I rarely post links to things not created by me, but here's one that just sounded hilarious: Google Moon. After playing it for a while, try zooming into the highest level.

As an almost-instant update to an item two posts down, I have managed to finish the question-posing phase of the Bible games. All that remains is programming, which will not start for a while, if previous experiences are of any indication.

July may have been the month with the lowest expenditure in recent memory (and by that, I probably mean around 2 years). I haven't calculated everything yet, but I'm pretty sure this is going to be true. Does that mean that I'll spend lots and lots of money in August? Of course! Car insurance, tuition, residence, they'll add up to around six grand.

I must confess that for weeks (or maybe years), I have harboured a grand misconception. I started to realize that there's nobody out there that truly cares about me. Nobody cares about the emotional and spiritual trauma that I've been experiencing. And as such, I essentially stopped caring for the people around me. Then I realize, I was wrong. There is One who truly knows and cares about me. I just hope that I take that into my life and really stop my error from being further planted into my mind.

Alright, turning to trivial matters. I must complain about my guava juice. I pick up a few bottles of guava juice whenever I go to T&T in Toronto. I have found out that the Bomy brand tastes much better than the other brand, so that's the one I stick to for a long time. Last time when I went to T&T, I found out that they have changed the labeling of the bottles. I thought, ok, should be the same thing, I guess. Little did I know that when I opened one up recently, it tastes so much worse than before. I compared the old bottles and the new ones, and found out that the old ones have the label "30% juice" while the new ones have the label "at least 25% juice"... So, they literally watered down the taste. Now it tastes just about the same (and as bad) as the other brands that I've rejected before... So...yeah, I'm kind of disappointed. No more good guava juice to be found.

I sleep so much these days, it's scary.

I read this passage from the Bible yesterday:

There will even come a time when anyone who kills you will think he's doing God a favor. They will do these things because they never really understood the Father. (John 16:2b-3, MSG)

And I started thinking, that is so true in our world today, when I see on the news the so-called insurgents that chanted "God is great" after killing people, or when there are recruitments for the so-called "Army of God." Jesus really is a contemporary, isn't he?

Just found out today that the Bible game I'm planning has been cut down to 50 minutes. I was planning for a 90-minute game. Sigh... I was trying to decide which games to cut, which games to add, but eventually decided that I'll still do whatever I have planned and look to see what happens then. You never know what God has in store. Meanwhile, I think I'm almost done with the questions posing phase.

Yesterday's Bible study was the best one that I've had in recent memory. There was actually a topic. There were examples and discussions. There were life applications. There was an emphasis on learning these applications, instead of being bogged down by semantics and lexicon. There was enthusiasm from the leader. Praise God for His work.

Now they want me to go to Taiwan this summer...yikes. No.

I've been working on this Bible game for the love feast in the middle of August. As I work through this, I'm starting to think, this takes a lot of time, and it's going to be over in about an hour. Is it really worth it? Also, am I really trivializing the Bible, or is it really going to be educational? One thing's for sure, I still haven't lost my passion for quiz shows. Now of course I'm working on this so as to avoid wasting time while thinking whether I want to do my probabilistic homework or not...

Personally, I'm more and more confused about my faith's role in my life.

Made a grand shopping tour today, which, as always, didn't yield too much spending. I did this alone, of course. Speaking of which, I think I'm rapidly shrinking back to my own little cocoon. The only contact I had with people were with the cashiers, and even then I said no more than 3 words.

There is a major problem with my left shoulder. There's pain whenever I pick up something, or rotate it. I'm guessing it's because when I'm sleeping, I'm always sleeping on that shoulder. Then again, not too long ago, the same pain happened to my right shoulder, which healed itself after some time. Hopefully the left one will do the same as well... Meanwhile, carrying heavy stuff while having a bad shoulder? Not good.

I just found out that my jeans (the only one that I have, which I've worn since April of last year) has some pretty big holes in pretty embarrassing spots. I wonder why I haven't found that before, and why nobody else noticed, either. So now I have no jeans, all my other pants are too small for me, with the exception of perhaps a couple that I may be able to squeeze on...barely.

The presentation...well...I think it's pretty bad. Having no rehearsals really doesn't help. And I got a pretty boring topic, I think. Felt like the past two days have been wasted. At least they laughed when I mentioned "shady calculations"...

