Htam::Diary.Theme(tt)

This Sunday, I woke up at 6 again, but stayed in bed until 7 since I was pretty tired.  I then went to church early and got ready.  I did the usual: translated, played guitar, and did offering.  I finally did not have a meeting during lunch!  Of course, by the time I was done with offering, everyone's done with lunch.  But at least I got to talk to a bunch of people while eating, since they were not gone yet (as opposed to when I come out of the meetings in the previous weeks).  It was nice to catch up a bit with Anne, Jennifer, and Mari.  And no, I was not trying to talk to sisters.  I was simply sitting alone on a bench and they came over to talk to me.  Afterwards, I went to Caltech to play table tennis with Ran, Matt, and his friend Howard.  It's been a while since we've had four people, which is so much better than just three.  I really miss playing table tennis—this has been the sentiment each time I played.  I wish I would play more regularly so I stop feeling this way.  Since I twisted my ankle during a game (I still won it), I decided to take off early and come home.  As such, I was able to have dinner at home.  I ate the Har Lam Kee leftovers that I inherited from the Ohio people yesterday.  I did some light work and reading.  Another week.

This Sunday, I took Bing to the Flyaway station in the morning, and then went to pick Hannah up.  I was a bit late, but Hannah was just coming out, so it was perfect timing!  She signalled that she'd like to drive, so I came out and went to the passenger side instead.  That's nice.  When we got there, the parking lot was still chained, so we unlocked it.  Hannah insisted that she would move the parking sign over, despite its heaviness.  While moving, Ernest's family was driving towards us, so she told them that I was torturing her.  Steph was on time for breaking of bread (!) and took the translation duties from me.  I helped Kevin with the singing time for high school and junior high groups.  Then I listened to the message over the transmitter amplified with the guitar amps.  After the meeting, I talked to Beryl for quite some time, and then finally locked up the church building when everyone had left.  I then went to Caltech and played some table tennis with Matt.  Today it was just the two of us, hence we did drills for most of the time.  It was good practice, and at the end when we played 2 out of 3 games, I actually took the second game off of him.

This Sunday, I picked up Hannah, Alex, and Anne for church.  Chris and Lydia were in town visiting, and I asked him to play guitar for the high school and middle school groups.  He asked me to join him so I sang with them.  Then I did some stuff for the HSG, since we are starting a new series using Spiritual Exercise.  By the time I was done, it was a bit too late to join the main meeting.  So I figured I would listen to the message later.  I did some reading from the aforementioned book.  After lunch, we had a bit of singing time with Lydia.  Then I did some tasks, and locked up the church building as usual.  In the afternoon, I went to Caltech to meet up with Mason Porter, who was a postdoc at Tech when I was there.  We played a lot of table tennis together, so when he was coming to visit, we got in contact and set up a time to play some table tennis during the Caltech table tennis club.  After we were done, I tried to go join the Chius, but I was too late.  So I came home instead and ate some simple dinner and am now going to sleep early.

This Thursday, I finally woke up naturally before the alarm (though I did move the alarm back a little).  I did some errands and then went to school for lunch and some tutoring.  Then I went to the first combinatorics seminar this quarter featuring Igor.  He talked about his favourite conjectures, the room was completely packed, and many of the students (myself included!) were taking notes.  Afterwards, I talked to some peers about some math problems, then went to the GSO-SIAM joint seminar.  It was horrible.  Oh well.  Afterwards I went to the gym and played table tennis for 2.5 hours.  I did not lose any match, so I continued playing the whole time.  This is so much fun, I don't know why I stopped playing.

This Thursday, I woke up at 5 sharp (which is earlier than just "5 [something]").  I was planning on going to the gym—even got dressed and walked out the door.  Then I remembered that today I have a long day at school, and might get fairly tired.  Moreover, I might have a chance to sneak in a bit of table tennis playing.  So I turned back.  This was a mistake since I didn't end up getting much work done today—I think I always tend to take a break on Thursdays, after working a whole lot culminating in a meeting with Igor on Wednesday.  In any case, I ate lunch, and then went to school for reading group, library errands, combinatorics seminar (Boris was back to speak!), a bit of table tennis, and then GSO seminar.  I got back home around 7 PM.  Now I am about to go sleep.  Today in table tennis, we played doubles.  I played with Justin against Wenying and Tianyu—lost 1-2 due to Justin's service error at the very end 9-11.  Then I was with Huiyi and played against Wenying and Justin—won 3-2.  It was fun, and I had a good time.

This Wednesday, I did a lot of work in the morning just as usual.  I also ate lunch at home, which is what I usually prefer on Wednesdays.  Then I went to school and met with Igor—which turned out pretty well.  I actually had something to tell him, but on the other hand I was also pretty stuck.  As such, I don't feel like a total loser, yet I also welcomed his advice.

Afterwards, I went to play table tennis.  Today is last day of the UCLA Math Department Graduate Student Outreach Table Tennis Tournament.  After advancing out of round robin as the best seed, I played Justin and Justin for my round of 16 and quarter-final matches, and won fairly easily.  Then I lost to Alfonso in the semi-final match pretty poorly, despite playing quite well for my current state.  Yesterday, Kefeng beat Ben and Huiyi in his quarter- and semi-final matches.  I helped schedule the last two matches.  I first played with Huiyi for bronze.  I actually won!  Last year I also finished third place.  Then Kefeng played Alfonso for gold, and it was a very good match to watch.

For my match with Huiyi, I lost the first game, but I found her weakness (it was too late).  For the second game, I exploited it to the max and crushed her very dominantly.  I think by that point, she has lost her confidence.  So I kept going, while letting up a little and attack a few times.  I consequently won the third and fourth games to finish the match.  I basically gave her variable amount of underspin high to her backhand—which she doesn't know how to deal with.  She attacked a few times, almost always hitting either the net or hitting it out.  There was once she hit it in, I chopped it back, and after a few more, she dropped a small ball.  I rushed in, and gave her a small ball back, saved it, and she hit out.  It was very good.  Instead of serving underspin (which is disadvantageous to her) all the time, she tried serving topspin at times.  I took those opportunities and attacked (and gained a few points).  I also tried serving topspin every once in a while, and attacking.  Anyway, it was a patience game, and I exploited her weakness, and that's about it.

On the other hand, the match between Kefeng and Alfonso, it was much more heated, and was very fun to watch.  They were able to convert to topspin much more easily than Huiyi (I basically did not try to convert), and was also able to defend several consecutive hits and loops.  So it looked really nice.

Since we had pizza at this party, I ate a little and came home.  I talked to Steph again, but this time only for about half an hour.  Then I took a long hot shower, watched some TV, and am now getting ready for bed.  It's been a tiring day, packed with things.  But it was good.  Praise the Lord.

This Friday, I went to Whole Foods, then to a carwash, and then to Pavilions.  Afterwards, I went to school and warmed up for table tennis a little with Sid, then had lunch with him.  In the afternoon, I played with Alfonso in a semi-final match.  Alfonso beat Wenying yesterday, who is much better than I am.  I felt like I had no chance, but I gave it my best.  I at least got 6 points in each game, and got up to 8 or 9 the last game.  I felt like I played the best I could, so no regrets.  Alfonso will (probably) play Professor Kefeng Liu at the final next week.  It will be worth watching.  Afterwards, I played a bit more table tennis, and then came home.  Just like last year, I was defeated in the semi-final match.  In the evening, I picked Jonah up from school and drove him home.  I stayed over a little bit, talked to Steve and Tammy a bit, and then came home.

This Friday, I basically played table tennis.  In the morning Caleb Ng called me and we talked for about an hour!!  In the mean time I did my dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, and such.  Then I ate breakfast, went to school, and practised table tennis with Sid.  I advanced out of the round robin as the top seed (I allowed way fewer points than Alfonso, who allowed fewer points than everyone else, and so on).  I scheduled both my round of 16 match and my quarter final match yesterday, so I can play them back to back.  It takes way too much effort to gear up and play matches, so I wanted to do this.  My first opponent, Justin Shih, graciously allowed me to schedule my next match with Justin Palumbo, basically admitting that we both know I was going to win.

Anyway, after practising with Sid, we went to have lunch in Ackerman.  Today we were joined by Josh!  It's been a long time since I've seen him.  It was good to catch up a little.  Then I went and did some stuff, and then played my matches against the two Justins.  I won easily for both, though I was quite nervous, since the world expects me to win.  Afterwards I stayed in the lounge quite a bit, did some work, and played some more table tennis.  I don't like getting sweaty too often at school, so once I have a match, I like playing a lot that day.  In any case, I am officially (at least) a semifinalist again.

This Tuesday, I did some work in the morning, and then went to school and played some table tennis with Sid.  Then I had lunch with Sid and Athipat as usual, went to seminar, and then played a bit more table tennis with Huiyi (for the first time) and Justin.  It was quite fun.  Huiyi is quite good.  I am sad that I haven't been able to play for the last three years (busy doing math, which is a good thing) so I am much worse now than before, so I couldn't show her all the things I used to be able to do.  Oh well.  Then I came home and did more work for the rest of the day.  In the evening, I went to prayer meeting as usual.  Today is not very exciting, but that's also quite nice.

This Friday, I successfully fixed the proof from yesterday where I translated cellular automata into tiling problems, thus proving that tilings is Turing-complete (not that we didn't know that before).  Then I went to school, played a bit of table tennis with Sid, had lunch with him, and then did some work.  Then in the afternoon I played with both Kevin and Brent, beating them both, and thus advancing from my round robin clique (having beaten all other players).  I also played a bit with both Justin and Tye, just for fun.

This week I used \$2-off coupons to Green House 9 times, with a total savings of \$21 (including a few other coupons).  In the evening I cooked for myself, for the first time, tofu knots.  I also cleaned my apartment and threw away some clutter.

