November 30, 2004(Tuesday)

PhD application deadline for Duke and Indiana University is coming up tomorrow. However, two of the references is still very slow and have not completed even one of eight recommendation letters that I want from them. I have emailed them many times to send out many "friendly reminder". The response rate is pretty bad so I tried to call them. I called Dr. Ljiljana from SFU yesterday; she assured me that she will complete the recommendation letter in time. I have called Dr. Soni twice in the last two weeks, the last time being in the wrong time because he had a meeting during that time. I called him again this morning. He seemed to be annoyed and said that I don't have to press him every so often and he assured me that they will be done on time. I know that this will be a possible outcome when I make this phone call. However, since I am very serious about getting the thing done so I have no choice but to make the telephone call. This may be a bad timing to call but I just want to make sure that the stuff get done! Poor me.
Tonight is the combined fellowship between Baptist and MB Chinese youth. This will be an outreach about the "tough question in Christianity". It went pretty good; however, it overran. It partly because most of the people arrived late. This is the normal outreach that we used to do in Baptist Church for many times. Now there are lots of new believers and non-believers in the MB Church so I went to help them out with this program.

November 29, 2004(Monday)

Work is more or less normal (i.e. nothing much to do). I did some IP Expert lab design. That's why I dislike business trip: too many business trips, separate with Carmen and also need to work very hard! At night, Paco and his family came to my house to eat. There are many people that treated me nice and I need to repay them one by one! We talked about the revival meeting for Easter 2005. Carmen and I will be responsible for the part of music. Paco's 5-years-old son "Kin Hey" came and he did not make a mess. However, he still have his mouth with chocolate ice-cream (or other food) while playing around with the cushion. I hope that there will have no ant or cockroach! But I can imagine that it will be very difficult to keep the house clean when we have little children at home. They absolutely make a mess in the house with food!
Originally Semson should come at night so that I can show him how to make the website. However, one of the Chinese youth (Leo) from the Spanish class that accepted Christ several weeks ago had an emergency. Leo practiced music with us on Sunday night and he should be part of the worship team for tomorrow night's outreach. However, Semson told me that he had a problem with breathing and the doctor said that one side of his lung is not responding. There is a lot of air accumulated in the lung (isn't it normal?) and so he needs to do a surgery. The situation is not good. It makes us feel that life is very unstable and short! Don't take life for granted!

November 28, 2004(Sunday)

I went with Carmen to the Chinese Place this morning again so that she can buy her beloved "egg roll". And then we went to Baptist Church for worship and Sunday School. Yanting came to our house so that Carmen talked to her regarding about the Nov 30 outreach. Carmen also tutored her English.
At night, I was working for the IP Expert lab and earning extra money. I love to earn money using my brain rather than using my time or using my physical strength. This is one of the reasons that I want to be a professor.

November 27, 2004(Saturday)

I went to Baptist church for Chinese youth fellowship meeting and then worship department meeting. I am glad that we will have three teams so that I don't have to lead song in Baptist Church every other week.

November 26, 2004(Friday)

I finally completed all PhD application! I completed the last one: U of Penn (I still don't know how to spell the entire name: University of Pennsylvania). However, I am still waiting for my reference to finish the reference letter. Two of my major references are taking their time so I need to wait for them until I have the complete application. I cannot push them or else I will have a bad reference.
I do not have a strong PhD application. My GMAT score is average or slightly below average; my overall GPA is slightly above average (MBA GPA=3.91, M.Eng GPA=3.57, BASc GPA=3.6). I don't think that my reference letter is too strong either. My Statement of Purpose is good from my perspective but I am not sure whether it is really good. Therefore, I am doing other stuff to strengthen my application. I have exchanged almost 1000 emails (sent 600, received 355) with professors and students in many universities. I read 15 papers and gave elaborated response to the "targeted" professors. I tried to email the targeted professor as often as I can (without annoying them) so that I would not only be an application number but also there is something solid behind that. I hope to read more paper for them in the next month and even give them a phone call in order to bring my application alive! This shows how desperate and determined I want to be accepted in a top university.
I went to be bank in the afternoon to deposit cheque and I also assembled a short lab on LRE (Long Range Ethernet) for the course that I will teach two weeks from now. I still don't have an idea what I should teach.
I went home for dinner and went out for a walk with Carmen at night. With wireless internet connection, I am able to sit anywhere at home and write this online diary.

