Htam::Diary

This Tuesday, I went to Target again in the morning.  There is someone in the jewelry department this time, and she replaced my watchband for free (I paid the cost of the band).  I am glad I did not buy a watchband yesterday, for one thing, I was about to buy the 20mm band, yet mine is actually 19mm.  Furthermore, I do not have the necessary tools, and it would have caused me a great deal of time to attempt to replace it.

Afterwards, I ate lunch at home early, then went to Noon Sing.  Tim Kwa and I were the only ones there.  After my 1.5 hours of class of the day, I went to SFL for a while, waiting for 4 PM to come around.  I caught Dr. La Belle after her class, and she handed me evaluation of my English proficiency, which she instructed me to leave in her mailbox yesterday.  Then I proceeded to Ruddock and wasted time until Frosh Prayer.  There were many people at Frosh Prayer today, the three leaders, myself, and Scott Hsieh, Jamie Jackson, and Christina Lee.  Then I had dinner with John Shen at Lloyd, and watching Heroes together after dinner.  I did not do any work today, it is my one day of rest.  I shall start tomorrow again.

This Monday, I woke up around 7 and worked on Ma191.  After my classes, I went to SFL and continued working on the set.  This set is extremely hard.  I had to use 15 sheets of scratch paper.  (Compare this to using only 1 sheet for my Ma116 homework, where I did most of the work directly in my head.  Scratch paper usage is a good metric in measuring set difficulty.)  I finished at 15:24 and went to turn in my set.  Since I finished on Saturday my other set that is due tomorrow, I now have no posted set to do at all.  This lasted for about half an hour until the last set for Ma116 was posted at 16:07.  When I was going to turn in my set, I saw Abraham Buditama, so I walked with him all the way to Mead, and then back towards Ruddock.  On the way, we saw Debbie Tseng, so we walked with her for a bit.  Once we got to Chandler, I headed back to Sloan to turn in my set.  When riding my bike back home, I saw Sunny Chun, so I went with her all the way past Chandler and back to Ruddock, where she met Kevin Chen.  I consequently decided to visit Ruddock for a bit.  Upon coming out, I saw John Shen, who is turning in a drop card at the CSS.  So I waited for him and then I went with him back to Lloyd.  Upon reaching the destination, I biked to Avery.  I proceeded in telling Chen Yee Liaw and Po-Ling Loh how I have no work to do.  I also attempted to locate Scott Hsieh and Jon Seitel.  After all this, I decided to go apply a homeomorphism to my hair.  I went to the "Mentor" Barber Shop on Catalina (they recently moved).  The one cutting my hair started at 17:17 and went up to 17:42 (25 minutes!), that was quite long.  When I started, the other barber finished one customer, started and finished another customer, and started a third customer.  In general, however, I am quite satisfied with my haircut.  Then I went to Target in attempt to get my watch band replaced.  However, the jewelry department is closed already, so I may have to come back another time.  On the way back, I decided to buy dinner from Subway.  Upon entrance, I heard the KR music Someday.  After dinner, I went to Avery and found Scott.  I was in his room when Sunny dropped by.  Then I went to Large Group.  I left at 22:30 since I was falling asleep, having woken up at 7 AM.  It feels good to have all work completed, even for only half an hour.

This Sunday, I went to church in the morning, followed by a retreat planning meeting at church, then a council meeting at school (including retreat planning).  Afterwards, I went to table tennis as usual.  However, just like last week, I am not playing.  I am letting my leg rest two more days.  Since I don't have to play from Tuesday to Saturday, sitting out two days gives me a whole week more of rest.  At night, I spent a lot more time working on Ma191.  I have been falling asleep since an hour ago.  So I talked to a few friends online, trying to stay awake.  I think it is late enough that I can go sleep now.  It is a bit cold, so starting today, I am wearing long pants to sleep.  Good night, world.

