Three things about the trip to the south...

Trains are much better than buses, even though the seats for the bus are way larger.

Kids grow up really fast.

I could definitely live without having another person telling me that my age is ripe for marriage, and trying to set me up with people I don't know.

Photos from the summer camp uploaded.

I still can't discuss my interests with people, not even with friends.

Now we have a strange water stoppage crisis. Hmm...

My entire lower body hurts. I hurt my toes initially while I was making the game two days ago, and fell off a flimsy chair. The rest of the legs and thighs follow after an enormous (to me anyway) amount of walking and climbing with heavy gear, then sitting continuously on the hard floor. So now I have trouble even lowering myself...

The air conditioner in my room doesn't work anymore...right on one of the hottest evenings here...sigh.

I don't like singing with gestures, especially weird and embarrassing gestures. I don't like games that are of no educational value. There are degrees of silliness, and a little is fine, but a lot is just...well...silly.

Just came back from the camping thingie. Some random musings: It was way too hot; these people are crazy, in a good way; my game, well, let's just say I will need hearing aid sooner than I thought; it was a good game, though, they ran the category twice; very glad to have revisit and perhaps solidify past friendships; my computer's volume is very low; got sick in the middle of the church service and came home early. I think the only possible reason that I could imagine spending time in Taiwan is with these people.

So yeah, I'm sick. I've always expected myself to be sick every time I'm in Taiwan, except I didn't expect it to be this late into the visit. Especially considering that I've been to the hospital many times last week. So anyway, it should be fine, I hope. Going to Tainan tomorrow.

Comparing the people here and the people in Waterloo in church, there's a sense that the people here are warm and genuine, not show-off-ish nor harsh. That really cannot be said of the Waterloo bunch (as a whole, I mean)...

Today: off on a 2-day camping retreat thingie. Should be fine, I hope. The downside is that I'm going to be bringing too much stuff.

At least I'm getting one person who is willing to talk to me. I'm glad for that.

Yes, it's about 5am right now, and I keep wondering when I'll get over jet lag. Probably never. Two weeks left in Taiwan, even though it feels much too long.

Yesterday morning: whole family at the hospital. Yes, dad has been in the hospital for the fourth day. Good news is, he was finally released. Now he's relaxed and stuff.

Yesterday noon: Lunch at Chili's. Well, people around me kept saying how good this place is, so my expectation was kind of high. So I was slightly disappointed to see that the food was mediocre at best, but still good. I'm guessing that my taste buds have been desensitized somewhat. But the best part is spending time with this group of brothers and sisters from church. That's the main thing.

Yesterday afternoon & evening: Game making madness. I volunteered to make a half-hour game, and it's taking me way too long to make it. It should be good, provided that they don't get rowdy. I got mom and dad to play it, and they seemed to like it. In other news, went to visit grandmother briefly. She seemed a lot better now, even with great hair. She was laughing and stuff. That's great.

Yesterday: Hospital, and round two of the handbook madness, this time consisting of photocopying and collating. I got a free bubble tea, weeeeeee! First one! Thunderstorms seem to be the norm here.

What is it with these people's obsession with eating?

I thought I had finally overcome jet lag by having no afternoon nap yesterday, but all hopes were dashed when I woke up this morning at about 3 or 4 and couldn't sleep afterwards. Sigh...

Made a couple of trips to the hospital yesterday. It wasn't really pleasant, as expected. Dad's feeling better, so I guess that's good.

I also made it to church to help out with the making of the handbook for the summer camp coming up this weekend. So, this is what I do, fly around the world and make these handbooks. It was fun, though, and I didn't feel a thing, even though others are stressing out.

I much prefer to identify myself as a Canadian rather than a Chinese. Trouble is, it's hard to do that here. Or everywhere.

Yesterday: 2 restaurant meals. Lunch is Japanese, with eel. Dinner is American, with seafood cheese pasta thingie (which too much of an emphasis on "cheese"). Lots of awkward moments. And there goes my supposed hypothetical plan to cut weight.

