Tomorrow: Canada Day. MYF has a potluck and sports event. The weekly newsletter mailing process was a pain to me. I didn't receive enough information to send out the announcement until early this evening. By then, it's already too late to get people to think about potluck and bringing dishes. In fact, I don't even know what I can bring...maybe I'll just skip this one.

Credit card scare is over. Nothing happened.

I think this two-week supervisor break is going to haunt me. I'm going to be really lazy unless I start disciplining myself and really force myself to start working seriously. Yeah, maybe that's what I should do. Starting, like, ten years ago.

Mission: failed. But it wasn't as if I didn't do anything. I really thought I had a good solution yesterday evening. But just before sleep, I found out that I screwed up. So, there goes the mission. Tried to do something this morning, but didn't come up with anything. Oh well. It's only one question...

Visited Aaron today, made sure that his graphics card is good, and I went and bought MYST III & IV. Wooooooo! Future Shop sells for $50, Best Buy sells for $30. Guess which one I went for... Anyway, that means I'll have to finish both games by the end of August. Hmm...tight timeline there. Started III already, and I'm liking it so far. I like switches that do something for you immediately. I still don't like doors, though...always afraid what's behind them.

Quite frankly, I don't like these Wednesday night Bible studies. For one, I guess I'm going for the wrong reason. I have these bad memories of the bbs days when people just didn't want to come. So I get this idea that I shouldn't be like that and support these Bible studies. Well, I subconsciously assume that everyone else should be as "dedicated" as I am, so I was really disappointed when most of the people I'm close with don't really care much about it. Of course, I'm only a hypocrite. I don't like going to these Bible studies. I don't like the content and the format (basically reading things and going off in tangentially related discussion). I don't learn anything (mostly because I can hardly pay attention). So, me bad. By the way, is it surprising that a discussion on general Christianity didn't involve much of Jesus Christ?

Supervisor meeting was ok. No meeting for two weeks, and then back for more.

What is it with the warm-and-fuzzy officemates, eh? Hehehe... Berkant claimed that while I was away, the office felt strange...hmm... And Graeme claimed that I was away just to avoid him asking me about giving an URA talk...which is totally not true.

I have one mission for tomorrow, and that is to solve this probabilistic assignment question. Heard that before? Yeah, I hope it's not going to be a repeat.

Quite depressed. Lack of skills, lack of courage, etc. I feel like quitting everything now.

I'm being sucked into this brand-name consumerism materialistic thing which I was so adamantly opposed about. Sigh...

Negative variance is a bad thing.

Finally I received my box of goodies. But not without another scare last night when I found out that the front door to the St Paul's main building was locked, thus ruining my plan to send in the note and cheque then. Did that this morning, and everything's fine. Not terribly happy with the quality of the "convenient" handwraps which led to my "innovatice" use of old socks, and I find the small opening in other gloves quite strange, but other than that, I'm happy. Now I've spent too much money...

I promised myself that I would go to the office if I get the stuffs today, so I did that. The two officemates were kind of cute, as they emailed me asking if I'm ok, and they are worry about me not showing up in the office for a long time. Well, 3 days, I guess. It was nice and heartwarming somehow.

Of course I was very reluctant to go to the office as it was incredibly hot today once again. 34 temperature, 39 humidex. Sweating all around. Then again, I don't expose to the outside much, but still, enough to make me cringe. The wind didn't help, either...it was hot wind.

The available credit for my credit card suddenly dropped to $0 this morning. What in the world is going on here?!?! This is nuts...

Maggie was saying (over msn) that she was boring again. So I devised this game of asking her to guess the number I have in my mind. And she played. For 15 minutes. Finally, she figured out it's 3754. Then I asked her if she have heard of the story about 3754 caterpillars. Francis must be so proud... Then I sent her the numbers game I made a long time ago. Should occupy her for quite a while...hopefully...

I can't do my assignment. I can't do my research. I can't do anything...

Late night dinner was great, albeit a bit costly. Then again, I haven't went out to eat for 3 weeks now, so I guess it's sort of justifiable. One slightly bad thing about having 7 people is that they always try to get everyone's food out at the same time, and for my case this time around, I got the lukewarm food... But other than that, it's been fun.

I guess I tend to fit in (in the remotest sense) with people who are a few years younger than me. I've never been able to hang with people my age, and I have no idea why.

It's still very frustrating to think that the package was right there, a few metres away, and I still don't have it...

I don't think I'll be ordering anything from the U.S. again. Well, at least not in the near future. Also, we really need to get our own official postal mailboxes here in the grad apartment...