A lightbulb moment during today's morning washroom session revealed my enormous stupidity. Yes, a problem in a paper is finally resolved, but I raised that problem to start with, didn't realize that the problem has such a simple solution. If only I had paid slightly more attention...

I need a life change, but I've always said that, and never did.

There is this one line from the paper I'm supposed to present tomorrow that I simply could not understand. I'm not really sure how to go on with this presentation. Maybe I'll excuse myself by blaming the authors of the paper for making "shady" calculations...

My car insurance package just arrived today, and I'm very surprised by the cost of it this time. It's $1,441, which is about $700 less than last year. Hmm...really strange...and they say insurance premiums are going up... Well, I guess I'm happy about that, and it certainly reduces my tight budget this term...

So, the mid-week Bible study (aka material reading challenge) is over for the term. What did I learn? Nothing much, I guess.

I had a hard time trying to wake up this morning. Perhaps sleeping after a long hard day is much more enjoyable than regular days.

Trying hard to understand this paper that I'm presenting tomorrow. It doesn't look good for me...

I found a way to extract music files from MYST IV and collect ones from MYST III. They are decent enough, even though they're far from complete. At least this would be good enough to keep me from buying their soundtracks from oversea sources...for now...

Sometimes, a bit of a problem solving in real life could be a good thing. Case in point today: trying to move a couple of gigabytes worth of stuff from one computer to another. Initial solution: burn them to CDRWs, transfer the data, repeat. Problem: Burning takes 20 minutes. Better solution: Attach my external USB hard drive to the new computer, transfer it that way. This solution took about 5 minutes.

I guess the mission for today is to read the paper for presentation, and prepare that presentation. Not sure if I'll be able to manage that...it certainly will be the quickest paper-to-presentation turnover ever. For me, anyway.

I must confess (yes, another one) that I've been watching this Average Joe show. Surprisingly entertaining, actually. Too bad all of my favourites are gone now.

The marking massacre mercifully ended this morning. Started the marking yesterday, and quickly found out how hard it was to mark the question I'm left with. 4 papers, 1 hour, and one of the papers was blank. I had to stop after marking 15 out of 44 papers, due to fatigue. Restarted the marking in the evening, and the torture continued until about 1, at which time I decided to take a bit of sleep and restart in the morning. Restart I did, at around 6, only to find that I have made a mistake in the marking due to thinking -3 instead of -2. So I had to re-mark a few papers, and eventually finished at around 8:30. Rushed the eating and cleaning to school under a thunderstorm to enter the marks and finally handed it off to Bruce at around 9:40, 20 minutes before class time. Yikes. By the way, the average score: less than 2 out of 10. Even some of the people who wrote a lot got 0. Anyway, that's my adventure for the day...

Bad supervisor meeting, but really, I did nothing, so that was kind of expected. It was a hard week... Oh, yeah, she made a lot of faces...

Anyone up for making a couple of pugil sticks? No? Sigh...

It's kind of sad when I'm in a situation where my body is so weak that walking to the office and back is kind of a burden. So...anyone willing to be my exercise partner? I'm very picky about exercising, though...

I retrieved the assignments for marking, and boy am I going to be in rough waters tomorrow. Hard matching question. Hmm...

I'm burdened with enough things (academically, mentally, spiritually, physically) that I just don't have the stomach to try and figure out a travel route for my partial family's visit here. Really, give me a break. I need one.

Yesterday: Scrambling to make 25 questions in 1 hour. Today: These questions were used in a game during the annual church trip, this time in New Hamburg. So...what about that trip? First, paper cutting madness. A 20-minute drive. More cutting madness. Game planning madness. Game madness. Lunch madness. Calm. Just kidding. Walking madness. Sleeping madness. Finally, back home. Well, I went back home while others gather at Tim's for ice cap. I just didn't feel very social (although one wonders if I have ever felt social at all). A few pointers: I mainly hang with Ray & Kevin again, since everyone else just wants to play ball or doesn't care much for us in the first place; It's kind of weird to have my camera hijacked for most of the time; Beggars can't be choosers; I lost two pieces of writing utensil; There was this giant water wheel, and a small dam; For the game, it had a sucky first part, and a great second part that is an extension of the first part, and whoever came up with that extension is just brilliant; I'm in extremely poor physical shape, although we all know that already; There was a snake.........

Looks like my quest for getting dual-screen desktop will never come true for my laptop.

