January 31, 2006(Tuesday)

It is tiring for going to class early, at 9:30. I woke up at 7 and then I slept after devotion. And then, after the class, I slept again. I don't love to sleep but I need sleeping. I also talked to prof about the PhD project, which I am lacking the motivation because it is not going anywhere.
Qiao and Elaine went to our house for dinner at night. I showed them the gym and the business building that I always go to. They will probably return to Venezuela this Sunday so it is good to let them come to our place again.

January 30, 2006(Monday)

Today is dad's 60th birthday according to Chinese calendar. Happy Birthday!
I stayed home and catch up on the homework today. I fall asleep easily when I am reading book. The PhD Seminar course (about Inventory management this term) is quite confusing. There is some algorithm and concepts that I need to understand. I don't think that I am doing a good job in that sense so I can quite confused in the homework. I guess that I need to check with my peers and see how they are doing.
I went to gym to do exercise today. I guess that after without running in the treadmill for a week, I need some times to pick up the speed again. So I am very tired after the run.

January 29, 2006(Sunday)

Starting next week, there will have a Chinese (Mandarin) worship every week. Therefore, today will be the last day that we go to English service. Afterward, we went to have lunch with Shangmin, Tanyue and Jimmy to celebrate Chinese New Year. We went home and then we had a practice for Xinlei/Xiaohu's wedding. Carmen helps out in the choir and I am cleaning up. And then we went to prayer meeting and shared about our salvation testimony. It is not usual to be able to born in a Christian family and I thank God for that because it saves me a lot of time. And afterward, they have not had dinner yet so they went to our house to have hot pot as dinner. We spent most of the day with brothers and sisters because this is the best way to celebrate New Year when our relatives are not here.

January 28, 2006(Saturday)

I slept at almost 2am last night so that I can be very tired today. I arrived to the airport at 10 and took 2.5 hours flight from Miami to Indiana and then another 1 hour shuttle bus to Bloomington. I slept during almost all the time.
I arrived home at 4:30. And then we went to Elaine and Qiao's home for dinner. I have not seen little Elison for a week and now he is much bigger! I am really happy for them. They may go to Chicago next week for two days to take the Venezuela passport for Elison and they may return home within a week or so. I have known them before they started dating and now they have a little baby. I am very happy for them.

January 27, 2006(Friday)

Today is the last day of class and I got a usually good evaluation. The students are working on the lab. Most of them left by lunch time. I went to Japanese restaurant for lunch with the only student (Igor).
I was working hard on the homework today. I want to minimize the damage because of skipping a week class. Actually CTT is interested to hire me more often to teach courses, but I told them that my priority is school and I don't want to skip school often.
I went back to hotel at 5, went out for a 42 mins run and then went back to hotel and work on the PhD project, which I have not worked on for almost a week! The math is just too clumsy and I am not sure whether I am getting anywhere or not.

January 26, 2006(Thursday)

The laptop worked fine last night. In fact, to my big surprise, the wireless internet at the hotel turned out to work fine the whole night, and I am really impressed. However, when I went back to training today, the router died and did not come up. I shared this miserable thing with students. And one of the students helped me to check the hard drive and it turned out that the hard drive is making strange noise, which causes the problem. Interestingly though, I can sometimes boot up the computer. For instances, I am using my laptop now! I have no idea what is going on with this laptop and I think that I need to retire it as soon as possible.
One of the students helped me to transfer all the data to his removable hard drive and then he burned 6 back up CD for me again (because my laptop cannot burn CD). Therefore, I think that I am safer now. The laptop, however, is extremely unreliable. It made weird noise, gave me deep blue screen several times and crashed in the middle of no-where. I think that some of my files resides in the corrupted section so whenever I read it, it crashes.
At night, I went to Dolphin Mall. I have been here several times in the previous trip. It is definitely refreshing to walk in the mall after staying home every night studying. I go to Border bookstore as usual and read the "Dragon Ball" comic.