Guess what, I wasted another day! Hmm...

Today: 32 degrees with 41 humidex. Yikes... On a quasi-related note, apparently Venue, Mercury, and Saturn are going to be extremely close to each other on the sky for this week. Don't know if I'll be able to see them, though...NWN 45 minutes after sunset, in case you're interested.

So the packaged was delivered today at around noon, but I didn't know that until I received this UPS notice in the mailbox. It's a COD package, so probably the staff at St Paul's simply turned it away. But I was home at that time, so at the very least, they should have informed me about the delivery so that I can go and pick it up and pay the deliverer...so that was kind of weird. Second attempt at delivery is Monday, so now I just have to wait patiently and hope that the staff would be smarter this time around... Still, very disappointing that I couldn't get it today even though I would have...

Aaron was here, but nothing interesting happened.

I really need to do some work here...

It's somehow disheartening that a priviledge is being treated as a right...

Looks like the wpc staff accepted my misreading of an instruction. Cool. So now I have a score of 115. Certainly it's above my goal of 100, but still far away from the winner who got 385 (out of 395).

New heat wave coming tomorrow...looks like I'll be staying home, just as I have planned...

One thing I get really annoyed about is receiving the word "whatever" as a sentence (in some sort of a dismissive tone), in speaking or in writing etc. It just shows that the person saying it is highly disinterested (to say the least) in what I've been saying, and it is rude and disrespectful. Maybe I'm the only one who perceive it this way, and I'm trying hard not to get hurt when people say that to me, even though it has been.

See, the thing is, if I see you using various tactics to trick other people, then I would start thinking whether or not you are using the same tactics to trick me. So, it's this whole bad cycle thingie which really leads me to distrust most of the people around me. And that's not good.

I've wasted another morning. What else can be expected anyway?

I feel really dumb about staying at home and wasting all that time to eating and sleeping and watching television and stuff. Still waiting for the buzzer that will never sound...

I really have a boring life.

It's so boring that I couldn't even come up with a third thing to write about here...

Finally finished the madness that is Riven. I have to say, I didn't quite like this game...I don't know why, there's this sense of lost in there. And if I didn't have the walkthroughs, I wouldn't have been able to get to anywhere... Anyway, now I can put the game and the giant stack of paper to rest, and wait to see what I can do with MYST III & IV...

Supervisor meeting today was bad. I just don't know what I'm doing.

I was mistaken, and apparently today's the official summer solstice, at around 2AM...still the same length of day as yesterday, though.

I think today's summer solstice, longest day of the year. Here in Waterloo, official sunrise was 5:41, official sunset was 21:05, making this day 15 hours and 24 minutes long. Compare that to 8 hours and 57 minutes for the winter solstice.

My beautiful plan for today was pretty much ruined when I decided to take a bonus sleep which killed about 3 hours, and then getting a visitor which killed about 6 hours. Didn't do much research, I can tell you that. Supervisor meeting tomorrow, not optimistic.

I don't know, staying home for a package that is highly unlikely to arrive today was kind of dumb, I think. Still, I might do that for the rest of this week and next, going out during daytime only if necessary...

News of credit card database hacked + sudden drop in my available credit ==> My suspicion that my card was one of the lucky ones to have been involved in fraudulent use. I guess we'll see in the very near future.

3 hours of Discovery Channel + lots of Riven playing ==> My plan to get work done on a Sunday was gone. Looks like I'll be doing (hopefully) a ton of work tomorrow...

Church was really quite this morning, what with almost no young people in there except Tony and I. Hope Pinery was good to you...

Just finished this Google U.S. Puzzle Championship thingie. I felt pretty good until after the test is over and I found some very stupid mistakes. It's not like it's an error in solving the puzzles, it's like I solved these puzzles and entered the answers incorrectly... For example, puzzle 3, I forgot to cross out one of the words that I used already, and ended up entering that word as the enter. Wrong. Also, for puzzle 12, they want us to enter the numbers not used in each row, but I misread that as enter the number of numbers not used in each row... So anyway, the 130 points worth of puzzle that I solved end up being no more than 95... Oh well, I guess there's always next year.

I had one of those "ring a bell" thing after the test was over. I somehow remember a guy named Craig Kaplan on the results of previous WPC tests. I checked it, and indeed his name came up in the result of the past few years. Then I realize, hey, there is a Craig Kaplan in our university! He's a cs guy who does graphics... Anyway, that's just one of those strange moments where two parts of my brain finally connect to each other.

Well, that's a start to the lonely weekend...

Aaron was here. Francis was here. Michael was here. It was like a continuing party of some sorts, except there is no partying. And now, a lonely weekend ahead.