Dad's in the hospital right now, been there for a night already. Going to visit soon. Hope I don't get sick as well, even though I'm already feeling it...

The claim for cheap food in Taiwan is overrated. So is the claim that everything's cheaper here. So totally not true.

I know I have said this time and time again, but it's worth saying again. My respiratory system simply cannot handle the enormous amount of pollutants filling the air here in Taipei. Also, my auditory nerve simply cannot handle all that noise when walking outside, especially through the market places. People shouting just to get attention for their business is really unnerving, and really rude, quite frankly. Respect our hearing ability, please. Also, I cannot handle what is being reported as news here. I had to walk away from it because it was too disgusting. Sigh...and people tell me it's good to be in Taiwan...yikes.

Today: Fasting first; trip to hospital to get checked up; got some blood taken out of me; running around trying to do boring governmental administrative thingies; afternoon nap that had me in a trance where it was really difficult to wake me up; night time nothingness. So...my battle with jet lag continues. Oh yeah, dad came back, but he's sick, so that really doesn't help.

I think I'm fast becoming a mad man with this internet thing. I think I've downloaded 3GB worth of stuff just today. Cumulatively I might have done close to 10GB so far. Compare that to an upper bound of 1.5 GB per week back in Waterloo...yikes.

Despite my new found "stature," I am not a toy! Please, people. I'm not squeezable.

I desperately want to go back to Canada. This is crazy. I can't live here. Somebody get me out of here...

So...what happened... Saturday: morning walk; the three monkeys came in to disturb the peace; pizza lunch; afternoon trip to the bookstore, with terrible thunderstorm; evening fellowship that was pretty boring, during which I felt really old. Sunday: morning walk and pout; church service that wasn't too bad, at least it's good to see some people that I like; afternoon trip to Costco, with terrible thunderstorm, again; evening nothingness. Oh yeah, and apparently dad will return tonight, which won't make a difference anyway because he's never home.

Yesterday (Friday 19th): First up, a mandatory trip to the immigration place to get stamped so that I can actually get out of this country. Next, a mandatory lunch with mom, sister, and two others. Well, the two others are a mom and daughter, and the two moms wish to "hook me up" with the daughter. We sat on the opposite ends of the table, so that's good. I tried to be as ignorant as possible. Still trying to think why I came here. It was a super full meal, and I felt really bad at the end. Not pleasant, certainly.

I'm really abusing this unlimited internet thingie. It's kind of slow sometimes, but I won't complain.

Being dragged up this morning to go walk around 10 laps. It was boring. Again, I wonder why I came here...

Leg 4: C.K.S. Int to Taipei Airport. By the time we landed, I was feeling sick. Headache, strange stomach. Of course when my mom and sister saw me, the first thing they said was about my "enlargement"... I said to myself before that if that happened, I'm turning back and going to Canada right away. Well, they did that, but I didn't get to turn back. We get this bus that travels into Taipei, and it felt like a long ride with all the signature traffic jams. I wasn't feeling well, and my sister was just chatting and chatting, and I felt terrible. Eventually she went to sleep, so that's good. We had these huge seats, but they aren't really that comfortable...

Leg 5: Taipei Airport to home. Short taxi ride. Nothing exciting, which is great news, quite frankly.

So, now that I had about half a day in Taiwan, I still don't like it. Hot and humid. Muggy. Still a bit sick, sort of a cold. I did sleep for 5+3 hours, so that's not bad. In between 5 an d 3, I was awake for 4, trying to get the internet working. It took too much time to get it working, but I'm happy that it is working now. Going off to something today, I don't know, I wish I can leave soon...

More details on the 5 legs of travel on 2 legs... Leg 1: Waterloo to Toronto. Roger arrived at my place at around 4:40am, a bit late, arrived at 5:45am for the 7am flight, but that didn't really matter. There was a long line-up with only 2 (or less) agents working the counters, but that didn't matter either. Turned out that my 7am flight didn't exist, so they put me on the 7:30am flight. Also, I went to the wrong line-up, as I'm supposed to go to the international line instead of the "triangle" line...I had no idea. But all of that didn't matter anyway because the plane didn't show up at the gate until 7:30am, and we didn't leave until 8am. It became so late that they announced that the next scheduled flight to Vancouver will leave right after my flight leaves...so...boo.

