Htam::Diary

This Friday, I went to school in the morning for a class, then followed with lunch with Mela at Louks, just like last time, though this time without Stedman.  Afterwards, I went to tutor for quite a long time.  My client is taking the SAT II tomorrow, so we spent extra time working on that.  Then I cooked and ate dinner, and basically relaxed for the rest of the night.

[Non Sequitur: World's smallest camera]

This Thursday, I went to Pavilions to get groceries, cooked lunch, and ate way too much.  At 5 PM, I went to school for the first GSO seminar of the quarter.  This was model theory and compactness with applications to combinatorics.  I knew pretty much everything that was done today, but the presentation was still enjoyable.  Afterwards, as usual, people stayed and chat for a bit over snacks.  I ended up getting home around 8 PM.  Usually I would have a super long day on Thursdays since I would have reading group at noon and combinatorics seminar in the afternoon, with possible colloquium after that.  But this is our first week and it's starting slow.

[Non Sequitur: Car thieves change tire then steal car]

This Wednesday, I went to school for classes, had lunch with Athipat for the first time this (school) year.  Then I had a long-ish meeting with Igor and talked about a lot of new ideas.  Today besides walking to (and from) school, I also walked to (and from) Whole Foods for groceries.  In the evening, Eric texted me to come play (sand) volleyball with his friends, so I did.  It was pretty fun.  This week so far I've had some sort of exercise each day.

[Non Sequitur: Mind control TV]

This Tuesday, I worked out the details of a little result (semi-trivial, but still, Igor wanted to hear about it tomorrow).  Then I cooked lunch, with Lightlife Smart Sausages Chorizo Style veggie protein sausages, just to change things up a little.  I found some papers I wanted to read, so I went to school in the afternoon to print them out, in order to not have to stare at my computer screen all day long.  While there, I played a bit of table tennis.

[Non Sequitur: Hotel forces guests to surrender digital devices]

This Monday, I went to school and had the first class of this quarter, since it did not happen last Friday.  Then I talked to Igor for a little bit, got lunch, and came home to eat.  In the afternoon I read some stuff about investments, buying houses, and estate planning.  In the evening, I went to the gym and played some volleyball.

[Non Sequitur: Rubber shelves]

This Sunday, I picked up Sam, Eric, and Hannah for church.  Hou-En and June drove separate cars and picked up six Caltech kids.  After the message, Hou-En and I drove the Caltech kids back.  Apparently they still have Challenges and Choices at frosh camp and build the boat thing.  In the afternoon, I played volleyball with Eddie, Priscilla, Eric, Alex, and Anne for a little bit.  Priscilla left, Alex and Eric went to play football.  I went with Eddie and Anne to play tennis, with racquets borrowed from June.  Later June came and played with us as well.  I also spent some time playing with Jireh and Cether.  Afterwards, I drove Sam and Eric back before dinner, since wanted to eat in the dorms.  I had leftovers from yesterday anyway, so it worked perfectly.

[Non Sequitur: 8 lines that would have ended Star Wars real fast]

This Saturday, I went to Bible study as usual.  I met Hannah, one of the three new students at UCLA to whom I will give rides.  After Bible study, we went to eat at Yazmin.  We haven't been there in a while now.  I called Scott Hsieh on the way to 99 Ranch Market afterwards, and called Caleb Ng on the way back.  I got home around 4 PM, I settled down and cooked dinner.  This is pretty much the day.  I did some light reading and watched some TV in the evening.

[Non Sequitur: We are all a part of the same thing]

This Friday, in some sense, marks the beginning of my fourth year of grad school.  Why in some sense?  Well, quarter officially began earlier this week, and classes started yesterday.  But today is the first day I actually have classes.  Wait really?  No, not plural.  Just one class.  Really?  No, it was cancelled due to some mix-up.  Oh well.  I went to school for nothing.  I didn't even eat there.  I came home and ate some leftovers from yesterday.  In the afternoon I did some reading, and also set up some computer stuff for this quarter.  For dinner I cooked new old food (in the sense that it fresh, but it's the same old stuff as always).  I originally had plans to go tutor and chain that with visiting Steph (again).  But I decided I just want to stay home tonight.  Finally perhaps I can sleep a bit earlier.  I finished the first movie since watching two on my flight back from Taiwan.