This Saturday, I woke up quite early (between 7 and 8) and worked on Ma116.  As I mentioned before, it is always due Tuesday, and I preferred to start working at least by Thursday, but sometimes I only start Friday.  This week, I only started Saturday!  Well, I actually always "start" early when I print out the set and look at it.  My mind solves problems in the background.  When I got up, I already had ideas on how to approach these problems.  So I finished the first problem.  Then I went to church for a special meeting with brother Godwin Sun.  While waiting for Hou-En to come pick me up, I thought about the second problem, and solved it at church (not consciously working on it).  When I got back five hours later, I started working on the third problem and finished it by dinner time.  This is an easy set, for I only had use one piece of scratch paper, and did all the rest of the thinking in my head.

Contrast this with Ma191.  I have been doing this set for quite some days now, and I am still not getting much done.  I have filled 15 pages of scratch work.  This is truly a lot.  I will work on Ma191 all day tomorrow, and probably most of the day on Monday as well.

When I came back from church, I got 10 emails in my inbox.  Apparently both Kechris and Ku decided to submit letters of reference for me today.  All the schools send me confirmation emails.  I also started applying to MIT, my third school of nine ordered by application deadline.

This Friday, I spent a lot of time working on Ma191.  I went to meet with Dan Pragel and discussed Ma191 together at 3 PM.  Afterwards, I went to Pavilions and bought some groceries.  This was spurred by the fact that suddenly I am feeding seven people for dinner.  Originally, I told Po-Ling Loh that I was going to cook for some people as part of the "eating at each other's houses" routine since Friday there is no food on campus.  Jamie Jackson and Andrew Kositsky expressed interest in coming.  Yesterday, John Shen told me he is thinking of coming, and this morning, Christina Lee emailed me saying she and Debbie Tseng wants to come as well.  Po-Ling, Christina, and Debbie came early and helped the cooking.  Debbie and Christina made garlic bread, Christina and Po-Ling made stir-fry broccoli, bok choi, and chicken (all ingredients I bought a few minutes ago), while I made mabo tofu.  We talked a lot during dinner, and it was absolutely enjoyable.  Then we had some pecan pie courtesy of Caltech Housing.  We placed some candles on it in celebration of Andy's birthday.  Afterwards, we sang KR for a very long time.  People left at about 22:20.  That was five hours of time "wasted," yet it was highly enjoyable and I do not regret it at all.  I broke my string of "a diamond a day" that I had for the last six days.  But I definitely enjoyed singing KR today as well.  I also submitted my UCSD application on schedule (thanks John Shen for minor proofreading my essay; I only changed one paragraph).  Two down and seven more to go.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving.  I woke up quite early (before 8 AM).  I went to church in the morning, where we had a sharing meeting.  Afterwards, there is a potluck.  I had way too much food.  I got home around 3 PM, and I realized my stomach is too full for comfortable studying.  Therefore I walked to campus and visited John Shen.  After talking for some time, I briefly dropped by Avery and then came home.  I decided to lie down since my stomach was still very full.  I slept for two hours.  Originally, I was going to go with LCF to Pastor Daniel's house to have Thanksgiving dinner.  However, given that I am already too full, I decided to stay home instead.  I worked on Ma191 set which is due Monday.  This weekend I have just as much homework (or even more) compared to a normal week.  Indeed, Ma191 sets are sporadic, so the fact that I have one due makes this weekend much harder.  Good thing I do not need to work on German.  I am gaining 2.5 hours from not having 1.5 hours of class on Thursday and 1 hour of class on Friday.  However, special events during the Thanksgiving weekend account for much more than 2.5 hours.  Therefore, my weekend is actually very tight, and I should work hard.  I am sleeping later tonight because I am not tired because I took a nap.  I hope this does not mess up my sleep schedule in the long run.