November 25, 2004(Thursday)

I asked my co-worker something about LRE. Therefore, I am more confident when I need to teach that course. Other than that, there is nothing much going on today in work. There is something weird about my US bank account. For some reason, the bank charges me ATM transmission several times (each with about $100) two weeks ago. I never lost the card. When I report it, I have to cancel the card in order to start the investigation. At that time, I was told that I don't need extra money to apply for the new card. I checked the online statement today. They have returned me the money, but not the full amount yet. Also, they said that I have to pay US $21 delivery fee for the new credit card. I am really pissed off at them. I wrote them email as mean as I can to complain this issue. I am burnt with anger (even though it just involves less than $100). It is the principle and the unreliable ness that drove me nuts!
Yanting will have her math final exam tomorrow. Basically she did not really study the whole semester and I am trying to squeeze so much into two days tutoring section. That is not possible! Anyway, I tutored her tonight again.

November 24, 2004(Wednesday)

I worked too hard yesterday. So I got a flu. Therefore, I took a sick leave. This is not the first time that I am sick in Venezuela; however this is the first time that I apply for a sick leave. The bed that we are using now is borrowed from Dr. Chu. In fact, Semson assembled the bed himself. However it was extremely loose and it collapsed last night. Therefore, I tried to fix it today with hammer and nail. I did not hurt my thumb but it still took me a long time. The nail that I was using is from the bed itself and I have to take the nail out from the broken part and re-hammer again. I also tried to assemble the window curtain that I tried a week ago. However, I still cannot screw it on the wall; probably because there is a metal bar on the wall.
I also went out to do short grocery shopping with Carmen. At night, Yanting came to my house and I tutored her with math. She will have her final exam Friday and she is not ready at all. Let's see how much I can do.

November 23, 2004(Tuesday)

It took me a long time to ask for a taxi. After 30 mins wait, I ordered from another taxi company. I also complained to the hotel. At 45mins time, taxi came but the manager was so pissed that he asked the hotel driver to drive me.
This is another day of hard work. I tried to make sure that the hardware works, but still one piece of hardware does not work. In the mean time, I played around with the router config and had some fun. The most troublesome part is to organize all the messy cable.
Desca asked me to teach two one-day courses in the middle of December at Jamaica, even though I told them that I know nothing about the course material. Probably they have confident in my learning skill so I have to teach anyway. I will go to Raleigh for a week in December and then Go to Jamaica for at least two days for the course. How come there is so many traveling lately?
I took flight back to Caracas at night and arrive home at about 12:30. I don't have anything check-in this time. Also, the taxi driver drove fast. Therefore, it only takes 45 mins to get from the flight exit to home.
I also caught a flu this afternoon. Probably because I was working too hard (I rarely worked hard except during business trip) and the hotel room is a bit cold.

November 22, 2004(Monday)

I took morning flight to Miami. The flight is at 9am rather than the usual 7am or 8am. So that I can "only" wake up at 5:30! After a 3 hours flight, I arrived at Miami again. I was there May for training course and Miami also is my honeymoon place. This place has a special meaning to me.
After some food, I went straight to CTT. I talked to CTT people and they emphasize that this is a very important contract with Cisco and I am the core of the team. Therefore, I better do a good job or else I will screw up a lot of business opportunity.
The training lab preparation supposed to be easy. However, life is never meant to be easy. There is some problem with the equipment again. Therefore, I need to troubleshoot the reason and stay late until 9:30pm again. Business trip always is exhausting.

November 21, 2004(Sunday)

Today is the first time that Carmen led songs. She led Porque El Vive (Because He Lives), Es Seńor (He is Lord), My redeemer lives (from SoP), Pon Tus Ojos en Cristo (Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus), Príncipe de Paz (from ACM's Prince of Peace). Her type of songs is slightly different from mine. I lead more ACM's song and she leads more hymns this time. I played guitar and piano. I am always responsible for music worship in Venezuela. However, I know that my music skill, especially piano skill, is bad. Therefore, it is difficult to match up to the standard that Carmen requires. However, I hope that one day I can live up to that requirement.
I led Sunday School and then went home for lunch. We went to MB Church and led the same set of song again. Afterward, MB Church and Baptist Church worship team came to my house for dinner and then practiced music for the Nov 30 program. There is no one playing any music in the MB Church youth fellowship and some of them asked me to teach them guitar. Therefore, I taught Willy and Ricky guitar tonight. These are a group of people without family (just like how I was in Venezuela before marriage). We see this as a ministry: to provide them a feeling of "home". Carmen and I both identify with this mission and we hope to serve that better.

