preparation, which finished up (with the help of Francis) at around 12:40PM, just before the start of the fellowship. Then there's the Race. It was great, actually, despite having to kill one of the three legs. There were lots of interesting stories, which I'll record here later, I hope. But the thing is, I was really really tired, my back was achy, my feet were hurt, and my knees were in pain. Good exercise, I guess. Another good thing is the rain only came down about half way through the Race, and most people didn't mind it anyway. Good Race. May do that again if I don't go crazy with the preparation again...

Needless to say, I need some sleep. And get back to research work...yikes.

I think I may be a perfectionist in some areas of my life. Just some. Like game shows.

I told myself to not panic about the Race, and yet I'm panicking. I'm slightly calmer now that I've completed the first leg's clues. I just need to once again, trust God in everything. Meanwhile, it's going to be an overnighter tonight, and I think I may have overblown on the prizes...

Thunderstorm! Tornado?

Current musical favourites: Khachaturian's Gayaneh (excerpts).

I can only trust that the Lord will take care of everything about this Saturday's race. I've been through this before: feeling very pessimistic about the thing, the weather forecast says it's going to rain, and many people couldn't come. But despite all this, I won't worry about it.

Meanwhile, I have been slacking off on the research stuff this week, after having such a good one last week...sigh...I knew I couldn't keep up with it all.

I definitely think that my personality has taken a wrong turn in the past few months. I mean, I used to basically love everybody, and now it's just not the case anymore... I used to care quite a lot about some people, and now I just quit doing that. I guess I'm just disappointed. And then I read this from The Message translation of Matthew 5 yesterday: "You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for." Hmm...

This Jeopardy tournament is getting really good. They're in the quarterfinals now, and for three days in a row, Final Jeopardy was correctly answered by exactly one out of three contestants, and that contestant always wins. I think that's a true sign of a really good clue, actually, to really differentiate amongst such high-calibre players. One of my favourite clues today in the category of Also a Musical Instrument: Liver or kidney.

Yeah, I just pretended that the new huge landmark in my room never existed. And there really is a need for a new TV. Or at least better cable...

Apparently I missed a dramatical power outage in the school.

Made a sort of long trip in preparation for Race. I don't know...but right now, I'm quite pessimistic about it. My heart isn't in it anymore...all I can think of are the many ways that it can screw up. More prayers needed.

Went to Wendy's for lunch, and got quite a nice caesar salad instead of fries. I think I like that.

I'm just terrible at making conversations. I'd like to talk to people, but most of the time I'm just really afraid to. Not a surprise, of course.

One anecdote from last Sunday. It was mom's day, and during church service, the chairman asked us to give our mom a hug. Well, my mom's not here, obviously, so I didn't move. But then I saw Roger sort of reluctantly (and perhaps grudgingly) walked to his mom to give her a hug. That was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while... If my mom was there, though, I think this would happen: my mom runs toward me, and I run away.

Amazing Race finale tonight! Weeeeeeee! Too bad that means no more Race on TV for a long long time...

Sometimes I wish someone would know the mental difficulties that I have been going through.

There was a supervisor meeting, and it was good. No flaws found just yet for my proof. There was the first Kolmogorov complexity class, and it was tiring. I fell asleep during the class, and left during the break. There was a surprise mail telling me that I have won the C&O outstanding TA award, and it was embarrassing. I had the worst semester yesterday, to a point where students could have killed me for getting their assignment 1 back at close to the end of the semester. Ah, well, I guess it's all cumulative.

Looks like I'll be driving to Pittsburgh in two weeks! The only concern is whether I can stay awake for the entire ride or not...

Life with very little human contact and very little TV is, well, I don't know, a bit boring, I guess.

Alan's back. But I was sleeping (or at least trying to sleep) when that happened, so I didn't get to hear what he's thinking about. He left soon after he arrived...

Tomorrow's going to be a long long day. 10AM: Semidefinite programming. 11.5AM: Supervisor meeting. 1PM: Probabilistic methods. 4PM: Kolmogorov complexity. 7PM: Millionaire and Jeopardy. 9PM: Amazing Race finale. So my day ends some time after 11PM...

Went to watch Millionaire and Jeopardy on the big screen TV down on the 4th floor. It was great, actually. The bass to the Millionaire music was intense, and the words to Jeopardy's clues were too big...

I finished reading The Message version of the Bible yesterday. I think I started reading a couple of years ago, so that's something of a long project finally done. Now I have to wonder what's the next project...

Hot weather today. 21 right now. Don't like it, of course.

Who knew it would be so hard to find a publicly accessible patio or roof with a decent view on campus?

Barring further discovery of errors (which is very likely), I have solved the problem that I was working on. For now. So I think that's good news...sort of.

When dreams come true, it feels a bit shallow...

It's kind of hard to adjust back to life without TV. The strangest thing to get used to is that I can't watch TV while eating. I think I might go to the 4th floor TV room more often now...

No TV. So that means I REALLY have to cut down on the TV watching...

Some screws were tightened, and it was good. Well, better than before, that is.

Had a really really long walk today in preparation for The Amazing Race. I think it took around 3 hours to walk the whole thing, stopping intermittently so that we don't pass out. The best thing about the walk: this beauty.

In a sense, I'm a lot like Dr. Calamitus from Jimmy Neutron. I've started a lot of projects that never got finished. Now my mom suggests that I collect the Biblical questions I've written and put it out in book form. And I'm thinking...hmm...I've tried to do something like that before, only I gave up soon after...