This Wednesday, CCF made Blue Slip Milkshakes, a day of the term where CCF makes milkshakes for people with Blue Slips.  After my Ma191 class, I went to the Olive Walk but no one was there, so I went and grabbed lunch.  Today is the third time I had pizza in Chandler of my many years at Caltech.  Then I went back to the Olive Walk and people were setting up.  Even though I did not sign up, I helped out quite a bit, mainly being the floater who helps set up and arrange things, and help the people actually making milkshakes.  Then I went to German, and then came back.  Now it is time for cleanup.  I actually signed up for cleanup, and I enjoyed cleaning up today.  Afterwards, we decided to return the extra ice-cream and milk.  Tim Kwa bought them but he needs to finish a set, so I stayed in Ruddock studying German in Kevin Chen's room.  Po-Ling Loh was making loud noises on Kevin's drum set for about an hour.  Tim finally finished his set, and I accompanied him to return the unused merchandise.  During dinner, John Shen came to visit and we talked, ate, and watched Heroes together.  At night, RSG and SHSG had a joint showing of the movie Amazing Grace.  I watched the first half, and then came home.  I will borrow the disc from Nathan Lau and watch it later.

This Tuesday, since Tim Kwa is away, John Shen decided to hold Noon Sing.  Besides the two of us, John Liu and Po-Ling Loh came as well.  Now I beat Tim by three!  Afterwards, I had Ma116 in Sloan 351 (the Lounge) since 151 (the only lecture hall in Sloan) is undergoing construction.  I heard they are putting in a projector, wow, really useful!  (For those of you did not realize the sarcasm of the previous sentence, recall that math lectures are always given on the board and we never use the projector.)  After class, I spent an enormous amount of time studying for the German Kapitel 3 quiz.  Then I realized I should have spent even more time studying chapter 3 (since it is a chapter quiz) instead of spending so much time memorizing the gender of words from the previous chapters that I had failed to memorize earlier.  Some of the memorization was useful, that is, the quiz is necessarily comprehensive.  However, the focus was definitely on chapter 3, and I should have spent more time on it.  Oh well, I am taking German pass-fail, so I need not worry.

This Monday, I woke up, and I feel that my leg is in better condition than before.  It was getting worse monotonically, but now it is better.  Yay.  I still went to the health center, but they think it is just an inflamed tendon and there is nothing to be worried about.

Today, as Tim Kwa is away, we did not have Noon Sing.  I took this opportunity and ate in Chandler.  I really miss eating there.  So many good memories.  Today it seems to be a refresher on how good it was to dine there regularly, and how much I will miss the fellowship of these brethren at Caltech when I am gone.

I also worked a lot on German today.  I am studying for my chapter 3 quiz.  I think I have developed a pretty good study system now.  All I need right now is a few more hours, and then I will be ready for the quiz.

At night, I went to Large Group.  I had not gone since three weeks ago when I started sleeping early.  I still would like to sleep early, which is why I left LG early tonight.  We had a sharing meeting on Thanksgiving.  It is nice to hear what other brothers and sisters are thankful for.

This Sunday, I woke up and realized my leg that started hurting Friday night, and hurting worse yesterday, is hurting even more today.  It is impeding my normal walking posture even more now.  Consequently, I was unable to play table tennis today.  However, I still went to the club to make sure things are going well.  This is called devotion and responsibility.  Jiaqi Guo also cannot play today, but she also showed up, with similar devotion and responsibility.  Today I realized I will be comfortable letting her take over the club after I graduate.  The club will be in good hands.

Starting yesterday, I stopped trying hard for expert diamonds on KR Party, and started going for hard diamonds on KR3.  So far, I have gotten a diamond a day since I started (yesterday).  We shall see how long I can keep this up.  I shall prepare to go sleep now.  This post is 4 seconds before the post yesterday, modulo a day.

This Saturday, I worked on Fraïssé theory in the morning.  I only started my Ma116 set yesterday, but today I have effectively finished it.  I still need to write parts of it up, but I more or less have everything I need in my brain organized.

