November 30, 2005(Wednesday)

Today is the last "intensive" P635 reading class. After this class, there is no more reading. However, I talked to the prof about my project and there is still a lot of work that I need to do. So it is far from perfect and I will still be very busy. And I went to gym at night and continue to work on the project.

November 29, 2005(Tuesday)

Carmen usually wakes up at 6:30 so that she can go to work at 8. I woke up with her as well to give a phone call to Hansel. I have not talked to him for a long time. It is good to hear his voice again.
Afterward, I went back to sleep and work up at 11:30. After class, I vacuum the house and continue to work on the project. This is still another busy day.

November 28, 2005(Monday)

I had a productive day today. I cleaned the house and did lots of homework. It makes me feel really good. I hope that I can continue to work hard in the next couple of days. Especially, I spent several hours reading the statistic class homework.

November 27, 2005(Sunday)

This morning someone supposed to pick us up for church. However her car has problem so we went to another church instead with Shangmin and his wife. The church name is called "Emmanuel Baptist Church"; I feel that this is a much more conservative church with an older crowd of congregation. Afterward, we went to eat Chinese buffet because today is Shangmin's 30th birthday. And then in the afternoon the worship team came to our house for music practice and hotpot dinner. This is the number 5 or 6 hot pot that I had since I arrived to IU.
At night we went to prayer meeting as usual. I also did some of my homework too.

November 26, 2005(Saturday)

Carmen and I went to see the Harry Potter film today. She is a big fan of Harry Potter and I like to see the movie too. We had a great time watching the movie and I need Carmen to explain a lot of plot to me because I do not really understand what is going on. Afterward we went to grocery shopping as well.
At night, Elaine and Carmen were watching our wedding DVD. They watched both the morning and banquet section. I was working on my project at that time.

November 25, 2005(Friday)

Today is thanksgiving shopping day, just like the Boxing Day shopping day in Canada. Lots of things are discounted by a large percent. Carmen and Elaine this morning went with some CCF shopping, while I stayed home to study (as usual). We purchased a DVD player with surround sound and I spent about an hour or so to configure this. This is from a non-famous brand. I hope that we will not run into any problem like what Hansel did to his DVD player.
There is a thanksgiving dinner at fellowship. Afterward, we had a drama. I used the Venezuela campamento idea and elaborated it for this gift. The idea is that, Mr. Naive went into a "life market" to purchase something. The items that are for sales are: friendship, love, family, money, consumption, enjoyment, money, degree, fame, power, Way, Truth, Life. Each person has to explain why his/her is the best. I am playing the role of "love" and Carmen played the role of "Way". I think that we did a pretty good job.
I continued to work on my project today. Other than the literature review, I am quite addicted (I don't think that "addicted" is a strong word in my case) to work on the project. I am having fun in how to massage the math to make it look nice or elaborate the result. I tried to search for anyone that has done it before and according to my search, I think that what I am doing is "extending the frontier of knowledge". I hope that I can publish this to a good journal.

November 24, 2005(Thursday)

Today is the thanksgiving holiday. Everything is closed. The school is closed and even the gym is closed. Therefore, I spent today to do the project's literature review. Very boring. However, I still have to do it. I fall asleep many times. I also read some One Piece comic too.
At night, some CCF people came to our house. Originally there is a drama practice tonight, but then since most of the people are out of town (to places like New York, Chicago, Kentucky, Baltimore and so on). Therefore, the practice is canceled. However, three of them suddenly showed up in our house so we had a short practice plus dinner tonight. I am happy that they feel comfortable to stay in our house.

November 23, 2005(Wednesday)

I talked to classmates today to compare answers about our homework. And then I talked to the prof about the PhD project. Every time after talking to him, I have lots of work to do. Even though this week is thanksgiving break, I still have lots of thing to do. I do not have the holiday mood that other people have. Holiday is still a luxury to me.

November 22, 2005(Tuesday)

I went to take the driving written test today. The last time I went there was Oct 10 and it was closed on Monday. So I went to take the test again. With the driving knowledge I had previously, I only studied for 20 mins and went to take the test, and I passed!
For my PhD project, I had some interesting result. Therefore my professor asked me to do more literature review because it is very likely that someone else has done this already. I don't want to repeat what they did. However, this is very boring to read other people's paper. Very boring and I fall asleep several times.

November 21, 2005(Monday)

This is thanksgiving week and holiday starts at Wednesday. However, I have no class on Monday, and Tuesday's class is canceled. Therefore, I got the whole week off. However, I am still very involved with my project. I talked to the professor this afternoon and there is lots of thing for me to prove. B Basically, I am trying to do a project on complementary product for a supply chain. The result I have looks different from my expected. Either I made a mistake, or I have some good result. I am trying to convince myself that what I have is good. Therefore, for the rest of the day, and I think for the next few days too, I need to try different calculation to show that I did not make a stupid mistake.

