April 30, 2009(Thursday)

I woke up 4am in the morning and then left home around 5am. I go with my German classmate Jan to the airport and then we took a flight to Orlando and arrive at 10:30am. We also rented a car and therefore we were able to drive around. However, we did not research in advanced about where we want to go. Further, we are not interested to spend money for the entrance fee for Disney, Universal Studio or Kennedy Space Center. Therefore we simply drove around the area aimlessly and had lunch downtown.
Afterward we went to hotel to take a nap because we are both too tired. Then I had a short meeting with my professor about my presentation tomorrow. Being a professor he gets to stay in the very nice conference hotel, which costs almost $250 per night, while I share room with another student each pay around $40 per night. The conference hotel is 10 mins walk from the Disney downtown, while my hotel is 20 mins drive. Anyway, afterward Jan and I walked around Disney downtown and had dinner there. We went back to the hotel to check emails.
Today is the final exam of my students. I asked my friend Wenbin to help proctoring the exam. However I forgot to upload the final exam but I am glad that wenbin helped me to email to the students. Therefore at night I spent some time marking the exam too.

April 29, 2009(Wednesday)

I did some exercise and doing some study. At night we went out to have some grocery shopping. I will be going for a trip tomorrow, leaving home for 56 hours. Hope that Carmen and Cailyn will be fine.

April 28, 2009(Tuesday)

Today is the last day of my teaching class. The final exam will be this Thursday but I will be out of town so today is the last day I see my student. It is simply a review section, so most students are gone 20 mins later. I am glad that I get this class over. During the beginning of the semester, I have no idea what I am going to teach. As time goes, I developed some material. I think that the students like me and hopefully I get a good evaluation.

April 27, 2009(Monday)

Less than 12 hours of the sermon, this morning I had my dissertation proposal defense. There are two defenses during the PhD program at my department. The first one (this one) is about a proposal and the second one (which will happen next summer) is the final defense. I had done presentation before in school and at those times I spent lots of time preparing. However I don't feel like much preparation this time, so I similar prepared the first 20% of the slides several times and run through the whole slides once or twice.
The scariest thing is forget to wake up on time. The presentation is 9am and I usually wake up at 8:45am. I hope to wake up 7am but Cailyn woke up 4:30am this morning and I need to accompany her (simply sit besides her and let her know my presence) for 20mins. However I am grateful that I still wake up 7am this morning.
During the presentation, I intentionally speak slowly and I finished on time. The Q&A discussion afterward went ok too. I think I did a good job. As one professor emails me afterward, "I hear (from Seb) that you not only passed this morning, but that you really ˇ§wowedˇ¨ them with your presentation and ideas. Way to go! Thatˇ¦s one less hurdle to cross."
Presentation/public speaking is always my strength and I am glad that I come through this time. After the presentation, I accumulate so much energy that it is a great time to go to the gym to consume some energy. However after working out, I am quite tired.
At night, we went out to the playground to play with Cailyn for a while.

April 26, 2009(Sunday)

I had a sermon this afternoon about the ups and downs of serving of Elijah. It is because lately lots of people (especially myself) felt so frustrated, tired and burnt out at church. Hopefully this can be a sermon to encourage them. During the preparation process, I have some good idea. Therefore unlike previous sermon preparation process, I pretty enjoy this one. Everything went well and I have a gift of public speaking.

April 25, 2009(Saturday)

This morning I went to the deacon board meeting. Then I stayed home for the rest of today and then at night Nicky/Joyce brought their baby to visit us.

April 24, 2009(Friday)

I had meeting with other professor about my dissertation. Nothing special

April 23, 2009(Thursday)

Professor told me that there is additional funding from my department so I need to go to a conference next week (Thurs to Saturday) at Orlando. From a positive side, this is definitely good for me to get exposed to more people before going to the job market. However there are some church committeemen that I have to adjust because of this.
I gave out the evaluation today. My class has 22 students; however there are some kind of event going on in school and therefore there are only 14 students that showed up. Anyway I think that I did a good job in teaching and hopefully I get a good evaluation. This is very important to me, for my job search!
Big news! My host server (geocities of yahoo) will be terminating this service later this year!!! I have been using this since 1997; I start my photo website since 2000 and online diary 2002, all from this web server. So I need to see what I should do!!! I have most of the photo saved already, but uploading to another website will be a big pain! Actually yahoo has closed its free photo album and also free briefcase in the past year or so. Yahoo definitely is doing bad now!