This Friday, I went to school and played some table tennis.  Sid helped me warm up, and then I played against Nevin and Ekaterina.  Each match was 2 out of 3, and I won with 44 points, losing 6 points total.  Then I had lunch with Sid in the med cafe.  Afterwards, I came home and tutored in the afternoon.  Then I went back into the department to do some work.  In the evening, Steph came to visit me, and we did the exact same thing as we have done in the past, which was modelled after the latter portion of the day after the Getty trip.  We've decided we will try to meet fortnightly, but since this week she had something on Wednesday, we pushed it back to Friday instead.  It's nice to spend a few hours with her.  We had fellowship on some fairly deep subjects matters.

This Friday, I woke up early and finished my draft and sent it off to Igor.  This last two weeks of "break" culminated in this paper.  I've decided to take the rest of the day off and do some errands.  I had many items I wanted to do during Spring break—some of them were listed as fillers ("it would be nice to do them, but not necessary—if I am bored, I want to have something to do, hence I'll list them here") and some were necessary (such as filing taxes).  So the fact that I did very few of them is a good thing—I must have been focused on my work so much that I did not need to resort to doing fillers.  However, filing is not filler, and I had to do taxes—so I finished it today.  I also did a few other things, including going to Wei's table tennis club to get my paddle rubber replaced.  I played a little there, and then I gave her my paddle.  I'll pick it up some other time.  Today I ate brunch at 9 AM and did not eat again until 5 PM.  The adrenaline must have pushed me through.  I ended up eating what I would have for breakfast for dinner (since I had lunch food for breakfast) and also had a yogurt.  Today was a weird day.  But as I told Steph over the phone, I'm doing really well.  Praise the Lord.

This Sunday, I went to church as usual.  Steve and I discussed some tax issues regarding long-term investments and I pointed out something he misunderstood (which he said yesterday).  Then I went to Caltech and played table tennis with Ran and Matt.  I haven't played since last year after Caltech commencement.  Since graduation, I've played seriously 4, 4, and 3 times in years 2008, 2009, and 2010, respectively.  I played for 3 hours—and I was not as tired as I used to get—which is probably a sign that my health is getting better.  Afterwards I came back, picked Steph up from Ohio, and had dinner with her at New Japan.  We talked (it's been a while since we had a chance to catch-up) and prayed together.  It was quite good.  I dropped her back off at Ohio (where she parked) around 11, and then I came home.  It's really late, but I think the fellowship was worth it.  Hopefully I'm not too tired tomorrow.

This Friday, I went to Caltech commencement.  Caleb Ng asked me to ditch the name-reading and go with him to get food.  So we first went to Trader Joes, and then to Chandler.  There we met Michael Woods and Craig Montuori (great minds think alike).  After lunch, we went back, but the ceremony has yet to be concluded.  After it was eventually finished, I went around congratulating the graduates.  We took pictures, and so forth.  Afterwards, I decided to go to Chandler and eat some food again—I had lunch with David T Lee's (big) family.  The Caltech table tennis club decided to have a special meeting this afternoon, to celebrate the seniors leaving.  So I went and played table tennis with them.  It was fun.  I was still acceptably okay, but not great.  Every time this happens, I realised how much I miss playing.  Too bad my schedule does not really allow it for now.  Maybe after I get tenure. :-P

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 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 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 Thursday, I woke up early to get some studying done before teaching.  I had a light lunch (by myself) since I am going to play table tennis in the afternoon.  During my office hours, some students in Tori's section came to ask me questions... why?  I don't know.  Oh well, I helped them anyway.  Today at seminar, Terry Tao was speaking.  The room was completely packed, with one student standing because there were no more seats.  Afterwards, I played my remaining two matches in my round robin division.  I first played Sam, who uses the same kind of paddle Paul uses.  I played quite well the first game, winning 11-5.  Second game I went soft (big mistake) and was trailing at 5-10.  Then I won 16 straight points, finishing the second game at 12-10, and leading 9-0 in the third.  He won one point, and then I won the next two, finishing the third game at 11-1.  Then there was departmental tea, where I got a scone and kept it to the side.  After the tea ended, I played Sungjin, whom I beat easily, though allowing a few more points than when I played with Kevin.  Then I ate the scone, and then came home.  It was already past 5, I am now defrosting meat.  I cooked dinner (so good!) and ate at around 7.  I continued working at night.  Now I am really tired so I will probably sleep soon.

This Tuesday, I played table tennis in the math department.  The Math Department Table Tennis Tournament Commission is holding a singles tournament this term.  There are 6 round robin groups each of 5 people each.  The matches started yesterday.  Notice that the complete graph of order 5 admits a cycle decomposition into two Hamiltonian cycles.  This week each group plays 5 matches in a cycle (so each player plays two adjacent players), and next week the other ones.  My matches are both today, back to back at 2 and 2:30 against Kevin Xia and Paul Bunn, respectively.  I beat Kevin 3, 1, 0 without too much trouble.  Paul is the one that I almost lost to last year due to the fact that he has a hard bat (illegal), and I don't really know how to deal with that.  This time Hao Huang helped me warm up by using a hard bat.  So I figured out some tricks.  I was able to beat Paul 7, 5, 7.

Besides the table tennis part, let me write some stuff about my day.  I woke up late (8!!) because my alarm failed to go off (it is on one of my computers, and over night the hard disk filled up so it was unable to generate a playlist to play music).  I quickly got ready and went to school to teach.  Then I had a light lunch (since I will be playing table tennis), went to SMC, and then played table tennis.  Then I came home, took a shower, and hurried off to tutoring.  Today tutoring was a bit longer, and then I went to buy groceries and went to dry-cleaning store (as usual).  After dinner at home, I walked over to Joy's apartment for prayer meeting, since it is moved there as Tammy is not feeling well.  Now I am at home and getting ready to sleep.

This Sunday, I was quite busy at church.  Right after breaking of bread, I started HSG teaching stuff.  So I gathered people around, played guitar for singing (which was horrible, by the way), and taught Romans 12 with Steph.  At noon, I did offering, and then straight to rounding people up for HSG planning meeting.  Why no one else would help round people up eludes me—I was hungry and would have preferred a few minutes to eat lunch while someone could go round people up.  Oh well.  I led the meeting since Beryl was not there (at first), and we talked about various issues.  I think it went fine.  I am kind of tired now, I will type up meeting summary later.  Then I went to get some ice cream (whoa!) and then played table tennis at Caltech.

I played with a grad student, who is decently good.  I beat him pretty much, but not easily.  And then I played with Ran, whom I lost to last time due to fatigue.  Today I beat up relatively easily, too.  And then finally I played with Jiaqi.  But by then I was tired, and so could not focus nor play well.  But that's oaky.  She knows how good I am. :-P  Anyway, I had a lot of fun today.  To some degree I hope I get more opportunities to come back and play with them.

At night Rachel asked me some math problem, so I helped her with it for more than an hour.  I realised that I still quite enjoy helping people with math, and seeing them go from confused to having understanding.  But now it is too late, so I should go sleep.

This Thursday, I went jogging the same route that took me 13 minutes two days ago, and I tried to run fast this time and finished it in 10 minutes.  I taught in the morning as usual, and then had lunch with Sid.  Not many people came to my office hours today.  Then I had seminar as usual.  Afterwards, I ran into Yen, and we decided to play a bit of table tennis.  We decided to sign up together for the math department tournament.  I then continued working at school until 5 PM or so, and then came home for dinner.  At night, I talked to Charley for two hours.  Now it is time to sleep.

This Sunday, June is having a baby shower in the afternoon, so the girls are all gone.  And the guys are therefore playing football.  This means I have my chance to go play table tennis at Caltech.  After returning the lunch trays I first went to OfficeMax to buy stacks, which I have about 30 of already.  And then I went to Caltech.  Soon after I got there, Isaac Chao showed up, so we played for a while.  Then later I played with Michael Woods and Ran Huo.  I beat Isaac and Michael with not too much trouble.  But by then, I had played 3 hours and was quite tired (since I have not played in many months).  So I lost to Ran.  Oh well.  In any case, I realised I still really like table tennis.  Oh, I wish I had more opportunity and time to play.

This Friday, I actually spent a lot of time working in the math department.  It feels rather good.  When I got home, I got a package delivered.  It is a new fan!  I am a fan of my old Aloha "The Tempo" oscillating Tower Fan with remote control.  So I decided to get another Aloha "The Tempo" oscillating Tower Fan with remote control.  My evening plans revolves around the fans, including bringing one of them to my new office in the math department (I can only park on campus after 4:30 PM).  There are some very nice features of the tower fan,
including, but not limited to:

- cheap!
- upright, save space!
- three gust strength settings!
- three wind modes (normal, natural, sleep)!
- remove control, for the lazy!
- binary timer (there are 4 shut-off times LEDs denoting 1/2 hours, 1
hour, 2 hours, and 4 hours, respectively; they can be lit in 16
different ways, yielding 16 unique different lengths (half hour
increments from 0 to 7.5 hours), with 0 meaning disabling the timed
shut-off feature, true to many Linux-based configuration files)!
- makes me cool!

Though I found it difficult to control both of them with the remote
control, since both controls control both fans at the same time.  Good
thing I moved one to my office.

The decision to go to my office was partly due to the fact that I left my table tennis equipment there.  This morning Michael Woods informed that he will be driving Ran Huo and Jiaqi Guo to Wei's Westside club for table tennis tonight.  I actually thought about going before he mentioned this to me (how strange, since I have not done this in almost a year).

