Pi in the Sky

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:02:00 +0000

After 6.5 years of blogging on blogger, Blogger has moved on, and so I will have to move on as well. It's sad, but I guess I'll embrace Wordpress for now. I'll move this to a new location soon, and will post the link here as the final post. Pity that I couldn't get to the 2000-post celebration (this is the 1906th post)...oh well. And now, two more useless thoughts...

Ok, so I'm ignoring the check engine light on my car.

Don't feel like applying for jobs at all...

Lecture 13

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:48:00 +0000

I had a boring lecture. It's not bad, it's just that I didn't feel like teaching at all. I really don't know why. I like this projection stuff, but I always have a hard time conveying its great points.

Seen a draft of the first test, and it could potentially be nasty...heh. For some strange reason, I end up being responsible for about 60% of the marks for the current draft...yikes.

Yay for possible teaching again next term...?

Lecture 12

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:12:00 +0000

There were so few people in class at the beginning of the lecture that I was starting to wonder if I should start the class at all... Eventually I did, of course, and slowly but surely people started trickle in. While I was preparing for this projection lecture, I was really not satisfied with how the text arbitrarily define what a projection is and then go on to prove things about it. So I went the other way and defined orthogonal complement first, then tell them results about orthogonal complements which naturally led to the definition of the projection. I thought that was pretty clever, but apparently I wasn't good with the presentation so the reaction had been minimal...heh. Oh well, need to prepare better next class.

I really should ask for feedback on my lecturing style soon... I'm still not sure if I'm doing ok.

I'm living on the edge...I never know what I'm going to teach the next class!

Lecture 11

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:52:00 +0000

Slightly late to class today. Had a light plan for this class, so it all went ok, except for a few miscalculations, and trying to get the class to prove a simple result which ended up too complicated. I had 10 minutes left at the end to hand out assignments, which was good. Still don't know a lot of names, though, but I'm learning.

It was funny when Michael got his assignment back with a perfect score, and he said "this is crap! because my proofs are crap!" Heee...

Now that the material is getting more straightforward, fewer people are getting help. Which is good?

Lectures 9 & 10

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 04:20:00 +0000

Lectures are going on just fine. It just feels a bit...boring. I don't know what I did right, what I did wrong, and I just keep on doing what I do without knowing whether it's good or bad. Handed back the assignments on Friday, which was slightly chaotic. Monday's curse was broken, and it wasn't too bad, but I can't believe I didn't think of a quick illustration for my big picture. Anyway, just a bunch of blahs.

Now the scary part...coming up with exam questions on materials unfamiliar to me or difficult to formulate question.

Heh at David who asked me about group theory which I totally forgot about.

Life outside the lectures

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:39:00 +0000

Life still goes on despite the intensity of the lectures. A few things come to mind that's worth noting. I almost had a panic attack two days ago. Why? Well, a student informed me that my @uwaterloo.ca redirect email address was not working. I checked, and indeed it wasn't working! This sets off all sorts of panic in me since I used this email address on all of my job applications! Several trips to the mfcf office later, it was finally resolved. As it turns out, my account had somehow expired, and it might not have been working for about four months... This is pretty depressing news. On the bright side, though, I'm very thankful that the student came in during lunch hour to ask for help and tell me about this information. This would not have happened had I went out for lunch in the first place, which didn't happen since I was not hungry, which was because I had a late breakfast, and the lateness was because Roger wanted to go to work late! So as much as I was depressed by the bad news, I'm also very grateful for the good news.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally made the decision to leave the fellowship coworkers committee. It was a long time coming, and I felt that given my age (i.e. not youthful anymore) and problems, it is the right thing to do. Of course, secretly I just feel that I was disappointed in the committee and thinking about the fellowship brings too much pain, so I would rather not continue in this painful state. I was considering withdrawing from the fellowship completely, but for the sake of many friends and new believers, I'm sticking with it for now. I really shouldn't criticize the fellowship, but I've had enough of it for now.