November 20, 2004(Saturday)

The bedroom does not have a curtain. We have borrowed an electric drill from Che So. I tried to drill holes to the wall. But somehow, it does not work. I tried it for an hour. This is the first time that I use an electric drill. I feel that the electric drill is not working properly because it is too hot. And for some reason I think that it takes too long to drill a hole. I tried to drill for about 1 mins (it seems forever) and I can only drill for about 1 cm. Therefore, I guess that I may need to hire some professional to drill for me. I felt quite defeated. I am a person of "high level" because my interest is high level thing like computer networking, program planning and so on. When it comes to the practical stuff, I am not that great.
I went to Baptist church for music practice. I dropped a pick into the electric guitar. When I shake the guitar to let the pick comes up, the mic of the guitar does not work again. I spent the next 30 mins fixing it but I still cannot get that to work. I don't know what to do to return a normal guitar back to Roberto (the guitar owner).
The MB Church music practice was canceled because people cannot make it. Rather, we went with Leo and Kit to walk in the mall and eat dinner.

November 19, 2004(Friday)

I hosted the Boston online tutor section for CME. I tried to call the Raleigh class students but they were not there. I also got some replied from PhD regarding about my application. Basically, I just informed the professors that I have already applied. I am trying to do anything that I can to increase my chance. For example, I sent this email so that the professors remember me when they are reviewing the thousands of application.
Carmen and I went to Che So house for dinner at night. She discussed with Yanting about the Nov 30 outreach and I also taught Yanting Math because she will take her final exam in a week.
My flight schedule for Miami:

Nov. 22 (Mon)	AA 902 Caracas - Miami 09:05 - 11:22
Nov. 23 (Tue)	AA 2133 Miami - Caracas 19:30 - 23:38

It finally happened tonight. After being a person for 30+ years, I finally have to take a step out and kill the first cockroaches in my life. We have been so cautious about the hygienic situation of the house, and believe that there are only yellow ants in the house. But NO!!! Basically, a cockroach somehow fell down (from somewhere) to Carmen's arm. And she cried out for help. And then I saw a cockroach in the washroom lying upside down. Why doesn't it know how to flip back? We were staring at it and I made the decision that I, being the head of household, must kill the cockroaches. I went out and take my slipper and try to kill it. Carmen reminds me that this would make my slipper dirty. Therefore, I went to take some plastic bag and cover my slipper. When I got back, the cockroach was still there lying upside down. I took the courage and use the slipper to slap on it. The process is not that bad. The bad part is as follow. The bottom part exploded. The thing blew apart. It takes a lot of guts to pick up the moving cockroaches (even though the bottom half exploded). Very tough. Now we are all alerted about cockroaches. We should follow Hansel's ZERO TOLERANCE on the house cleanness.

November 18, 2004(Thursday)

I will be teaching bootcamp at Raleigh Dec 6. Previously I only teach at the bootcamp while CTT do all the preparation work. Currently CTT outsource everything to Desca. Therefore, I need to do more stuff. I am in the process of redesigning the lab. In addition, I called the students today and check about their status. I will do the online training after the bootcamp. It will be an end-to-end job for Desca, except we use the name of CTT and CTT will do the sales job for us. Anyway, now my phone can call North America for free. I also can practice more English now.
I need to go to Miami next Monday and Tuesday to check the equipment that I will use for the Raleigh bootcamp. Previously we used online lab but I have complained enough time that they will switch to real equipment. I need to go there to check the equipment and the new lab guide that I design.

November 17, 2004(Wednesday)

I redesign the CVoice lab that I will use for the CTT IPC Express bootcamp class. I am doing a lot of training stuff lately: IPExpert and also this one. I am glad that there may be some overlap so that it would save me some effort.
I am very tired in the afternoon. I had 7.5 hours of sleep at night plus 1 hour of afternoon nap. However, probably because I woke up in the "wrong phase" of my sleep cycle. Therefore, I am tired. More important, it may be due to the fact that I don't have something to pursue nowadays. Therefore, "without vision, man perishes". This is especially true for a purpose-driven / goal-oriented person. Therefore, it may be a good idea to pursue the Voice CCIE, at least, the written exam.