[Non Sequitur: Cylindrical mouse]

This Thursday, I did work in the morning as usual.  In the afternoon, I went to school to meet with fellow combinatorics students to discuss reading group matters.  Afterwards, I played some table tennis with Huiyi, Jack, and Wenying.  Then I drove directly to Gardena.  Even though I got to Steph's house exactly when she asked me to, of course she was half an hour late.  Good thing Jess was home, so she let me in and I had good company for a while before she left with her friend.  I just sat and read and waited for Steph.  We then had dinner at King's Hawaiian as usual, talking the whole time, of course.  However, today I drove her in my car—this hasn't happened in quite some time.  I didn't really want to drive her car.  Originally I was supposed to leave at 8:30.  But she invited me to stay, until, say, 10:15, to help her with school stuff.  So I went to 99 Ranch to buy some stuff before they closed, and came back to help her.  It took a lot longer than we expected—but she said I was really helpful.  We ended up finishing around midnight.  I bid her good night and came home.  Tomorrow, school starts.  No more craziness.

[Non Sequitur: What websites looked in 2001]

This Wednesday, I went to school and worked out in the gym according to something I read in a magazine yesterday.  I'll talk about this more at a later date.

In the evening, I drove to downtown LA and parked at John Shen's apartment.  Then we walked and had dinner, then walked to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.  We attended the LA Opera production of Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky.  We got student tickets for \$25 each, which got us seats in the founders' circle (normally \$230 each).  The seats were quite good—besides being close to the stage, the seats themselves are also very comfortable.  The opera was slow and fairly boring, but the music was fantastic.  I decided I like Wagner better.

My introduction to opera was Bizet's Carmen, when I got a free ticket courtesy of the MOSH Cathy Jurca from Caltech during my freshman year, when I did not know the difference between operas and musicals.  After this, I kept entering the lottery to see the opera again, and finally got a chance my senior year, watching Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.  Then I watched Wagner's Ring cycle of four operas over the span of about a year. Then I decided to branch out and watched Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, which was an opera buffa in Italian.  I missed Wagner, so I watched Lohengrin.  Of a total of 9 operas, 6 were by Wagner in German, the rest were French, Latin, and Russian.

[Photo: John and I at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion after LA Opera's production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.]

[Non Sequitur: Playing with the moon]

This Tuesday, I did some work in the morning as usual.  This time, I used Rubik's cubes as visual aids to help with my research into higher-dimensional tiling problems, where doodling the tiles on paper is no longer an effective means of solving the problem.

Then I went to school for lunch with Stedman and Mela.  We met Mela at RMMC in Wyoming about three months ago.  Since she was coming to UCLA for grad school, we trade contact information then.  After lunch, I helped Stedman by listening to his research progress (this was the original intent of meeting up).

In the evening, I went to the library to pick up a book before going to prayer meeting.  Given that the West LA Regional Library is a mere 5-minute walk from prayer meeting, I might be doing this as a regular basis now.

[Photo: Using some of my Rubik's cubes (and friends) to visualize mathematics research.]

[Non Sequitur: Weird classes offered]

This Monday, I did some math in the morning, went to school to take care of some items, had lunch, and came home.  In the afternoon I did laundry, cleaned my room, and cooked dinner.  I made mabo tofu, eggs, and broccoli.  Instead of eating rice, I ate leftover pasta from CPK.  Then I talked to Steph for a while over the phone, tutored in the evening, and talked to Caleb for 2 hours or so more.

[Non Sequitur: Tie the knot]

This Sunday, I went to pick Eric up from the UCLA dorms and go to church.  This might become a regular thing now.  After church, we went to the park.  Some of us played football.  I played some volleyball with Eddie, Mari, Caleb, Priscilla, and Steve.  During breaks, I chased Mercy and Cether around in the playground.  At the end, Eddie and Mari played against Priscilla and myself—I think we all had some fun.  Afterwards, people went to have dinner.  Eric wanted to come back first, so I took him.  I was so hungry, good thing I had a snack bar that I gulped down.  It was good talking to him on the way there and back, getting to know him a little.

[Non Sequitur: "YES" and "NO" typographical sculture]

This Saturday, I went to Bible study where we finished Job's words (31:40 "The words of Job are ended").  It was surprisingly good for the fact that I've missed several Bible studies in the last few months.  Indeed, the last one I attended was more than two months ago.  Today, Hou-En and June's daughter Tabitha (my "sister") called me by name for the first time.  She's been able to answer my name correctly when June asked her in the past, but today she actually said "hello Jed" (in slurred baby speech) to me when she saw me.  It was a heart-melting moment.  We then went over to Hou-En and June's place to watch football.  I ate some pizza, talked to June for a bit, and then left.