I have been very tired lately. More than usual. I haven't experienced this much voluntary yawning for a long time. Maybe it's just the lack of exercise. I don't know.

Lecture 8

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:14:00 +0000

Ah...a Wednesday lecture, so it must be better... And I think it was indeed better than Monday's lecture. Prepared well enough that I could explain things. The material is a bit dry, though, so I'm not sure how much the students learned. I saw one person just sleeping in his seat...but I guess the good news is it's just that one person. And now I'm panicking, since I don't have anything prepared for future lectures... Oh well. I did start the lecture by telling them my real email, and they seem to like it...heh. Now they know my birthday, though...

Monday's office hour was crazy... One by one, people came an hour before it started, and remained almost an hour past its finishing time. Of course, in the middle, nobody came. So maybe I set up the wrong time. Awkward moment: two female Chinese students came in and started talking to me in Mandarin. I've never advertised that I can speak Mandarin, and I can't explain math in Mandarin, so I just awkwardly responded their questions in English...I don't know what else to do.

Met Durgesh the TA, whom I missed his office visit before class by a couple of minutes. Decent guy, doing CM now, but wanting to do business degree for PhD. We talked various topics like the combination lock, job market, and the geography bee...heh.

Lecture 7

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:36:00 +0000

I think I have a conclusion: Mondays are bad for lectures. I had another bad lecture today, and it wasn't even close. I think the reason is that I got complacent with the materials that were prepared for last Friday, so I didn't go through it to make sure that I can explain clearly. Also, I guess I just didn't spend enough time when preparing isomorphism stuff, so it came out pretty badly. So yeah, I really need to spend a lot more time with the prep work Sunday nights, which I didn't get last night.

I'm really on edge now, since I'm going to be teaching things I haven't learned properly yet...

I have never really given a reasonable explanation for changing the coordinates...

Lecture 6

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:13:00 +0000

This lecture is about change of basis. But, it has great potential to be confusing. In fact, I was so confused during lecture prep that I almost cried. Thankfully, it went well. I think. Didn't get to go through everything I wanted, but I think I explained it the best that I can. Drawing diagrams helped, maybe. The thing is, I'm really not sure how well I'm doing with these lectures...it could be entirely possible that I made no sense at all, or there's something that I do that's very annoying. Or I might be doing very well. Anyway, it shouldn't be that bad....

I'm behind schedule again...by about 1.5 lectures.

Essentially two people come to my office hours, and I want to (metaphorically) kill one of them. So that's a 50% rate...which is bad. Yeah, Jason keeps on asking the same questions over and over again, and I basically lost my patience. And he came before office hour started, left and came back to stay past my office hour, and asked questions after lectures anyway. No, there is no algorithm for proving things!!! At least the other guy Peter is better, and keeps my sanity intact...heh.

Lecture 5

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:23:00 +0000

I thought that went well. It was pretty tough to prepare for this lecture, though. I had too many things to sort through, and eventually got a lesson plan that might have actually worked. I didn't fluster all lecture long, which is surprising. Even more surprising is that although I had 3 pages of typed notes, I finished 5 minutes ahead of schedule! Ok, I guess I should have prepared more then...heh. So at least now I'm not too far behind.

The real interesting story came after the lecture. The background is the during the lecture I asked them why is it that the coordinates of a vector with respect to a basis is unique. The normal answer came out quickly, but in addition, this guy who had been sitting in the front row every lecture (whom now I know is Michael) came up with the other proof that I had in mind (which I wasn't planning to talk about). This proof involves knowing something about the translation of the nullspace. This little sidebar blew up after the lecture. Two people came up to ask about this alternate proof. One got it soon after Michael and I tag-teamed the explanation. The other guy (whom now I know is Jason, who came to me for a ton of extra help previously) just didn't get it. We eventually moved on to the physics study room, where Michael and I were struggling to convince a (former) engineer this concept. I almost lost my patience. At the end, Jason seemed to understand it, and I wanted to end there before he start to doubt himself again. I left soon after, leaving Jason and Michael to discuss other problems.