Prepared a Bible study for Francis & Michael to lead during camping. I really hope they have time to actually do the Bible study, but somehow I doubt that they will...just like Spring camp...

Hmm...WPC tomorrow. Wooooooooo! Yeah, I missed it last year due to convocation, so I'm definitely not going to miss it now.

They have a midterm today, and we suddenly decided that I will mark it today and return it tomorrow. Ok, surprise work, I guess. Finished half the pile now, so hope to finish the other half tomorrow morning. Funny solutions alert: The question is to prove that any cut in an even graph has even size. So this student does induction. Base case, 0 is even, that's good. Induction hypothesis, suppose it is true for cuts of size 2k. Want to prove it for cuts of size 2k+2. Well, 2k is done, and 2k+2 = 2(k+1) is even, so we are done.

I guess I'm just very ignorant of people, and people are very ignorant of me. Seems like a good recipe for disaster. I just don't like to bother people, I guess...

Aaron's coming tomorrow, so I guess that's a good thing.

So...I wasted another day. Stayed at home, alone.

Still very sad and depressed. I'm definitely not fine...

I don't have a third item to write about.

Another sign that I'm getting too old: There's this Final Jeopardy today which essentially asks for the capital of Lithuania. I couldn't come up with it. I used to know it. I even had a classmate from Lithuania. So yeah, my memory failed me once again. A few days ago, I was trying desperately to come up with Offenbach. Couldn't do it, either...yikes.

Another interesting Jeopardy clue. This time, a clue on Shaq (I don't have the exact wording...): Appropriately, Shaq was in a commercial for this company whose slogan is "You've got questions, we've got answers." I laughed really hard when Alex announced the correct response.

For some reason, today I started wondering where my tripod went. I searched for quite a long time. Then concluded that I must have left it in Taiwan. But then after checking some photographs, I realized I have indeed brought it back. So I continued my search, and eventually found it behind the jackets hanging on my closet door. So...conclusion? I have very bad eye as well as bad memory.

Big thunderstorms started early this evening and is continuing. Sort of a symbol of my current mood, I guess. Good thing is, the weather will cool off quite a bit tomorrow.

I think I'm even more shy than before... I don't know why I was afraid to talk to Carlos about the comps... Eventually he was in Jessica's room, so then I boldly went in and asked them. Apparently about the same situation as last year, discrete opt impossible, graph theory ok.

The things I'm afraid the most about playing Riven are doors and caves. They are super scary.

Oh, yeah, of course everyone should have figured out already that I have very low self-esteem, right?

Ah, having The Scholar compete with ITC on TV is just like the classic battle between brain and brawn.

Still sick. It's been going on for too long now. It was the same last summer...

Woke up early today. Got to office at around 8:30. Started marking. Finished at around 1. Horrifying marking. No one got it right. I was tired. Went home, sleep. That's as interesting as the day gets. I couldn't get any research-related things done, so that's bad. Not sure what to do with the supervisor meeting tomorrow (of course I say this every week, but this time it's particularly bad).

I'm alone. The thing is, I'm probably the last one on everyone's list of people to talk to, hence the lack of human contact. Of course I could make an effort to call people or something, but there's nothing interesting to talk about off the top of my mind, and I think I would be bothering them anyway. So, I guess that's what I get for not being a popular guy or something.

If I sound like I'm depressed, that's because I am depressed.

Remember when I said that the TV would be the big spending item for the month? Well, I was wrong.

Hmm...Myst III & IV are on xbox...that got me thinking a bit...probably won't do anything until August, though.

Finally a day that didn't hit 30 in temperature. So the 30-degree thingie lasted exactly 1 week. Now really hoping for cooler weather...and hoping that my sickness would go away as well.

Started the marking today. It was a horrible question to mark. Finished about 15 papers during this afternoon and evening. And 3 of them were blanks. So...I'm not sure how I'm going to squeeze all the marking in tomorrow plus preparing for supervisor meeting. I'm way behind on that one...

Not having any human contact after getting home from church service kind of sucks. Sigh...I just think that everyone hates me or ignores me or something.

You think that after telling mom the same thing a million times (approximately), she would kind of get it.

I just found out today that my car's license plate "borders" have been replaced... They now bear the names of Forbes Waterloo. Well, it used to be that the front plate has no border and the rear plate bears the name of Toyota Dixie. Today I just realized that something's weird with the front of my car (which is something I felt strangely about for a while now), and then I figured out they probably got one for me during the last maintenance, which was mid-April. So, I guess my detective skills have been lessened quite a bit...

