Htam::Diary

This Tuesday, I had some time of rest.  I was at school for three hours, teaching in of it, and came home and tutored two hours.  Besides that, I mainly took care of some chores and spent some time with the Lord.  I think I needed to do this.

This Monday, I went to school and prepared for teaching, went to class, held office hours at SMC, and then tutored in my office for 2.5 hours.  I then ate a quick dinner with Adam from In-N-Out (his idea, I still don't like the food there), and then rushed to more tutoring.  This was a very full day.  I have been very busy in the last few days.  I really need some time off soon.

This Sunday, in the afternoon we played volleyball, baseball, football, and soccer.  Wow.  Four sports!  I mainly played volleyball.  We had full games for a while, but then people started playing soccer.  So Doris and I played against Steve and Caleb.  Tammy joined them, and Alan joined us.  And later Antonia joined them and Annie joined us.  These small games were quite intense, and fun.  Afterwards, we had like 15 people go to Phoenix for dinner.  I shared food with Lydia, which was pretty nice.

This Saturday, I picked Alex up for Bible study as usual.  We were, again, one of the first ones there.  After Bible study, we went to get dim sum, but the circulation was not good, so I left.  I was looking for an excuse to leave anyway.  So I quickly ate a sandwich and then went home.  I have a lot of work.  I graded exams, and then went to school to tutor.  Afterwards, I did more grading.  I also cleaned up my apartment.  I was completely out of plates and mugs, so I ate a frozen entree from Marie Callender's for dinner (since it has its own plate) and I drank Naked Juice (since I don't have mugs from which to drink OJ).  Good thing I cleaned up.  I need to get back in to my routine.

This Friday, I used the ASUCLA coupons multiple times and "saved" $10.  Yesterday was $8, and the day before was $2, for a total of $20.  Yay!  This feels good.  In the afternoon I had classes, and then grading midterm.  I went home to get my car, came back to school, and tutored in the evening until 8:30 or so.  Then I went to Friday Fest for the first time since 2/12, when Alex "forced" me to go.  I ended up grading exams there for about 2 hours, not really talking to anyone.

This Thursday, I ate lunch with Beren!  This has not happened in a very long time now.  We used to all eat together most days when we were first years.  Now our lives have grown apart.  It's good to talk to him again.

Then I taught higher partial derivatives, which, using Clairaut's theorem, allowed me to sneak in some combinatorics.  Haha.  In the afternoon, I worked on combinatorial geometry with Feng.  We had pretty much finished everything, only a little bit left to discuss.  Then I came home, did laundry, had dinner, and then went back to school to work.  I finally finished around 9:30 and came home.

This Wednesday, I did work in the morning as usual, and then went to school for lunch.  Athipat convinced me to join ASUCLA today (for free) so I can use some coupons this week.  In the afternoon, I went to classes, and then came home promptly.  Why?  Tina is visiting LA for a week to look for a place to live.  So I picked her up from Steve and Tammy's to go check out a place that was a bit too far for her to walk to.  It was good to see her again.

After I came back, I cooked dinner, ate, and rushed to tutoring.  Today tutoring was quite difficult, since my student who is in pre-calculus had a class where, in one session, the teacher taught the definition of derivatives, power rule, product rule, quotient rule, and chain rule, followed by the definition of the integral, and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, part 1.  Like... really?  How does he expect any of his students to get all this?  He even asked them to calculate the derivative of sin(x) using the limit definition... but they don't know the limit of sin(h)/h or (1-cos(h))/h.  So how are they supposed to do this problem?  I am so confused.  I feel bad for my student who is now "struggling" with not understanding calculus, after having 4~6 weeks-worth of material shoved into him in one day.

This Tuesday, I spent some time seriously considering and discussing about summer opportunities.  I started thinking about EPGY at Stanford because of Mark, and now I am trying to juggle a bunch of different constraints, including moving, WCCC, and other less important factors.  Perhaps I could go to EPGY for the short middle middle school session.  (No, that was not a typographical error.)  Or perhaps I could consider CTY instead.  Really not sure right now.  We'll see how things go.

This Monday, I started tutoring a new client.  This is not a long-term thing like my other client that may go on for years.  But on the other hand, he may want many, many hours of tutoring for the next month or so, hence this may be a fairly good opportunity.  But because of this, I stayed at school until almost 9 PM.  It's a been a long day, and I'll have to do it again this Friday.

This Sunday, I translated for communion and did offering box afterwards.  I am no longer sure which weeks are mine and which are not.  It becomes all kind of fluid now.  I know that I missed last week, so I was fine doing whatever this week.  After church, we played volleyball, despite not sure how many people will play (possibly 2v2).  After a while, however, we actually got a few full 6v6 game!  It was a pretty good mix today.  We had games where there were people of different levels playing together for fun, and also some quite intense games.  We had some games that were quite chill or landsliding, and some others that were very close.  Fang jumped high and spiked once today.  That was epic.  I also got some good digs (really happy) and a few acceptable hits (yay).  I really need to set better.  It is also nice to have Jonah joining us again.  He seems to be recovering.  Afterwards, we went to Phoenix for dinner.  And then I took Alex home.  The entire trip we did not say a word, I think we were both rather tired.  I am actually quite glad we feel the freedom to not say anything (and sometimes talk a lot).  It's good to be able to do both.

This Saturday, I went by myself to Bible study, got there late due to traffic, but only to find Steven, Ernest, and Rebecca there.  We started singing nevertheless, and then people started trickling in.  We went to Pho for lunch, and this may be the first time I had lunch with Tabitha!

