Htam::Diary

This Friday, I woke up early and did work.  Since it is my day off, I had no classes today, I could focus a lot on studying.  I did about 2 to 3 times work as I usually could per day.  As a result, I was quite happy, and decided to go to school anyway and watch the finals match between professors Kefeng and Thiele.  It was worth watching.  Afterwards, I beat Justin Shih for bronze.  And now the tournament is over.  I came home and did more work.

This Thursday, I went to school to teach my last class of the quarter.  It went pretty well today--nice ending.  Then I had lunch and held office hours.  Combinatorics seminar was cancelled so I came home early, did some work, and then drove back to school.  I saw some people playing doubles, so I joined them.  We had 6 people and we played three teams.  After a while, Wilson left, and so we had 5 people, and rotated around (losing team change one person).  Then Yen left, so we just had four people.  I was with Justin Shih and Tye was with Justin Palumbo.  I decided to play left-handed, and we won most of the time.  It was quite fun.  Afterwards, I got dinner from Kogi truck and came home to eat.

This Wednesday, I played Professor Thiele in the math departmental table tennis tournament.  Sid helped me warm up an hour early, since yesterday we saw how Thiele warmed up the half hour before and Wilson did not get time.  So today we did it even earlier, but that meant I was sitting for half an hour, and by the time I played, I was not warm once again.  I cannot even execute easy shots that were second nature to me before.  Oh sad.  I lost.  I won one game though.  And I should have been able to easily won if the warm up times were reversed.  Oh well.  At least now I don't have to worry about setting up a time for the final match.  I can now say I am a semifinalist.

This Tuesday, I had my last TA session with half of my kids, some of whom I may never see again.  It has been a good term.  I really enjoyed teaching them.  By this time I have pretty much learned all their names, and now they are gone.

Again I went with my officemate to lunch at Synapse, and then I had SMC--seeing pretty much the same people again.  Then I went to watch Professor Thiele play against Wilson in the last quarter final match.  Thiele won easily, and I grabbed the opportunity to play with him a bit.  If I am at my usual condition, I can probably easily beat him.  But my hand is still quite weak.  And we are playing tomorrow.  Oh well.  At this point, I have pretty much gotten my goal: to play with Thiele.

Afterwards, I talked on the phone to a friend for a while, and then went to tutoring, groceries shopping, dinner, and prayer meeting.  At night, I made some decisions that I am convinced to be completely correct.  The nature of these decisions cannot be revealed at the moment.  But suffice it to say, nothing will necessarily change much in the near future.  As for the distant future, well, whatever the Lord's will was going to happen, will happen.

This Monday, we had 3 of the 4 quarter final matches in the math department table tennis tournament.  Kefeng beat Yen quite easily.  Then I played with Kefeng a little bit.  I am very out of practice.  Also, today my hand is very unsteady (due to volleyball yesterday--I was even having hard time writing as prettily as I used to today in class).  Then I beat Tye.  Then Justin Shih beat Hao.  This was quite interesting, since Hao was quite favoured before.  At night, I talked to a few people on the phone, and also visited Jonah.

This Sunday, Chris drove to my place again and parked in my spot, so we can carpool.  We went to pick Alex up, only to find the road closed for bike race.  Eventually we got Alex, and Chris drove, and we were right on time (usually we would be aiming for 15 minutes early).  It was quite hot, and I was uncomfortable, so I sat near the door.  In the afternoon, we had a brief HSG planning meeting, and then a WCCC meeting right after.  Then we went to play volleyball.  Yay, today was a lot more enjoyable than last time.  However, we still pretty much did not switch teams.  I don't understand why people are so adamant against switching around so we get to play with different people.  We had dinner at Sam Woo, and today we had 7 people sharing 7 dishes, which was actually pretty good for once.

This Saturday, I picked Alex up for Bible study as usual.  Afterwards, I went to visit Hou-En, June, and Tabitha briefly.  I brought some stuff over for them (just the courier), and got to see my baby "sister."  She is so cute!!  Then I joined people for lunch at Thai Purple.  In the afternoon, I stayed at church and worked, partly because Lydia wanted to do it.  We barely said a few sentences to each other the entire afternoon.  We were definitely being studious.  At night, Jonah came over to church for a bit, and then we followed him back to his house for dinner.  Then we talked for quite some time (with Jennifer, too).  And then I left.  I talked to my mother on the way back (with my new bluetooth headset!) and realised I don't want to cut the conversation, but if I park in my garage I get no reception.  So I went to the math department instead and parked there.  I climbed 5 flights of stairs (mostly external) so I would not have to take the elevator and lose reception.  After everything was said and done, I realised I was so hungry, so I ate again.  But I ate too much, so I was very full, and could not go to sleep.  I eventually went to sleep close to 1 AM.  Wow, that is very late for me.  I have alarm for 7:30 "tomorrow" morning.

This Friday, I studied geometry for most of the day.  In the morning I did a qual.  And then after lunch, I decided to take a stroll and buy some things while talking to Steph.  Then in the afternoon, more studying, and then took Jonah to Steve and Tammy's.  Came home, had dinner, continued studying.  Oh, my neighbour is playing loud music, and there are lots of people, it seems like a party.  So I went to the math department.  I did more work there.  I just got back, close to midnight.  Today I studied a lot.  Walking outside in shorts near midnight was a terrible idea.  I was so cold I started running.

This Thursday, I had another great teaching this morning, followed by an opportune TA evaluations.  Then I went to Synapse again to get lunch.  I really like sandwiches.  After office hours where once again I had student from other TA, I went to the last combinatorics seminar of the term.  Then I stayed at school until close to 6.  I walked home and got my car and went back to school.  There I worked until 8 or so.  I spotted a Kogi truck on the way to school, so I decided to get it for (late) dinner.  Thanks to Michael Woods for introducing this to me.

This Wednesday, after classes are done I played table tennis.  Today I had mine semi-quarter finals match against Choongbum Lee.  I won 11-3, 11-8, 11-1.  The second game I was definitely playing around.  Anyway, I probably should stop doing that for matches in the future.  After the match, I played with some people unofficially for fun.  There were a lot of people who wanted to play against me.

At night, I did more math at home.  I came up with this proof yesterday, found a hole in it, and patched up the hole in my mind this morning.  I worked on it during the afternoon while waiting for table tennis, and tonight I finished working it out.  It turns out to be a matter of triangle inequality... who would have thought?  I also used a fact from a theorem by Perron--Frobenius which I knew.  However, I am still trying to figure out if this is necessary, or if I can bypass this theorem all together.  One part I decided to use interlacing of eigenvalues since that is probably the cheapest way to solve that problem using machinery.  However, there are probably more direct approaches without resorting to interlacing.  I am a bit too lazy to optimise my proofs at the moment.  I should spend more time studying geometry instead of doing combinatorics (which I love a lot more).  I am actually very uncertain about the prospects of the geometry exam.  Maybe I should give up for the benefit of passing the other exam more confidently.