Got the page of watcard photos of my students today. Still missing some of the late registrants, but whatever. I'm going to have a late start to this knowing students and their names thing. At least I had a good start with 2 names (with 1 other possibility).

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:16:00 +0000

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 373214

Yay wbcoopament!

Boo probably will lose them all.

Lecture 4

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:31:00 +0000

It went fine for the first 40 minutes until I realized that I had only 10 minutes left to do one big proof. So of course I rushed through the big proof, making a fool out of myself. I think I write smaller on the board in this room, probably because I didn't want to make that squeaky noise... Anyway, this is it for all the things I know, now onto teaching things that I don't know...

Lots of people showed up in the office hours. It is a hard assignment, I guess. And, as one student said, it is at a much higher level than the first linear algebra course. Also, asking engineers to do proofs is a tough task.

Hopefully this will be the last bad lecture for the term. Not looking good for it, though.

Lecture 3

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:20:00 +0000

Well, that was a horrible lecture. I was quite a bit behind on schedule, so I was rushing through a lot of materials. At the same time, I really don't know how to rush things along, so I ran out of time at the end. I explained badly a student question, and I asked the wrong question to the students (went one step ahead of myself). It felt like I was running out of breath all the time, speaking so quickly! Horrible...oh well, next time, it should be better, even though I'm still one lecture behind. I guess this is the price to pay during multi-sectional courses...I can't make up my own schedule.

A few more signatures this time...so I guess the class list will go up again. Still no photo page, though, so I have not learned any of their names.

Nobody came to my office hour today...

Lecture 2

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:12:00 +0000

It went much better, but now I'm horribly behind. I do have a group of responsive students, and had success in student interaction. But maybe I went too slowly...only go as far as the rowspace (and not even finished it) when I planned to do columnspace and nullspace as well. Hopefully things will pick up quickly.

After class, got a bunch of students clamouring for my attention. Most of them just want signatures to get them into class, which is quick. One girl demanded to know answers to her questions without thinking through them herself, which was annoying. One guy asked questions about assignment 0, and eventually took almost an hour to finish. But that's good, though, at least he's willing to learn about the processes in linear algebra. He found me today again while I was sleeping in my office...oops.

The squeaky blackboard thing is still very annoying. I fixed the bad statement from last time, and added that I checked quest and found two people dropped the course already...oops.

Lecture 1

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:28:00 +0000

I got sick, so it was a bad start. I was also pretty shaky at the beginning, but then got the things rolling after a while. First, let me complain about the classroom. It was hot in there. The blackboard space is too small. I bumped into things at the edge a few times. The projector was positioned so that I couldn't use both the projector and the blackboard space. But most importantly, it's a squeaky blackboard! Every time I write it produces this very annoying squeaky sound! I don't think I can survive it...

Lecturewise, I really couldn't decide on what I want to teach. Eventually just review some of the more interesting things about systems of linear equations, touched on nullspace, rowspace, and columnspace, and give a little preview on overdetermined systems. Tried to make something work on matlab, but apparently it's too small on the screen. I did make one mistake in randomly saying "if you're afraid of vector spaces, you shouldn't take this class"... Hopefully nobody took it seriously. Need to fix that next time.

Students were responsive, generally, with some in front nodding their heads constantly, so I guess that's a good sign. There's this one guy that I think I've seen before, but I just don't know who he is.

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 03:26:00 +0000

With about 90 minutes left in 2009, I guess I should do a reflection on the year of some sort. But I don't think I can come up with something remotely comprehensive within this short timeframe, so I'll just write down whatever comes to mind, in very brief form. Putting conclusion at the start, I have to thank God for everything that happened, good and bad.