November 16, 2004(Tuesday)

I am not working on my MBA in the next few months. In addition, my CCIE certificate will expire in half a year. Therefore, I am thinking of studying more about VoIP (Voice over IP) technology (the one that I go to teach) so that I can recertify myself and be able to take some benefit of that (e.g. doing some part time work) when I am studying PhD. Let say, I should have the written exam of the Voice CCIE by next March. This should not be too hard. But going for the Voice CCIE lab exam will be a huge commitment and I will see how it goes.
After dinner at church, I led Bible Study. I have gift in teaching; I would rather be a teacher than in a worship team.

November 15, 2004(Monday)

There should be a Call Manager Express online training for the Atlanta group. However, no one showed up at all. Therefore, I was just waiting and surfing the net. There is nothing much happened today; I did some IPExpert lab. I went to buy some burger from the street. However, it rained and I do not have an umbrella. Therefore, I have to wait until the rain got small. However, it takes a long time and there is still heavy rain.
There is a new hired named Daniel working in Desca. He went to Bogota last week for a training course and we shared the room together. He is a good person. At least, he is nice to me and not hostile. Anyway, he will be sitting in my place and I will be moved to another cubicle. Therefore, I did some move this morning.

November 14, 2004(Sunday)

Carmen and I went to Chinese Place before church. I know it for a long time that Chinese Place is a "street market" every Sunday morning. However, I have never gone there because I need to go to church and I don't need to buy any food from the "street market". Carmen would like to visit this place this morning, especially because there is "Ball Law bread" sold there. Therefore, we had a 15 mins visit (transportation was over 30 mins one day!) this morning.
I am the song leader 80% of the time when I attended the church. Let's say if I go to church every week. Then I will go to six Sunday worship a week, 4 at Baptist Church and 2 at MB Church. I will be song leader for 4 of those time. However, I go away quite frequently and I tried to arrange such that I will be song leader when I am in Venezuela. Therefore, it ends up that I am the song leader 80% of the time! And today is one of those times that I can sit back and relax. What makes it more interesting is that, there will be a church General Assembly afterward and Sunday School was canceled. Therefore, I basically don't have to do anything today in church!
I finally confirmed that the microphone works for the home computer. Therefore, I moved the computer from the outside to inside. There is a desk that Che So gave me for a long time. It always filled with ants. Therefore, with the two years of "ant-hatred", I sprayed as many "insect killing" as possible (of course, I did that outside the house). After this piece of furniture is cleansed and moved, our house is more or less settled.
I invited people to come to my house for song practice for Nov 30 combined-youth-fellowship outreach. This is the first time that I invited people to come to my house in Venezuela. My house now is very "ready" - we have wireless internet access (well, none of them have laptop), piano, guitar. This will be a step for our wedding vow - household of faith. We pray that our house will be a gathering place for the brothers and sisters; and to glorify God! Comparing to people here, we are extremely blessed. They only live in a room; they don’t have any music talent or fellowship skill. Therefore, we must use whatever we have to serve God

November 13, 2004(Saturday)

I enjoyed a day of relax and shopping with my wife. She wants to buy some clothes; so we went to Sambil for shopping for about 3 hours. I rarely go to shopping myself and this definitely is a challenge for me. I guess that I have never shopping with her for so long during my 10 years dating life! I brought some books to read during that time. Anyway, it was a good time for us especially because we separated from each other last week due to the business trip.

