My Life at February 2007
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February 28, 2007(Wednesday)
For most of the day I was working on the simulation class homework. To my surprise, my answer is quite close to the answer of the prof. I am quite happy because of this. However, the last little bit of discrepancy, usually takes the longest to troubleshoot. Let's see how long it will take me this time.
February 27, 2007(Tuesday)
I finally got the next Simulation assignment today. I spent most of the day working on it. The first day I usually have confident to finish the program with ease. Wait till I get to the debug stage and I will be frustrated again! The homework is due after spring break. Since I will have a road trip during Spring break, I hope to finish it as soon as I can!
February 26, 2007(Monday)
I am enjoying the last days before the next simulation homework is coming. I am still quite frustrating about the class because the Prof keep on changing the simulation library, and the homework is not that easy. I am still looking forward for finishing this class in two months.
February 25, 2007(Sunday)
Today is another relaxing day. I did not work hard on my homework. After working hard for so long, it feels weird not to work hard. However, when the next simulation homework comes, I will be busy again.
Carmen posted an Ads on the school's newspaper during the Valentine's Day, which is a love note. And through this ads, she won a prize for a chocolate basket and also a free spa. Today I spent some times to go to Spa with Carmen.
February 24, 2007(Saturday)
Last night, Frank and Pat went to Bloomington from Chicago. They used to be people from our group but then moved to Chicago to work after they graduated from university. Frank stayed at our house last night and tonight. I taught the baptismal class for Jacky, Frank and Pat. In fact, Pat will come back to Bloomington to get baptized. I think that we had a good spiritual sharing.
At night, Nicky and Joyce got a new car so we had dinner with them and drove their old car back to their old home.
February 23, 2007(Friday)
Today is a fun day. I played badminton for about 2.5 hours with church friends. And then at night, it is combine group, between the Cantonese speaking undergrad/grad group and the mandarin speaking undergrad/grad group. After pot luck, we played some games. One of the games is to blindfold someone and then that person has to do some tasks, e.g. walk several steps and then put a folk into the cup and then walk more steps and eat something and drink something. It is a competition between the two groups and each group can make noise to interfere each other. Since I don't understand mandarin (actually I do understand Mandarin), I am a person to play. I played quite crazy, crawl on ground and dance too. I am a bit crazy, consider my position and my age. But what the heck. People from my group know this already. I think that it may be an eye-opening experience for the other group to see the crazy side of me.
February 22, 2007(Thursday)
I had meeting with professors about PhD project. I also got idea about future possible PhD project. That got me excited for the rest of the days. I am a very aggressive person, in terms of doing research. In a personal relationship level, my aggressiveness may be pushy. However, professors say that I am doing the right thing and I am ahead of schedule. Therefore, I should be doing fine.
February 21, 2007(Wednesday)
I couldn't sleep last night. Woke up in the middle of the night. However, I am glad that throughout today I still have the energy. Moreover, I finished the assignment from the simulation class. There is some information that is missing, which cause me struggle in the last few days. At that time I am so pissed and upset about the assignment. It takes miracles to finish this and I am glad that I finish this assignment.
At night, I had deacon board meeting. We only spent 2 hours today for the meeting and it is the shortest time.
February 20, 2007(Tuesday)
With some progress on the simulation assignment yesterday, I am able to move on to work on something that is much more important: my PhD project. I worked on it several hours today and I feel better now.
February 19, 2007(Monday)
I am frustrated with my simulation class again. The professor kept on changing the "library" that we reference to. Therefore, a user like myself has to adapt to so many different things. This is extremely frustrating. I have some progress with the homework, but then I also have enough. One more simulation homework and it will kill me.
At night, I went to proctor for the undergrad's I-Core class.
February 18, 2007(Sunday)
Today is the Chinese New Year, however, I am SUFFERING from the simulation homework. This totally ruin not only the weekend, holiday but the whole semester. I spent so much time on the homework and not enough time on what really counts: the PhD project. I want to get over this as soon as I can.
After church, there is nomination committee for next year's deacon. As expected, I am helping out again. Today dad also performs the drama in Vancouver.
February 17, 2007(Saturday)
I taught the baptismal class in the afternoon. And then at night the church has a gathering and we had a great time eating and having fun!
I also worked on the homework for the simulation class. This is so hard. Probably the hardest homework in my life. This is so hard. Yes, this is so hard. Undergrad and master is a joke. That is so easy. PhD is so hard. Very difficult. I am running out of vocab but I still want to stress that this is so hard!
February 16, 2007(Friday)
I had a meeting with Prof Seb and Kurt this morning about my project. I submitted the paper that I wrote for the last month but then, as expected, there are still a lot of things that I need to work on. During lunch, we had a meeting with potential PhD candidates. And then I played 2 hours badminton with church friends Wenbin.