Afterwards, I went to Caltech and saw the EXPLiCIT musical production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.  It was quite funny and enjoyable.  It was also good to see some friends.  I had dinner with Caleb Ng at the Green Street Restaurant.  It was a good experience.

[Photo: My sister got a new friend, the Linux mascot Tux.]

This Friday, I woke up rather late (because playing volleyball last night) and noticed (to my surprise) that I am actually not very sore at all.  I went to school, had lunch, did work, had classes, and did more work.  Eventually I realised I better come home soon as I need to do laundry and also tutor tonight.  So I did.  After finishing tutoring the usual material, I decided to show my kid how to prove Redei's theorem that says "every tournament has a Hamiltonian path" using induction.  He learned induction to prove closed forms for series, and I told him there are a lot more interesting problems we can prove using induction.  So he asked me to give him example, and so Redei's theorem came to mind.  I think he was pleased.  I was as well.

Addendum: My paper comes up as the third hit in a Google search of "Redei's theorem."

This Thursday, I got up semi-early again (yay!) after only 8 hours of sleep or so (given how much I've been sleeping lately, this is a good change of pace).  I worked a lot, almost being too late to school.  After a wonderful teaching session (yay!), even though I again did not get to the magnitude function of an n-dimensional vector, I went to seminar, did some work, and then came home.  I cooked dinner, and then got ready for volleyball.

I have not played since two Sundays ago (18 days), so I am a bit rusty (and eager).  I also predict I will be really sore tomorrow.  At first I played with Jess against Dan Shen and Alex.  We lost quite badly, and Steph came in to help, but then Jess left.  So we played 2v2 this way and lost two games, and then I teamed up with Alex, and won.  Jonah joined their team and we still won.  So now Steph lost all and Alex won all, so they are now together, and I am with Dan and Jonah.  We won both games, but they were both very very close.  I feel bad for Steph since she lost every single game.  I actually kind of regret not letting her won the last one.  But anyway, it was fun tonight for me.  Hopefully I will be able to do this again some time, but next week look really busy so far.

This Wednesday, I went to school for lunch as usual.  Today, there were so many people!  We had six people eating together.  Wow.  These days we seldom have even all four of us.  After classes, I came home, and took a shower.  Why?  This morning there was no hot water, and I called facilities to fix it.  Now I get to enjoy the fruits of my labour.  Then I drove over to Torrance.  The traffic was not too bad, and talking on the phone to my dad the entire trip made it even better.  I got to Steph's place and went in and waited for her to come home.  I did some work and read some Bible.  In the evening, we had dinner at King's Hawaiian just like last week, and then came home.  I asked her dad to help me read some Chinese characters for paper WCCC registration forms that I am entering in, just like last week.  And then I came home.

This Tuesday, I finally had a full teaching session.  The last few weeks have been rather boring, setting up 3-dimensional coordinate systems, parametrising curves, expressing lines and planes, and other background material for doing calculus in 3 dimensions.  Now that we are done with that, we finally get in to calculus.  In particular, we talked about limits, continuity, and partial derivatives.  Just as in single variable case, limits and continuity are used to formalise derivatives, but will most likely be quickly forsaken in lieu of the mechanical rules of derivatives that we shall learn and employ.  So I spent the first half making sure they really know how to calculate partial derivatives, including using implicit partial differentiation.  Then I went back and talked about limits and continuity.  I had examples where we have a function that is not continuous at the origin, and one that is piecewise yet continuous everywhere.  I wanted to show that the magnitude of a vector in n dimensions is a continuous function, but I ran out of time.  So sad.  I'll try to show it on Thursday for sure.  It is rather cool.

This Monday, I went to school as usual and worked.  In the afternoon, I was a bit dizzy, but it passed after resting.  In the evening, I picked up Jonah near his department and gave him a ride home.  He cooked dinner for me.  Yay.  We talked for a while, and then I came home.

This Sunday, I woke up at 3 AM feeling rather dizzy, so I emailed Joy to ask her to pick Alex up and also do communion translation for me.  And I went back to sleep.  I woke up at 8 AM or so and called Joy to make sure she would take Alex, and then went back to sleep.  I eventually got up around 10 AM.  I was still partly dizzy, but it did not stop me from going groceries shopping and, later, going to the math department.  I got a lot done today, so that's good.  And I rested quite a bit, too.

This Saturday, I decided to sleep in because I was physically really tired.  As in, I woke up, but decided to go back to sleep.  I eventually got up, and drove to meet John Shen and Tim Kwa for lunch at Ocean Star, which is now possibly one of my preferred dim sum places after just one try.  It was right to let TimK pick the restaurant.  Anyway, afterwards, I went back to Caltech to drop off something, and then went to Pasadena City Library to borrow two (leisure reading) books.  Then I came home and read.  I am trying to take it easy.  I've been really physically drained the last few days.

This Friday, I did some stuff I've never done before.  It's okay.  I had classes, and worked more.  Then I rested.  I ended up only going to sleep at 2 AM, which is much much later than usual.  I need to get back on schedule.  So busy these days.

This Thursday, I worked quite late.  After my seminar ended at 3 PM, I worked with Feng on combinatorial geometry for 2 hours or so until 5 PM.  Then I talked to Josh about NSF for a while, came home to dinner (I was famished!) and then started working again at around 7 PM.  I pretty much worked straight until now (midnight!) and I am not done yet.  This was "perfect timing" that I was busy since my neighbours are playing very loud music and having a party.  I probably cannot sleep anyway.