January 25, 2006(Wednesday)

I let the student to work hard today. Therefore, this is another easy day for me. I go very slowly so that I can avoid covering something that I am not exactly sure about. In addition, I think that the students appreciate me going through stuff slow because I gave them the "mid-class" evaluation and three students (out of five) gave me a near-perfect mark. The other two students did not fill out stuff.
My laptop will die permanently anytime. I have a strong feeling about this. Because when I went home from the hotel today, I tried to turn on the laptop but it either gave me the deep blue "DEAD" screen or saying that "remove the non-system disk" (I don't have any disk). I did not drop it on the floor or have any hit. I know that this is similar to August 13, the day before I left Venezuela. This particular laptop just died and Pastor Ricky Chan helped me to reformat it. I tried to turn on the laptop for many times and it just never boot up. However, with the previous experience, I always back up the file. Therefore, I am doing the "disastrous calculation" and find that I am in a pretty good shape because the files are all backup. I just have to do some downloading from email. I felt good about myself.
I went out for jogging and came back to hotel. After several more trials, the laptop suddenly can turn on. (Now I am using the laptop). Therefore, I immediately took out the USB drive and save the files to the USB drive. Hope that the USB port will not crash! So let me do as much with the laptop as I can now because I would not know whether this will be the last time that this laptop will ever turn up!

January 24, 2006(Tuesday)

Today the students are working on the lab. Things are quite smooth today. Also, I know that Conservative won the election in Canada. I am sure that parents would be very happy about this.
Whenever I can, I try to work on the homework. The homework for the Queuing/Probability class and PhD Seminar is hard! I spent the day and the whole night but I am not getting any success. I think that I need to work harder.
At night I went to a western place to eat dinner. Besides eating steaks, I also asked for a "Romarita". Originally I don't really know what this is, but then it turned out to be Margarita (a type of alcohol) that costs $6.5. It tastes ok and built up my tolerance to alcohol.

January 23, 2006(Monday)

Going to Miami definitely reminds me a lot about my life in Venezuela. Most of the people here speak Spanish, and even people in Wal-Mart broadcast the messages in Spanish. I think that the ratio of Spanish people here is even more than the ratio of Chinese people in Vancouver! And it makes me think that people in Bloomington are really nicer and the town is quieter!
I met CTT and Desca co-worker again today. It felt quite good to see the "old" friends again! They all welcome me! I am teaching the IPTX (IP Telephony Express) class this week. Previously it was a bootcamp that consists of two or three courses. Cisco reduced the requirement to one course, so it means that I have less opportunity to earn money. I am teaching five (supposed to be six or seven) English speaking students from the Caribbean Sea. They are pretty competent. Also, since this bootcamp reduced from two courses to one course, I have lots more time to talk. And Cisco changed the course from version 1 to version 2 and there is something that I am not familiar, which I may skip. Therefore, I am trying to go as slow as I can so that I can cover everything by Friday afternoon. I put in as much extra stuff and as many usual jokes as possible. The lab set up today is relatively smooth, except one router has a bit problem with the password. However, everything is solved by lunch time. Therefore, the stress level so far is pretty low.
I went home at 6 and went out for a 45 mins jog. And then I walked 15 mins one-way to the Japanese restaurant that I always go to when I was in Miami. This time they changed the hotel so I need to walk a while to reach the restaurant. I am quite full now!

January 22, 2006(Sunday)

I got back to the usual travel mode today. However, I don't have to wake up very early (such as, 4 or 5am). I woke up at 9am. And then I took a bus from the student union building at 10:50 and arrived to Indianapolis airport at noon. Then I took 3 hours flight to Miami. The AA flight is very small. The smallest that I have been to. I think that it can only fit about 50 passengers! There are only three passengers per row and there is about 15 to 20 row.
I slept through the shuttle bus ride and airplane ride. I arrived to the hotel at 7:20pm. I usually stay at the Hampton Inn. But since the Hampton Inn is all full, I stayed at the Homestead Inn this time. This is like a motel, not good at all. However, it still costs the company $106 per night. Too expensive. In order to make me feel a bit sleepy, I ran about 30 mins round trip to Wal-Mart to buy some food and toothpastes.

January 21, 2006(Saturday)

I went with CCF people to have lunch with Elaine, Qiao and little Elison because little Elison had his one-month birthday two days ago. Therefore, this is like a birthday party for them. Also, Qiao would like to take this chance to treat us for lunch to appreciate our help. And then, we went for grocery shopping too.
At night, I asked the Cantonese group (Macedonia group) to come to our house for dinner. We shared about the promotion idea for March 10 outreach for CCF. We have some solid plan now. And then at night, Carmen and I finished the Monopoly game that we have played for about a week. After counting all the assets (including houses and hotels) she had $9410 and I had $10040. Basically all the places are taken and we had 9 hotels altogether. This is certainly fun to play Monopoly for a long time.