At night, we went to fellowship as usual.
February 15, 2007(Thursday)
Today is another freezing cold day. There is a lot of ice on the ground and it is very slippery. Hopefully none of us will have an accident. We went to prayer meeting at night as usual. I also worked on the simulation class homework. Basically that is what I am working on full time now.
February 14, 2007(Wednesday)
There were so many snows yesterday night and this morning that the school was closed until noon. Therefore we took advantage of this and slept for an extra 2 hours.
Hansel and Fiona went to Hokkaido (Japan) January 2006 and gave us something to put on shoes which increase the friction to walk on ice/snow. We never got a chance to use that because there is not much snow. However, today is a perfect day to use it and we finally took advantage of that. We also took a lot of picture about the snow outside.
There is a lot of ice everywhere. (See my photo website for picture) The trees are full of ice-tube. The best part is cars. All the cars are covered with a thick layer (some are more than 2 cm!) of ice. When I use some hard thing to hit on that, the ice just separated to two and falls down easily from the windshield, or top of the car. Carmen and I had a lot of fun getting the ice away from the car! I am sure that Hansel would enjoy it as well!
At night, we went out for dinner. However, being the Valentine's Day, lots of places are full. Therefore, we went to China Buffet to eat dinner. I had a huge roasted beef, and lots-of-vegetable Mongolian BBQ noodle and I am full.
February 13, 2007(Tuesday)
Today is not that cold in the morning, but the weather turned cold in the afternoon. The roads are full off icy. I also helped out Prof Seb for his MBA class, which they played the "beer game". This is a game that display supply chain "bullwhip effect", which the order oscillates a lot in the most upstream.
At night, we had dinner with church friends again and pre-study. Lately they came to our house often and we prepared a lot of food (and washed a lot of dishes) too.
February 12, 2007(Monday)
Another day of class. I am quite tired today, probably because of not enough sleep. Therefore, I am struggling to stay awake in class. I also took an afternoon nap at my cubicle during lunch already. Or else, it would be even worse.
February 11, 2007(Sunday)
After Sunday school and Sunday worship, there is a nomination committee for the church deacon board. Afterward, we went to snowboard again today. Carmen did not go. I went with Nicky, Simon and Jacky. In fact, my Chinese classmate Wenbin and American air force classmate Dan also go. At first, I got lost with my church friends, and Wenbin was tired so I snowboard with Dan. He is good and very fast. Much faster than I am, probably because he ski and he just went down straight. Afterward, Wenbin and Dan went home and I spent the rest of the time with my church friends. We had fun with the downhill snowboard/ski and played until the closing time at 9pm. We returned home at 11.
February 10, 2007(Saturday)
There is a baptismal service today at our church, because the pastor is not available Sunday so he came Saturday. Originally I felt bored because I am not close to the people who got baptized today but I have to come because I am a deacon. Also there is a sermon time and I do not enjoy listen to it. However, I find that the baptismal service (the actual water time) is one of the most sacred baptismal services. We were singing "I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back" before and after the baptism. I felt that this is a big commitment, just like the wedding vow. And those of us who are baptized welcome this new people joining us. I am quite moved by the whole thing. God teaches me lesson especially at a time which I think absolutely boring (at first).
I had the first baptismal class for Desmond today because he plans to get baptized April this year. I am happy to share with him as much fundamental about Christianity as possible. At night, Carmen and I went out to eat and also did grocery shopping.
February 09, 2007(Friday)
Time flies. Today is the last day of the teaching for I-Core. I only have to teach three days this semester. However, there are still proctoring and grading in the next few months. However, there is some unusual thing today.
Normally, the students attend a two hours section, of which 1 hour is for Operation Management and the other is something else (e.g. marketing or finance or strategy). In addition, as I mentioned two Fridays ago, this semester HP donated about 40 tablet computer so that the students can experience this technology. I am supposed to sit-in one section (1 hour) for this tablet computer demonstration, and teach three other sections. But this makes mess up the schedule. Last week, I lost one of the sections that I am supposed to teach, and it turns out that the coordinator made a mistake and the class ended up in the computer class room. This morning, when I went to the computer class room to sit in at 9am, I find that my 10 am section was there. I thought that it must be the same rotation-mistake that the coordinator made. Therefore, I talked to him what should I do and he said that he will teach this section and I can go and take a break. This is a two hours break because he does not need me to sit-in for the computer section. And he also helped me to teach my 10am section so I don't have to be there as well. And then I taught the 11am section. I handed out the evaluation form as well, that means, I have to end class early and let them do the evaluation. Afterward, I find that I also lost my noon class and these students are in the computer room as well. I talked to the coordinator again and he said that I am free to go. Therefore, I only taught for 30 mins today, out of the potential 4 hours instruction!