April 22, 2009(Wednesday)

I just stayed at home, went to do some workout. Nothing special today

April 21, 2009(Tuesday)

I got a paper rejected by the top journal (Management science) today. This is my third time submitting a paper and the first time that I get a reject (for the other two, one is under third round review and the other one is under first round review). I am not surprised by this rejection, because only 2% is accepted. In fact, I am quite pleasantly surprised by this process! I submit the paper last week and I got it back today! What impressed me the most is that the Department Editor and the Associate Editor wrote some good feedback! After reading their feedback, all I can say is that, the wisdom and experience of these people are totally beyond anything I can imagine! I don't think that I have ever seen someone so smart! Wow! That actually scares me from being a professor!
At night I spent two hours composing the final exam for my class. I promised them not to give them any surprise in the final exam. Yet I still have some fun making up my first final exam! Hope that they have fun doing it too!

April 20, 2009(Monday)

The pastor went in the past two days to our church to give out some workshop and sermon. Seems like this seriously bring out the differences in our church and there are some tension going on. So today I spent some times emailing and also communicating with others. Hopefully it won't break the unity of our church.
At night we went out for some grocery shopping. Lately Cailyn knows how to walk really well. However she is also scare of a lot of thing. Even her most beloved flower! We went to some craft store where there are several isles of flowers. She actually scares and wants to hold me tight! There are too many flowers, too overwhelming! Carmen and I also had a good time watching her grow is also good too!

April 19, 2009(Sunday)

I spent around 5 hours today working on some paper that I hope to publish. This probably won't be good enough to be my dissertation. Yet I still want to work on it because I have no idea about my dissertation topic yet. Rather than finding the topic and makes myself crazy because of feeling unproductive, I would rather work on some lower-return paper.

April 18, 2009(Saturday)

This morning I went to play some very easy recreation basketball and badminton. Then during the afternoon the pastor that we originally wanted to hire (but ended up not) had a Bible Study workshop at our church. He is more open minded and there are some fundamentalist at our church that is offended. However there are also members that really like his preaching too. So it seems like that the opinion is quite extreme.
At night, we had dinner with him and other church members. As usual, we went home early because Cailyn is getting fuzzy after 1.5 hours.

April 17, 2009(Friday)

Normal day, nothing special. At night, we went to church.

April 16, 2009(Thursday)

Normal day, nothing special

April 15, 2009(Wednesday)

Normal day, nothing special

April 14, 2009(Tuesday)

I got some feedback from other professors about my dissertation proposal. I included two papers that I wrote previously to this proposal; one of them was under third round review and the other one is just submitted today. Therefore, my feedback to these professors is more for the smoothness of the defense presentation.
Cailyn also knows more to express her. Specifically when we bring her to pooh, she knows how to say "no" when she doesn't want to. Also, she has quite a large temper when things do not go her way. However I am learning to be positive to build up her character.

April 13, 2009(Monday)

Normal day working on school work.

April 12, 2009(Sunday)

Cailyn does not want to sleep during her first afternoon nap. After Sunday worship (around 4pm) she is very tired. She is so frustrated that it takes her to cry really hard for around 30 mins before going to nap. However, she is so exhausted that she only slept for 45 mins. Therefore, normally she sleeps 2 hours afternoon nap and today she only had 45mins.

April 11, 2009(Saturday)

Today is a really relaxing and no-work day. I had two 1-hour afternoon naps. In the morning we also go out to have some Easter-Egg-Hunt event hosted by IU apartment office. Of course Cailyn is not able to compete with other kids. So our purpose is just to walk around. Then we also went for grocery shopping too. A too relaxing and unproductive day.

April 10, 2009(Friday)

Before fellowship, the deacon and the Pastoral Search committee had one last meeting to evaluate what we did is good or bad. We are all very disappointed and the meeting has quite a lot of emotion, including myself.
Tonight is the Good Friday program at our fellowship, responsible by Carmen and I. We tried to prepare something similar to the "magical" Passover. We had some Jewish food, then use two ice-cream stick to make a cross, to symbolize how hard it is to make a cross. Then we washed each other's feet and had communion. I think that this is a really good experience and people do enjoy this program. Thanks God. Serving in the fellowship group is much simpler and easier than in the deacon board.

