January 31, 2005(Monday)

I taught the guitar class at night. For these several people, they will be the guitarist for the Feb 8 combine church meeting. They started to take lesson from me about two months ago and this is time to show off their skill. Since they don't have much musical background, it is difficult for them to catch up. Therefore, they must practice very hard or else they will make bad mistake. I am actually very happy to teach these people guitar. I don't have time to go to the MB Church youth fellowship but then I can still contribute something the other way.

January 30, 2005(Sunday)

It is another one of the few occasions that I don't have to lead music today. I taught Sunday School on book of James. We don't have to go to MB Church today so we can relax during lunch time. We went to Paco's house for dinner, to visit his new born baby and also show him the song that we will sing in the Asameblea meeting in Mar 25. At that time, Pastor Wong Key Con (one of the chair from Chinese Christian Missions) will visit us from San Francisco. This will be a big thing so we are preparing it in advanced. In addition, we may go to a weekend short term mission trip in Punto Fijo because they need us to lead the music.

January 29, 2005(Saturday)

We went to Parque del Este for running. And then Yanting went to our house and I taught her math again. At night, we went to MB Church to practice music for the Campamento in Feb 5. Kum Fung usually was the pianist for the last several times but he would like to lead singing this time. Therefore, he invited me to play piano for him. I have no problem with that and I can pick up the melody quickly.

January 28, 2005(Friday)

Work is a bit boring today again. I worked on some IPExpert IPv6 lab. At night, we went to Che So's house for dinner. We have a Chinese Youth fellowship meeting. We ate dinner, played card (whoever lost must dance and sing) and relaxed around. Lots of other church people were there as well.

January 27, 2005(Thursday)

Today is an eventless day. Work is plain. I spent some times writing the fellowship magazine. I have not been taking up writing for a while. I am always bad for writing. However, for some strange reason, I always wrote a lot in church. Probably God is using my weakness to serve Him as well.

January 26, 2005(Wednesday)

I gave a phone call yesterday to my HK friend Big Head and he gave me several email addresses of the St. Mark's Secondary School (SMS) classmates. I have not contacted them since 1994 (or 1990 for most of them). It is certainly great to contact them again! I received some of their emails and I checked some picture of them too. I still remembered that I used to play soccer with them 15 years ago. Now everyone are old (mature) and looks different. I have not seen their face of a long time! In fact, I forgot some of their faces.
The PhD application has completed over a month. However, I am still worrying a lot! I have a habit of checking Business Week's Forum. This forum gave me lots of idea and momentum for the application process. However, I am a bit over the "point" and from now on I am just worrying myself. I have basically done all that I could and I don't know what else I can do to increase my chances for application. I need to calm down and stop worrying! Cast my burden to Jesus!
I also reviewed the 60 memorized Bible verses that I had during the 1994 discipleship training. I am still keeping this verses periodically, may be memorizing it twice or three times a year. This helps to calm me down and see things from God's perspective.
Yanting came to our house to dinner. Afterward, we went to visit Paco's new born baby at their new house! This is my first time going to their house and first time seeing a baby that is so young (2 days) However, the baby boy was sleeping for the 2.5 hours that we were in his house, so I don't get a chance to hear him cry.

January 25, 2005(Tuesday)

Work is eventless. However, I gave a phone call to my long time friend Jacky Leung in HK because he had a baby girl yesterday at HK! I am happy for him! He also passed me several email addresses of HK High School classmates. I am looking forward to contact them back.
I went to Church at night for the fellowship, about music sharing night. I am "mum" really easily when thing does not go well. We need a laptop to display the song lyric. However, the computer was locked inside the office and no one has the key. We have to wait for Mimia to arrive at 8pm, 30 mins later than the schedule time. In addition, Kitty, who is supposed to co-host the program, was late. I am glad that Carmen stepped in and took over because I am not emotionally well enough to do anything at that time. The night went ok and I am glad that I did not mess it up!