November 12, 2004(Friday)

I did the Boston QoS class online tutoring session in the morning. There was only one person attended this two hours online session and he was 45 mins late! Therefore, it went relatively smooth. Afterward, I went home for an afternoon nap and enjoyed the old-good-long lunch. There was nothing that I can do for Banco Union until after business hour. After we received the part from Cisco at 3:30pm, the co-worker Leonardo and I went to Banco Union. Previously, Alexander (the technical manager in Colombia) asked me to stay longer; however I refused. I told him that I am just married and then he laughed and let me go. I am not sure whether he has the "evil" smile that would get back to me later, or he really understands.
We arrived Banco Union at 4:30 but the test can't start until 6pm, when people left. We changed a piece of hardware and made test. Our test is to have about 12 concurrent telephone calls and see whether it would crash the router. Usually it would crash when we made the call or hang up the phone. Every time when we tried to make over several phone calls, it crashed. We never able to make 12 phone calls without crashing. After the changing of the new hardware, we got it work finally! To confirm, we tried it second time and it worked as well! I want to show the customer that I care and I want to make sure that it works, so I wanted to try one last time. There was a thing call "Murphy Law" in the company industry. It says that, you can never get thing work when you want to; it only works when you don't want it to work. Also, an extension of this "law" is that, it would work all the way and would crash at the very last minute. I joked about this to my co-worker at that time and they bet that the "law" wouldn't work this time. We tried to make 12 phone calls and it works fine. And then we hanged up the phone one by one. I hanged up the very last call and it crashed! The "evil" "Murphy Law" is at work again! My goodness! That was 7pm and I had to leave for flight! I felt really bad and defeated at that point in time. We had tried so many things and we swapped hardware but the thing still does not work. Damn the Cisco software and Cisco's product sucks big time! (Word coming out from a double CCIE!) I felt really bad for my co-worker Leonardo; he had been working on this for over a week and he worked last weekend on this problem! (He has to go to school too! I guess that he is twice or three times busier than I am!) He tried hard to fix the problem but it just does not come to an end! This will be a long weekend in Colombia and poor Leonardo probably will spend his time with Banco Union!
Speaking about leaving Colombia, I would not know it for sure until I board the plane. Since the problem has not yet been fixed, I am in a huge risk of staying for a longer time. I have heard that it is possible for the company to make a phone call to the airline so that I have to return to work when I am checking in! I am glad that my boss has not yet done this evil thing to me. (I heard that Glenayre, my ex-ex-employer, has done that to some of their senior technical support!)
I took a 1.5 hour flight back to Venezuela and arrived home at about 1:30am!

November 11, 2004(Thursday)

Even though it does not look like it, the Banco Union problem is still pointing to a hardware failure, as suggested by the Cisco TAC engineer. Therefore, we are waiting for Cisco to send a new hardware to us. In the mean time, there is nothing much that I can do. That means, I can do some personal stuff. Also, I am finally catching up to my sleep. I went to bed at 11pm last night and wake up 8 am today; I also have an hour afternoon nap too!
The area that I am in is a very high class area. As I was buying lunch from a high class restaurant, I saw the waiter is trying to "move" a 6 years old girl away from the restaurant. At first, I thought that they were playing games. However, as I (and other people) was observing, we saw that the girl was really serious about staying inside the restaurant while the waiter, although he was smiling, tried to move her out. Life is so sad. I have luxury food while this poor girl has nothing. I almost wanted to gave my "take out" lunch to her, but I just donate her Colombia $5000 (about Cdn $3).
We had a new piece of hardware to test for the customer site. However, the test must be done after 5:30pm. Thing definitely was bad. My boss needs that to fix ASAP. The TAC engineer has to leave at about 6:45. The other Desca employee that works with me has to leave by then too to go to school. That means, I am all by myself with the customer. I don't know much about the entire setup. Even if I do, this is still beyond me. I pushed extremely hard for each of them to stay longer and be more productive. However, it still cannot be fixed. We cannot test that during day time because it would interrupt the service. And I will have a flight tomorrow night back to Venezuela. My nightmare is that I have to stay for extra long time to fix the problem. I will be really pissed if I have to do that. But the hope of fixing that by tomorrow is very small. I am stressed and I am confused. I can spend a longer time to work tonight but then no one can work with me. I am so poor ;(
Originally I thought that tonight will be short because there is not much test and also no one to stay with me. I only installed the new Cisco IOS image and tested it. However, the process took quite some time. After we finished the test that I thought, my co-worker Leonardo is already backed here from school. He was supposed to be junior and I am supposed to be the senior guy and asked him what to do. However, obviously that he knows much more than I do (actually, I don't expect myself to know anything in the beginning anyway) and then he was examining the debug output. And then we tried to reset the router and did it again several times. Each time the router took 15 mins to reset! Therefore, we spent there until 11:20pm waiting for Leonardo to check the output and also resetting the router. I have no mood to do anything productive (e.g. checking the IP Expert lab). Anyway, this long night certainly satisfy my desire to work on the problem. I just hope that I don't have to stay for any time longer. All of the restaurants (including delivering service) were closed by 10pm so we did not have dinner. Gladly I ate my lunch really late so that I don't feel hungry at all.