It appears that one of my close relatives has a secret admirer, and yet very few people know about it. Hehehe...

I guess I'm slightly concerned about the toy's noise...no complaints from the neighbours yet, so I guess it's fine.

Who knew that 3 minutes could feel soooooooo long?

The TV is broken. And I have poor eyesight right now...

Tomorrow: borrow another TV, tighten some screws, travel the world.

More exercise today, and much more intense than before...weeeeeeeee!

Hmm...I guess I should have already resigned to the fact that pretty much everyone else is a lot stronger than me...that's not a surprise, of course.

A lot of things that I say are taken are jokes, but...some aren't...

The Amazing Race course for myf is pretty much set. Now I just need to figure out some details and logistics, and do an actual run-through...should be interesting.

Wow...getting exercise two days in a row...even though it's only about 10 minutes, but it was pretty intense. Aaron's coming tomorrow, so more exercise for me!

Yeah, I think too much. That's what happens when I live alone.

I did some exercise with the new awesome toy, and that was great. But now my right hand is twitching...not so great.

I thought this was a pretty good Final Jeopardy clue, maybe it's because I got it right... World Cities: Capital of the ancient Roman province of Galatia, it became a modern national capital in 1923.

Not eating for 9 hours during the day isn't really good for my body, isn't it? At least now I know that I won't be going out for lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays...

I always had this disillusion that I could have lived on my own without using my parents' money. And indeed, I was able to do this for the days that I've spent in Waterloo, until today. Had to pay off that VISA card that has only $8 credit left, so I finally dipped into mom's money reserve...sorry mom.

Oh, I know! I should stop being so jealous! Yeah, that would be a good thing. Besides, God gives everyone different gifts and talents, right? Okay! Hmm...

Sometimes (like right now) I got so excited about reading something that I wish everyone would read it. Too bad none of my friends likes to read. Now I just feel like I have an inflated ego or something...sigh...need to tone it down.

Hmm...spending two hours trying to find 5 missing characters from a C++ program? Well, at least that's better than what I did in 2nd year university where I spent two hours trying to find a missing & in my C++ program. Poor Francis...

I had a sort of breakthrough with the research thingie. I solved this problem, got happy, only to find out that I glossed over one small fact which I cannot really prove... I guess that's what happens to all of my research activities...

It's really too bad that I don't have friends that like to do what I like to do...then again, I'm just weird.

I'm so tired, and yet I couldn't fall asleep...contradictions abound.

I'll admit again that I'm very emotionally fragile. And being alone for most of my day is of no help.

Why do I fear Alan's return so much? I don't know...

There's even more snow today. That's crazy. But I like this cool weather...

Two classes and a supervisor meeting today. Semidefinite programming reminds me too much of convex optimization, so I probably won't take that. Supervisor meeting was ok, I didn't really have anything to say, and yet we found something new. Probabilistic methods is fine, actually. Nick pinpointed my skepticism about the independence of things, so I think that's a good sign.

I don't know why I'm just so tired today.

There's actually a bit of snow this morning. It's May 2nd, and we have snow...

I got internet back at home now, so that's some good news, I think.

Still couldn't believe I have that toy...wow...

A new semester starrts tomorrow, and my courses are all Tuesday-Thursday courses, so I don't really start tomorrow. But I do have a supervisor meeting on Tuesday, and I've done "virtually" nothing on it. Ah, speaking of which, I hate the general use of the word "virtually"...when something is advertised as "virtually" quiet, then it isn't quiet...when something is advertised as having "virtually" no side effects, it has side effects...anyway, just as a rant on the side... Back to the topic of this paragraph, I hope this coming semester is going to be better than the one just passed.

(I really don't want to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Which means I really shouldn't write this paragraph...but anyway, here goes.) If you know that there is a Sunday service at 8:30 that you should attend, why wouldn't you make special arrangements so that you go to bed early on Saturday night? Isn't the corporate worship of the Lord far more important than everything else? I'm sure that ones that would skip a Sunday service would have no problem waking up early for school or work, so why all the slacking off for Sunday service?

I'm sort of resigned to the fact that so many people (or more people that I would have thought) have already know about my secrete identity. I guess it wasn't too bad, it's just a shock to me, that's all. Now it would be interesting when Alan finds out...

One thing I forgot to mention is that before I went to the Jeopardy audition, I did a little bit of practice by playing Trivial Pursuit on my own. Of course, I suck at those, but I'm especially bad at Sports & Leisure and Arts & Entertainment categories (not surprisingly). I did eventually get a SL question right, which is the one that asks about the number of sides in a "ring" in the UFC. If only every sports question is like that...nevermind. One other intereting question that I needed to "figure out" was the question on what notoriously hot location is visible from Dante's Peak? Another interesting question asks what destroyed a certain space probe (which I forgot the name of) whose purpose is to study solar flares? Anyway, these questions didn't help at all with the audition, of course... The answers: 8, Death Valley, and solar flares.

The exchange is complete, and now I have a big new toy to play with. Woohoo! Now I have no excuse to not do any exercise...well, I could say that this thing makes too much noise and shakes a lot, but that's beside the point, I guess. At least I'm temporarily happy, and it takes depression off the mind for now.

I got the grades for approximation course already, and it is a 86. That's pretty disappointing, but I guess I wasn't so surprised since this course often came as a second thought. Even though I worked hard for it, I always started too late, and never had time to do a good job on anything... Now I'm hoping for a better grade for the poset course, but I really don't expect anything better than this...