January 24, 2005(Monday)

Paco's wife Siu Ling gave birth to a baby boy at 9am this morning! Carmen and Yanting went to the hospital this morning to visit them! We are very happy for them. Carmen and I went to "Lee Hamilton" to eat steak at night. This restaurant always have a special place in our heart because we ate dinner here May 31, 2002, the night before Carmen return to Vancouver after my first arrival to Venezuela! The food is good. I think that the steak tastes better than "the Keg" in Vancouver. The portion is definitely much bigger and the price is much cheaper. Hansel should come here to try it out. However, I am always frustrated the fact that, being a high class restaurant, almost none of the people can speak English!
Yanting came to our house at night and I taught her math so that she can be prepared for the math exam on Wednesday.

January 23, 2005(Sunday)

Eric was the singspiration leader today at the Baptist Church; Carmen, Yanting and I were the worship team (I played piano). During the Sunday School, Chi Kong made cruel statement about the fellowship and me. We all felt upset about this but I handled the situation really well!
I was the singspiration leader at MB Church and I led this songs: "Deben Alabar a Jehová" (from SoP), "Entrare Por Sus Puertas" (I will enter His gates), Love is not reserved, Because Lord's name, Canta Al Señor (Shout to the Lord). We went home afterward skipping Sunday School as usual. Today is probably the last day that we will see Mrs. Chu again because she will go to China for at least six months (and probably forever depends on the job situation there). Dr. Chu will surely miss her. I had the guitar class at night at my house. I taught them guitar so that I can prepare them for the Feb 8 combine church fellowship worship team.

January 22, 2005(Saturday)

I went to Parque del Este for the usual weekly jog. Then Yanting came to our house and I tutored her math for 1.5 hours. Afterward, Eric and Yanting practiced music at our house for the Sunday Worship tomorrow. I am glad that we don't have to go back to church because there is piano and guitar at our house.
At night, we went to MB Church to practice music. The practice actually did not take too long. I played ping pong with Menyee and Leo. This is one of the three times that I really play ping pong in Venezuela. I am glad that I got some sweat.

January 21, 2005(Friday)

Another eventless day at work. I continue made phone call to PhD Prof but most of them are not in the office. I also went to buy violin string (because my violin broke string very often lately) but they don't have that. I also worked on the IPExpert lab after waiting for them to give me lab access for about a month.
Roberto from Baptist Church came to our house to discuss about the Praise and Worship in Campamento. He did not have idea what we should do but I gave him lots of consultation and we know what we should do. I am so professional at that.

January 20, 2005(Thursday)

Supposedly there is an online tutoring training this morning for the Raleigh CVoice group. However, no one showed up. I have nothing much to do today at work. I also tried to call some of the prof from different PhD school so that they can associate my voice with the file. Let's see whether this would increase my chance or not.
Kitty and Jhon came to our house for dinner to discuss about the music night next Tuesday. I baby-sat them to make sure that they know what they should do for the program. They are new in serving in a committee and I want to make sure that they know exactly what they are supposed to do.

January 19, 2005(Wednesday)

I ate breakfast this morning and I was a bit late to work at 9:20. Omar called and asked me to go to a customer called CAF. They had some problem with the PIX firewall. I have not been going to customer site for a long time. Besides the Colombia trip in Nov 9-11, last time I went to customer was a day in Oct 26. And the previous time was Aug 18 to Sept 3. I surely got really rusty skill. I was really feared and stressed before going there because I have no idea what to expect. On the other hand if I go to customer site every day, then I would be used to the skill.
The troubleshooting is for the PIX firewall change. I have little idea about what I am supposed to do at first, even though I am a security CCIE. I am great that my mind is fresher after lunch and the problem is more or less solved by the end of the day. In addition, the location of the customer is very close to my home, even closer than my office. Therefore I would not mind if I really have to go back tomorrow again.

January 18, 2005(Tuesday)

I was checking on the MIT PhD paper today. I hope that emailing the prof would increase my chance to be accepted. Rather than going to Baptist Church for fellowship, we went to MB Church tonight. The MB Church people have asked me to go for quite a while and I finally made the commitment to go today. I led the Bible Study (more like a preaching) for the whole group, with some commitment at the end. I led the verses Luke 19:1-10 about the tax collector Zacchaeus. Since Dr. Chu's son Paul was around walking and people are not too attentive, I have to yell most of the time. Carmen told me that I better need to learn how to speak without hurting my voice cord if I am really going to be a professor one day.