Events... (1) Travels: 2 trips to Taiwan, 1 trip to Saskatoon, 1 trip to Vancouver, and 1 incredibly eventful year-end trip to Chicago. (2) Teaching: had a great time with teaching 239. (3) Jobs: Current postdoc job is just bizarre, and searching for future jobs is painful. (4) Housing: A year at Ed and Ingrid's place was...awkward, and the search to buy a house was a bust. (5) Games: getting addicted to 2-7 triple draw, dwindling of boardgaming events, and had a great time organizing an amazing race.

Thoughts... (1) Getting old: approaching 30, and feeling like my life has been wasted. (2) Spiritual depression: being disappointed in myself and the fellowship, and slowly regressing. (3) The future: a sense of despair in what's going to come. (4) Materialism: being surrounded by materialistic people affects my thinking on money and "stuff." (5) Detachment: starting to have more and more of the "don't care" thoughts toward many (perhaps important) things.

Blogging from Chicago!

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:35:00 +0000

Roger finally bite his tongue and paid $5 for the internet access, so I get to make a blog post from a new city! It has been a very interesting "ride" to Chicago, and the anticipated trip back to Waterloo could be interesting as well. The conference itself makes me feel pretty bad...need a ton of time for reflection when I get home. But...linear algebra course is coming up very quickly, and that worries me a bit... Oh well...

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 04:36:00 +0000

Somehow I suddenly become this bitter, cynical, indifferent person. Ironic (or fitting) that I would find this during Christmas season. Also ironic (or fitting) that I would be heading off to the Chinese Christian Conference with this coldness.

Christmas Eve: I was alone in the house in the morning. Bored in the afternoon. Decided to go out shopping like an idiot. Bought Formula D the boardgame, inflatable bed, and oreo ice cream. Went to Yen's place to play Formula D in the evening (although at one point it seemed that there would be no evening activities). I lost both times.

Christmas Day: Woke up, had breakfast, then wasted time. Picked up Lucas and Brian (a one-hour detour) for church evening event. Laughed at the fellowship skit. Bored most of the time. Packed up for the trip. Raining all day.

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:20:00 +0000

It's Christmas Eve. I feel...indifferent? Or just sad, I guess. Really, when everyone else is just doing their own thing, and I'm being left alone, it just doesn't feel right. Of course if I don't care about all this Christmas stuff, then it doesn't make any difference. The world doesn't care much for it except for the money. The church doesn't make it anything super special. The absurdities of what goes on around this time of year are getting increasingly difficult to ignore. I just have this hopeless feeling about it all.

A few short updates: Switzerland trip is a bust, and it's so sad. Turns out the course I'm teaching next term is very different from what I thought it was, which is shocking. I stopped applying for jobs, due to procrastination on the deadlines. I'm gaining too much weight now, it's scary.

End on a positive note? Well, there is this pocket-size Bible that I had for about 10 years. When I flew from Tokyo to Toronto, I accidentally left it on the plane but didn't know it until a couple of days later. I called the AC luggage centre, but wasn't really expecting to get it back. Little do I know, just a couple of weeks later, they found it, sent it back to me, and I now have it on my desk. This Bible has been through a lot...being lost many many times (once was lost in Saskatoon and didn't get back to me until a year later!), but every time it comes back to me. It's a pretty special Bible, and holds great sentimental values. So, let that be a slightly heart-warming story to end this Christmas Eve post.

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:13:00 +0000

The car is going to hit 100K today. That's a huge milestone. I drove this car as far north as Algonquin Park, as far east as Montreal, as far south as Pittsburgh, and as far west as...London? That's anticlimactic... Anyway, the car has served well. Maybe it's time to retire...heh.

The travel planning saga continues...where my family wants to come to Switzerland as well! But...they have to find plane tickets first, and it isn't easy during the Chinese New Year period. Meanwhile, there was another plane ticket scramble where Gary suddenly decided to go to Taiwan this Saturday with his girlfriend! Long story short, the total cost is about $5500...which is less than the cost of one ticket that is found by the travel agent.

Still not doing anything that I'm "supposed" to do...