Today I first played with Ran, then I played in a round robin group with Jiaqi, Michael, Cathy, Nincon (sp?), and Sam.  Cathy and Nincon are beginners, and I knew I could easily beat them.  Michael has always been very predictable, due to the fact that I play with him all the time.  Sam is really good.  So going in, I knew that the match I had to focus on was playing against Jiaqi.  To my surprise, actually, I beat everyone 3-0, except beating Cathy 3-1 (really could have beaten her straight very easily), and with Sam.  Sam is an interesting fellow.  He is only 12, and he beat everyone else in the group (almost all 3-0, I think).  He plays very well, and seems quite intelligent.  He told me he wants to go to Caltech when he grows up—he has already gone there for Rubik's cube competitions.  When I played with him, we tied 2-2.  In the fifth game, I was leading 9-8.  In the next rally, he was in the attacking phase and I was defending, shakily.  Though I have to say it was not a sure bet that he would win that, since we found ourselves in those situations quite often and I still pull out of the defence posture and win the point, it was unfortunate for him that I hit the net and scored the point for that rally.  He must have felt that he would was ahead and controlling, and would have gotten 9-9, and with the momentum, reach 10-9 and easily win afterwards.  Indeed, his nerves were so shaken that I easily won the next point on my serve and beat him 11-8.  It was a great evening.  But after the round robin, it was already close to midnight.  So I opted to forego the playoffs and just come home.  It was also very nice seeing Wei again.

[Photo: My identical new (left) and old (right) fans with their respective remote controls.]

This Monday, in the afternoon, Josh Zahl came over to play violin with me.  We practised the duet piece that we've been playing for the last couple of months, roughly meeting once every other month to play together.  It is a low-priority thing so we are not putting in a lot of effort to it.  But we were definitely glad that some places we were still playing quite well, and in fact, perhaps even better than last time we played together (precisely two months ago on 6/3).

Then at night I decided to go to the Wooden Centre to play table tennis.  After roughly a 3-month hiatus (and very infrequently before then, too), I am finally back.  Playing real table tennis feels very different from playing "ping-pong" in the math department.  Today I mainly played with a visiting professor in the geology department.  He says he usually plays with Professor Kefeng Liu, who is currently out of town.

Besides playing table tennis, I also went and watched people play volleyball for a while.  They look really good, and is completely at a different level than how we play at church.  However, towards the end when they did not have enough people (some left early), I asked them if I could join them.  They were quite nice about it, and helped me along the way (they gave me the easiest jobs to do—hitting outside) and also pointed me towards where I should move and such.  If the opportunity arise again, I may want to play with them more, and learn from them.  But just watching them play is already beneficial enough!  Today is a great day for sports.

This Friday, I played table tennis with Sid, Choongbum, and Hao.  We played all 3 combinations for doubles, and Hao won all of them!  I am quite surprised, actually.  Maybe I need to get used to my new rubber.  But that is no excuse.  Afterwards, though, when we played singles, I won all of them.  That's more like it. :-P  In any case, playing on Fridays has (almost) become a routine.  I like this.  I am almost playing 7 hours of sports a week again: 3 hours of table tennis (Tuesday and Friday), 2 hours of volleyball on Wednesday, and 2 hours on Sunday (either volleyball or table tennis).  I think in general, exercise is good.  But I wonder, how long can I afford to take time out of my life and do this?

This Friday, I played table tennis with Sid, Choongbum, Hao, and Yen.  Sid had to leave early, so we let him play more at the beginning.  After he left, the four of us played all different double combinations, and then played singles after that.  I think I won every single match for doubles, and every single game for singles.

Afterwards, I drove to Korea town.  Tim Kwa drove Scott Hsieh there, and John Shen went there himself.  The four of us got dinner at the Galleria.  Scott and I shared pork tonkatsu and a serving of garlic bread.  It was really good food.  We talked about random things ("catch up").  It was quite enjoyable.  Afterwards, we went to the Korean super market, and I bought a bakery item.  I decided to come home, and the rest of them continued having fun.  It is good to see them again, though I actually saw all 3 of them not too long ago (at different places).

[Photo: A set photo in the Korea town Galleria parking lot.]

This Thursday, Choongbum talked about Szemeredi Regularity Lemma for our reading group.  Afterwards, Hao, he, and I went to play table tennis (we set this up on Monday after my talk).  Yen joined us (probably out of coincidence), so we played doubles.  First I was teamed up with Hao, and we won 3-0 or 4-0 straight.  Then we swapped so I was with Choongbum.  This was a hard battle, and we won 17-15 on the 7th set.  Then we decided to play the last possible match-up; Yen and I won 4-1 or 4-2.  Doubles is really fun.  For one, it is less stressful since if I lose, it is not a direct statement about myself, and it is also more challenging at times, especially when paired up with someone weaker.  I think I would not mind doing this more often with them again.

This Tuesday, I decided to go to school for lunch.  Wherefore?  Yesterday early morning I received an email asking me to look over the (supposedly) final version of my paper to be published with Journal of Graph Theory.  It had a 48-hour limit so I had to do it today, since it requires the use of a school computer to finish the work.  I also wanted to see if Sid wants to play table tennis today, and if that is the case, I should complete my work before 2 PM (when we would play).  This is my reason for going to school for lunch.  It is quite logical, yet it also messes up my eating schedule for this week.  Oh well, sometimes sacrifices need to be made.

Unexpectedly, Sid's wife was here today for lunch, so I finally get to meet her.  Josh L also came, so the four of us had lunch.  After lunch and algebra, Sid and I went to play table tennis for an hour or so.  It was good to get some exercise and get back into playing.  I should put in some effort to play more.

This Sunday, I went to Caltech to play table tennis.  Before going to Caltech, due to a baby shower that June was attending, I actually took Hou-En home.  Then I went to Pep Boys to buy a car tire pump, and went to Office Max to buy some desk organizers.  The time was perfect for me to head over to Caltech.  Just like last time I went, it was because ACF people wanted to go play basketball there.  I signed everyone in, and this time some of us also played badminton there.  I had a good time today.  I first played badminton with a bunch of different people, then I started playing table tennis with Caltech people.  Later, Gershom played table tennis with me for a while.  Priscilla came later and played table tennis with me for a while, too.  Afterwards, we went to eat dinner at Wahoo.

This Wednesday, I went to eat lunch with the first year math grads again.  It is nice that so many of us are eating there together now.  Most of us have class at 12 and no class at 11, it is quite nice.  After geometry and algebra lectures, I played some table tennis with Sid.  Perhaps I would suggest to make this into a weekly thing.  Exercise is always good.

This Tuesday, I went to school to play my final match against Professor Kefeng Liu in the Math Department Table Tennis Competition.  I had lunch with Sid, and then we went back to his office and talked for a while, and then did math (separately).  Then at 13:10 he helped me warm up for half an hour or so.  Then we rested.  The "pre-game festivities" started at 2 with free hot dogs.  Alex and Tammy came to watch.  At slightly before 14:30, I warmed up with the professor and then we started the match.  The first game I lost 3-11.  Second game I was leading 10-8 but he got me on his serves, then we traded points (winning on our serves) for a while, before I made a mistake and losing 12-14.  Since I did not enter with an expectation to win one game, I was not frustrated by that lost opportunity to get one game off of him.  Indeed, I was able to continue playing, despite ultimately losing 7-11 and 5-11.  It was a good match, and I am not regretful of how I played.  Many people think I did well, it was worth watching, and I did better than what they expected I would.  I think that was a good finish.  I got second place, and I enjoyed my time.  Afterwards I emailed the professor saying I enjoyed playing with him and would like to play with him next quarter.  He replied saying he also had a good time and would play with me again.  Yay!

This Monday, I got Sid to help me practice table tennis after class in preparation for my big match tomorrow.  I do not have the expectation of even winning a single game; thus I am quite relaxed.  On the other hand, of course I would like to do as well as possible, hence I am practicing.  Sid is a great training partner, he is good enough to return most of shots (as long as I am not trying to kill him), and can also give pointers as to what to work on.  We of course started with forehands and backhands, and then I did forehand-backhand switching drill for a while.  Then we played some games.  During the games, if I found something I want to work on, we would just pause the game and keep on working on that specific item.  I realized I have trouble executing my third shot if I serve top-spin, which is something I want to do every once in a while to change it up.  So we practice that for quite some time.  I am ready for tomorrow's final match against Professor Kefeng Liu.  Yay.

This Thursday, it is my turn to play in the semi-final.  Sid came to help me practice and warm up.  Then Paul came to help Brett, my opponent.  Brett plays similar to Paul, but he uses a nicer paddle.  So I know how to take advantage of his paddle, giving him many serves he could not return.  I beat him easily allowing points 7, 3, 7, 9, in my four games.  The last one is not close, even though he seemed to have gotten a lot of points; I was solidly leading, and had no doubt that I would win.

This Wednesday, I had 3 hours of class in the afternoon as usual.  Professors Kefeng Liu and Thiele have their semi-final match today.  It was at 3 PM, while I still had class, so I could not watch the entire match.  I took a quick peek when I was taking my usual bathroom break.  Thiele started playing well and lost 12-10 the first game; but then he lost the touch and lost 11-4, 11-3, and 11-4 in the next three games.  Kefeng Liu is still undefeated (in terms of games).

This Tuesday, I went to school just to play table tennis.  Today I have my quarter final match against Paul.  His paddle does not have rubber (which is illegal in table tennis), hence I had a very hard time playing against him.  I lost the first game 9-11.  I quickly regained the second game 11-3.  But somehow I lost the 3rd game again.  In the fourth game, he was leading 9-10 with a match point, misses it, and then leads again 10-11.  He against misses his match point opportunity and I win 13-11.  The fifth game was much more in control, despite the final score being 11-8, I had pretty good confidence that I would win the fifth game, after being down in that match.

Tonight my former roommates John Shen and David Barmore came over.  Barmore was here first, and we played Octi.  Then when John got here, we had sandwiches like usual and watched Heroes.  It was nice to spend some time with them again.  The next time will probably have to be after my qualifying exam.

This Monday, I went to three hours of classes as usual.  Then I stayed behind and watch some quarter finals.  Besides mine, the other three quarter finals were played back to back today.  I missed Professor Kefeng Liu beating Hao (5, 5, 6) while I was in class.  I saw Department Chair Thiele beating Yen (4, 4, 3), and then Brett beating Tye after a deuce in the last game (-4, -8, 9, 7, 10).  I will be playing Paul tomorrow.  He is the one I am most nervous about.