January 17, 2005(Monday)

Even though I slept for over 9 hours, I am still very tired. I did not go to work this morning. Carmen and I went to buy grocery. I went back to office this afternoon and showed my boss about my evaluation from last week's course. He was pleased with that. There is nothing happening in work. In order to maximize my chance to be accepted by a good university, I continue reading some of the paper by the prof and gave them feedback.
Elaine, Qiao and Elisa came to have dinner at our house tonight. We talked about the combine fellowship (two churches) in February. Pastor Tsang from Vancouver will go to Venezuela at that time so he will be our speaker.

January 16, 2005(Sunday)

We took early flight from Washington Dulles airport to Puerto Rico San Juan and then back to Caracas. The trip was smooth and there is no unexpected thing. We were back at Caracas 3pm. We had TGI Friday in Caracas airport. In the airport, we met Baptist Church's Kitty and Lisa, who worked in the travel agent in the airport. They just finished work so we went home together.
We did a lot of clean up the Saturday before leaving Venezuela. When we got back home, the house is still clean and with minimal amount of ants. (It is not possible to eliminate them completely). We were happy about that. We did some clean up and organize the stuff. I MSN Hansel at night with the webcam on. This is the first time that I tried to use webcam and so is Hansel. We compete for who is the faster typist.

January 15, 2005(Saturday)

Since we completed the lecture yesterday, today will only consist of lab demo in class. Originally, today should be a full day. However, the students are all saturated and so am I. Therefore, the demo today was only 1.5 hours. It was not too smooth but I am glad that I completed that at 11am.
All I did this week was only training. Therefore, I joked in class previously that there is only Cisco and hotel in Virginia and Washington DC. One of the student, Chris Hays, offered to drive us around this afternoon. Therefore, from 11:30 to 3:30, he drove Carmen and I to the downtown of Washington DC and also Georgetown. We drove by White House, Pentagon, Capitol Hill, and St. Mark Cathedral. We also ate dinner at a Thai restaurant. The weather was really cold outside, especially because I have gotten used to the Venezuelan warm weather!
After a 1.8 hours afternoon nap, I went to hotel's exercise room with Carmen. I jogged for 51 mins. It felt so much better and healthier.

January 14, 2005(Friday)

When I woke up this morning, the back of my right shoulder hurts. This is the first time. Probably because I was sleeping in a bad position last night. It bothers me the whole day. The training was very fast today. This is the first time that I teach the new IPTX (IP Telephony Express) course. The students are basically saturated already. So am I. We are just going over the material blindly. Even I feel that I am moving really fast. I hope that the students understand the material after doing some lab. I also got the evaluation back. My overall average is about 6.53 out of 7. This is quite good from other people's standard. However, this is only a middle score out of my five training experience. I am not too delight/depressed by this. However, consider that I missed the first half day due to the flight problem and also I did cover so many materials, this is a pretty good job. I think that other people would do much worse.
We went to eat Vietnamese dinner at night. In additional, I was so tired because I did not have any afternoon nap lately. Therefore, I had a 1.5 hours after-dinner slept.

January 13, 2005(Thursday)

The class today is normal. Good as normal. But I handed out the evaluation today and I will know about it soon. I also did some troubleshooting so that the lab for the next two days will be smooth.
Carmen and I went to the mall to eat dinner tonight. We ate at a place called Red Lobster

January 12, 2005(Wednesday)

Everything was relatively smooth today. The flow of the course should be CVoice, QoS and then IPTX. However, since it is extremely difficult to obtain internet access in Cisco, therefore, my company asked me to do QoS last because QoS involves online lab access. However, yesterday I discovered that the QoS online lab access only works until Friday. Therefore, CTT asked me to change the schedule (again) to do IPTX last. Therefore, we were doing the QoS today and I gave them lots of time to do the lab.
In the mean time, I troubleshoot and understand the IPTX lab. I have practiced that last month but I am still not too comfortable with that. I spent a long time checking out the IPTX lab to make sure that there will have no surprise.
Carmen and I went to eat Vietnamese food at night. We have not eaten Vietnamese food for several months. The last time that I ate it is about a year ago! It surely feels like I am in Vancouver!