I guess having MYF in the basement isn't too bad. Not ideal with the projector and stuff, but having tables is a good thing. Of course I suspect that someone was here just for the free advertisement, but I shall not be bothered by it anyway.

I just pretended to be this really dumb person during the Bible study today. I just don't feel like saying anything, probably because I've been alone for most of the day anyway...

Temperature hit 32.8 and humidex hit 39 yesterday. And the heat wave continues...

Restarted this Riven thingie, and really, it's impossible. I went through some of the walkthroughs, and found out that I missed a ton of things even though I've been through the same path a hundred times. So, me no good with games... Meanwhile, thinking about getting Myst III & IV, which is pretty cheap right now, even though my computer isn't good enough to run them...

It's Saturday, and I wasted yet another morning. I don't really remember what I did...what do I usually do on Saturday mornings anyway?

If you think that having a haircut as the only thing done in a day to be productive, then I had a pretty productive day... I guess I just don't feel like doing any work, after all the tumbling research and probabilistic assignment fiascos. Or maybe it's the hot weather.

And now, I chose to be alone in my room, doing nothing. I did finish watching the Mole DVDs, so that's one thing done... Other than that, I don't know what to do.

Still sick.

So I went and find Nick for help, and what we concluded was that my way of doing it doesn't work...so, have to try another way, which was too late. But apparently some other people are having trouble with the question as well, so he said we might have another go at it later... By the way, he had the biggest monitor that I have ever seen. It's huge!

The heat continues with 31 temperature and 38 humidex. There was a thunderstorm yesterday, but that didn't help cool things down in the morning. The thing is, even with the hot weather, I can hardly sweat outdoors. Probably because of the humidity thing. Once I got indoors, I started sweating...kind of weird.

I'm more painfully aware of my way of wasting time...it's horrifying.

I had this one single goal today, and that is to solve this one question on the probabilistic assignment. Well, I failed. And it's not because of a lack of trying. I spent the whole day doing that problem, and couldn't come up with a solution. I think I have the right idea, it's just that the numbers don't work out. So...going to see Nick tomorrow morning and see what happens then. I still feel pretty stupid about spending the entire day on it, though...

Ah, the mid-week in-depth Bible study thingie. I still don't really like it, but I guess it doesn't hurt...

For some odd reason there has been a recent surge in interest in my pictures for the Taipei 101. You think something might happen to it soon? It's just kind of odd...

It's still very painful to see all that work go down the drain just because of a careless mistake. Sure the supervisor is "confident" that I can resolve it, but right now I just don't see it... Anyway, going to focus on that one probabilistic question for tomorrow, and that will be it for the day.

Another reason I don't like hot weather: I seem to get sick during hot weather all the time...I don't really know why.

Going to delay the long overdue haircut once again...

On my way back from school, I witnessed a pretty horrific bike accident. I think some guy stopped for a second, and then another guy rode the bike almost over him, turning 360 in the air and hit his head on the ground. He sat up holding his head, probably having a terrible headache, and blood started dripping from the right side of his face. That was a horrible scene. I thought for one moment that I'd like to help, but decided I don't know how to approach them, and walked by them... I felt even more terrible about that... Is this kind of shyness going to be such huge obstacles in my life?

I watched The Scholar tonight. Good show, I think. Of course, having quizzes and puzzles in one episode is like paradise for me. One thing to pick on, though. They were studying for 19th & 20th century literature for the final showdown, and for some reason two of them started studying Shakespeare...hmm... Anyway, they had this one good puzzle. There are three (binary) light switches on a wall, and there are three lights on the back. However, they cannot see which light goes on as they turn on the switches. They need to figure out which light does each light switch turn on. They have only one chance to go behind the wall to check the lights. So how would they solve this problem? It had a very interesting solution, I think...

I've learned that I'm one to easily give up on things...that's unfortunate.

As expected, it is another hot day today. But there were winds and some clouds, so it's not too bad.

I was reading a paper whose second section is titled "Introduction."

I'm very disappointed today about the collapse of my supposedly solved problem...sigh...

Another sign that I'm really really bad with numbers: So there was this assignment due last Thursday, and I thought I needed to hand in questions 1, 2 and 3 for that one. Just found out that I only needed to hand in 1 and 2...and 3 was the one I struggled with for a long time... Well, I guess it's a good thing to get it done last week instead of scrambling for it this week...

The Mole was such a good show...too bad they never replicated the quality of it in future seasons.

Ah, personal struggles. Nobody else understands it. It's gotten so bad that I didn't even attempt to get Aaron here...