I don't like to smile and laugh anymore, at least not in public. I don't know, maybe these grim circumstances and outlooks are getting to me.

Another new mild surge of visits to this site came from just one mention of David Madden (ah, there I mentioned it again), the current Jeopardy champion. Still very impressive with 10+ wins already. But recently he's been getting fewer lock-outs, even finished in second place before FJ once, so at least his games are quite exciting to watch. Proud to know that he's the only one to get this FJ on classical music: It's the roughly 70-minute work that includes the sung words "Alle menschen werden bruder."

Finished MYST IV today. I have to say, I really don't like this game. Other than the excitements in the initial age, it got way too complex. Spire was basically impossible to figure out on my own, and Haven was more like gathering static information to get a combination, nothing exciting about that. Serenia was just strange and confusing and very easy to get lost. I had to rely on walkthroughs quite a lot, and that was no fun. On the positive side, the one point where a critical decision needed to be made (pulling one lever or another, or none), I'm happy to report that I made the correct decision the first time around, thus saving the world and stuff. Well, not really. But it really didn't require as much decision brain power needed in the finale of Exile, so it wasn't really too interesting. In any case, the ending was sad, but ok. I still prefer Exile to Revelation, though...

I must confess that I have been catching a few episodes of Beauty and the Geek recently, and the show ended today. The way the last challenge really sucks, and my new favourites Richard & Mindi lost. However, here's the funniest ending I've seen in a long time (even though it's been done before). Here you have Richard, whose caption during his interview this episode has always been "had been kissed two times." Then right at the end when they were talking about the loss, Richard & Mindi made a small kiss, and then Richard's interview caption immediately changed to "had been kissed three times." I'm such a sucker for these types of jokes. (By the way, another one of those funny moments from the show. Richard was asking the size of Mindi's waist, and she responded "zero." Then Richard tells in interview: "Size zero?! To me, if you are size zero, you don't exist!")

According to my web stats, there was a mild surge of interest in my site yesterday. Mostly they were linked from my UW site, so I can venture an educated guess that a small number of people were doing that from the mere 1-second mention of my name in the C&O picnic (which I didn't go, incidentally). Oh yeah, speaking of which, I really don't like getting up in front of a lot of people to receive an award. That feels really embarrassing. So, that's probably why I didn't go to the picnic.

There was a rush to get the assignment done yesterday morning. At the start of the day, I think I had 4 questions solved, and 1 typed, out of 5. Got to the office at around 9, decided to start typing the other 3 solved questions (which are ridiculously hard to type), and then gamble on the last question being not too hard. Well, surprisingly enough, I did all that and actually finished the assignment (minus one small part that I didn't even want to attempt) 10 minutes before class time. So...another disaster averted. I really need to cut down on these close calls...

Coming up this week: a talk, more marking, the usual fruitless research, and get MYST IV finished already.

I just feel very hopeless these days.

There's this homework due tomorrow, and I still culdn't figure out 2 of the 5 questions. And they are long questions... It's going to be a long long night...or not, because I'm feeling sleepy already. I just didn't have any motivation to do these tedious calculations.

I don't want to complain too much about a Bible study, but really, when most of the time was spent discussing semantics and lexicon, it kind of strays from the main purpose of it all.

Return of the supervisor meeting later today. Certainly I have not done "three weeks worth" of research, in fact I got nothing to show for. So, I don't know how to get out of this one...

More thunderstorms today. Still very hot, though, with the 30 temperature and 41 humidex...

The last thing I want to think about right now is planning for the family's trip here.

112.5mm of rain yesterday. That's like the usual rainfall for a month (or two) in one day... Exciting... More rain today, but not that much. Very muggy today, though, unlike the slightly cool evening yesterday.

I was tired, depressed, and Francis' mom was yelling. Hmm...not a good combination. And really, asking me to take them home a second before my car leaves the parking lot, with them nowhere near the car, with a car behind coming in fast...I don't think so. And did I mention I was tired and depressed?

Managed to clean up the desk a little and started doing a little calculations for the homework. Hope this lasts...

Does my weight problem have to come up in every conversation? It's not like I don't know about it or something.

Apparently the family's coming. Time to pack up some things.