January 11, 2005(Tuesday)

The class is much better today. Since we lost some times yesterday, things were really rush yesterday. However, as for today, we are more relaxed. I gave them a lot of time to do the lab. Therefore, I can have an easy time. I even had a short afternoon nap during lunch time, sleeping in an empty cubicle! So far, my feeling about the course is that the students are enjoying the course and they like my style of teaching. I hope to have a good review this time as well. In terms of the technical knowledge. They are not as strong. Therefore, I did not cover as detail as the other class. In addition, I gave out a lot of answers to the lab or even helped them to do in order to speed up the process.

January 10, 2005(Monday)

I woke up at 3:30am this morning and went to the Miami airport at 4:20. Our flight is 5:20. There are a lot of people lining up already in the Delta airline. We only barely make the flight. The flight is from Miami to Atlanta and then to Baltimore. I slept through the entire time. Afterward, we took a taxi from Baltimore to Virginia. This is a 1.5 hours taxi drive which costs $110US! The road has some congestion in between but we still managed to check in at about 11:30am.
Cisco office is close; Carmen and I walked to the Cisco office. Then I have to face the crowd. When I first saw the Cisco representative who introduced me to the class, he privately asked me where I am from. I told him that I am from Venezuela. He is surprised that Cisco sent someone all the way from Venezuela to teach an American audience! I told them that I am Canadian citizen and have taught this bootcamp four times, he still doubt my ability. I need to proof to him! The class was pretty dead at first but it was not that bad. I have the charm to entertain the crowd. I used my usual jokes and analogy and tried to get the class as involved as possible. However, the technical knowledge of this crowd is below average. In addition, I have to cram three one-week courses into 6 days. I am not optimistic that they can understand everything that I will teach.
I went back to the hotel at 6:40 and catch up some sleep.

January 09, 2005(Sunday)

We are heading to USA today for the Virginia training. Usually I take the early flight. However, the company arranged me to the afternoon flight today because the early flight is all booked. The afternoon flight is very full too. We went to the airport at 12:20. The AA counter was relatively quiet at that time. My flight schedule supposed to be traveling to San Juan (Puerto Rico) and then going to Washington. There is only one hour during the transit flight. I have raised concern previously that there may not be enough time for the transit. There is nothing that my company can do because other flights are all booked. I talked to the travel agent and she told me that the flight from Caracas to San Juan is delayed by 30 mins. I would have no time for the flight transit. In addition, there is no other flight tonight. My final destination for this trip is Virginia. The Washington airport is really close to my hotel in Virginia. There is only one flight per day so I will have to miss one business day! I personally do not care about the missing day but that would be bad from the training class's perspective.
I called CTT (the training organization that contracted me to teach this week) about this situation. They said that the travel agent from AA promised that I can be on time last Friday. This is not my problem and AA must do something to get me there by the end of today. My company asked me to put a lot of pressure to the AA agent and I did. However, the first flight is delay and other flights are all booked. There is nothing that she can do. There will have a flight tomorrow from Miami to Baltimore airport, which is only 30 mins from my hotel so our iternary is changed. I will take a 5:00am flight and arrive Baltimore at 10am. I will lose the first half of the day tomorrow. We were at the counter for about 1.2 hours and people behind us have to wait for a long time.
Our flight to Miami is 5pm today so we have some time to wait and relax. We went to TGI Friday to have lunch. For the last business trip, we always tried to eat cheap because the food in USA is expensive and we are sharing the food expense. However, in Caracas, the food is a lot cheaper. Therefore, we ate a really full and luxury lunch. We even ordered an "Ultimate Margarita", a drink that has quite a lot of alcohol. The last time that I ate TGI Friday at the airport was about April 2003 and I drank this as well.
We finally arrived Miami at 8pm local time. After one hour of finding and struggling, we finally found the hotel "Sofitel" that AA booked for us. It is a pretty nice hotel and I am impressed about this. We had dinner there. I also called CTT about the problem that I had. They are working hard to fix it. I will take a 5:20am flight from Miami to Baltimore and will arrive there at 9:52am. CTT told me that, there is no way that it will take 4.5 hours to fly from Miami to Baltimore. It is confirmed later that I am actually going through Atlanta before reaching Baltimore. Today is a rough day. I am glad that Carmen can be with me to share my stress and to help in a lot of way.