April 09, 2009(Thursday)

I taught class again; but I don't feel like teaching for the last couple of classes. I don't think that I did a that good a job as I used to do about a few weeks ago. I will probably hand out evaluation form in about 9 days; so I have to do a great job for the next two classes.
Regarding about the telemarketing problem. I have reported to the IU phone department and they let me have free caller ID phone service to track down which company calls. This is pretty good deal.

April 08, 2009(Wednesday)

This morning we went to the second hand toy store "Once upon a child" to sell some toys that we got second hand. It is because our house has too many toys and some of them Cailyn no longer play.
For the last several months there is a lot of telemarketing phoning our house. Previously there is only once in a few days. But now suddenly it becomes several a day. It exceeds my acceptable level. I have called the IU phone department. Eventually we may even have to change the telephone number!

April 07, 2009(Tuesday)

I taught the class today as usual. Nothing else that is special today.

April 06, 2009(Monday)

I had lunch with a new PhD student again; and then I went to workout. Even after 11 days, I still have not fully recovered from donating blood.
At night we rearranged the furniture again, around the 4 or 5 time this year. Previously we had the same set up for 2+ years. Now as Cailyn grew older, there are more things to adjust. At first we had the alphabet tile. Then the "cage". And this cage has been moving several different positions. In the past two days Cailyn always walk to the kitchen. This is too dangerous so we transformed the cage to a gate tonight. We also have to move the TV, sofa, dining table around as well. Very tiring! Hopefully we can have this setup for the next couple of months!

April 05, 2009(Sunday)

Today after Sunday worship is the general assembly to vote whether we will hire pastor or not. We need 28 out of 35 people showing up to vote yes. A bit surprisingly and a bit disappointingly, there are 10 people that vote against this, and we will not proceed with this pastor. I have spent quite a bit of time and energy in the last 12 months to work on this issue and of course I am disappointed. But I have tried my part and if it does not work out, I tried and God has His other plan.

April 04, 2009(Saturday)

This afternoon we had another deacon board meeting; lots of meeting lately, especially because we are going to hire the pastor soon!
At night Cailyn *seriously* does not want to go to bed. This is the second time in a couple of days! She just yells and cried really hard and wants to go out of the bedroom. Last time (about three days ago) it takes her 1.2 hours to calm down; during that time she was really crying hard and crazily. As of right now, she has cried for 40 mins already, non-stop. She should be very tired now but still tried her best to cry. Carmen tried to comfort her for 30 mins and she is still crying. Now this is my turn. Basically I just sit there, using computer and let her feel that she is not alone in this room. But I am pretty much ignoring her and let her cry.

April 03, 2009(Friday)

I played about 2.5 hours badminton this afternoon. At first I played with someone who is really good. I can't believe myself to be totally exhausted! Consider that I have been running 3 times a week and my stamina is among one of the best that people I know! However, I am totally exhausted to a stage that I have to rest for 5 mins for each 5 mins to play, but amazingly he did not really sweat! He told me that I did not have a correct footwork. I usually run around the court, while he just jumped from one place to the other. That makes the whole difference! I tried to copy what he does but I can't. After playing with him for about an hour, I really had enough, and I played double with other players who are not as good. Then at that time I do not sweat and it is very comfortable.
Then we went to our church friend Joyce/Nicky's son Matthew's 1-year-old birthday party. There are totally three babies (all born within 3 weeks apart), and Cailyn is the only one that walk around. So people focus on her.
At night I led a workshop on devotion. I have led this workshop in English during 2001 in the FCGC church. This is the second time. I am always a very good teacher/discussion session leader and kept people involved and interested. Thanks God for this gift.

April 02, 2009(Thursday)

Today is a normal day; nothing special. Cailyn had difficulty with pooh again, but finally she had some. I can feel that "mother love" is very great! Carmen had tremendous patient and love for Cailyn! "Father" in a family probably would do some other thing.

April 01, 2009(Wednesday)

Today is mom's birthday. After calling her in the morning, I continue to work on the homework and dissertation.