January 20, 2006(Friday)

I had PhD seminar during afternoon today. And then at night Carmen was the singspiration leader. Last week it was me and this week it is her turn. We hope to serve through different opportunities here. In addition, I led the Bible Study too. I think that the Bible Study was ok, and some of the HK students are back so our group increased from 6 people last week to 11 people this week. I also helped dad and told him how to check whether he can connect his laptop to the internet through the house connection.

January 19, 2006(Thursday)

I went to bed early last night at about 11:00 and then woke up at 6:30 so that I can go to work with Carmen. However, I think that I mess up my biological clock. I am tired the whole day. Before the 9:30 class, I slept for almost an hour in the cubicle. But then I am still a bit sleepy during the class. After the class, I slept for another hour in the cubicle. I used to sleep at 1:30 or 2:30 and woke up at later than 10am. Now I am trying to adjust the biological clock.
Yuan Yuan and Jimmy from CCF came to our house for music practice at night. I am trying to get back to the study mood because I just don't want to work too hard for the PhD project again after the discouragement I had for the Christmas hard work yet Prof thought that it is not good.

January 18, 2006(Wednesday)

I went to purchase stamp for Carmen's work today and then I went to do workout again. In addition, Elaine from Venezuela got me a CD that Semson gave her to pass to me last November. I am supposed to upload the photo but I never had the motivation to do so. Finally, Semson gave me a reminder and I spent the night checking the 600+ photos and uploaded them to yahoo photo album. I have to resize all the photo from 300+k or 1M to 60k so that people can check it easily. I use the standard Window XP's MS Paint to do so. I also check any meaningless photo and delete that. It still takes about three hours. However, looking at the photo brings back a lot of nice memory in Venezuela churches! I am always the webmaster and uploaded a lot of photo for both the Baptist church and MB church. I have created about 7 yahoo photo albums for each church already! Let me know if you have nothing to do and interested to check the photo
I will go to Miami next week to earn some pocket money by teaching Cisco course. I will work for the same training company, CTT. Carmen will be still in USA at that time. I hope to make this course short so that I can get back to Carmen as soon as possible. I have been staying at home or within university area for the last several months and it is nice to have some traveling back. Here is my iternary.


Jan. 22, 06 (Sun)	AA4147 IND - MIA 14:46 - 17:23
Jan. 28, 06 (Sat)	AA4145 MIA-IND 11:18-14:08

January 17, 2006(Tuesday)

I went to school and work on homework. I also talked to Professor about the PhD project. There is still much work to be done and I think that I need to pick up my speed to work hard.
I also played Monopoly with Carmen at night. We have started the game several days ago and we played it an hour or so per day. Now there is a lot of houses, plus some hotels in different places. Every time we throw a dice is like a very exciting time because there are a lot of ups and downs.

January 16, 2006(Monday)

I worked on the PhD project again today. I did not want to get too far though because I am going to talk to professor tomorrow and I don't want to waste my time and find that my work does not match his expectation. I also went for workout this afternoon too.
At night, I went to Shangmin's house to talk about the outreach for Mar 10. Basically they are very supportive to my idea. We will probably have a "life game" during that time. I learnt this game about 8 years ago in Canaan fellowship. And I have hosted it once in FCGC during 2001 and once in Venezuela during about 2003. This will probably be the third time that I will host the life game.

January 15, 2006(Sunday)

I went to the Chinese worship and then to Wal-Mart to refund the air bed. When parents were here during last October, they told me that I can try to refund the air bed even though I don't have the receipt, because they have the bar code. I lend the air bed to Elaine and there is a hole again in this second air bed. Therefore, I tried to exchange for a new one again. I complained to the customer service in Wal-Mart and they let me know get a gift card instead! This is just like cash! Therefore, I can return the air bed without the receipt! This is happy to know. And Carmen had new glasses today too.
At night, we went to the prayer meeting and then I stayed for the committee meeting. We are going to start a new Chinese church with Chinese worship every Sunday afternoon. We discussed some of the detail about the first Sunday. I think that they have the heart, but seriously lack the experience of how a church would function. Therefore, we wasted too much time in the minor detail such as the program, advertisement or gift to people.

