Htam::Diary

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.

This Tuesday, I taught in the morning as usual, but today I think it went extra well, with a lot of people attending, too.  They were very lively and asked very good questions.  So I took this opportunity and gave them TA evaluation forms.  Afterwards, I had lunch with my officemate, like how we have been doing for the last few weeks now.  And then after SMC, I went to play some table tennis.  I played doubles with Choongbum against Hao and Yen.  Half of the rotation we always win easily and the other half we lost badly.  Since we lose first and then win, we were able to win the fifth game after the swap at 5 points (though to be fair, we were leading at 5 points, too).  Then I stayed and watched Adam's match against Tye.  I have to say, I am very surprised at how good he has gotten in one year, without proper training and such.  His shots are quite clean, and even though he has no attack power, he can place shots left and right quite well, forcing Tye to move around and make lots of mistakes.  Of course, I can easily beat Adam for sure.  Watching the match almost made me late for tutoring, but I got there in time.  I quite enjoy tutoring.

This Monday, I went to school but got kind of dizzy.  I think something is wrong with the AC today.  I usually have medicine with me, but I just ran out.  Oops.  I had quite a difficult day dealing with all this.  But I got a better after forcing all my classmates to be shivering in the cold with windows open during class.  After class ended around 4, I went to Boelter to pick up a baby chair for June from a friend of hers.  I am the chair courier.  I left it in my office and came home to get my car.  Jonah walked over to my office and helped me carry some stuff to my car, and then we came home.  He talked to me for a while, while I cooked dinner.  It was impromptu, but he ate some.  Then we went over to Steve an Tammy's, and he had a second dinner.  Then we talked there for quite some time, sang a bit, and then I took Jonah home.  It's a late night, but it has been an interesting and non-standard night.

This Sunday, I woke up at 6 something (I am quite happy with my recent self-awaking time).  I went to church with Alex as usual.  Today I translated during breaking of bread.  I also listened to the message today.  I think besides special meetings, it's been quite a while since I actually listened to a Sunday message (the last 4 weeks were special meeting and sharing, and before then I think I taught high school group two or three times in a row).  After church, we played some volleyball.  We ended quite early, so I decided to come home for dinner, instead of spending money eating out.

This Saturday, I woke up before my alarm (yay!) but stayed in bed until a few minutes before when my alarm would have gone off.  I picked Alex up and went to church.  We had very interesting conversation on the way this time (mostly about scifi shows).  Studying Esther 7 was, as usual, better than I expected.  We then had lunch at Pho 79.  When coming back, it was raining.  Hou-En and I had brought umbrellas.  (How come other people did not think of that?  Perhaps they don't care about getting wet, or perhaps they did not think ahead.)  I shared the umbrella with Doris... and in the effort of keeping her dry, I sort of got wet.  Oh well.  Then I drove Jonah home, which made me decide to go to 99 Ranch.  I bought quite a bit of stuff, even though I went to 99 yesterday in Torrance.  The Chius were right--that 99 is not as good as the ones near church.  On the way home, I talked to Charley for an hour or so (yes, I actually parked my car and continue talking to him even after I got back).  I really like talking.