Leg 2: Toronto to Vancouver. The flight was ok. We arrived at around 10:30am Vancouver time (I must have screwed up the departure time in the previous paragraph...must have delayed a lot longer than I thought.). I sat in the middle seat in the middle section in the middle of the plane. To my right was a young guy who got his left eyebrow pierced, and was constantly listening to his giant Creative mp3 player and falling asleep. To my left was a Chinese guy probably in his 30s, and he was constantly reading stuff. I was just trying to sleep after getting only 1 hour of it in the morning. I think I might have succeeded in that for a short while, but really never anything significant.

Leg 3: Vancouver to C.K.S. International Airport. It was a 12pm flight, so I had around 1.5 hours. But at around boarding time, they announced that it had been delayed to 12:30, and eventually left at 1pm. So really, flight delays don't matter at all, since all flights are delayed. There was a switch in a boarding pass. I tried calling mom, but didn't get anything in 3 calls. Eventually when it was close to the actual boarding time, I called again, and finally she picked up the phone. It was 2am in Taiwan, and I miscalculated it...oops. Anyway, I tried doing the solitaire hangman while waiting and while on the plane. I got 8 out of 12 words, so apparently I "have a remarkable gift for words." But I just think I got lucky when I got words like necromancy and sacrosanct (which I still don't know what they mean), but I was really embarrassed when I didn't get the word logarithm. So...the flight. It was a terrible flight. There was turbulence happening almost all the time. I was sitting around a group of home-coming short-term students. They were loud. And the guys behind me were rocking my chair. I had a ton of trouble and frustration with sleeping. Again, I think I might have slept briefly a few times, but those were just horrible. The meals were nice, but that's about the only bright spot in this flight. The flight landed at around 3:30pm, so it's shorter than the listed time, which is a good thing. Customs were a breeze with only one person in front of me, with a brief panic as I was trying to find my boarding pass. Waiting for luggage was, as usual, pretty long and boring. But I did get my luggage, so that's fine. (By the way, the ramp that goes to the flight in Vancouver was probably the longest such ramp that I've ever walked on.)

Typing in Taiwan...

26 hours, 5 cities, 2 continents, 5 legs of travel, 2 (out of 2) flights delayed, 3 (or less) hours of sleep in 2 days, over 15,000 kilometres. And I'm here. Very tired. Huge headache. Bad flights. Going to sleep...

Remind me, why am I here again?

Conclusion of the day: I hate flying.

7 hours, 3 cities, 1 giant concert, 104.1 gas (this is at the service station, 105.9 Waterloo), 241.6 kilometres. This is the trip to get the Chens back from their NYOC adventures, but turned out I only got one back. Met Yiwen surprisingly, and he's still as serious as usual. The guy sitting beside me talked to me a bit, and I get that "look" again when I mentioned I'm studying PhD in math... Very good concert. Now I have 3 hours until I leave. Haven't started packing just yet...

Here's the incident at the gas station which proved that my brain is not in good shape. First, I went to one gas pump, went out, and discovered a sign that says the pay-at-the-pump thing doesn't work. Ok, so I backed up to the pump behind me and put in my credit card. Long and behold, I found out that my car is on the wrong side of things. So finally I backed up again and went to the opposite pump. Ok, not so interesting.

I really dread going on this trip. Why am I going on this trip?

So far today...I found myself a proud owner of a Canadian passport (after getting lost on the way to the passport office). I got myself a parking pass for next term. I found myself drawing things for (what eventually became) a 15-minute supervisor meeting. I got myself a haircut (weeeeeeeee!). And now I'm just waiting to leave for Toronto for tonight's concert...hmm...