I also spent two hours or so on applications.  I started the UCSD application, which is due in January.  However, they will start processing on 12.01, so hopefully by submitting early I have a chance in hearing back sooner than usual.  Of course, it might not work at all.  Anyways, their personal statement limit is 2500 words, which means I do not have to cut my essay.  However, one of the questions they ask is why I am a good match for their school (as opposed to any other school).  To answer that question, I looked up (on MathSciNet) papers published by the six combinatorialists at UCSD.  I have decided that Fan Chung Graham is probably the best match.  I will now need to alter my essay, taking out why "Princeton is a good match" and adding in why "UCSD is a good match."  Besides this, I also filled out some application forms, and filled out a paper form to request additional GRE score reports.

Today, I also spent some time studying German.  I wrote a web application that can quiz me on words, and remember which ones I need more help on, and quiz me on those.  This is based on my work for my GRE vocab memorizing application.  However, it is definitely specialized for studying German.

Po-Ling Loh came to the Chester complex to visit my neighbor Sunny Chun.  She stopped by and got some bread from me.  We also sang one KR song.

This Friday, in the morning, I went to the library and worked a bit more on my personal statement for Princeton.  After class, I finalized it and submitted the application.  I am now one out of nine done!  Yay!  Thanks primarily to John Shen and Scott Hsieh for reading my essay this time.

During Noon Sing, at first it was me and Tim Kwa.  Then Jamie Jackson showed up soon.  After about half an hour, Po-Ling Loh showed up, and eventually, Scott Hsieh as well.  Afterwards, Scott, Jamie, and I went to Chandler for lunch.  We were joined by Nicholas Fette, Jessica Arnold, and Matthew Chan.  It is nice to eat with others, I really miss eating at Chandler, now that I often eat on the Bridge during Noon Sing.

In the afternoon, I bought groceries, including an extra loaf of bread for Sarah Hunt and Amber Valdes.  At Pavilions, the KR song Everywhere was playing.  And then I finally got to start sitting down and doing my math set that is due Tuesday.  Even though I have been thinking about it somewhat, I have not sat down with it yet.  Perhaps I am getting used to starting only on Friday, four days ahead.  In any case, I got a lot done.

At night, I went to Avery formal dinner.  Po-Ling hosted Jessy, Sarah, Jamie Jackson, Ying-Ying Tran, and me.  I had a wonderful time at dinner, and I got a lot of photographic captures with others--almost everyone I knew.  After formal dinner, we went to LCF.  It started late because every student at LCF was at formal dinner.  We studied Revelation today; some parts of it were actually quite enlightening.

This Thursday, I went to the combinatorics seminar, where Wilson talked about things that I recently learned in his class, and then he had extensions he did not mention in class.  Then I had a 30-minute quick lunch break.  The length is really inadequate, I was unable to eat the fruit that come with it.  Then I went to Ma116 as usual.  Afterwards, I stayed in the Sloan lobby and finished my fruit.  It is really hot outside, and I plan to go to the library afterwards, so the only logical place to eat the fruit is in the Sloan lobby.  Multiple people expressed interest and inquired wherefore I was eating there.  After working in the library for a bit, I went to Crellin.  This is the first time I ever been to Crellin, and it was the first time I even heard about this building when I looked up the SURF presentation schedule.  I went to Vibha Laljani's talk, which is followed by Po-Ling Loh's talk, and then Michael Grinold's talk.  The reason I went was of course to listen to the one and only math talk given by Po-Ling.  I missed it during SURF seminar day because the two of us were presenting at the same time.  At night, right before dinner, my former roommate Matthew Chan showed up and gave me a German quiz.  We talked for quite a bit, later joined by my former roommate John Shen.  After about half an hour of talking, we bid farewell to Matt, and then John came in and we had dinner together.