Changed the home page slightly so as to freely share the photo gallery without having the higher risk of discovering this page. Current known ways to get to this page: Accidental link from Google; most recently published list of blogs on Blogger; and from my UW home page. Speaking of which, here's an interesting Jeopardy clue in the category of "Noun to Verb": When launched in 1998, it was just a noun; now it's a verb meaning to check up on somebody online.

There had been intermittent thunderstorms throughout the day, actually started this morning while I was still sleeping. Quite surprising to have a thunderstorm early in the morning. It's still going right now. Certainly glad to have some relief from the high temperatures of the past week, even though I didn't go out much.

The storms became one obstruction of my original plan to go to the office and work. Instead, I stayed at home and did nothing. I have no idea what will get me going.

Meanwhile, I'm going crazy, and nobody seems to think that it's a big problem.

Finished the Spire age in MYST today. Well, sort of finished. I had to use a walkthrough. After having done so, I figured that I would never have done this on my own. So...there you go. I suck at this even though I like it...just wish it is easier, that's all.

So guess what, I wasted another day! I knew that would happen when the assignment due date was postponed... At least now I have two new books to look through for research, although I highly doubt I'll find anything useful in there. I think my problem is that I don't have any space on my desk to work...

I've lost my appetite for traveling. Isn't it sad...

One bright spot in today's continuing progress in procrastination is that the probabilistic assignment due date has been postponed by two days. That's a big sigh of relief for me. Now I just need to get going with the stuffs that need to be done, which I should have done a long time ago.

I'm very confused with the Spire age in MYST. Nothing really makes sense to me. Maybe I'll go through the hint page...hmm...

I guess I should have already gotten used to being alone. (Unrelated note: Genesis 2:18.)

Fragile.

I did some work yesterday (but not much). Research is still incredibly frustrating. Couldn't understand a proof that I'm supposed to understand. Thought I solved the problem again, only to find out that it has the same flaw again. Probabilistic homework is strange. Going to work on only that today, and hopefully find Nick tomorrow to talk about it. I'm going crazy. Not surprisingly.

Temperature hit 35 yesterday, humidex 40. It's been hot like this for too long now...

The post count in blogger is back! Woohoo! So this is the 1050th post in this blog. Hehehe...never knew I posted that much.

I really need to stop this anger and disappointment toward people around me. It's not good, and so unChristian.

Perhaps I should stop thinking about this bleak outlook for my future and start completing the jobs set out in front of me right now.

Finally, pictures from the annual Canada Day celebration at Columbia Lake (now a river) are posted. I had to cut out quite a lot of the fireworks pictures, as I took too many and most turned out pretty bad. But there might be a couple of good ones in there. Just have to look carefully.

Finally, solved the problem from assignment 1 for which I was invited to resubmit. It wasn't too bad. As with most of these probabilistic problems, there are a couple of iffy steps in there, but that shouldn't be too much of a trouble...I hope...

It took a while, but I finally squeezed out enough courage to explore the Spire age in MYST IV. It's the darkest age ever. Apparently everything's floating in there, and lots of clouds and thunder surrounds the "prison" castle. Still couldn't figure out much there, though...

I'm doing a lot of thinking about what the future holds for me. Now that I have given up on getting a faculty position, my choices are pretty limited. And with the personality that I've been given by God, I will definitely have trouble surviving in this world. So...I don't really know what to think of it. I have a general ideology that I do not think much about what will happen in the future, since it is pretty much futile to do so. However, that was when my path of life was pretty much set for me, go on and study more. But now that this path nears its end, I'm having trouble holding up. Anybody have connections with the game show business who can give me a boost?

For some odd reason, I simply couldn't work at home. But when I'm in my office, I get hungry and sleepy pretty quickly, and I want to come home in the hope that supposedly I could work there. But truth be told, I have a history of not being able to do anything productive at home, so why do I still convince myself that today is the day that will change everything? Meanwhile, 6 homework questions await me, 1 of them long past due for which I think I have a solution for but I just don't have the desire to work out the details. Also, 3 weeks worth of research awaits me. I'm not sure how I can pull this off again. And the answer is, of course I can't.

Taking 24 hours to download a file is way too long...the average rate was 2.5K/s, worse than dial-up. But at least it completed the download...

Last week felt like a particularly long one, even though I wasted so much of it... Started Aaron to the airport, then marking, then finishing MYST III. Really felt like that happened a long time ago. By the way, I finished MYST III in under a week...certainly a lot shorter than I thought.