November 10, 2004(Wednesday)

I worked on the IP Expert scenario again for about 4 to 5 hours today. In terms of the Banco Union problem, there is nothing much that we can do. The Cisco TAC engineer does not know how to solve it. We have escalated that to the Development Engineer and are waiting for their feedback. I hope that my boss understand that there is nothing much that I can do. Even if they don't understand (or even use a gun pointing to my head), there is nothing much that I can do. It is very unlikely that a solution would arise this week. My hope is that I don't have to stay here for any longer to attend this problem.
I went to Banco Union for a short meeting with the customer. And then I went back to Desca to continue work on the IP Expert lab scenario. Usually for a business trip, there is nothing to do at night. Therefore, I can get quite productive in other thing.

November 09, 2004(Tuesday)

I woke up at 3:30 and left home at 4:30. I arrived at the airport at 5 and took the flight to Colombia Bogota at 7. After 1.5 hours of flight, I arrived Bogota at local time 7:30am. Every time when I wake up early for flight, I feel that I have an iron-like determination and extreme discipline.
After picking up the apartment key from Desca office, I went back to the apartment to settle down. The apartment has three rooms and there are currently three other people occupying the apartment. That means, I have to share room with one other person. I heard that his name is called Daniel. Probably I should work as late as I can so that I don't have to go home and see these people. I also went to buy coffee first thing. I love the "Juan Jaldez" brand Colombia coffee "cold Maltea coffee". I like this even more than chocolate milk!
I spent the afternoon and evening (3pm to 9pm) troubleshooting the problem for Banco Union. Actually, I did not do anything. It is the TAC engineer that does the work. It is because the problem is related to a bug in the Cisco software. There is nothing much that I can do other than hoping the Cisco development team has some fix for us.
Later when I talked to the customer, I find out the seriousness of this problem. Banco Union has purchased a lot of services from Desca. This IP Telephony project (total US $500k) is the largest and there will be more to come. However, because of the problem that they are having for this project, the image of Desca (especially the technical knowledge) was really dented in front of the customer. Jorge (Desca's owner, the biggest boss) even asked the customer that whether he needs to travel to Colombia tomorrow to talk to the president of the Banco Union! In order to save face, Desca asked me, a double CCIE (that does not know a thing about IP Telephony) to solve the problem! If I can get that work, I will have a strong image in Desca. If I can't get that work (actually, it is the Cisco development team, not me), then probably I have to stay here for a longer time in order to fix the problem (that means, Carmen has to stay by herself for a longer time). So let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst!
I guess that part of my advantage (other than being CCIE) is my "pushy" project management skill. When I am needed (i.e. pushed by my boss), I always push the TAC engineer VERY HARD so that they can fix the problem immediately. Usually being pushy is bad. But I guess that this work for me this time. (But I strongly believe that the Cisco TAC engineer will hate me)
I have applied for a part time job previously. It is with a Cisco training company called IP Expert. My job is to write scenario for them and I get paid for each scenario that I wrote. I started to do some work at night.

November 08, 2004(Monday)

There is an IP Telephony problem in Colombia. I was told that I need to go there tomorrow to Friday. I do not know much about IP Telephony but since I am a double CCIE, I have to go there, as a "marketing" thing. Previously I have no problem with going for a business trip, especially because I have nothing much scheduled for the next few days. However, after Carmen is here, I am not willing at all. I don't want to leave her behind in Venezuela. However, this is work and I have to do it. Let's hope that the trip will indeed end at Friday so that I can return that day. Here is the schedule.

Nov. 9 (Tue)	AV 79 Caracas - Bogota 07:00 - 07:50
Nov. 12 (Fri)	AV 78 Bogota - Caracas 21:30 - 00:20

November 07, 2004(Sunday)

Today is a long church day. I am the worship leader today in both churches. I led the following songs: Deben Alabar a Jehová (from SoP), I love prayer, Love is not reserved, Dios Escucha Mi Oración, Brilla Jesús. In addition, I taught Sunday School. Carmen did not join the Sunday School because she has to go home to prepare some snack for the MB Church this afternoon.
I went to MB Church to lead the same song. In addition, we had a sharing about our love life and Carmen sang a song while I played piano. There are several new believers today and some of them converted to Christian. At night, we had a meeting with two church Chinese fellowship's youth group to discuss about the Nov 30 outreach night.