This Friday, I had a rematch with Boris.  Indeed, today we had the remaining 3 matches of the 8 in the first round played back to back.  Because the lounge is reserved, we played in the SMC instead.  First, Paul beats Justin narrowly in the fifth game 11-9.  Then I played Boris.  Unfortunately for Boris, he was seeded 16th and I was first, so we played each other again despite having played in the round robing group.  I again allowed him 5 points just as during round robin.  Then Brett beats Choongbum 3-1 (with Choongbum winning the first game).  Afterwards, I played with a super tiny paddle from Paul for a while; of course, I used my left hand so as to not mess up my right hand.  After a while, I was getting pretty good with it, even able to (kind of) loop (as well as the bad rubber allows) and attack.

This Friday, I went to school for algebra discussion and combinatorics reading group meeting, as usual.  Afterwards, I played some more table tennis.  Today I play my remaining 2 matches in the round robin group.  I first played Victor Lie, my officemate, and then played Boris Bukh.  I won 3-0 against each one, finishing with a perfect record of 3-0 in matches, 9-0 in games.  5 other people finished like this.  I allowed 5 points each in my matches today, so total allowed points is 13.  The second seed falls to Professor Kefeng Liu, who allowed 14.  Third seed falls to Professor Thiele, department chair, who allowed 37 points (a big gap from the two of us).  Granted, these two professor both had to play someone pretty good in their round robin groups, and hence may have had a harder time than I did; but it still feels good to be first seed.  I will (supposedly) be playing the easiest opponent in each elimination round.

Today the games were really exciting; a lot of people came to watch, probably because it was a Friday afternoon.  We had 5 matches back to back, with Helen playing 3 and I playing 2; so we switched off playing.  Many of the first years came to watch, possibly because Adam, our algebra TA, announced in discussion that they should all come to watch me perform.  Adam does not play table tennis at all, but he is really into the competition spirit and possibly the most dedicated spectator and fan (of the tournament).  Afterwards, Boris, Adam, and I went to get dinner in Westwood.  We ate at Falafel King, it was quite good.  This is the first time I have eaten out for dinner besides the few times I ate with church people.  We talked a lot about math over dinner, and also table tennis.  I think I was very excited from talking, and probably the adrenaline from exercising, so I had a very hard time falling asleep.

This Tuesday, I would consider myself completely recovered.  But since I have no school on Tuesdays, I am resting some more.  I definitely am resting; I originally wanted to go watch table tennis today.  Indeed, GSO is the math department equivalent of a student body association.  GSO is holding a table tennis tournament for the department.  The 32 players are divided into 8 round robin groups of 4 each.  Each group plays 6 matches (everyone plays against everyone else).  My 3 matches are later this week, but the other 3 are today.  I would have wanted to observe their levels to prepare for my match.  But I decided to stay home and rest one day more.

This Sunday, people from my fellowship were going to play basketball, but it rained.  So I suggested, somewhat off-handedly, that they could come to Caltech to play.  They actually got excited about the prospect, even after learning that they would each have to pay $5 for insurance.  I drove to Caltech to ask whether this would be allowed.  Even though rules and regulations in general do not allow bringing such a large group of guests, I have known the gym crew for quite some time and they let me do it.  So I called people at church and they came shortly after.  I shoot a few hoops with them, but once they started, it was already time for table tennis.  I played with Michael Woods at first, and as others came, I ended up playing with a lot of my old friends.  It has been so long that I've played here that I cannot even remember when it was.  However, it was definitely a good day.  I am back.  Yay.

This Sunday, I went to church as usual, but without Alex, and possibly last time with Joy.  Since Joy is gone for a few weeks, she got moved to play piano this week before she leaves, so I covered for her for the translation during breaking of bread.  Brother Jonathan Pong continued with his message today.  Afterwards, we had meeting for the high school group teachers over lunch, which lasted quite a long time, and then we had cleaning after that.  I stayed for quite some time, and then left shortly before 3 PM.

After eight weeks of hiatus, I am finally back to table tennis!  Yay.  Ken showed up, and I played with him for a while, and also with Michael Woods.  I am very rusty, and since Ken has pips, it was even more difficult.  But I easily beat Michael as usual.  Afterwards, I borrowed Huiling Chen's card to borrow a book from Millikan for Scott Hsieh.

This Sunday, I played table tennis today.  Wherefore?  Midterm tomorrow!!  This will be my first in-class midterm for math class since high school?  There had been none at Caltech.  I also had a closed-book exam in topology once.  Besides that, I have never needed to memorize theorems and definitions.  Today I am going to try to go through my notes and re-think everything.  I also need to memorize and memorize more.  I think I have not "studied" for an exam (besides the entrance qualifying exam) for quite some time now.  For one, I had not had an exam for a class during senior year.  And junior year I pretty much gave up on studying and just took the exams, since most of them were open time (which means I should just look at the exam as early as possible, and then try to do them just like doing homework; except there is no collaboration—hence I do not feel like I am studying, in the sense of preparing, for an exam).  In any case, I think I am not going to be very well-prepared for this exam, but this will have to do.  I already sacrificed table tennis, surely I cannot sacrifice sleep as well.

This Sunday, after table tennis, Michael Woods drove myself, Isaac Chao, Jiaqi Guo, and Han Hsuan Lin to Old Town Pasadena, and we had dinner there.  This idea was inspired by the two Kevins from when I was a frosh.  Indeed, the two Kevins, sometimes with Jon and Bernard, would often go eat after table tennis.  Once I got to know them better, sometimes they would take me with them.  Last year, we went to eat a few times afterwards.  And now we are trying it again!  The dinner was quite enjoyable, howbeit a bit long and expensive.  Perhaps next time we can try something simpler.

This Sunday, after church, I went to 99 Ranch to buy some groceries as there is nothing to do.  I put the perishables in Michael Woods's apartment and then talked to him for a bit.  Then we drove over to the gym together at 3 PM.  As the new "usual" case, we play from 3 PM to 4 PM first, before the club officially meets.  This was a good idea, as there are way too many people who came today at 4 PM.  The new students are here!  As Jiaqi Guo is not back yet, Ran Huo took charge and made sure people were all getting to play in a rotating basis.  Michael and myself helped him to make everything go smoothly.  I did not see any good players, though.

This Tuesday, I went to the "first" meeting of the UCLA table tennis club.  The word "first" is in quotations for two reasons.  One, I have already gone to their meetings before, yet it was before school started hence no officials were there.  Second, there are so many people that the official first meeting is split between three days.

In any case, I enjoyed my time today.  I played against several people, beating most of them easily.  The vice president Chen came to play with me.  He was rather good, and I lost to him the first game.  But then I won the next two.  I would say we are roughly the same.  This is great—I had not have people with roughly the same level at Caltech (undergrad).

I do not think I will be going to club regularly just yet, since these are late at night and so far I am still sleeping relatively early.

This Sunday, I translated during Breaking of Bread.  This is the second time for me, and the first time of my regular schedule (the first "test" was a few months ago); I am glad to be serving in this capacity now.  After church, the young people cleaned up the church building.  Afterwards, I went to Caltech to play table tennis at 3 PM.  I picked up Michael Woods from his apartment and went to play.  Ran Huo showed up around the start, too.  It is good to play with them.  I also played with Yi and Chefung, ended up playing for about three hours.  That was not the plan I had.  I asked for 3 PM start time instead of 4 PM so I can leave around 5 PM instead of 6 PM.  Oh well, I enjoyed playing.  This is probably the highlight of my week.  At night, I finished the GALANT drawer, which took 2 hours and 30 minutes total.  It is a good drawer, the only place I can conceal things—I am putting my pills in there so it does not get too much sunshine on it.  All my other shelves are open.  I will have to figure out where to put this drawer unit, and how to best utilize it.

This Sunday, I went to Caltech at 3 PM and waited in the gym to see if anyone would show up early to play.  I sent out an email earlier regarding this.  No one came early, though, so I was just reading topology for an hour.  Afterwards, I went to Michael Woods' apartment and had dinner there with him.  He made some excellent sandwiches from ingredients he purchased at Bristol Farms.

Today I took the same route as yesterday, except I drove to the gym and to Michael's place, which were all very close.  However, the end result was that I drove 64.0 today, and 63.6 yesterday with a visit to IKEA!?  How is this possible.  Well, from Weyburn to church to Chester (via 405, 10, 5, 10) is about 29.6 miles.  From Chester to IKEA to Weyburn (via 210, 134, 5, 134, 101, 405) is about 34.5 miles.  And from Chester to Weyburn (via 210, 134, 101, 405) is about 30.7 miles.  The difference is about 3.8 miles, which with the difference of the two actual trips, means I drove for about 4.2 miles extra.  I do not think I actually drove that much in Pasadena, though it is hard to say.  In any case, the 134 segment is about 3.7 miles and the detour to IKEA is about 3.5 + 3.8 miles.  They form somewhat a rough equilateral triangle.

This Friday, I went to Bed Bath and Beyond again.  This time, I went with the express purpose of buying a Brita Pitcher for my office.  Haokun has made me weary of drinking the water provided there.  I also take a look at the pillows here, so I can make a decision tomorrow when I go to IKEA.

Afterwards, I went to play table tennis at the West Side club for the first time since I went before school ended with Jiaqi Guo.  Today I went at slightly after 4, since they start then and I like to go to Tammy's for dinner.  During this time, there is a juniors program, so there are a lot of kids.  No chance to play good players.  So sad.  I do not think I will be coming to play at this time again unless it is for the benefit of taking my classmates.  And I won't be taking my classmates unless I can get a deal to play for cheaper than $7 per person (Wei did not charge me this time, but I need to come to an agreement if I am going to bring friends to come play for only an hour and have to face the possibility of being charged $7 per head).

At night, I went to Steve and Tammy's but to find that there is no one there.  Oh, apparently they are meeting at some other place this week, without telling me.  Oh well, they say they will remember to tell me next time.  I enjoy being by myself anyways.