I was at a TRACE workshop titled So you wanna be a faculty member? Conclusion? I will not be a faculty member. In fact, since I have decided I will not be a faculty member, does that mean that studying for a PhD is essentially a waste of time? Anyway, one of the things that really struck me was the following line on the slides (page 4 upper lefthand corner): "Same field of study with same supervisor for Masters & PhD is frowned upon (just asking to get your butt kicked!!)" Hmm...so...I'm screwed?

Played a bit more MYST today, despite my conscience telling me otherwise. There's this "lights out" puzzle where if you push a square, its neighbouring squares reverse their signals (on to off, off to on). On my first try, it took forever and I couldn't solve it. After a bit of sleep, on my second try, I used the greedy algorithm and it worked! That's really strange...

Yesterday's MYF: Again, people were late. Started 40 minutes after the supposed start time. Same wait for me as last week, I guss... Bible study was too long, but nobody else thought so. Ray was the funny one, though. Ed was asking me a question, I didn't say anything, so he asked Ray to help me out. So then Ray said, "say something, Martin!" I got closer to Kevin and Ray now, and farther from Francis. He's just doing his caterpillar act that is fast becoming really really old.

Today: Coworkers meeting. Again, it went too long. Here's a hint: trying to solve an NP-complete problem in constant time isn't going to work. Later, lunch near Uptown. I wouldn't have gone if Jason wasn't there, quite frankly. Oh, and it was an overpriced dim sum lunch where I really wasn't full, but I had to pretend to be full because everyone else is full (supposedly).

Skating: On Monday, Francis & his mom came up with the idea of going skating today. I think I was ok with it at that time, not committed to it, of course. Later Francis sent out an email to the coworkers regarding this, and now almost everyone wants to come. So I decided I won't go, as I don't like having too many (familiar) people there. Today, I felt dizzy, so definitely a no go. The coworkers meeting went overtime, so skating at CIF was not feasible. So we went to eat. After lunch, it was around 2:40, and the skating at RIM Park closes at 3:50. Again, not feasible. But Francis still wanted to go, and he assumed that I wanted to go, but I excused myself out of it anyway. So they all went to play basketball, leaving me alone to head home. Thus is the story of my life, being the loner of all loners.

Not happy today. And of course nobody cares, and nobody should care. It's all my fault anyway. As I have mentioned before, I expect too much out of people, and I just happen to have interests that nobody else around me has.

Jason suddenly showed up today. Weeeeeeee! Too bad he's only here temporarily... Sounds like MS is treating him good over there.

I was playing MYST IV (instead of doing work, of course). I really couldn't absorb the instructions these characters are telling me the first time (even with captions on!), so I had to play a second time to barely get the idea of it. Then there's this puzzle...yikes... So there's this classic puzzle that gives you a 3L and a 5L bottles, and you need to get 4L of water. The puzzle in MYST is similar to this, except 3 times larger and 100 times harder. At first I thought there was no solution, but after a long while, finally figured out a solution. Boy, those guys are really good with coming up with these puzzles. I really need to quit playing now and start the horrific work week ahead...

Being ignored sucks.

Being overweight also sucks.

Being a lazy bum really really sucks...

Disasterous morning: I knew I shouldn't have tried to install MYST IV, but I couldn't resist. I tried the minimal install, and the game wouldn't start. So I freed up some hard drive space and tried the full install. It asked for the second disk, so I put in the second disk, and after a short while, the computer crashed. I restarted the computer, and it complained about having no keyboard. Well, there is a keyboard, and it was working just fine. Frustrated, I restarted the computer again. Same thing. Repeated this quite a few times, smashed the keyboard (gently, of course), and still nothing. Very frustrated, so then I went and cook breakfast. Breakfast done, turned on the TV, and voila, all static. Sigh...so the cable went out again.

After breakfast, decided to try the computer again. This time, decided to pull the power cable and put it back. And voila, the computer started up fine. Ok, so I tried installing again. This time, it skipped right down to asking for the second disk. I put in the second disk, and after a while, the computer crashed again. Restarted the computer, and it wouldn't find the keyboard. So, unplug, plug, restart, install, crash, repeat 5-10 times. But each time the progress bar in the installation progressed a little, so I had hope. Eventually, however, I got to a point where it wouldn't progress again...so...I found a new solution: simply copy the files they were copying myself. And it worked. Finally done the full install, and I launch the game, and...the game crashed on contact. Obviously my patience had ran out a long time ago, so this wasn't really helping. But I did get the game working, after installing some driver for the graphics card. Ok, and that's it for my adventure. I think they designed it so that even the installation is a giant frustrating puzzle for us to solve...