Later when I go home, the more I think about this, the more I think that I may have to teach the 10am section. It is because student of that sections attend class for two hours. Therefore the coordinator actually only take care of the first hour and I am supposed to continue to teach the 10am section. Whatever. Since I have already talked to the coordinator and I was in my cubicle studying/sleeping at that time, I have no way to find out or make it up. I sent an email to the coordinator so that I formally document that he told me to take a break this morning 9-11. Therefore if there is any trouble in the future, at least I have some written record. I think that he may have made the mistake, but I don't really know for sure.
AT night, we went to fellowship. Our group is the singspiration leader and we practiced several time. However, we are currently borrowing other church facility and since their church has function tonight at the normal place, we have to let them use the facility. We would not have the microphone and drum. We just found out about this last night. We have to change the songs to something people are more familiar. That is pretty disappointing consider the effort that we put in. However, this is certainly a good time that God teaches us the right attitude to serve.
I also spent some times learning C++ program. I learnt about this 1996 in UBC, but then I never like it and I forgot everything. However, I may have to use this for my project so I have to pick it up again. It is such a pain
February 08, 2007(Thursday)
I had a good afternoon nap this afternoon. The pace of the several classes is more relaxed now so I can afford to have some afternoon nap. At night, we went to buy valentine's gift for each other. We also went to prayer meeting at night.
February 07, 2007(Wednesday)
There was a lot of snow yesterday and today there is still a lot of snow on the ground. I am glad that I don't have to shovel the snow. I also reformat my laptop again. This is like the 6 or 7 times (all together) that I have formatted the two laptops. The simulation class requires us to program in Visual Basic. The vb.net program takes a lot of memory and I decided to dedicate one computer just to do this.
At night fellowship people came to our house again to practice the music.
February 06, 2007(Tuesday)
I am taking a game theory class. I am interested to use this as my future dissertation area. However, this class is too mathematical. Yes, even I think that this is too mathematical. So far, it is basically a class of pure math. Unlike applied math (e.g. calculus), this class consists of a lot of proofs and uses a lot of "set theory". Very little economic or game theory. I do not enjoy this class, but I hope that I can get something out of that so that I know this aspect of the game theory as well. Today I have the first homework but I am glad that this is easier than I thought.
At night, Nicky, Joyce and Chris came to our house for dinner and also prestudy for this week's Bible study. We studied Ephesians 5:22-33 which talks about wife must be submissive to husband and husband must love wife. Since our group is mostly college age, we will let them ask some questions to the two married couple about what a marriage life is.
February 05, 2007(Monday)
I am quite tired today when I get back to school. Probably because we enjoyed and exhausted ourselves during the weekend. At night some of the fellowship people came to our house to practice singing again.
February 04, 2007(Sunday)
Today is the church first year anniversary celebration. Each of the groups will present a song and our group presented "You are my all in all". We sang in 4 different parts too. We also have a group T-shirt. I am proud of people of my group. However the easy temptation is to compare with other groups or be competitive. We must remember that we are serving God.
Then Carmen and I went with Joyce, Nicky, Joe and Wenbin (Wenbin is my classmate) to go to ski. Most of them try snowboard but I tried ski because I got a bit bored with snowboard and want to try something new. At first I am a bit scare because I can't stop. But then once I pick it up I did pretty good and fast. I can pick up sport quite fast and I am good at these.
February 03, 2007(Saturday)
We went to a Christian marriage conference by Dr. Gary Chapman hosted by another church. He is a really good and funny speaker and we learnt a lot. He talked about topic such as "Communication 101", "Understanding and expressing love", "Initiating positive change", "Making sex a mutual joy" and "How to share the things that bug you". We certainly hope to have a better marriage. Not only for us but for our families and people around us.
At night, in order for me to practice what we learnt today, we went out for dinner and also grocery shopping with Carmen.
February 02, 2007(Friday)
Even though I have no school today, I worked extensively on the PhD project and also the simulation class homework today. At the early evening, my brain just cannot function. And at night after fellowship, people came to my home to practice the music, and also take care the T-shirt about our group.
February 01, 2007(Thursday)
I listened to a job-talk by a PhD candidate to the business econ department today. It is quite interesting and he is well prepared. I got the simulation class homework today and I worked hard on that. And I also met professors about the PhD project and I worked hard on that as well. I was really free for the last few days, but not anymore. There are plenty of things that I need to work on. At night, we went to prayer meeting.