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:57:00 +0000

Wasting my life, that's what I've been doing. I'm supposed to be applying for jobs, but I just couldn't do it. Instead, I spend my time doing nothing of any importance. And that's how I get depressed for wasting my life as I'm getting closer and closer to being three decades old.

Contemplating a trip to Switzerland during reading week Feb 12-21. The cost is reasonable, but I just couldn't find anyone who is willing to go with me. I guess the moment the cost of the plane ticket goes up is the moment when I'll give up on this trip idea.

First major winter storm last night, and this morning I showed how unfit my body was by being tired after shoveling the short strip of driveway behind my car. Granted, these are pretty heavy snow, but still...didn't do much. And that's just the start of winter...

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:06:00 +0000

My two-week stay in Taiwan has expired. It felt more relaxed this time, as I didn't even travel beyond Taipei. Initially I didn't know why I was here, other than that the plane ticket is cheap and I can do this. Then I had a pain in my tooth, and I had hearing loss. Ended up getting a wisdom tooth removed and having a ton of things sucked out of my ears! So I guess that's why I got here...all part of God's plans, of course, except I didn't know ahead of time. Thank God for this, and the trip was not wasted.

I think I'm getting used to the idea of spending time with my family. We've met at least 4 times this year, and that's way more than usual. What it does is removing the awkwardness and unfamiliarity out of being with family, and make it ok. Sort of. So that's another good thing.

Thinking ahead to my return to Waterloo...I have to say I'm not entirely looking forward to going back. I still don't like to stay in Taiwan, but at the same time I will miss some things that won't happen in Waterloo, like wearing t-shirts and shorts at home, and getting easy access to cheap food. Also I will go back to dealing with the church, fellowship, school, job application, all those things that could depress me quickly. So...I don't know. Oh well. At the very least, the travel between the two places should be good...got confirmed upgrade for NRT --> YYZ!

Removing a wisdom tooth. Part II: Reflection on physical pain

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:10:00 +0000

I've described my painful experience in my last post (the one below this). Now some reflections on physical pain. (1) I have very low tolerance for physical pain. Even though (thankfully) the pain I experienced was over in less than a day, I was exploding during the entire thing. I take comfort for granted, so whenever I'm in some pain or I'm sick, I have a very difficult time in enduring it. I can see how this could strengthen a person's faith in God, as you could think of anything else but ask help from God. But for me, the experience made me feel so distant from God...I don't know why.

(2) I cannot fully sympathize with another person's suffering. While I'm experiencing the pain, sure my family would comfort me and stuff, but I was like, you're not experiencing this...you have no idea how painful this is, even if you have experienced it before. So on the flip side, I don't think I can be entirely understand and sympathize when another one is in pain. This makes me a bit sad, actually. Of course I want to make you feel better, but I cannot offer anything but empty words, and these don't help much at all.

(3) The pain that Jesus Christ endured on the cross, that is so unfathomable. I really cannot imagine what He went through. It must be infinitely worse than what I've been through, yet I complained the moment it happened. I really need to think more about this and put this into a better perspective in my daily Christian life. Somebody once asked me, if I was told that I could save the human race by going on the cross, wouldn't I be happy to do it? This is coming from a skeptic, of course, but I can definitely answer a resounding "no" to it... What Jesus did is far more than I can imagine and endure. And to do it obediently...that's just impossible for a human.

Removing a wisdom tooth. Part I: The experience

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:46:00 +0000

It all started as an innocent trip to Taiwan, but the experience is unforgettable. A couple of days after I got here, the leftmost area of my teeth was in pain. Specifically, the area just above the lower wisdom tooth was painful whenever I eat something. In addition, I get this intermittent sharp pain in my left head. I thought sure enough, this happened before, it would go away in a couple of days. That didn't happen. Come this Monday, my mom got me into a dentist appointment to look at it (the dentist had a full schedule, but I squeezed in somehow). Turns out that my upper wisdom tooth bit on the wall around the lower wisdom tooth, and it got infected. The suggestion: remove the wisdom teeth. This came up ten years ago at the same place, where the other dentist then did not want to remove them for me because of possible danger. But now it appears it is impossible to avoid it now...but because of the awkward way that my wisdom teeth have grown, it requires a specialist to do it. But since it would take a week to recover and my flight out is in a week and two days, it is essential to have it done on Tuesday. But of course the specialist's schedule is full, but somehow I managed to squeeze into the schedule and after an x-ray check up, I was indeed scheduled to have my two left wisdom teeth removed on Tuesday.