January 08, 2005(Saturday)

I had a lot of sleep today. About 9 hours of sleep last night and then 1.5 hours of afternoon nap. Carmen and I also did a lot of house cleaning thing. Last time after we came back from the Raleigh trip, we found that there are some ants and some mould in the dishes that we did not dry. Therefore, we swept the floor, cleaned the dust from fan, cleaned the toilet and cleaned the kitchen. I also went out to Parque for running.
At night, we had a meeting with the devotional department Elaine and Qiao. Even though they were new believers (about 3 months old), they are the more mature Christians in the fellowship so they will be the devotional department. I gave them a lot of suggestions since I have been in the devotional department for four years. Afterward, we went out to have dinner together. We shared a lot about a marriage life and how to handle argument. They are the couple with the most similar background with us. Hopefully that we can develop good friendship with them.

January 07, 2005(Friday)

My flight next week with Carmen to Virginia. This is for the CTT training (revised after the trip)

Jan. 09/10 (Sun/Mon)	AA936 Caracas - Miami 16:25 - 18:52 DL982 Miami - Atlanta - Baltimore 05:20 - 09:52
Jan. 16 (Sun)	AA1845 Washington - Puerto Rico 07:10 - 11:46 AA1151 Puerto Rico - Caracas 12:50 - 14:27

Today I am really productive and did a lot of thing. When I went through the custom in the last few times, I always have to go through the "special" screen check. The TSA (Transportation Security Authorization) people told me that my name may be blacklist. Therefore, I called them to remove me from the list. In addition, I also applied four more yahoo free websites and put dad's photo onto the website. Two days ago, I also struggled about the U of Michigan reference letter issue. I called them to explain my issue and asked for a waiver. They said that they rarely gave out any waiver. But from the phone conversation, my English skill is pretty good so I got this exception. I am happy about this. I called Duke University in the afternoon because I also said that I am an English native speaker in the application. They cannot give out any waiver though the phone so I emailed them separately. I only need this waiver if I am offered admission.
I gave Hansel to take the better violin to HK. Now I am suffering with the bad one. It is really bad. For some unknown reason, the string always broke! This violin have broken over 10 violin string in the last year, while the better violin (the one that Hansel took to HK) only broke two or three in the last ten years. I was really frustrated and impatient with this violin. I got some cheap violin string and hoped that it would not break.
I need Venezuelan money for paying rent. So I went to Fernando's house to exchange some US money. I also applied for the campamento (Spanish word for "retreat") for Carmen and myself. I went to Campamento two years ago and I did not enjoy it because everyone spoke Spanish. However, this year, Pastor Isaac Tsang from Vancouver will be the main speaker so I can listen to Chinese sermon! I paid the fee to Fernando too.
I have a working visa but Carmen still has her visitor visa. Therefore, she has to leave Venezuela every three months. Not only that, every time when she enters Venezuela, she should have an air ticket to show that she will leave Venezuela in less than three months. Therefore, I went to Mimia's office to purchase the air ticket for Carmen so that she has a proof saying that she will leave Venezuela in three months. Actually, which Canadian citizen would smuggle to Venezuela? The air ticket is for going to Curacao, the place that I have visited twice. In theory, she should not need to use this air ticket because hopefully she will come along with me to the future business trip. Therefore, this air ticket will be void and the money will be wasted at the end of the year.
For some reason, the office was almost empty in the afternoon. Therefore, I left early to go to Fernando's house and to Mimia's office. Today is a very productive day and I did a lot of little things. At night, Ah Men and Yanting came to our house for dinner. They are the caring department and Carmen spent some time to go over important thing for them to do this year. Later in the night, I taught the guitar class. I also helped the Baptist Church to do the PowerPoint for the song list this coming Sunday. I did a lot of thing today!