November 06, 2004(Saturday)

I went to Parque del Este to run with Carmen. And then we went to Che So's house for lunch. In addition, we brought a lot of dirty clothes there to wash. We have a laundry machine here but it does not work. So we have to ask Che So for help again. We also practice music for tomorrow's singspiration.
We went to MB Church for music practice again. Since they were playing ping pong, I played with them as well. Afterward, we went with a lot of new MB Chinese youth (most of them non-believer) to have dinner and karaoke because Dr. Chu will go back to China for a month tomorrow. A lot of people smoked inside that room. The karaoke songs are very loud and people sang terrible. It was a life experience for us because of this "low quality" enjoyment. Oh well, at least, we can experience what the Chinese enjoy here.

November 05, 2004(Friday)

I had the online training for the Atlanta QoS course. There was only one person showed up so it ended pretty quickly. I also went to the bank to deposit the US dollar and had hair cut in the afternoon. Kum Fung came after work to help me to reinstall Window XP (previously had Window 2003 server) in the new computer. I spent the whole night to install software. I hope to know how to reformat the whole operating system so that in the future I can reformat anytime.

November 04, 2004(Thursday)

I was told today that I may have to go to Colombia next week for some work stuff. Also, for the training, I may need to go to Miami for several days in order to test the equipment (we will do physical equipment instead of remote lab for CVoice). Therefore, I may have to leave Carmen behind for several days, which is not good. Previously I have no problem to do so because I am by myself in Venezuela. However, now I don't want to leave Carmen behind. I hope that it won't happen.
Since there is a new computer, I went home to download the necessary software. In addition, I brought my laptop home so that I can have a Local Area Network. This is something that I do all the time in work, but I don't get to play around much at home. Finally, I have internet connection at home! The stressful Monday morning would not exist anymore because I can check email during the weekend!

November 03, 2004(Wednesday)

I did the online discussion forum for the Boston CVoice class today from 10 to noon. And then I went to take the Cisco Certified System Instructor (CCSI) exam in the afternoon. I am supposed to have this certificate long before I start to teach any course. I did not really study for this test at all. I received the material this Monday. I did not bother to read the whole thing. I only need to do presentation on two chapters so I only focused on that two chapters only. The material is based on the most basic Cisco course and I know the material well enough. In addition, I always have talent at teaching or presenting. I have quite a lot of confident. Originally it is a two days exam with some lap component. However, since I am a CCIE, they waived the lab section. The two presentations that I did were smooth and the instructor was impressed with what I did. He repeated several time that he was impressed.
Carmen and I went to Michelle and also Paco's house to pick up grocery. Ah Men also came to our house to install the internet connection during lunch time. I also assembled the computer and also computer table today. Therefore, more or less our house is settled.

November 02, 2004(Tuesday)

After about a year of preparation (mentally, spiritually and also in terms of the application papers), I finally finished the application for Stanford. It was such a relieve. Now, I only leave with U of Penn. (I will not apply Michigan because it requires ESL to take TOEFL even though I have a degree from Canada). I checked back to the PhD program in Queens, Western Ontario (both of which are top in Canada) and HKU. I am amazed at how much my expectation on myself has grown! Previously, Stanford and MIT are only dreams. Now, I really wish to get into universities of this level! Let see what happen April 2005!
After dinner at church, Carmen and Kitty hosted the game night. I am glad that Carmen can host the game night so that I can get some time to enjoy the fellowship too! This is the day that I have been waiting for a long time.

November 01, 2004(Monday)

I went to work from my new house. It was about 1 minute’s additional distance away. I checked the Stanford and NYU written questions today. I also studied briefly for the CCSI (Certified Cisco Systems Instructor) exam today. Carmen and I did a lot of house work today too.
We went out for dinner and then continue to clean up the house. The laundry machine does not work so we have to wait till someone to fix it. Victor and Michelle from MB church also brought a lot of household thing for us.