With so many fatal plane crashes these days since the Air France miracle, plus the ugly lawsuits from the Air France survivors, I wonder if this is God's way of saying, maybe if one die of a plane crash for every ungrateful Air France survivor, they would finally start to realize the gift they received...

The torturing begins...tomorrow!

My printer was broken yesterday. Apparently there's this fail-safe device that kept the cartridge from moving, so I don't know what's going to happen there. Time to start thinking of a new printer (or two).

Yesterday afternoon was crazy. Costco, Sportchek, Sports National, UW, Swiss Chalet, Aaron's place. Very tired. More of that today...

After 7 days of perseverence, I failed yesterday. Sigh...

Church this morning: boy, the kids these days...and the songs they sing...hmm... Marking: went straight to school for marking after church. The first problem, finding where the exams are. Turns out there's this secret little compartment in the C&O lounge. Good hiding place, I guess. The marking was easy, as it was a pretty easy question, and thus I had little problem with the request for being generous. Bumped into Omran three times, twice in the lounge, once in the apartment where he seemed to be leaving. We TA the same course next term, so it should be fun.

I must have said this too many times before already: I really don't want to go to Taiwan. For good reasons, I might add.

On the TV front, My Kind of Town was silly yet very fun to watch. Veronica Mars is getting really good. Mythbusters are awesome, even in reruns.

13 hours, 5 cities, 8 people, 2 meals, 6 bowls at Mongolian Grill, 1 small meat circle at Old Lee's, 1 plane ticket, 0 gundam, 13 games of bowling, 7 bowlers, 101.5 gas at Toronto (I didn't do it), 97.5 gas at Waterloo (didn't do it either), 296.? kilometres = first trip to Toronto in ages. Right now I'm so dizzy, though, that I won't recall much of it. So I'll skip it.

Bowling scores:

Round 1: Me 59 (2/), Francis 105 (1x 2/), Mama Yen 93 (2x), Roger 101 (2x 1/), Kevin 82 (2x). So Francis won and I lost. Pretty bad games.

Round 2: Me 90 (2/), James 74 (1x), Mama Yen 68, Michael 92 (3/), Kevin 91 (2x). So Michael won. Even worse games.

Round 3: Me 62 (1x 1/), Francis 66 (1x 1/), Roger 49. So Francis won again, and I finally had a strike. Worst games ever...hehehe.

Marking madness begins (and hopefully ends) tomorrow.

I have trouble sleeping. Don't know why.

I guess one of the things I got used to doing in this intense week of probabilistic examinations is that I can now do what I considered to be "sloppy calculations" (aka asymptotics) like if they are just normal.

Ah, the truth shall set you free. I certainly hope this freedom is not temporary.

Wow...what a day... The exam was fine, just one screw-up which I think is still Nick's fault. Then it was a rush to coworkers meeting, home, busy finishing up the game, printer screw-up, rush to church again, finally finished the game, ate a little food, and then the game. It was ok, I think. Controversial questions, I think. Hehehe... Tony did pretty well, which is excellent. They skipped the testimonies, though, so I had a bit of a slack. Overall, not bad. Now tomorrow's another story...

I don't think I'll have time to play through MYST again before I return the computer...that's too bad, I was hoping to take some more pretty pictures and put them on my desktop.

Usually I'd like to talk to people, except most likely I'm afraid, except when I'm very familiar with them (hmm...two "except"s in one sentence...). Then again, some don't like to talk to me, so I guess that's just fine as well...

There was emergency proctoring for the alternate exam time for the course I TA. It was at 10:30 this morning, and I got the email at around 9:30. I thought, well, since I probably couldn't make it on Saturday's exam time, I might as well go for this one. So I did. Bruce was expecting 20-30 people to show up. 9 did. And another TA showed up as well. So that's 3 students per proctor. Pretty good ratio, Bruce said. Anyway, I mostly just studied for tomorrow's exam. And it's nice to finally see who Matt was, even though we TA the same course... I almost gave him the exam when he came in the door...