After dinner, I went to the gym.  Konda and Joshi were there playing table tennis.  I sat down and read Subsystems in Second Order Arithmetic, a book that Caicedo recommended when I talked to him earlier today regarding the content of Ma116b.  After a quarter, Jiaqi Guo finally showed up.  This is the first time we decided to come play together ourselves outside of normal scheduled time.  Apparently she just woke up.  She was playing very poorly, for she was unable to move quickly.  By conservation of energy, I actually moved a lot today.  She beat me in the first game, but then I beat her in the next 10 games or so, quite easily too.  She really is not playing well at all.  Usually, I need to try pretty hard and we trade games back and forth.  Today, I eventually switched to my left hand and was still giving her a lot of trouble.  This is not like her at all.  She apologized and said she would sleep well next time and play with me.  Hopefully she keeps her word, because I really want to practice with her long pips backhand.

This Wednesday, I spent more time working on my Princeton personal statement.  I successfully reduced my two essays into one that is just under 1000 words (the limit) by zealously cutting everything.  I currently have a 999-word personal statement.  Besides this, I also spent some time working on math, going to RSG, talking to some people, and the like.  My life is pretty much going back to normal now.

This Tuesday, I got my room cleaned.  My kitchen and bathroom are now both cleaner, though not much cleaner, since I have been cleaning them fairly regularly anyways.  Consequently, it is not as exciting as I first got it cleaned this summer after my old roommates moved out.  I am much more free these days, having finished all my set of the week, and now have one week to complete my next set.  I spent some more time on Princeton application.  Scott Hsieh stopped by my room and we talked about my essay a bit.  I think I am going to try to have a reasonable draft done tomorrow.  I cut some paragraphs and amalgamated my two NSF essays together.  There are no transitions, there are redundancies, and there are extra phrases about NSF that should not be even mentioned.  A reasonable draft implies that all those will be fixed, except maybe the word count will still be slightly high.  Then I can work on the word count on Thursday, finalize it, and send it Friday.

This Monday, I played four hours of table tennis.  I have not done this in a while now, having been busy for many weeks and thus skipping the afternoon session.  Today I played with John Liu, both of us with left hands.  Then after he left I got really bored.  Michael Woods did not come today.  At night, I played with Jiaqi Guo.  It is fun playing with her, because I need to pay a lot more attention due to her long-pips paddle, and I also get to try new things.

As of today, I am completely caught up.  I finished my set that is due tomorrow.  My next set is due next Tuesday, so I can start early, and I can also spend the next few days working on my first grad school application, which I hope to have finished by Friday.

Also, since Tim Kwa did not show up for Noon Sing today, I now beat him by two.

This Sunday, we had lots of people who came to table tennis!  I have not seen so many people during club nor during class.  We had four round robin partitions of five players each, which amount to 20 people.  We only had 9 tables, so there were people sitting out at all times.  However, since we had round robin structure, people were automatically taking turns sitting out, which is one of the reasons for having structure (I used to either have to keep reminding people to let others play, or volunteer myself to sit out; neither of which is good solution for myself).  Indeed, each round robin partition had two tables, and the match that finished first will have one person rest, while the other play against the person who just sat out.  Then the other table will finish, and rotate this person back in, and the like.  It is quite nice.  Today, I lost to Ken Mak (parent of a frosh), who beat all of us; and Chefung Chan, who beat me and Jiaqi Guo; and I beat Jiaqi.

This weekend, I spent about six hours or more studying German.  I just spent two hours doing the homework.  I also need to spend a lot of time just reading over the textbook.  German is really hard, and is taking up a lot of my time.  But since I am taking this class on pass-fail, it does not induce much stress.

This Saturday, I woke up late!  I woke up slightly before 9 AM, which is late for my current standards, especially given the fact that I went to sleep at 11 PM last night.  I spent an hour doing math, and then went to Ruddock.  RSG made pancakes for the House this morning.  It went reasonably well, though with many hiccups that were frantically solved in a timely manner.  We prepared precisely the right amount of pancakes.  Indeed, the last pancake was brought to 1.5 and passed around until someone finally half-reluctantly took it.  This implies that people who wanted pancakes all got enough, and we also had none leftover; furthermore, we did not need to stuff ourselves to finish leftover pancakes.  Afterwards, I continued doing math again.  This is the Ma116 set due Tuesday, I suddenly had an inspiration and solved the rest of the problems.  Consequently, I had about two hours free, hence I went with Michael Woods to the gym and played table tennis.  This week I played 10 hours.  I soon realized that eating a few pancakes, though filling at the time, does not give me enough energy to last through training.  I started feeling extremely fatigued.  So I went home and had some food, which restored my energy.  At night I went to church Bible study as usual, and then slept around 11 PM again.