January 14, 2006(Saturday)

I went to play basketball this morning again. I practiced a lot so that when I go back to HK this year, I can compete well with Hansel. And then Carmen in the afternoon went to one of the CCF friend's bridal party because she will get marry next Saturday. I stayed home, tried to read some book but fall asleep most of the time. At night, we went to another CCF friend's house to see their wedding picture because they got married in Taiwan January 1 of this year. The tradition of Taiwan and HK is quite similar, but not the same. At least, they have an engagement banquet dinner which is for bride's relative and a wedding dinner for groom's relative only. This is interesting to know about this. At night, I played Monopoly with Carmen. We planned to play the same game of Monopoly for the next few days, while playing about an hour or so per day.

January 13, 2006(Friday)

There is a presentation by one of the faculty that recently went to China for a tour about the opportunity to cooperate with Chinese university to teach business there. It is interesting to hear Caucasian talks about China. And he also said that the more he knows about China, the less that he fears about China because they always think that the Chinese is going to take over all of their job because of the low wages. This quite amazed me because they actually fear about China!
I led song the first time in Indiana. I led song many times in Venezuela and it is good to lead again. They like my style but then I find that this is just an average song leading time. Of course, I told them that the glory should be back to Jesus. And then I also led the Bible study for our Cantonese group too. This semester we will study the eight miracles that Jesus did according to the gospel of John. We talked about two miracles today. We generated a lot of discussion about what miracle is, pray with faith, wait upon God.
I also learnt Excel's Visual Basic Macro function. The queuing class that I took needs me to write code in Visual Basic so I spent some time to learn and to write code. I am always a fan of Excel, plus Mathematica. Now I think that it would be very good to learn how to write Visual basic for Excel too!

January 12, 2006(Thursday)

This is another day of work and school. I got a workout mattress from home and brought it to the cubicle. I also got an eye mask. Therefore, I can sleep on the mattress in my cubicle.
And then at night, I went to play basketball again. There are so many people in the gym! At first, I went to a gym with four basketball court and all of them are not only full but have at least one or two team’s line up. After waiting for a while, we switched to another gym with 10 basketball court. And surprisingly, this gym is also full with people lining up in almost all of the courts too! What is going on today? How come there are so many people playing basketball today? Probably because today is the first week of school so people just took their time off to study. There is also one Caucasian guy that I play is very aggressive to the point that he is just unfair. He pushes me hard, and even kicks my leg too. And when other people were jumping for the rebound, he jumped into that person and hit that person too. It pisses me off. I don't like to be too physical so I just stayed outside and don't bother to compete with him. I better save my life because this is just a game

January 11, 2006(Wednesday)

There is quite a lot of workload for the classes. So I spent most of today reading or doing homework, even though I only had one day of school yesterday. This is still an uphill battle. I think that it may be time to say farewell to the PhD project, at least, for the short term. I don't think I can spend as much time in this class as before.

January 10, 2006(Tuesday)

Today is the first day of school. I have class at 9:30 but I decided to wake up at 6:30 so that I can go to school with Carmen. I walked with her today to walk for 20 mins. Then I went back to the cubicle to work briefly on the PhD project. And then I had the queuing/probability class, which has only 4 students. IT is a bit boring today and I kind of fall asleep. And after the break, I went to the Statistic class. This statistic class is taught by the Psychology department. People from different faculty (optometry, anthropology, geography and business) are taking the class.
After the class, I had a meeting with the Prof Seb about my PhD paper. I worked quite hard on the paper and I hope that he would say some good thing. However, he said that I got too many result and this is like a mess and not organized. The write up (31 pages) is too long for him to get a hold of. Also, I do the analysis around the profit margin and demand, but not the most interesting variable: profit (because the math is just too ugly if I do it using profit). I was quite disappointed after hearing saying this. He is a hard working prof and expects us to work hard. Also, he put in a lot of effort to help me for my paper. So I know that he is not too lazy for reading my paper but may be my paper is just too unstructured (even though I think that it is quite structure). I am upset but there is nothing I can do. I just don't want to work on the paper at night so I took a short break. And then I got back to the paper again, and worked on that for 3 hours. This time, I tried to derive the profit function, which is, as expected, quite ugly.