January 06, 2005(Thursday)

I had the QoS training for the Raleigh group this morning. There was only two people showed up and it went relatively easy.
I got the CUE (Cisco Unity Express) equipment yesterday for my training course. This is a US$60k equipment that has the purpose of recording voice mail. For the company, I know that it is a bit expensive for an answering machine. But it can perform more than that! It can be an auto-attendant, voicemail for many people. When you consider a Cisco IP phone to worth US $500, then the price of the CUE sounds more reasonable. Anyway, I played on the lab and had fun with that. I need to teach this material next week in Virginia and I am preparing myself for this.
I used to have afternoon nap almost every weekday. This is a big part of my working life. Today, Carmen went to church and I was studying hard for the CUE equipment. Therefore, I tried to skip afternoon nap today. It was not as bad as it should be because my brain was occupied with lots of studying. I went home a bit earlier to reward myself from working so hard.
Kitty and Jhon came to our house for dinner and talked about the fellowship. They are the "academic" department of the fellowship and I am helping them and gave them lots of advices. I told them to do the fellowship magazine, the notice board and also push people to read more spiritual book. I asked them to prepare the singspiration leader list as early as they can. If I try to be as specific as possible, then I find that this would work pretty well. Therefore after giving them the step-to-step plan, I am going to follow up with them closely to make sure that things are getting done.

January 05, 2005(Wednesday)

I got a lot of good info about PhD in business from the Business Week Forum. I checked the info again and someone posted that we need the TOEFL exam for some of the programs (e.g. MIT, Northwestern, Chicago, and Duke) even though I have a degree from Canada. I remembered that I have checked these questions before. Therefore I went through these schools’ website to check it again. That was a really scary searching time. If I made a mistake in any one of them, I will be dead! I find that Duke needs TOEFL, but at that time, I said that I am English is my first language (consider that I have been in Canada for 15 years, almost half of my life!). The scary part is about MIT. I can't find any info from the website. However, I did email them about this before and they said that I am exempt from the test. I can't find the email though. Therefore, I tried to call them. The administrator was very impatient. She asked me something and when I asked her to repeat, she was extremely impatient. She asked for my name but I reluctantly did not want to say. Eventually, I told her my first name. She immediately recognizes that I am Hubert Pun because she said that I have sent them a lot of emails about the application process. Oh, I hope that she is not annoyed at me! Or else my hope in MIT will be gone.
I originally planned to apply for U of Michigan for the PhD. However, after I found out that I need TOEFL, I stopped the application. But since I said that I am English speaker in Duke, I tried that on the Michigan as well. So I continue with the application. Let see what will happen.
After some second thought, I think that it may not be the best thing to go thru the Michigan application like this. It felt a bit guilty to go ahead, plus this may hunt me back later. Therefore, I should call the admission office and checked with them again some date later.

January 04, 2005(Tuesday)

There is limited water supply at our home today, due to some construction work. Actually, it is not bad at all. In theory, our house would have no water supply Monday and Thursday. However, for the past three months, only a handful of days that we have no water supply.
I got another piece of equipment to test for the bootcamp next week. I was working on that but nothing much is interesting because the key part of the equipment (Cisco Unity Express) is still missing.
We went to church at night and the program is sharing about the photo. We have a very limited amount of photo in Venezuela so we can not show them the best. The fellowship people would like to be closer to one another. However, they are not willing to share about their info. Therefore we are pretty frustrated about this. There is no free lunch in the world. So if you are not willing to share, no one can get to anywhere.

January 03, 2005(Monday)

Finally, my prof wrote the reference letter for Stanford. It is one day late. According to Stanford, "It is a GRAVE disadvantage to you if all 3 recommenders don't respond by the deadline". However, my recommender said that they have some network problems over the weekend and he has talked to Stanford and that will be fine. It is the problem of his JIT (Just in time) philosophy. Accident can occur. I hope that, since there is problem on his part, he will write a better reference for me.
I gave him a phone call and he sounds really promising and positive about my application package. (That’s why I asked him to write the reference letter in the first place) He said that my two strength are that I took 25 analytical courses with good grade and I have known about my PhD dream for about a year and is actively preparing myself. When I asked about my weakness, he said that I do not have one. He said that my background is one of the strongest that he has seen. I got a good starting point and now it is a matter of who I am competing with. He will certainly get me to somewhere. So let's see whether he is over positive or I am in the right place.
Work is relaxed. I guess that many other companies have today as a holiday, but not for my company. However, there is nothing going on today in work. But I need to get back from the holiday mood to the working mood, especially because I need to go to Virginia next week for the training.
I went home early tonight.