So...tomorrow's exam. I'm absolutely not confident about it at all. My memory has been failing. My mathematical skills have deteriorated. I talked to Carlos about it (and it was a long and fun chat, by the way, which included various topics), and I think basically it's not going to be impossible, and everyone's probably going to be in around the same situation, so I shouldn't think too much into that (I hope). On a slightly unrelated note, it's pretty neat to talk to Karel as well.

Crazy scheduling time: Tomorrow -- exam 1-3pm, coworkers meeting 3-5.5pm, preparing for game 5.5-6.5pm, love feast 6.5-9pm. Saturday -- go to Toronto to pick up plane tickets and get a free lunch (woohoo!). Sunday -- morning service 10-12, marking 12-12. Monday -- laundary, get luggage, packing, costco, clear the fridge, pay residence and tuition, prepare for supervisor meeting. Tuesday -- pick up passport 9am, supervisor meeting 11.5am, Aaron's concert in Toronto 8pm. Wednesday -- return to Waterloo and return Aaron's computer 12-2am, traveling to the airport 4.5-6am, flight to Vancouver 7am. And if I can squeeze in a haircut in there, that would be good, too, but I highly doubt it will be done.

Heh...Nick realized a mistake in the exam based on my solutions.

Finalized the questions for Friday's game. It's a lot less than what I prepared for it, and I don't know if it's going to be good or not. I can only pray.

I really don't want to go to Taiwan. It's too late now, of course. Sigh...

So the exam madness is over. I had a good morning with solving some more questions, but then it was a frustrating afternoon trying to figure out two parts of the exam. Just handed it in, with about 2 hours to spare. Yes, essentially, I gave up. Hehehehe...now back to sleep. By the way, when doing things like this exam, it's quite reassuring when you get information that the classmates are doing about the same as you are. So I wasn't too depressed or anything.

Finally got the outstanding TA award plaque today. It looks pretty. Not sure if I'm really courageous enough to put it on display in my office, though..

There was a fantastic thunderstorm this afternoon as well, making it pretty dark in the offices. That should cool things off a bit, I hope.

So...lots of things happened these two days. Yesterday was the usual "try to get as much done as possible for the supervisor meeting" day. The meeting today was good, I think, sort of. It was delayed until 12, which is precisely the time the Nick asked us to pick up the take-home exam, which I did before going into the meeting. Now it's exam madness. At first I was tired, so I went to sleep, which sort of defeats the purpose of getting no sleep at all during take-home exams. Then I was frustrated with the questions. But now I feel better. A little bit. After having solved 3.5 questions out of 6. It's due tomorrow at 5, hope it all goes well...

I have to say, my brain hasn't been functioning well mathematically recently. Case in point, there's a graph that I drew which is supposed to have no labelled cycles, yet there is one right in front of my face that I didn't notice. In any case, there's an error that I found in a paper, but after several months of investigation, it turns out that the "mistake" didn't satisfy the hypothesis of the theorem, hence it's not a mistake after all. And in the most outrageous case, in one of my probabilistic assignments, I wrote down something like e^(ab+c) = (e^a)(e^b)+e^c...yikes...and this elicits the comment "back to junior high!" from Nick...hehe. So in conclusion, I shouldn't work in math.

Apparently I'm still an adolescent, which, well, you can probably tell already.

As expected, I wasted another day. Sigh...

Doing heavy exercise for about 100 seconds and then rest is apparently pretty bad for me.

No, I don't like being alone almost all the time, but now that I have gotten used to it, it's going to take a while before I can have normal contact with people...

I had another one of those depressing moments where I go, what am I doing here? I've lost my friends, I've lost my interest in academia, I've lost my spiritual hunger, I've started the process of torturing myself by agreeing to go to Taiwan, what exactly am I doing here? Anyway, I guess it's pretty common for me to be like this nowadays.

Yeah, I wasted another day.

I think I'm in the process of regression.

So what happens when I decided to waste time? I waste a lot of time. I decided to take yesterday off after Thursday's frenzy. Of course I didn't do anything useful, and felt bad about it. Same thing is happening today, so I'm not happy at all. I simply couldn't get myself going with this research thingie. I've lost interest in it already.