This Thursday, I went to play table tennis in the Wooden Center (gym) at UCLA with my new classmates.  I know Sid was going to come.  And since I sent out an email, other people such as Josh Zahl, Athipat, and Sungjin showed up.  Sungjin was going to play racquetball with Gene but I think Gene did not show up.  The tables here bounce funny.  Since I even brought my own ball, I am pretty sure it was the tables.  I was unable to get the balls back easily, since they often fall just short of my paddle.  It is very peculiar.  I am pretty sure it is not my problem since I play quite often and know exactly how balls should feel.  Furthermore, the time to play here is not very optimized, it is at night, which is when I like to go to sleep (wanting to sleep at 8 PM means I need to sacrifice a lot, I suppose).  We will see if I go play regularly from now on.  Hopefully there will also be better people there once school starts.

This Sunday, I went back to Caltech to play table tennis again.  I have not played for two weeks since last week Caltech gym was doing floor work.  It looks the same, I wonder what they did.  I realized I really yearn to play good table tennis with good opponents.  It is so much more satisfying.  Today I did not have good opponents to play with besides Yi.  I played with him to 2-2, then I lost the fifth game at 11-9.  Wow, that was fantastic.

This Thursday, I went to my last Caltech table tennis club training session that Michael Woods, Jiaqi Guo, and myself started last term.  I have not gone for the entire summer, but this is my last chance before I become an UCLA student.  I have not really played table tennis in the strict sense in a while now (I played a bit in Taiwan and Seattle with friends, but that does not really count), so I was quite rusty.  However, I still had a good time, and I beat everyone at the 1-game round robin at the very end.  I still really enjoy playing table tennis.

This Sunday, after church, my dad took Hou-En and Dave's family out for lunch.  We went to Fu-Hsing, which was quite good.  In the afternoon, I went to table tennis club again.  Last week the gym was occupied.  It is nice to play here again.  This will be one of the last few times I get to do this here.  My dad walked here and took a look, and then walked back.  He was exercising by walking while I was playing table tennis.

This Monday, I went to my last table tennis class here at Caltech, and possibly the last table tennis class ever.  It has been a good four years with our coach Wei Wang, former Olympic level player.  She has taught me a great deal during my 12 quarters of table tennis with her.  The people at class will also be greatly missed.  I got some of them, including Wei, to sign a table tennis ball.  Wei also gave me a super big table tennis ball.

This Saturday, in the evening, Jiaqi Guo and I decided to go to our coach Wei's table tennis club on the west side.  We have talked about going to this place for years now, and now I finally have a car, we can actually go.  Today, however, Diego did not know our level and put us in the bottom bracket for round robin, and it was quite boring.  I am not sure if we will go back again.

This Sunday, I picked up Hou-En and June for church.  I am giving them rides now!  In the afternoon, I went back to playing table tennis.  This breaks my 13-day hiatus.  I first beat Michael Woods, and then got one game off of Chefung, losing 1-3, beat Jiaqi Guo, and then finally beat Yi in the last game at deuce at 3-2.  This was so fun—I am very glad to be back.

At night, I took the table tennis undergrads—Michael, Jiaqi, and Han Hsuan Lin to dinner.  And afterwards, Jiaqi came over to sing some KR.  David T Lee and Christina Lee also stopped by with their older sister, and we talked for quite some time.

This Thursday, we had table tennis training just like last week.  Eight people showed up: Chefung Chan, Isaac Chao, Jiaqi Guo, Han Hsuan Lin, Yi Liu, Ken Mak, Michael Woods, and myself.  The training was quite tiring, and Michael lost track of time for a bit so we played too long.  Everyone was very tired towards the end.  We did a 1-game round robin at the end just like last week, and perhaps due to the fatigue, the results were quite peculiar.  In particular, besides Ken beating everyone, the rest of the people formed a 7-cycle: I beat Han Hsuan beat Isaac beat Michael beat Jiaqi beat Chefung beat Yi beat me.  Personally, I beat Han Hsuan and Isaac, but lost to Michael (so did Jiaqi).  Usually, Jiaqi and I would never have trouble beating Michael.  In any case, it was a different experience tonight.  I also got a haircut today.

This Wednesday, I went to play table tennis with Jiaqi Guo in the afternoon.  This is quite different than what we have done in the past.  Jiaqi is playing a lot of table tennis this week.  By tomorrow, she would have played about 10 hours this week, which is precisely when I played table tennis.  Afterwards, we got dinner at Avery.  Most people were done by the time we started eating, so we got to talk to each other (in Chinese) for a while.  It is good to practice Chinese.

This Monday, I played table tennis for four hours.  This is not surprising.  What is surprising, however, is the Jiaqi Guo also went for four hours.  We went together in the afternoon to the intermediate class from 2 PM to 4 PM.  Michael Woods was there too, so we switched off every 15 minutes and we played against each other 1/3 of the time, playing 2/3 of the time.  At the end, I played a match against Jiaqi.  Our coach Wei says I should treat Jiaqi to soda if I lose (I usually win).  I eventually lost to Jiaqi 2-3, with the last game at 9-11.  It was a very close match.  I brought Asian milk tea from 99 ranch for Jiaqi at night.  Then we played with each other again.  This time, we both had to leave a bit early.

I left early because of the first CCF Family Business Meeting this year.  Today, after some talk about the purpose of CCF, and the responsibilities of Christians, we went on to talk about logistics such as voting procedures.  Once that is set, we talked about Council structure.  We will discuss and decide on Council structure next FBM, in about 3 weeks.  Then we will nominate leaders during that meeting, and elect them during the third.  Because of this, my sleeping schedule is pushed way back.

This Thursday, I woke up "late" this morning because I stayed up "late" last night because of other people.  I actually got up at 7:30, which is indeed later as compared to before 7 the previous few days.  I got ready and went to SFL only around 9:30.  I worked on German, and then math.  After lunch and German class, I went back to SFL for a bit.  Then I decided to go home, and I vacuumed my room.  I also talked with my dad about buying a car, and called a few car dealerships.  Then I came straight back to campus to have dinner with Jiaqi Guo (and Han Hsuan Lin) early since we are going to play table tennis at 19:30.  After dinner, there is nothing to do, so I just went to Jiaqi's room and we sang songs from the Phantom for a while.  Actually because of this, we were slightly late to table tennis.  Oops.

Club training was nice.  We had 7 people show up: Adri van Duin, Yi Liu, Ken Mak, and Michael Woods.  We rotated quite frequently so I think we all got to play a fair amount and rested as needed despite having a parity error.  We did a number of drills, except I realized I cannot move effectively due to my ankle, so I fed balls for other people while they did footwork drills.  Then we played a giant round robin with 7 people each only one game.  I lost to the 3 old people and beat the 3 undergrads.  Afterwards, we sat in a circle and talked about strategies.  This was quite interesting, howbeit a bit weird.  I will definitely look forward to doing this again next week.

This Monday, my only class of the day got canceled.  So I have a 5-day weekend, having no classes on Friday and Tuesday.  I finished grading the first Ma121c set.  It was quite enjoyable to grade these sets, actually.  One problem I gave everyone a zero, but I also spent time to write counterexamples for each one why their proofs do not work.

Then I went to play table tennis in class in the afternoon with Jiaqi Guo.  However, near the end, I hurt my ankle.  I iced it for a while, and it feels better now.  However, I will probably have to rest a few days.

This Sunday, I went to church as usual.  People keep on asking me about my trip and my grad school decisions.  In the afternoon, I played table tennis for the first time in quite some time.  There were very few people, and it was less organized and very weird.  Hopefully it will pick up again after next week.

This Friday, I went to SFL and worked on the Book again.  I solved a problem, and decided that it must, therefore, be time for lunch.  In the afternoon, I went to find Jiaqi Guo to play table tennis, but alas, she is not there.  After some time, I decided to go to the gym anyways.  Loh and behold!  Jiaqi is playing with Han Hsuan Lin!  I was a bit upset since we were going to play together and I told her I would go find her at her room.  However, after a bit, I calmed down.  We then just rotated playing one game with each other, the other person playing with the robot.  We played for quite a long time—exceeding three hours!

This Thursday, Jiaqi Guo is finally done with her finals—I have been waiting for this day.  So I played table tennis with Jiaqi for quite some time.  We have not played for a while now.  It is always good to play with her, since she is the closest to my level amongst the undergrads here.  I did not really do anything besides playing table tennis and taking care of things involving travel.

This Tuesday, I played table tennis with Isaac Chao again.  I played with him last Friday.  It was fun, so we decided to play even more.  Before going, I went to his room and we talked for quite some time.  He just showed me some stuff on his computer.  It is really fun playing table tennis.

This Sunday, I went to church as usual, and played table tennis in the afternoon as usual as well.  Today, Jiaqi Guo did not come.  However, Han Hsuan Lin printed out the Round Robin sheets.  However, as Yi suggested last week, sometimes we can do something different.  Therefore, we decided to play "top-table," where each pair of people at a table play one game only (as opposed to one match best out of five games).  The winner moves towards the top table and the loser moves the opposite direction.  We just started where we were warming up.  I happen to start at the top table with Ken Mak.  I lost.  He stayed at the top table and I moved down.  I have never lost at the second table.  So I just keep moving to the second table, winning, and moving back up to the top table.  I beat Ken twice (lost to him much more times), and got to play Yi and Michael Woods at the top table.  I lost to Yi (which is his only victory on the top table, since he did not beat Ken ever) and beat Michael.  So overall, I won at the top table thrice, Yi once, and Ken won all other onces.  Besides the three of us, Michael had advanced to the top table once, but he has also dropped fairly loh.  On the other hand, at the second table, I had played many people, including Mary Lei, Isaac Chao, Han Hsuan Lin, and Michael Woods.  Some of these people, especially Mary, have not played with me for quite some time in the Round Robin groups.  It was nice to play with them sometimes as well.

At night, Scott Hsieh stopped by my room and we talked for quite some time.  He was also helping me decide how to schedule my visits to grad schools.  My neighbor also stopped by my room for some time.