November 20, 2005(Sunday)

There is no one that can drive us to the normal English worship this morning, so we went with CCF friends to Mandarin worship today. And it would be good for Elaine too because she can understand more Mandarin then English. Usually the Chinese worship is twice a month and they will make it to be every week starting next February, which is the time that they will officially start the Chinese Church. Let see what will happen.
I went with Carmen to the gym during afternoon. After Carmen went to work, she has less chance to go to gym. At night, we went to the prayer meeting and also celebrated Joyce's birthday.

November 19, 2005(Saturday)

We went to grocery shopping in the morning. We purchased a mountain of things. And then I went back to school for the statistic class. The class postponed from yesterday to today noon. The prof ordered pizza for lunch. In general, the prof is a nice prof because he ordered donut every class, and even pizza today! None of the previous teacher has done this to us. However, I really hate the statistic material. I fall asleep today again. Since I don't think that I will focus on statistic, I never put my heart there. However I still need to pass this course.
Afternoon the fellowship people came to our house for Praise and Worship. Carmen was responsible but she let the people to lead it themselves. Her philosophy is that she wants to let them try and develop them. However, my philosophy is that I should do this and make sure that the program has the quality. We have different philosophy. Anyway, they also had dinner at our house and then played the "find the killer" game too. Now our house is like a gathering place for them, which is good. This is at least something we have learnt in Venezuela. There are nice people such as Che So that took a good care of us and now we want to take a good care of them.

November 18, 2005(Friday)

There is no Statistic class today because it is postponed to tomorrow. I slept until 11am. And then I worked out and also did the project. At night we went to fellowship. It is boy/girl sharing night. Basically we just played game and nothing much has been done.

November 17, 2005(Thursday)

After skipping/canceling it for several weeks, I went to the teaching class this morning. Each of the students has to take turn to teach and four did their teaching today. I will have it next time. I plan to ask everyone to take a quiz and each marks other team's quiz. The questions are based on the teaching section of today. Therefore, I am teaching several concepts: whether they paid attention or not, break ice game, game theory, know their students. I also planned to show them the picture of Carmen and I in Europe as an introduction, to make the 10 mins section even more fruitful. I have a feeling that this is going to be a greatest lesson with lots of thing covered in a short time and in a very memorable way. I am proud of myself.
I also went to pick up Carmen after work. And then at night, we went to Joyce's house for hot pot and also played card game. We played the "guess who is killer" game for almost three hours and we certainly had fun in that.

November 16, 2005(Wednesday)

After the tornado yesterday, today it snowed. It was relatively warm yesterday but the interior weather changed to freezing temperature today. What a dramatic change. Also, I have not seen it snowing since 2002 winter.
Today is the first day Carmen went to have a full time job and I surprised her by showing up in her work place at the end of the business day. I accompanied her to wait for the bus, and then I bike and accompanied her back from the bus stop to home.

November 15, 2005(Tuesday)

In Vancouver, there is a risk of earthquake. And in Indiana, there is tornado. There is several tornados warning today and the wind is pretty heavy. At that time Carmen and Elaine are outside and I am quite worry about them. I am glad that they return home safe.

November 14, 2005(Monday)

Carmen showed Elaine around today while I stayed home to work on the project for about 8 hours. I went out for running in the middle. Also, when Carmen was preparing the food at night, the tape under the kitchen's sink leaked water. The whole thing just falls apart. They did not use glue to glue it. I just assembled it back and the building management came to fix it at night.

November 13, 2005(Sunday)

I tried to back up my files to CD. I have two computers each with CD write capability. One I got from Venezuela and the other one I got two months ago. However, the two computers complained that the CD is bad. However, I have used two or three CD from this stack of CD. I am really frustrated and pissed about this situation.
In the afternoon Shangmin and Tan Yue drove Carmen and I to pick up Elaine from the airport. We also check out the car dealership. Her flight is delayed from 3:30 to 5:00pm. We arrived back home at 6:20pm and skipped the prayer meeting.
I worked on the project for a while and also read "One Piece" comic that I borrowed from friend here for 1.5 hours. I am addicted to comic. I also talked to Mrs. Cheng from Venezuela for 30 mins about the church situation.