January 09, 2006(Monday)

I went to work out today. It has been such a long time that thing is getting rusty. To be specific, I have not been biking for several weeks and the chain of the bike has rust! Therefore, I can feel the "bumpiness" when I tried to press the pedal a bit harder. The workout gym reopened after three weeks and it felt good to sweat and work out and run again. Running outside in this cold weather gives no sweat, and playing basketball would not feel as productive as running or work out.
I also worked very hard on the PhD paper. My prof said that I need to at least work so hard that I feel sick about the paper or else I am not there yet. I think that I am starting to get sick about the paper and I need some time away from the paper. I spent some time to clean up and organize the house, which is a good way for me to get away from the project. I will sleep early tonight too (slept at 4:20am again last night because of the PhD project again) because I need to go to school tomorrow at 9.

January 08, 2006(Sunday)

I went to ECC fellowship in the morning with some CCF friends. Then several of us went to visit Elaine and her little baby. And then we went to have grocery shopping. At night I went to the prayer meeting again. I did not do a lot of PhD paper in the last two days, but school will start tomorrow and I am ready. Other people are not too willing to get it started but I am used to the working hard environment because I have worked hard lately. Rather than saying that school will start soon, I will say that, there is one few semester from graduation.

January 07, 2006(Saturday)

This morning, several of us went to help Jo to move house. She is moving from one apartment to the other and we helped her for two hours. And then we went home for an afternoon nap. I went to play basketball again in the afternoon and spent the night working on the PhD paper.

January 06, 2006(Friday)

I worked a bit on the IP Expert today because they required a certain kind of formatting that I need to follow. Then I went out for a jog and continued to work on the PhD project for a couple of hours. At night, I led Bible Study in CCF. I think that this is the first time that I lead Bible study to a group of non-Cantonese speaking people. I mostly spoke in English while they responded in Mandarin. I hope that they can understand my sharing.

January 05, 2006(Thursday)

I worked on the PhD project full force today. Other than picking up Carmen from work, I stayed at home all day and work on the PhD project for almost 8 hours today. I am surely betting a lot of my time and hope in this complementary paper project. I take it so seriously that if I get rejected (which has a probability of 70%), I would be pretty upset. I think I will go to sleep early today. I went to bed at 4:30 last night and I will go to sleep at about 3:15.

January 04, 2006(Wednesday)

Today, Elaine's husband Qiao finally came from China to USA to visit his son Elison. I am very happy for him. Originally I am supposed to pick him up at noon. I asked Shangmin for the car yesterday and planned to pick up the key at 11:30. However, he was not until at that time and I am very worry. Being a person that always keep the promise, I need to find some way to pick up Qiao. I tried to call other people in CCF that owns a car and finally found one. However, by the time that I am about to leave home, Shangmin called and said that he just got home at noon. Therefore I am able to drive Shangmin's car to pick up Qiao. I was very worried at that time and so I am very glad that he called.
I am very excited to see Qiao reunited with his family. He was very tired after 30 hours of air flight from China, which he can only sleep for 2 hours. However, I am very excited for him and took picture when he holds on to his child. Then I went to grocery shopping with Elaine so that they are all ready for food.
I went to play basketball again this afternoon. I have a bit more energy today.
The IP Expert project that I worked several weeks ago need some rework. I hate rework but still I need to do it in order to get paid. Therefore I worked on it for about 5 hours. And then, I also worked on my PhD project for about 1.5 hours and slept at 4:30. I am so used to work at night now and I seldom go to bed before 3:30 am! I am probably in the Vancouver time zone, or even places that are more west than Vancouver!

January 03, 2006(Tuesday)

I got back to the study mood today. I worked on the PhD project for about 6.5 hours today. However, I also went out for running for 48 mins. Carmen got back to work today too. So thing is more or less back to normal.

January 02, 2006(Monday)

I worked on the project for several hours. I am hard working. I hope to get it going again. Then I went to play basketball for 2 hours again. Probably I played it too frequent, I lack the excitement about basketball already. It is still fun and exciting to play, but my "beginning's luck" and the excitement is gone. But I am not too worried because I will have a "break" on basketball when school starts. I will continue to do work out. Now the work out place is in maintenance so that's why I went to another gym to play basketball. Things will return to normal soon.

January 01, 2006(Sunday)

I was the pianist the first time for the Mandarin Sunday Service today. Then at night, prayer meeting is held at our house. We shared about the blessing of 2005 and also our devotional life. Then Joe got the DVD for Star War III so we watched it at night. Then afterward, there were "40 years old virgin" movie shown on TV. We watched part of it when we went to see "Harry Potter" in the movie theatre Nov 18 and found that funny. So we watched the complete movie tonight.