So there was this long coworkers meeting which I really wasn't needed anyway, and I was mostly abandoned, so...yeah.

30 degrees today. Super hot. Muggy. Air conditioner is a good thing to have. I can't imagine back in the days of Columbia Lake Townhouses...yikes. More of the same for the near future, apparently.

I think I have this (perhaps annoying) habit that whenever I couldn't hear what a person is saying to me, I would lean my ear closer and ask the person to say it again. I don't know if this just looks really weird or not...anyway, I think I have hearing problems, so I do this a lot, apparently.

Sorry, Peter, didn't get to talk to you much. Nice to see you again, though.

Congratulations, car, for hitting the I'm-too-tired-to-think-of-interesting-adjectives 36K! You hit it 5 kilometres before the Mississauga service centre on 401 West. I forgot to look at exactly 36K, as you can tell... We forgot to congratulate on your 34K, which you hit on April 30 just as I was getting lost in Downtown Toronto off Yonge Street on my way to the Jeopardy audition. This one took 61 days, and the current 36K one took just 35 days. Ah, the signs of summer...

(Breathing sound...) Roger, Maggie, I...am...your...father...

12 hours, 4 cities, 4 passengers, 730 pounds of human on the car, 5 pastors, 1 giant lunch, 0 gundams, 29 drinks plus other stuffs, 1 hour of bowling, 83.5 gas (86.9, 79.9 in other parts of Toronto, 83.9 Waterloo), 1 closed ramp, 1 giant traffic jam, too many red lights, 145 km/h top speed, 1 angry mother, 297.2 kilometres. And there goes another trip to Toronto, this time via a MYF thingie. The dramatic stuffs came after lunch, but that's a long story that I'd like to forget, so I won't say it here.

There's bowling, so there must be bowling scores. Well, we had 5 people and 1 hour. Normally we can get through 2 games with 4 people in 1 hour, but I thought that if we hurried, it's possible for 5 people. Well, we didn't, 4 frames short of two complete games...but we all suck at the second game anyway, so I guess it didn't really matter...

Round 1: Ray 72 (1/), Me 101 (2X 2/), Kevin 75 (1X, 1/), Steven 53 (1/), Francis 97 (3/). So I won. Surprisingly. I got a strike to start off, and it went downhill from there.

Round 2: Ray 52 (1/), Me 90 (2X 1/), Kevin 46 (1 incomplete), Steve 46 (1/, 1 incomplete), Francis 64 (1 incomplete). So I won again...

Well...looks like I'll be in hiding for a while...and also I'll be even more overweight...

Behind door number 1: A new TV! Weeeeeee! We got it at Best Buys. 20 inch Toshiba. $240 plus taxes. Picked up The Mole DVD as well. So that's my big spending for the month... Scheduled big spending for next month: car insurance.

(Apparently I was wrong with the paragraph previously occupied here...so yeah.)

Maggie was very well behaved in the trip to Costco, surprisingly enough. Tomorrow: Toronto.

Hi Andy! So nice to hear from you.

I did some research work today (and it's only Thursday! Amazing!). I found that I missed one case in my previous new proof, so I got that fixed. Not too bad. Now I have even more weird drawings...

I did some accidental spying today. First, it was spying on Francis in and out of the library. Then, it was Ed's car with Ingrid in there, reluctant to come out of it. All accidental. Really.

One last note (hopefully) from the trip to Pittsburgh. Graeme and I bought some fruit at Pittsburgh, but apparently we bought too much. So we brought some fruit on our way back, having decided that we would consume the fruit in the car before we crossed the border. Well, the folks on my car totally forgot about it until we were on the Rainbow Bridge. Too late. So we just pretended that the apples were never there and brought them back to Canada anyway. Next day, I offered the "smuggled fruit" to people, and people accepted them, so that's nice of them to help us cover-up our mistake. Thanks, guys!

Identify this bird. I have no idea.

The search for a new TV was in vain. Most are over-budget, and the one that I liked was out of stock...so, not so good. Going to try again tomorrow.

I always knew I'm bad with numbers, and this probabilistic methods course didn't help. I was doing this homework question, and I thought some n^4 is actually n^3...so that sort of ruined an entire question, and I had to re-solve the question again. But at least I'm happy that I've got that done now.

This means that I have a free evening. And of course there's nothing to do. And of course I get depressed over having nothing to do and nobody to talk to. I need a new TV...

I didn't do any exercise while my fingers try to recover...but at least it's very hot outside today (25 degrees), so I sweat a little while walking. Then again, my weight is still back to 190...so...eh...still not good.