What went wrong: After reading some online forum, I found out that the infamous second disc is actually a dual-layer DVD. This is not normally supported even though it should be. So that's probably why the DVD drive could only read a few minutes and then got stuck. As for why copying the files myself works, I have no idea, but I'm certainly glad that it did work. Meanwhile, I think I'm lacking a ton of fruits of the Spirit...

Well, I guess the big thing today is that I just finished playing MYST III: Exile. I definitely needed the walkthrough to do the Voltaic Age. Otherwise I would pretty much stuck there forever. I'm happy that I did the puzzles in the final age on my own, but the ending...well...that's a whole other story. The first ending I got, I lost. The second ending I got, I got killed. The third ending I got, well, it's sort of a happy ending, but not the happiest one. I saved the book, but didn't free the main character. So...he's stuck there, but I'm fine. The correct ending is one that actually requires quite a bit of observation and thought, not one that is easy to figure out. So I failed the final puzzle. Oh well...now I'll probably take a break and then later continue onto MYST IV. By the way, I'm always incredibly nervous when the ending is near...

I guess I'm starting to get used to solitude. Nobody really wants to talk to me, really. Except for my mom, of course, but I felt so depressed after the phone call today that I decided not to pick up the phone again during Taiwan's daytime.

Apparently 12oz is a lot of weight...

I don't like instant messaging. There, I said it. Well, with some people anyway.

A millionaire question today asked that in the computer game, Myst is the name of what. Hehehe...I think they made that question for me...

To say that I've wasted a lot of time is a major understatement. But then everyone knows that already.

Marking was painfully slow today. Just finished it. It's one of those questions where there's an obvious answer that is hard to explain and is wrong...so...yeah. Oh yeah, and the terrible headache in the evening didn't help, either.

I like this David Madden kid on Jeopardy right now. Only 23, but very bright. Locked 2 of the 3 games so far. See if he goes far...probably he will lose tomorrow, but I'll certainly be pulling for him.

It's such a tragic event in London. Once again, I cannot imagine myself being in this situation. Must be horrifying.

Today's intended schedule: Go to school, pick up assignments, mark all assignments, come home, watch television, play MYST, go to sleep. What happened: Went to school, picked up assignments, came home, went to sleep, played MYST, watched television, and now too tired to mark assignments. Sigh...

I did finish the Edanna Age in MYST, though. Very frustrating, but eventually got it done, even though I don't know how I did it... There were secret passageways that I sort of discovered at random, and I sort of don't like those kind of things...

Finally finished the original KOTC DVD set, bought at the end of 2003. Now off to the new KOTC DVD set bought at the beginning of this year...

Oh alright, I finally read a walkthrough to MYST III. But I only read just enough to get me to the next step, so I guess that's not too bad. I was really stuck on Edanna, and I couldn't go anywhere new, and I was extremely frustrated. Turns out that one of the flowers can shoot a concentrated ray of sunlight to burst a bag of water, which would turn on a new pathway. Of course if I had been much more observant, I might have been able to figure this out, but most likely no...

Observing people's driving habits... Michael: Just go straight as fast as possible. Francis: Drive with the car slowly shifting to the right until it's too far right, then jerk back to the center of the lane, repeat. Francis' dad: Press the accelerator for a few seconds, depress it for a few seconds, press it for a few seconds, depress it for a few seconds, repeat. Interesting to see Francis' family dynamics at work, but apparently the most interesting stuffs happened right after they dropped me off the car...

Marking today. At least that won't be too mentally taxing. Unlike research and homework...

Injury report: A sprang right wrist (blame it on moving too many heavy stuffs recently), neck pain (blame it on the weird slumpy bed), and a strange bruise at the solar plexus area (which I have no idea where to blame).

This wireless card not working is pretty disappointing. Sigh...no extra bandwidth.

The truth is, I simply cannot do any work. At least not now...