I made a MYST IV CD yesterday, so now I can enjoy the music in my car as well. Nice. Too bad MYST III doesn't fit into the same CD...

All this delay in the Bible game thingie is, on one hand, driving me crazy, and on the other hand, a great test of my patience. I'm hoping that maybe I can sneak a small game in there anyway. Also hoping that maybe I can do one in Taiwan.

Finished the passport application process this morning, but not without more complications. So Mary's cousin signed the guarantor's thing, but one thing she forgot to write was my last name. So we enlisted Ingrid to imitate the writing. It was hard, and definitely visibly different, but the passport office people didn't say anything, so I guess it's fine...for now. Passport office was a bit hard to find, even harder to find was free parking, which I didn't find any, so I had to pay a buck for it. Unfortunately they sort of forced me to take the express option for passport processing, so that cost an extra $30. Had I sent it in two days earlier, I would not have needed to pay the extra cost. Also, had I not mention I need it by August 17, perhaps they would do it pretty fast using regular service anyway, so I didn't need to use express. But, what's done is done, so that's done. Now I'm Taiwan-bound. Let the torturing begin! (Seriously, though, why am I going there just to make 3 people happy while shortening my life expectancy?)

Adventures of my last probabilistic assignment: This is the second main goal of the day. Solving one question. I have reduced this question to getting a lower bound on a double-sum expression that looks pretty complicated. I need a lower bound of (3/4)^n, and all I can get is (2/3)^n, or, through some shady calculations, (2.15/3)^n. Not good enough. Asked Graeme. No help. Nick disappeared. Eventually found Carlos and Karel, and they were talking about the question as well. No help there, either, but at least we shared our frustrations. Eventually Nick showed up (there were some mix-up regarding email delays), and he showed me where my calculations went shady, and offered a strategy for the solution: forget about the double sums and just pick one term from each sum. That term would be sufficient for the lower bound. Well, I tried, and it worked, and was too easy... So this was pretty mind-boggling to me: doing things in a complete way makes them worse, while doing just one thing is good enough. That's the story of probabilistic methods, apparently, and I'm getting out of this industry as quickly as I possibly can. By the way, apparently my use of the term "shady calculations" has caught on to these people...heh. Also, Carlos is so friendly.

It appears that my Bible games will be delayed until two months later. Thus is the story of my game show life, always preparing, never playing.

So...Pastor Henry can't sign, because really, he doesn't know me... So...Francis' mom came through and got Mary's cousin to help out. Hopefully everything will be fine by tomorrow...

Man, Griffin and Bonnar still make me laugh so hard...

I guess when people are in some kind of a romantic relationship, funny stories happen. And apparently that's the case with mesister...hehehe.

Got the passport photos (it was passport photos morning, apparently). No luck finding Pastor Henry, though, even though I think he's in the church, but the door is locked. Going to try again tomorrow. Then again, I wonder if people like Peter, Andrew, and Eugene would count as "professional engineers"...hmm...

Left out the Bible games next Friday in the list of things in the coming week or two. Yeah, that's going to be another tough one.

I managed to lock myself out of my own room last night, even though I didn't lock it...it was blocked by a fallen heavybag...stupid me. Wish I had a slimmer body to slip through the door without much noise. But fortunately, a broom helped moved the thing slightly so that I can barely squeeze in the room and resolve this situation.

So apparently I'm applying for a Canadian passport now. I remember the thing that I dislike the most about the application is the "guaranters" part. It used to require two guaranters, but now it only requires one, so I feel better about it. I'm hoping that Pastor Henry can do it... Another thing I don't like is that I can't use my English name... So anyway, looks like I will grudgingly travel to Taiwan soon.

I really don't like the tingly feelings I get all over my body...something must have gone wrong.

Oh yeah, there's an assignment due Thursday, two exams to write, one to mark, and one supervisor meeting next week. Yikes...