November 12, 2005(Saturday)

Today is fellowship fun day. I went with the CCF to ice skating today. There is a free skating session. Our group has over 30 people at one time and we spanned half of the court! I took pictures and skated around fast. Afterward, we went to Shangmin's group for gathering. We ate pizza and then played the "concentration" calling game. And then we went back to my house for Praise and Worship practice. And at night, we went out to have dinner with them. At night, we also cleaned up our house because Elaine will come here tomorrow. I have not yet studied today! What a relax day. As I mentioned before, I am usually not productive in the weekend

November 11, 2005(Friday)

I went to the Statistic class in the morning. And since this is a morning class, and also a boring class, it is very easy to fall asleep. However, I don't want to do so because the prof is the business school PhD department head. Therefore, in the last few weeks, I went to washroom and sit on the toilet to sleep for 10 mins during the break time. And in the last two weeks, I went to the standalone handicap washroom instead and sleep in the corner of the washroom. There is a lot more privacy there. After class, I did the homework for 1.5 hours. People may think that I like statistic, but actually I hate this class with passion. There are not many classes that I would hate it so much. I am now quite focus in my project and I know what direction I will NOT head to. I don't want to waste time but then I still have to get over this class. I know that all of the people that I talk to dislike this class too. I am quite angry and impatient when I am doing the homework. I just gave up half way and decided to come back it later.
I went to fellowship at night and it is Bible study as usual. Afterward, we went out for drink thing and returned home at 12:30.

November 10, 2005(Thursday)

During lunch today, I went with several classmates to have lunch (paid by the department) with a potential PhD student candidate. He is from the Air Force, and Air Force will pay for his program. However, rather than the usual 5 years, he is required to complete his program in three years! Rather than scaring him about the workload that we are having, we only mentioned the good side.
I felt in love with my project. I can work on it for a long time! I have basically completed most of the math and now it is time to write up. I need to write a "story" about each equation, which I am good at. People thought that I am only good at math, but actually I am also good at making up story (BS) and elaboration. I spent another 4 or 5 hours today working on it! I went to basketball at night and also ran for about a mile. Now I can run a mile for about 7 minutes, which is a record for myself.
I read Hansel's Nov. 5, 2005 diary. He wrote about the time he left Vancouver a year ago. And then I compared to my diary of May 18, 2002, which is the day that I left Vancouver. His diary has much more content, emotion and passion; while my diary mainly consists of items and event, and not so much emotion. This is generally true that he is a person with much more feeling and emotion than I do, or at least, he wrote it and I do not write spend a lot of time to write about this. On the other hand, I am very punctual about updating my diary, but Hansel would update it once several days. (And he still has not updated his Korea trip that has happened over a month ago!) Also, I am good at long distance running while he is good at heavy weight lifting. But we are both impolite, impatient (and have an awesome wife).

November 09, 2005(Wednesday)

Nothing much happened other than studying and studying. Why I forget to update the diary for this day again???

November 08, 2005(Tuesday)

We were waken up by a phone call. And this is a nice one! Carmen got a full-time job! She will be working in the residential hall to help maintaining the resident and supervisor some part time undergrad students. Even though this is only a 10 months contract work, this is such a relief for both of us. And this will be her first time to work since she quitted work 16 months ago.
At night, we invited my classmates Greg and Valya to our home for dinner. We originally invited them in the middle of September but Carmen ended up returned to Vancouver at that time. So the dinner is postponed to now. The dinner nearly got canceled today because Greg almost may have his four children today. This is the first time that we invited non-Chinese people to our home for dinner. The first questions that we need to decide is whether we should use dishes/folk or bowl/chopstick. To show our Chinese culture, we gave them bowl/chopstick. We also gave them folk as well. They used folk and just seldom tried to use chopstick. In addition, they brought some fruit, chocolate and wine. We drank some wine later, and I did not get drunk. We talked about our school work, how the PhD seminar course is killing us, how is other people doing and so on. It is nice to get a break from studying, even though our discussion topic is still around school.

November 07, 2005(Monday)

This morning, someone from the building management came to our house to fix two rails (one in the bedroom and one in the living room) so that we can put our wedding picture frame onto the wall.
Basically, my life today is nothing more than Mathematica. I spent about 8 hours simplifying the result I obtained from my project. I tried to use matrix algebra to group similar thing to matrix. This is very tedious work and I need to be very careful. I am glad that, even though I was not a careful person when I was little, I am now relatively careful after the self-training when I was studying mathematics contest in high school. I seldom make really careless mistake, and if so, I can spot it out easily.
I went for a jog in the afternoon for 40mins. During that time, I am thinking how I can use complex number, together with the matrix, to represent my result so that I get everything in one compact way. I have no concrete idea yet.
I also went to school to talk to professor about my research assistant project for 1.5 hours. At night after having enough of tedious simplification of my project result, I also worked on this research assistant project for more than two hours. Therefore, I spent 13+ hours to work on the two projects. I don't feel bad at all because I am nerd and I enjoy solving mathematic modeling problem much more than reading papers or writing papers. And also, since I have some progress, I feel good too.