This Friday, we had Frosh Prayer at my apartment in the morning at 9 AM.  Afterwards, I went with John Shen and Sunny Chun to brunch, to talk about Frosh Prayer for next term.  I got back and went to Council Meeting.  Later, I asked if Han Hsuan Lin wanted to play table tennis with me, since we tried last Friday but did not get to.  He said he is busy because of finals.  Later, I bumped in to Isaac Chao in Avery, and he asked me if I wanted to play table tennis.  So I went with him to the gym (I had my table tennis paddle in my backpack, how convenient!) and played for a bit over 2 hours.  Then I came back and went with LCF to dinner.  The people who went include Jian Yu Fung, David Lee, John Liu, and John Shen.  After dinner, Christina Lee joined us at Ray's place for some games, and John Shen took me back home first.  Since my bike was at Avery, he dropped me off there.  I thought I might as well check whether Scott is back from his 10-day trip.  And sure enough, I got there just in time that people were surprising him.  Someone commented that my arrival was like a drama.  I suppose coincidences do make things look more interesting.

This Tuesday, I went to the last class I will take from Wilson.  I also turned in my last set for him.  Some things end now.  I went to Frosh Prayer, as usual.  Then I ate at Ruddock in OPI as part of Perpetual Rotation.  Afterwards, I walked with people back to Avery, and then talked to Chen Yee Liaw and Po-Ling Loh outside their room for a while, in Chinese.  They were both fairly enthusiastic in learning and practicing Chinese.  Afterwards, I went to play table tennis with Michael.  Usually, this is the time I play with Jiaqi Guo.  However, since she is busy with classes ending, she said she would play with me Thursday instead.

This Friday, table tennis went wrong.  I was going to play table tennis with Han Hsuan Lin today.  However, the athletic facilities manager would not let us borrow the equipment.  This is most likely his fault, and not ours.  At night, I went to Fleming to eat for the first time in a very, very long time.

This Wednesday, I played table tennis with Yang Luo for the second time outside of club.  We originally wanted to play Fridays, but he cannot play the past Friday and this Friday.  So last week we played on Thursday.  I cannot play this Thursday, so we play on Wednesday.  We first of course just warm up with forehand hits.  After a while, he started his intense looping, so I practiced a lot of blocking.  Every once in a while, I would smash it back, and usually, he will not be able to react fast enough.  After about half an hour, we switched to backhands.  After warming up backhands, I suggested he could try looping with his forehand straight to my backhand.  I gained experience blocking with my backhand now, since forehand loops are usually more powerful than backhand loops.  I also tried sometimes sidestepping and blocking with my forehand, to practice switching.  After another half an hour, I suggested he could practice looping to the two corners alternating.  I had a lot of fun trying to block with both forehand and backhand, when I already needed non-trivial effort to blocking either side.  It was very good practice.  We then played a match, and I took one game off of him.  It was a very good time indeed.

This Monday, John Liu emailed me saying he cannot come to class in the afternoon because his hand hurts.  Therefore, I decided to go and play with Michael Woods.  (I usually do not go in the afternoon, and Michael and John play with each other; parity is a very real problem in table tennis when there are few good players around.)  I talked to Wei about getting new rubber.  I looked online beforehand and decided I want to try Yasaka Mark V rubber (again).  I had used the rubber long time ago.  She said she can sell me one and glue it for me and bring it back for the evening class.  I then had dinner with Scott Hsieh in Avery.  For the night class, I tried out the rubber.  I realized I like the rubber for my backhand, but I do not like it as my forehand.  Wei suggested I could just use Butterfly Sriver (which is the one I have been using for my forehand) again, and use the Mark V I got as my backhand.  This will require that I use black for forehand (since it is currently my backhand Wakaba—to be replaced) and red for my backhand (which is the new Mark V rubber, replacing my old Sriver).  I am going to try playing with the new rubber for a little more and then decide what to do.

This Sunday, I went to church in the morning, "as usual."  Except, I have not been there for three weeks, so it is not just "as usual."  I really enjoyed the Breaking of Bread meeting.  I did not realize how much I miss being there, until actually being there again after missing it for a while.  I also got to see many more brothers and sisters who were not there yesterday.

In the afternoon, I went to Caltech table tennis club.  I am still running the show there.  Today, we had a lot of players, around 15, so I split people up into three round robin partitions.  The top partition had Yang Luo, Ken Mak, Adri, Yi Liu, and myself.  Yang beat everyone, and Ken only lost to Yang.  I beat Yi, who beat Adri, who beat me.  By tie-breaking, Adri is third, and I am fourth.  It is unusual that I beat Yi, since he is a very good player.  I thought I would lose to him and may be able to beat Adri.  On the other hand, I took one game off of Yang, which is unusually nice, too.  Overall, I was playing very well, and enjoyed playing with all these wonderful players.  All of them are not only good, but are all very, very nice people.

This Thursday, I played table tennis with Yang Luo outside of club play for the first time.  It was really fun practicing with Yang.  He had powerful loops, so I practiced blocking.  I also tried looping very hard and fast for a while.  He also tried to give me some pointers as to how to improve my game, using the skills that I am strong at.  Basically, I need to be more aggressive, and win more points instead of defending until my opponent messes up.  After table tennis, I had lunch with Po-Ling Loh.  I asked her about her experiences as a TA, as I am considering whether to be a TA next quarter.

This Monday, I started playing table tennis again, after a one-week hiatus.  I played with Michael Woods today.  I think I get tired more easily now, having not exercised for a while.  I need to get back to my usual fitness, and then go beyond that.

This Saturday, I went with Ken Mak to the Northridge Open table tennis tournament.  I played in the U-1400 and U-1600, while Ken played in U-1600, U-1800, and O-40.  I first played in U-1600 round robin.  There were three people in my group.  I was the lowest seed.  I lost to the top seed (1500s) 2-3 and beat the middle seed (1300s) 3-1.  However, the middle seed beat the top seed and there was a three-way tie.  By Win/Lost ratio of games, the middle seed actually advanced.  If I had beat him 3-0, I would have advanced.  Every game counts!  Then I played in the U-1400.  I was the middle seed this time.  I beat the unrated player without too much trouble, but lost to the top seed.  He was playing very well, in my opinion, even better than the 1500s top seed in my U-1600 round robin.  Ken advanced in both U-1600 and O-40.  He lost in the O-40 immediately, but got 2nd place in U-1600.  I am very tired now, after being out for 11 hours or so.  I am going to sleep early tonight.

This Monday, even after playing in San Diego yesterday, I still went to class.  Since both Michael Woods and Chefung Chan came, we decided to switch off playing with each other.  I let them two play first.  I played with Ioana Aanei for the first half hour.  At the end, our coach dragged Albert Wu over so we play doubles.  I was with Albert.  Despite the fact that I am not as good as Chefung and Albert is probably not as good as Michael, we won.  Albert and I seem to be good partners.  This may be partly due to the fact that he is left handed.  A right handed and a left handed player as doubles partners is the ideal combination.  We also had good strategy.  Yay!

This Tuesday, I decided to try something different.  I did not bring my table tennis equipment with me.  After my class that ended at 16:00, I came home for a brief amount of time.  This allowed me to rest a bit, sing a KR song, and then head right back to campus.  It's not that beneficial to come back for an hour, but it does not hurt either.

However, tonight, I played very poorly at table tennis.  Jiaqi Guo is not playing too well either, but I played especially bad.  I was physically very tired.  Perhaps this is from playing three days in a row (but I have done it other weeks, too) or from the physical training on Sunday.  In any case, I hope I will be doing better next Sunday as we head down to San Diego for the spring NCTTA tournament.

This Sunday, our table tennis club goes into training mode.  We paired up (with me playing with Jiaqi Guo) and did some forehands, backhands, movement drills, and attack drills.  Then I paired up with Michael Woods to help Jiaqi and Pauline Ku practice doubles, while the rest of the people play top-table.  Afterwards, we did some physical training, involving frog jumps!  I was pretty drained afterwards.  I had dinner at home.  The last time I had lunch or dinner by myself in my apartment was last Monday.  It's been quite some time.  How did I get so busy?

This Monday, I played with Michael Woods for the entire class at night.  We did a few different drills, including returning very short and wide balls which are generated by throwing the ball while standing next to the net.  I got pretty good at it, able to make the ball almost land on the table while at its height, so it rolls across the table without bouncing up.  If I execute such a shot, the opponent basically cannot return the ball at all.

The highlight of the night, however, I would say, is side spin looping at the very end.  Sadly, I enjoyed it most when Wei was demonstrating how to do it with me.  Michael was having a lot of difficulty placing the balls back on the table, so I was not able to practice it too much.

This Sunday, we had very few people show up to club play, so we did not do round robin as usual.  However, Michael Woods and I helped train our Women's team on their doubles match with Jiaqi Guo and Pauline Ku.  I enjoy playing doubles.

This Monday, it is the first day of my penultimate quarter at Caltech.  I have no classes in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so I went to the library for a while, and then I went to lunch early.  It was nice getting to eat lunch with a bunch of people from CCF, after not seeing them for quite some time. 

My first class this term is L130b Elementary German.  We have a new instructor who seems to be quite interesting, after an hour of observation.  Of course, this is only a preliminary evaluation.  After one hour of break (which I could go play table tennis), I went to my second class, which is Ma191b Symmetric Groups.  There were very few people in the class, and I think even fewer were registered.  Therefore, I am not sure if this class will be continued.

At night, I went to my third class, which is PE84b Advanced Table Tennis.  I have taken this class 10 times already, but today, we had so many people I do not recall having this many before.  We had to resort to playing four to a table or playing doubles.  However, it was quite fun.  Chefung and I beat Michael Woods and Changyi Li.  And then we switched partners and Michael and I beat Chefung and Changyi.  I think Changyi is simply very out of practice.  He has not played for a very long time.

Afterwards, there was the first CCF large group of the year.  We are starting earlier this term: 21:15 instead of 21:30.  I was able to leave at 22:30 (while things still went on), and sleep at a normal time.