I was calm and collected going into the dental specialist's office, ready for the removal. Or so I thought. I was actually a little bit nervous, but the fact that this surgery is taking place didn't sink in until the anesthetics drugged half my mouth. I was a bit woozy, but I was assured that I wouldn't feel any pain, even though I would know what the dentist was doing. After some anticipation, the surgery started. A piece of cloth with the mouth area open was put on my face, so I couldn't see the dentist and the nurse, but I could certainly hear them and feel what they were doing. What followed was a violent mix of cutting, drilling and pulling of my tooth. The nurse kept saying "you'll feel some pressure" and then the dentist would cut in with a lot of force and then try to pull it out. I could feel that he was struggling to get it out. Even though I was promised I would feel no pain, I did feel some pain during the surgery. I tried to endure it rather than asking them to stop and slow the progress, and of course eventually the news that the tooth was out was very welcomed by me. I was so tense by then. Whenever I think back to the procedure, I feel all squeamish and uncomfortable...like right now. The sewing up of the wounds was ok. After it was done, the dentist decided that he would not take out the upper wisdom tooth, for fear that it might be too difficult and take too much time. So I was certainly very relieved...little did I know, it wasn't over yet.

The nurse put a cotton cloth in the area where my tooth used to be in. After explaining what I should be doing (lots of things), we left. This was also when an extraordinary pain started. Biting on the cloth caused this continuous pain that, while not extremely painful, it hurt enough that I just wanted to get that thing out as quickly as possible. I couldn't describe how it felt...but I couldn't take it. I couldn't distract myself so I don't feel the pain. Every second felt excruciatingly long, and I had to keep that thing in for 3 hours. I used an ice thing to soothe the pain, but it was only temporary 10-second relief every time. I was very depressed, and couldn't stay still. Eventually, of course, time came to get it out, and indeed it felt slightly better. But still the pain lingers on, and I was struggling to find a reason to live. I ended up just staying in bed for the night, but I couldn't sleep much since I had to take medicine every 4 hours. Thankfully, by the time I finally woke up in the morning, the pain is mostly gone. And I thank God for the quick dissipation of the pain. My mom says the painkiller medicine that I took worked quickly since I rarely take any medicine at all. Maybe that's true... But yeah, that was such an incredible experience. I'm still shaking my head as to what I went through. Now...some reflections on my next post (which would be the post on top of this).

noreply@blogger.com (martin) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:23:00 +0000

Blogging from the United lounge at rainy Narita, using this extremely slow internet! I didn't upgrade the YYZ-->NRT flight, but I was given an emergency row window seat with super comfy leg room and headrest! Too bad I didn't sleep much. It was a day-flight anyway, so no need to sleep, I guess. But whenever I start to try sleeping, small turbulences would occur. So, it was all in vain anyway. The 13+ hours in flight is definitely very tilting, though. I've done a lot of things, and then realized it's only been 4 hours... Definitely not good for the mental health.

Only have 2 hours at Narita, so couldn't do the original plan of getting out and shop thing. But I did do the standard shopping inside gate area, spent a lot of my Yens, and got lost! I didn't know it was possible, but seems like I made a lot of wrong turns. Oh well. At least now I can relax a little.

The lounge is so crowded, and very little food...which is too bad, because I'm hungry. Good oolong tea, though. Ok, let's see if this slow internet lets me post this... (Looks like it does.)