5 hours, 3 cities, 2 siblings, 264.2 kilometres. Sent Aaron & Grace to NYOC. 6:05 AM: I arrive at their home. 6:50 AM: Left their home. 8:00 AM: Arrived at airport. 8:30 AM: Arrived at T&T and shopped at Shoppers. 9:00 AM: Shopped at T&T as if there's no tomorrow. 9:40 AM: Depart. 11:00 AM: Arrived home, lots of moving...

6:50 PM: Went to Aaron's place again to pick up his computer. More moving. But the result is really amazing. I never knew a graphics card can make such a big difference. MYST III now looks 100 times better than on my computer. As an aside, there are now too many cables around here that it's not even funny. Only 40 days, I guess. By the way, I finished the Amateria Age today, and it had such a cool and awesome ending to it...now I just need to see what it looks like under a graphics card...

More trip to Toronto coming up real soon. Like, in a few minutes. Tagging along with Francis' family to pick up his dad. I need an excuse to get out of playing MYST and doing research.

Tomorrow: early morning trip to Toronto. Should get the computer as well. Also going to T&T.

Mom is very serious about coming here this summer. Yikes.

I never knew I had close to 800MB of stuff in my "recycling bin"...

Frustrating Sunday

There was joint Sunday service. Afterwards, some lunch gathering at the new Ben Thahn. I was looking forward to eat there, so this would be a nice opportunity to do so. Well, I was left at the quiet end, and Francis basically made a fool of himself (which is his usual self, actually), and I didn't like the food. So...there you go. Not looking forward to eat there again.

Picked up a wireless card from Michael. It didn't work, unfortunately. Something wrong with my computer, I guess, unless the UW wireless network is totally down, which I doubt.

MYST III is getting very frustrating as well. Couldn't solve the pinball puzzle. And for the two other Ages, I couldn't get anything to work. Doors won't open. Elevators won't move. Flowers don't make more paths. So...probably going to put that off for a while. Or not. I will not use walkthroughs!

I think I have a close-to-dislocated right shoulder. I have intermittent tingly feelings all over my body. My neck hurts. I have a sore throat. Does that mean that I'm really sick?

On the exercise front: Bringing two cases of bottled water up to my room was painful. Rope jumping is breath-taking (in the unusual sense).

I really want to have this plan where I would listen to a sermon a day. Sermons that are from my church in Vancouver. Listened to the introduction to the book of Romans today. Quite good. Made me want to listen on...I just wish I would really learn and put them to life.

Today is the middle of the year. I have wasted so much time.

For the rest of the semester, here is the schedule: Work hard from 9-4 on weekdays. Play hard on weekends, holidays, and evenings. Of course, like all of my other plans, this will not materialize.

I really like MYST III so far. Figured out a couple of puzzles, and they are not super complicated nor incredibly easy. I like this stuff. Now I'm stuck on a couple of pinball machine type things...

Canada Day stuffs

It began with a nightmare that I couldn't forget. In another really dumb move, George W. decided to get rid of all the people in North America and start over. This involves setting off a nuclear bomb in Washington D.C. which will reach all of Canada, U.S., and Mexico. The target time for setting off the bomb was 6PM July 1st. I was scared, but didn't really believe it will happen. Even during the events (such as church services) prior to the blast, people kept saying to each other, this is the end, this is the end. As the target time came, I was really really scared. There was obviously a delay to the effect here, but even when people started wondering if the bomb was really set off, they kept saying, don't put this off, we've been so prepared for this day. There was a smell of sulphur, and I woke up. Incredibly scared by the nightmare, remembering it so vividly. It does show one point: I'm afraid of death, which is not supposed to be as a Christian. I have to re-think stuffs now...

MYF: Waited 40 minutes in the car. Really not happy. There was an almost-vegetarian lunch. I brought cookies. Also brought laptop and played MYST III hehehe... After-lunch sports. They played basketball. I took pictures (some are good, most blurry, as expected). Tried hard not to be jealous, and almost succeeded. Felt like a meaningless event, but that's probably just my being really not happy. 87 pictures.

Fireworks: Waited 2 hours. Sore bum. Cold body. Fireworks pretty much an elaborate repeat loop plus some extra stuffs at the end. 15 minutes of fireworks. 252 pictrures. Most failed. Should have used ISO 100 instead of 400. Should have fixed a time exposure. Should have done other things. Went home, and later took Aaron and company home. By the time I got back home for good, it was around 12:40 already. Long day.