This Friday, I really enjoyed the Noon Sing.  I have been going to many Noon Sings this term, in fact, more than any person, including Tim Kwa himself.  Today was no different, except it was different.  A few things were different about today.  First, I went to Chandler early and planned on getting food first while there is no crowd, then studying there until Noon Sing, and then go eat while singing.  However, I saw Po-Ling Loh at the dining hall and she was hosting a high school student for a competition held at Caltech.  She invited me to join them for lunch, so I did.  This impacted Noon Sing such that I am not trying to eat while singing.  Furthermore, for the beginning, I was the only there with Tim.  This is not that different from usual, however, it is actually always nice to just be singing when there are two people.  I really enjoy singing with one other person.  Later, Po-Ling showed up for a bit.  Then she left, then Scott Hsieh showed up.  Three people is not too bad either.  I realized (again) that I prefer small cardinalities in general when it comes to counting people.  Furthermore, when Po-Ling was here, we sang a lot of hymns.  And by a lot, I mean, after we started singing hymns, we did not stop singing hymns (at my suggestion, we even ended with hymn 59 instead of song 59).  I really like singing hymns.  In addition to that, I also really like modulation.  Tim was finally convinced to modulate after every verse for a few hymns.  I had to sing a high G, that was really fun, especially since that happens to be the highest note I can hit.  Finally, I do not have class right after Noon Sing (contrary to Monday through Thursday), therefore I was able to stay until the end.  All these (approximately) six reasons combined caused me to especially enjoy the Noon Sing today.

In the afternoon, I worked in the library until I got the no collaboration problem on Ma116 due Thursday.  Then Abraham Buditama helped me with German for a bit.  Then I went to Pavilions to buy groceries, and deliver them.  Then I went home for about 10 minutes, then I came back on campus for Frosh Prayer, followed by dinner in Avery with Scott, Tim, and Michael Woods, more SFL, and then LCF Bible studies on Philippians.  Afterwards, I went to David Barmore's room and he fixed my watch band with duct tape, and then we walked together to Chester.  I am going to sleep now.

This Thursday, I had rest.  I read a bunch of chapters from the Bible in the morning, then I went to the Thursday combinatorics seminar.  Afterwards, I went to Noon Sing, but Tim Kwa did not show up.  It ended up being just Jamie Jackson and Po-Ling Loh, so we went to Dabney Library and printed out some songs and sang a bit a capella.  We sang Be Thou My Vision and we even modulated for the last verse!  (I now have gone to Noon Sing once more than Tim.)  After Ma116 was supposedly Council meeting, but only half of us showed up, so we just talked for a while.  Afterwards, I came home and sang KR.  I have not sang KR by myself for quite some time now.  The last time I got a diamond (besides the one I got with Bing this past weekend) was before I went home at the end of the SURF period (August 13).  After an almost three-month hiatus, I received an Expert diamond today.  John Shen came over for dinner tonight, and we watched Heroes together, and talked.  Now I am falling asleep.  Trying to stay awake.  I also spent some time with UW application since I thought they recommended 11/1 as the deadline.  But then I realized today that the suggestion was for international applicants.  Therefore I went and worked on the first real deadline, which is Princeton on 12/1.  I set a tentative deadline of 11/16 for the Princeton essay.  I need to condense my 2222 words that I wrote for the two NSF essays into a 1000-word personal statement.  I think this is going to take a non-trivial amount of work, actually.  However, tomorrow, I really need to start working on Ma116 homework due Tuesday.