Why?  Well, I don't fancy watching football anyway.  But also, Bing Huo is coming to visit.  I picked him up, and we came back to my apartment to talk and sing some KR.  Then I drove him to John Shen's place to have dinner.  Bing's old roommate Tim Dong joined us there, and there were two other people from Caltech.  After dinner, we played a few rounds of Bible Guesstures, and then one round of Citadels.  Bing is staying at Tim's place tonight, so I bid farewell and came back by myself.

[Non Sequitur: Lego Penrose triangle]

This Friday, I did some work in the morning.  I ate a very light lunch, and then tutored in the afternoon.  In the evening, Steph came to visit.  At her insistence, we went to CPK for dinner, where she had a salad and I had pasta (no pizza!) and then had key lime pie for dessert.  It's been a month since we met up, so we had a lot to talk about.  Many things have happened since then.  It was good to catch up and stuff.  After dinner, we walked back and just talked more in my room.  We didn't really do any other activity besides just talking.  Oh, and I read her an Amelia Bedelia book, complete with great puns.

[Non Sequitur: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?]

This Thursday, I went out for a walk in the morning while thinking about math.  I came up with something—or rather, a proof of why Igor's idea won't work—and emailed it to him.  Then I spend some time following-up with GnuCash that I started studying yesterday.  I then went to school for lunch again and gave a second try to picking up tickets for the PhD movie that ran out yesterday.  The referee reports for SODA came in, and I read through them and thought about some stuff.  Funnily, I thought of one of the points made in the reports a few days ago, and another this morning.  In the afternoon, I washed the sheets Barmore used and also vacuumed the entire apartment.  Good to be clean again.  Then I went to school for a snack and watch the PhD movie.  It was pretty funny—but mostly I enjoyed recognizing almost every single location used in the film (it was shot at Caltech) and two TACIT friends (Zachary and Miranda Stewart) who were in it.  Afterwards, I stayed at school talking to Caleb for a while.  Then I had the idea of going to picking up a book from the public library—but there was only half an hour left.  So I ran home (yes, literally), drove like a maniac (all lawfully, within speed limit—just taking streets that had less traffic—okay so not like a maniac), parked and sprinted to the library just as they were closing.  I came home and read the introduction of The Planiverse—so far so good.

[Non Sequitur: Crayon to cotton]

This Wednesday, Barmore and I went to campus to have lunch.  The reason was that I wanted to pick up a ticket for the PhD movie, but they ran out already.  Then we came back and sang some KR.  In the evening, we picked up Sunny Chun and her roommate Diana Dou for dinner.  We went to Mitsuwa's food court.  It worked out well since they wanted to buy some stuff from the CVS next door.  After taking them home, Barmore and I started competing on a puzzle game.  We had to pause in the middle as he has a prayer meeting to attend.  While he's there, I studied GnuCash guide.  Then when he came back we finished the puzzle game (I beat him by a whole lot), and then we went to sleep.

[Non Sequitur: Lifespan of links]

This Tuesday, I did more work in the morning.  Then I had a Skype meeting with Igor that was postponed from yesterday, where we caught up on the last month and discussed where to go from here.  After the meeting, Barmore and I went to Souplantation to eat lunch/dinner at 3 PM.  We ate a lot of food in order to count it as two meals.  I think this is not healthy, oh well.  On the way back we went to Pavilions to buy some groceries.  At night we set up our second set of Star Trek album taken in Taiwan, after the first set in my Weyburn apartment.  Then I went to prayer meeting, nice to be back!

[Non Sequitur: Senior year mathematics]

This Monday, I woke up slightly before my alarm at 8:30, after sleeping at 00:30.  I'm getting back on track.  I woke up to find an "idea" email from Igor that he forwarded from someone else, which was exactly what I thought of before and wanted to present it to him today.  Oops!!  Oh well, I emailed him back telling him I already had that idea and actually worked out the details.  Then I continued thinking and working, until I suddenly came up with this great idea.  I'm going to explore it some more tomorrow morning, and tell him over Skype.  Indeed, our Skype call scheduled for today is postponed since Igor was tired.  I then went out for a jog, cooked and ate dinner, talked to Steph, and went tutoring.  Hopefully the new idea pans out tomorrow.

[Non Sequitur: IKEA changes BILLY, signifying death of books]

This Sunday, I woke up to my alarm at 7:30, after sleeping at 1:30.  I spent a long time getting ready for church, partly because of shaving cleanly the facial hair that accumulated in the last two or three weeks.  Then I drove with Barmore to church, and John Shen came to pick him up from ACF to go to their fellowship.

Today I got the news that Igor wanted to Skype tomorrow, so I came home to work.  I also got notice that my paper got rejected from the SODA conference.  Terrible timing.  Sigh.

[Non Sequitur: Worst commute]