January 02, 2005(Sunday)

Today is the deadline for the Stanford application. My referee has not yet filled that out. I sent him the invitation to write the reference letter four months ago. I have sent him countless "friendly" reminders that he should fill that out as soon as possible. He got a bit impatient when I called him or sent him email in the last few weeks. He told me that he knows how things work and things will be done on time. What can I do? The reason I am stuck with this referee is because I need one referee from MBA in order to strengthen my application. Since I took my MBA online, I do not have any prof that I am really close with. When I went to the MBA trip in August 2004, I talked to this prof. He sounds very encouraging and likely to write me a good reference letter. Therefore, I asked him to write reference letter for me for the most important schools that I planned to apply (Stanford, MIT, Columbia, UCLA and so on). I am an early person and I have requested for the reference letter early September. However, he put that aside. I have asked him to write the reference letter several times, trying to sound as nice as I can. However, at the last several times, he sounds impatient. He said that things will be done. He completed most of the reference letter middle of December. However, he said that he will complete the Stanford reference letter a bit later because there are more things that needed to be filling out. I have emailed him afterward and seems like nothing is done. Stanford is my number one school and it is at a huge risk now.
I have asked Carmen this morning that whether I should send another "friendly" reminder that the deadline is today. She said that, since he said that he will done that on time, it is not necessary for me to write to him again. If he wants to fill that out, he will. If he does not want to fill that out, he will not. There is one thing that I am guessing that is on his mind. Probably because I am too good a PhD student candidate. Therefore, rather than giving me to the top school, he wants to keep me to his school. If that is the case, he will probably write a really bad reference letter for the other schools but write a really good one for Indiana University.
The fact that I am a Christian really influences me. If I am not a Christian, I will probably be very angry. However, now I know that everything has the plan. "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." (Pr. 21:1) Therefore if God wants me to be in a certain place, He has His plan. It is very discouraging, consider that I tried really hard. But still... Let see what the outcome of the PhD application will be in three months.
Carmen made a movie presentation for the Tsunami situation. However, for some very strange reason, the movie was not working in church's computer. In addition, we have to (as usual) learn the Spanish songs. I was very mum at that time. The church computer has two window systems, one in Spanish and the other one is in Chinese. I am not sure how the Spanish one works, and the computer behave really weirdly for the Chinese window. Therefore, I was really frustrated and mum at that time. The church today is thanksgiving sharing. I shared about my shortfall. Even though I always stand in front of people and say some spiritual things, I am actually very sinful and always curse people.
After lunch at church, we went to MB church immediately. Some of the Baptist Church youth invited us to go to hiking; I want to go but we cannot go because of the commitment in the MB church. We were tired, but we know that what we are doing now is for the sake of Christ. We are looking forward for the reward in heaven.
Carmen was the singspiration song leader today and she leads: "I will enter the gates", "Hosanna", "Heaven and ground praise" (ACM's You are king), "Vengo a ti con mi Oracion". The MB church also has the Thanksgiving sharing. I shared the same thing. Carmen shared about her thanksgiving because of me and also because of her parents.
After dinner at church, I went home to teach the guitar class while Carmen went to Mrs. Chu's house to talk. This is the first time that she went out at night by herself. Of course, Dr. Chu will drive her home so I am not worry about the safety.

January 01, 2005(Saturday)

Today is a very relaxing day. We went to MB Church's BBQ from noon to 3:30pm. We don't have to be in charge of anything so we can just sit back and enjoy the program. We ate and also played game. We went back home and had a 3 hours long afternoon nap. This is a relaxing way to start the New Year. I would not worry that this will be a boring year though because I know that things will be pretty exciting. At least, I will know whether I will study PhD or not and this certainly will be a big event.