This Monday, I had extreme training session with Jiaqi Guo.  Since the gym is closed due to the holidays, we played in the Avery conference room.  She did not want to play games, so we just kept on training.  I actually used a long pips paddle so Jiaqi can keep on looping.  Similarly, she also used her long pips so I can keep on looping.  It is quite a hard training session.  Furthermore, we played longer, perhaps 2.5 hours.  And afterwards, she suggested we should do "frog jumps" around the table.  She agreed to do three times as many as however I do.  However, she could not keep up, so we agreed to lower it to two times.  I did 4.5 laps while she did nine laps.  When we were going down the stairs, we both almost fell.  We will probably be very sore tomorrow.  By the way, my list of tasks has shortened from 175 lines to 160.  I am definitely not going to be able to finish it, but I will keep on trying to shorten it.

This Saturday, I went to play table tennis with Jiaqi Guo again, as part of our every-other-day training.  Thursday Jiaqi complained that whenever I say something, she starts laughing and can't refocus back on training.  She claims that that is partly why she cannot play well.  So today, I did not say a word.  I came, we set up, we practiced forehands.  After about half an hour, she said, "do you want to do something?"  This is a question we often ask.  So I replied with "backhands."  After backhands, we did footwork practice, and then I let her do looping practice.  Then we played games.  I think I won about 5 or 6 games and lost 3.  It is nice to lose again.  However, I have to say I was not trying too hard, or rather, I was trying out new things and purposely executing shots that I am not good at as practice.  All in all, we had a good practice today.

At night, Hou-En came to pick me up early so we can go cleanup the church.  Then we went to the Dengs for dinner, and then had Bible study back at the church building.  Tonight I actually stayed up quite late, because I was waiting for my laundry to finish so I will have clean clothes tomorrow.  I did not realize I would need to change clothes after table tennis, hence my original plan of doing laundry Sunday afternoon does not work anymore.  I am not perfect after all, and I occasionally make mistakes like this.

This Thursday, I went for more table tennis with Jiaqi Guo.  We could not focus too well, and we are not getting very good results.  It is actually very disappointing.  Somethings needs to be done about this.  Jiaqi suggested that maybe we should play in the afternoon, because she will be more awake, and possibly playing better.  We will see whether that works this Saturday.

This Tuesday, I went to the gym in the morning and played table tennis with Jiaqi Guo.  I actually woke up a bit dizzy this morning, possibly due to the moisture caused by precipitation in liquid form.  We hit around for a bit, and then started training.  However, I did not really want to train footwork due to a slight hurt in the knee.  So we played games instead.  (Games are much less stressful physically than proper training.)  I think I won the first five quite easily.  Then we agreed that I should practice only serving to her backhand, since I always need more experience dealing with long pips.  I think I let her win a few games that way.  In any case, she is not in a good condition at all.  So she plans to train with the robot tomorrow.  We will play again Thursday morning.  Today I got 2 diamonds.  After being tired, I just went for a difficulty 1 song.  But then I sang a difficulty 3 song afterwards (In the Midnight Hour) and it was surprisingly easy.

This Saturday, I went to the gym intending to play table tennis with the robot for training.  However, I saw Chefung there, waiting for someone.  After a while, his friends did not show up, so we just played with each other.  We did a lot of training, which was putting a lot of strain on my shoulder.  Since I was still slightly sore, we moved to playing games.  Playing games is much easier on the shoulder.

This Sunday, I went to club as usual.  Today, very few people showed up at first, so I started playing with John Liu (he showed up for the first time).  Later, we still divided into groups.  We have 9 people, with 3 much better than us, 2 much worse.  If we divide "us" 2-2, the two in the bottom group will be quite bored.  Therefore we divide ourselves 1-3.  Jiaqi Guo and myself are lazy and therefore we let Michael Woods play in the first group, since he prefers to anyways.  I beat the 2 people in our group quite easily.  I was letting John score some points to the point that I was getting a bit nervous at the end, but I still beat him 3-0.  The last match of the day was again me against Jiaqi.  Neither of us has lost a single game yet.  I lost the first game, just like last time.  But then I focused and won the next three in a row.  I think I really need to learn to focus right from the start.

This Thursday, in the afternoon, I went to David Barmore's room and helped him on his Chinese essay.  He wrote a three-page essay in Chinese and wants me to look over idiomatic usages.  I spent two hours there.  Wow, that is a long time.  Well, I do not have much work to do anyways, so that was fine.  While doing that, Christina Lee and Po-Ling Loh stopped by his room.  They both tried a bit to read Barmore's Chinese paper.

At night, Michael Woods and I decided to go down to the gym for some extra practice.  Ken Mak, a parent, decided to join us as well.  As there are only three of us, we had to rotate around frequently.  So we mostly played games.  I started playing Ken, lost to him 1-3.  Then he and Michael played, then I played with Michael, winning 3-0.  Then it is my turn to play with Ken again.  This time, after losing the first 2 games, I won the next 3 games!  This is the first time I ever managed to beat Ken.  It was really exciting.  We got to deuce and also had some other very close games.  Ken said I should play with Michael, so I did, beating him 3-0 again.  Then I left, while Ken and Michael play one more match.

This Tuesday, Jiaqi Guo and I decided to go down to the gym and place some extra table tennis.  This is really the second time I get to use my right hand, since I primarily played with my left hand yesterday.  She was so sore yesterday that she did not come.  She felt that we were not in good enough condition to play games, so we just did some training routines.

This Monday, I went to play table tennis in the afternoon.  Since I have not played for a long time and I might have over worked my right hand yesterday, I am playing with my left hand.  Jiaqi Guo who has also taken a hiatus of the precise same length, and played similarly yesterday, is also sore, and did not come to class today.  The two of us are weak, haha.  Anyways, I went back for the advanced class at night as well, and I continued playing with my left hand.  My left hand is actually quite good.  This is the last class of the term, and hence of the (calendar) year.  I will of course be taking the class next term as well.

This Sunday, I finally got back at playing table tennis.  I have not played since 11/15, which was 16 days ago.  I played 11/15 with Jiaqi Guo, and then my leg started hurting the next day.  It was hurting a lot Sunday 11/18 and Monday, so I did not play.  Last week, it was basically recovered, but I wanted to make sure it is completed healed so I skipped one more week.  Jiaqi hasn't played since that same day either.  So we put the two of us in the second round robin group, letting Michael Woods play with Chefung, Yang, and Adri.  Jiaqi and I played with Ros, Edmond Wong, and Jonathan Krause.  Basically, Jiaqi and my match was the one match of the day.  We both beat the other three people easily.  After I warmed up playing Edmond, beating him 3-0, I played Jon and Ros aggressively the first game, and then defending the second game, and then do whatever I felt like for the third game.  Each of them got 8 points total out of the three games (their scores were 1, 3, 4, and 1, 4, 3, respectively).  I beat Jiaqi 3-1, losing the first game to her.  She commented that I am moving a lot more now.  That is good.  I had almost forgotten the joy of table tennis.  I am glad to be back.

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 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 Tuesday, I stayed home and worked in the morning, including lunch.  I have not had lunch at home for quite some time now.  I turned in my Ma116 in the afternoon, and then went to the gym at night and played with Michael Woods.  I am starting to try to get back to playing extra table tennis outside of the set schedule now.

This Monday, I continued trying to catch up from NSF applications and Bing visiting.  I skipped table tennis in the afternoon, and worked.  At night, I went to table tennis.  Pomona came over to play with us, but I played with Chefung while Michael Woods played with Jiaqi Guo.  I think the rest of our people beat all the Pomona people.  I played a lot very far from the table, it was quite interesting to do so.  Then I went to LG where Bing Huo and Tim Kwa planned a social hijack.

This Sunday, thirty players from Caltech formed six teams of five each and went to the NCTTA table tennis tournament at USC.  I have skipped church on Sunday regularly for the past three years three times.  Todays marks the fourth time that I skip church at the end of October.  Each year, I go to the tournament.  Each year, we do not win.  Of the six teams, one team is the co-ed Varsity team, and another is the Women's team, which count towards advancing to nationals.  The other four teams are Junior Varsity and are only for fun.  The Varsity and Women's teams can only have undergrad and grad students, whereas the JV does not count and therefore four of our postdocs (Konda, Joshi, Yi, Yongning) played.  They are four of our strongest players.  For our Varsity, I played first seat, then Michael Woods, Chefung Chan, Albert Wu, and finally Han Hsuan Lin.  We lost to USC, UCLA, UC Irvine, and UCSD.  I personally lost three matches, but beat the UC Irvine first seat.  It was nice to win a match.  As for our Women's team, we have Jiaqi Guo, Sharon Kuo, Pauline Ku, Ioana Aanei, and Sue Shiao.  They beat UCSD but lost to USC, therefore being second in the region.  Hopefully that is good enough for them to make it to Nationals.  The displayed photo was taken during my match against UC Irvine (which I won).

This Thursday, I brought my laptop to class and wrote my research proposal.  I then went to the Hixon Writing Center again.  However, the tutor was extremely late.  I met Gina Gage (we never met before, despite both being seniors), however, waiting for the tutor as well.  We decided to just have peer review and read each other's essays.  I think it was time well spent.

At night, I went to extra table tennis club practice for the tournament this Sunday.  I played with Chefung first.  Then we teamed up and practiced doubles against Joshi and Konda.

This Sunday, I woke up quite late after going to sleep relatively early yesterday.  I think I am slowly saturating back my sleep.  In the afternoon, we had our first table tennis club meeting of the year.  It was really exciting.  We had many people show up.  We used all the tables and there were still people waiting.  We made sure people rotated after playing for thirty minutes so everyone gets to play.  Furthermore, changing partners is always a good idea to broaden the horizons.  At first I was making sure everyone gets to play, so I did not play a lot.  Furthermore, since my right hand hurts a bit, I played with my left hand.  I did fairly well, finding a guy at my right level since we played until 3-2.  I had a narrow victory.

At night, I went to my first Ruddock Rotation dinner (yesterday was a lunch).  Afterwards, I stayed quite a bit and talked to some math majors.  My sleep time seems to be progressing arithmetically half an hour later each day since the first one-hour jump after arriving back at Caltech.