November 06, 2005(Sunday)

Carmen woke up early in the morning to prepare dinner because we will have worship practice at our home. Afterward, we went to church for Sunday worship and then went home to clean up our house. And then from 3 to 6:30 CCF people came to our house to practice for the Dec 9 praise and worship night and dinner at our home. It is such a wonderful time to practice with them because both Carmen and I are really involved in worship team previously and we really enjoy practicing music with them. They also enjoyed the Curry Chicken rice that Carmen made.
At night, we went to the fellowship prayer meeting. Today is the first time that I tried to share with Mandarin and even pray in Mandarin. That was quite challenging!

November 05, 2005(Saturday)

I went for the gym to do work out. Then I played basketball again for an hour. It is tired to play basketball after work out.
At night, we went to Joyce's home for dinner with Shangmin and his wife Tan Yue. We are serving as group leaders in the Campus group (which consists of the Mandarin speaking and Cantonese speaking group). We talked about a lot of different thing. Shangmin studies "Leisure" PhD (first time I hear someone study this kind of thing). So we talked about the job prospect of this PhD. They also said that they want us to join the fellowship committee so that we can represent to Cantonese group. We also brainstorm about the fellowship for Thanksgiving. In addition, two of them (Joyce, Tan Yue) are from China. Shangmin is from Taiwan while Carmen and I are from HK. Therefore, we talked about some politics questions. For example, should Taiwan return to China? We talked about the press freedom in China.

November 04, 2005(Friday)

I worked on the statistic class and homework most of the day today. This is my least favorite course this term, but still I have to complete this.
At night, I hosted the Bible Quiz with Carmen and Joyce. I have hosted Bible Quiz for so many times that I lost count. Probably more than 15 times. And "my game" have evolved and I think that the game format is really mature. The main idea is like Jeopardy. There are two rounds and each round has 5 categories with 5 questions each with different difficulty. Since the Bible study is on Galatians, this is the focus of the Quiz. The first round we had "Galatians", "New Testament", "Geography", "News", "Action". The second round we had "Galatians", "Old Testament", "church", "Sport/entertainment", "Others". About 40 to 50% is Christianity related and the other half is on other topic. My favorite type is "action", with questions such as "get 5 soxs in the least amount of time", "hop on one feet", "read from 1 to 20 in English", "memorize any verse in the Bible" and "pray for each person in the other group". Not only challenging their Christianity knowledge, I challenged their physical strength and other type of knowledge (e.g. Hollywood gossip).
There is a problem with the language. Most people are Mandarin speaking but there are some Cantonese speaking. Therefore I prepared some PowerPoint so that people can read it from the screen and listen to us to yell out the question. I made the PowerPoint such that each question has its own file and the main page has a weblink to the actual question. However, in the beginning there are very few Cantonese speaking people so Joyce suggested that we should use Mandarin and forget about the PowerPoint. I was a bit unsure because I spent quite a while on the PowerPoint. And then I asked the group and they prepared to use the PowerPoint. Therefore, it ended up that I show them the PowerPoint slide and let them read and we don't have to say the question out loud.
I think that this kind of Bible Quiz is new to most people. Therefore, they are quite excited about this. Different questions take care of different people's interest. In addition, each person within the group would take their turn to answer the question. Therefore, I don't think that there is anyone that is not really involved. However, obviously there are still lots of places that I can improve. But until now, I think that I can really make a Quiz fun. May be I should do this when I am a professor some day. I am sure that my students would be very surprised and would love me.

November 03, 2005(Thursday)

I used to take a note in my personal written diary (differ from this one) how many hours I study on each subject. I just gave up lately because basically when I have time, I study. Study is so normal that I have nothing much to write.
At night, I went to the gym for work out. And then I saw some friends so I played basketball with them. I am quite tired at that time but I still played for an hour. I have not heard Hansel play basketball for a while. He spent all of his leisure time sitting there staring at the piranha. I am looking forward to go back to HK to play against him one-on-one again.

November 02, 2005(Wednesday)

Carmen needs to see the career counselor this morning. The alarm is supposed to go on at 8am but for some reason we cannot hear the alarm. We woke up at 9:20 without hearing the sound of the alarm. Several times a year this has happened to me and I am glad that this does not happen during the time when we need to take a plane. She can change her meeting to 10am so there is no problem.
I went to professor and got his signature for the training that I am going to teach in two weeks. However, I am still waiting for CTT to get me the training lab because I have never taught this class before. I am quite worry about this.
After class, I study as usual.

November 01, 2005(Tuesday)

I may have a chance to go to Puerto Rico the week before Thanksgiving for teaching a CTT course. Therefore, I am trying to do as many things as I can so that I am more prepared or else I would be in a big trouble when I go to that course.
I also helped out a classmate Valya's project. She had problem with her math and had spent several weeks. I am taking a look and find out that what she is doing has a flaw and needs to redo most of the stuff again. I feel bad for her.