This Friday I woke up quite early probably because I went to sleep quite early.  I played table tennis with Michael Woods, Jiaqi Guo, and Edmond Wong.  I have not played for a very long time, so I was playing very poorly at the beginning.  However, after getting used to playing again, I was having lots of fun.  I first played with Edmond and I let him smash while I lob.  This is of course in practice for tomorrow Club Fair's demonstration.  Afterwards, I played with Jiaqi.  I think she also is heavily out of practice, because I beat her 3-0, which usually does not happen (we are about the same level).  Then I played with Michael, who actually got a game off of me so I beat him 3-1.  It was good to get some warm up done so we can attract people tomorrow at the club fair!

On the other hand, I am still very busy with Donut and other pre-rotation, rotation, and new school year tasks.  There are also some post-deployment issues for Bagel that I am dealing with.  In general, I am much busier this time than the average school day.

This Sunday, I glued on my new rubber bought yesterday.  This is the first time I glued my own paddle (I use to get my coach to glue it for me).  I think the gluing was quite successful.  I went out and tried the paddle with my dad, I was able to feel the ball when I loop.  Ah, the joy of table tennis.

This Wednesday, I went to play table tennis with some professors at NDHU.  I think I have not played table tennis since 2007.07.08 [DEPRECATED].  It has been about fifty-two days!  This might have been the longest time I have not played table tennis in the past four years.  Wow.  So many things that added together, one following one another, causes this hiatus that was way too long.  At the beginning today, I was playing very poorly, missing very easy balls.  After playing for a bit, though, the feeling started coming back.  I was able to deliver some very beautiful shots.  At the end, I tied 2-2 with the professor that I started out playing with—even though I think he is better than me even on my normal level, and I am not playing well today.  It is still very fun playing table tennis, I really should not give this up.

This Sunday, after church, I went to play table tennis as usual.  Today, I played with Mary (3-0), Yue (3-1), and Joshi (3-2).  I won against all three of them!  The hardest was against Joshi, which we went to the fifth game.  I realized he cannot deal with backhand chop as effectively, I also got used to his topspin serve.  It was fun today.

I also played the game loopy a lot in the puzzle game suite by Simon Tatham today.  I kept records for 07x07 normal, 10x10 easy, 15x15 easy, 15x15 normal, 30x20 easy, and 30x20 normal.  I broke my record for all but the last item today.  The last one I had only successfully completed once, which took 47 minutes and 5 seconds.  I was going to work on it, but then I decided to pay Ruddock a visit and talk to Abraham Buditama, who is my Syzygy partner.  On my way there, I stopped by Scott Hsieh and Kevin Chen's room, where I found Jamie Jackson and Po-Ling Loh.  They just came back from Andrew Hobbs's going-away dinner.  I talked to them for quite some time, and then spent even more time talking to Abraham.  This is probably the first time this summer that I went to sleep past midnight.

This Sunday, after a week of hiatus, I returned to playing table tennis.  Today, the parity issue is solved by our new robot.  I first played with Mary quickly.  Since we had five people, and I know Che-Fung will keep playing with Yue without switching out unless highly suggested, I wanted to make sure Han Hsuan Lin gets to play (since I think he left without playing last week).  So I beat Mary but then let the two of them play.  I then proceeded to set up the robot and played with it.  The robot can make me really tired.  Afterwards, a summer student came pretty late, and I played a bit with him.  Yongning also dropped by and tried out the robot.  Michael Woods solved our parity problem by suggesting getting a robot, writing a proposal to get funding, following through and finally getting us the robot.  Thanks Michael.

This Sunday, I went to church as usual.  After church, I went to the Caltech table tennis club.  I first played with Joshi and lost 0-3.  Since no one was switching out even after we sat at the end for a while, we decided to play again.  This time I won 2 games out of 5.  Then I played with Mary and won 3-0.  After sitting out for a while, I get to play Che-Fung, and lost 1-3.  Then I played with Yue and won 3-0.  It is nice playing against four different people, howbeit it meant going past the normal club hours.  Consequently I am very tired.  I was falling asleep at around 20:00.  I decided to sing KR for half an hour, and then I called my parents for half an hour, and then talked to friends online for half an hour (thanks PL).  Now it is 21:30.  I think I shall sleep now.

This Saturday, Michael Woods and I woke up at 8:00.  After a breakfast at Einstein Brothers Bagel, Kevin Peng drove us to Balboa Park Activity Center, where the tournament is held.  At 10:30, I played in the Under 1400 event.  In the round robin, I lost to Paul (top rated; advanced), but beat Tom and Matthew.  Actually, since Matthew beat Paul, and we all beat Tom, there was a three way tie, where Paul had the biggest ratio of wins to loses.  I was surprised to see Connie Lin there.  She was equally as surprised.  Apparently her fiance likes table tennis and came here to watch.  Michael also played in the Under 1400 event, but lost.  At 15:00, I played in the Under 1550 event.  I lost to Stephen Thrasher (who I recognize from Wei's club; top rated; advanced), and beat Greg and Harold.  Stephen beat everyone, so he advanced.  At 16:30, I played in the Under 800/Unrated event.  This is the only event that I, as an unrated player, can actually advance out of the initial round robin group.  I lost to Teresa, and beat Anso and Esther.  But since Esther beat Teresa, and we all beat Anso, there was a three way tie again.  This time, I had the biggest ratio of wins to loses, so I advanced.  I played against a guy around my age in the semifinal, beat him 4-1, and advanced.  In the finals, I played against a lady in a wheel chair, who is a member of the Mexico National Paralymic Team.  I beat her 4-0, and received a first place trophy!  This was rewarding.

At night, several Rudds came to pick us up.  Joshua Hutchin drives a small car that fit Hyung Min Park, Edmond Wong, Tzong-lian Tsay ("Will"), and us.  We went to Will's house and had dinner.  Then we played WarioWare on the Wii.  Joshua drove us back to Kevin Peng's place afterwards.

This Monday, I played five hours of table tennis.  I played 2.5 hours in the afternoon, and 2.5 at night.  I am really playing more and more table tennis.  This is amazing.  In the afternoon, I trained with Michael Woods, doing forehand loop, extreme footwork (forehand covering entire table), and some backhand loop.  At night, I played with Ning Bao, practicing more forehand loop and backhand loop.  It is a bit different playing with a left-handed player, but I was able to do it quite successfully.  We were even able to counterloop each other while both doing forehands (with Ning standing outside of the table to the right) and both doing backhands (with me standing outside of the table to the right).  It was a pretty good practice today.  Afterwards, I played a game with Michael, after he left, I played a game with Yue, and then one with Che-Fung.  With the rest of the time, I attempt to do the Ma117c set that I just started today, which I would normally start on Saturday (but due to prefrosh weekend and Ch3a lab report, I am behind).

This Tuesday, is the first time in 12 days that I have not posted before I sleep.  Why?  I've been sleeping really early in the past two weeks, ever since I returned from Ohio.  However, yesterday after FBM, I remembered a set that is due today that I have not written up (though I've already solved the problem).  So I stayed up until almost midnight.  Tonight, I went even later, playing table tennis with Michael Woods from 9:30pm till almost midnight.  I ended up sleeping past midnight.  I am finally "back on schedule" and now I can go attend late-night meetings such as RSG without having to think about sleeping too much.  I guess sleeping late (as in at midnight) does has its benefits.

This Monday, in the afternoon I played table tennis with Michael Woods during the intermediate class.  We just practiced at one of the end tables and ignored the rest of the class (which is what our coach Wei wanted us to do).  We first practiced looping (forehand and backhand), and then practiced counter-looping each other continuously.  We practiced it for a very long time.  Wei was surprised that the two of us were able to keep practicing the same thing for so long, especially when counter-looping takes a lot of energy.  Michael and I both agree we had a very good practice today—possibly the best we have had for a very long time.  At the end, we of course practiced our new-found favourite: lobbing exercise.

At night, I attended Caltech Christian Fellowship's first Family Business Meeting.  We have three of these each year during the third term, where we reflect on how the fellowship did the past year, consider goals for the next year, and decide on the direction and leadership positions for the next year.  Today the meeting lasted three hours, about the amount of time that was expected.  I would say our meeting went relatively smoothly, and many important issues were brought up, and hopefully will be addressed in the next FBM and also in reality next year.

This Sunday, I played table tennis for almost three hours!  This is a very impressive break through.  I used to have very bad stamina—it was hard for me to play for two hours.  Today my level of play did not drop significantly as time goes on.  I am very impressed with myself.  This probably has something to do with playing for four hours (but separated into two two-hour blocks) on Mondays in the past few months.  I am glad I have the capacity to do so now.  I truly enjoy playing table tennis; and it will be very useful to have strength to play whenever the opportunity presents itself.

This Monday, Wei the table tennis coach is in China, so her husband Diego came to substitute.  He led us in standard training exercises.  Most of which I know how to do and often practices.  One thing he added for the advanced class was lobbing exercise.  I have not done this, and it was very fun.  I stayed after with Michael Woods and practiced more lobbing.  Today, I played about five hours of table tennis, most of which was with Michael.  Michael is getting surprisingly good.

I was out of my room from 9:30am till 4:30pm, which is way too long for my taste.  I am quite tired.  At night, Large Group lasted very long, I left early so I can go to sleep now.  I've been sleeping before 11pm, so staying up so late is quite difficult.

This Thursday, after 4 hours, 1 minute, and 7 seconds, we arrived at Columbus, Ohio.  The local time is 6am in the morning.  Bing told me this is called a "red-eye" flight.  We got to the hotel and went to sleep.  After some sleep, I started studying for the GRE.  I also caught some Star Trek on the free cable TV service the hotel provides.  Today is the only day I will have time to do this.

The open practice starts at 7pm.  Jiaqi Guo, Janet Sheung, Pauline Ku, and Radhika Marathe went first since there were some mix ups in hotel location and transportation.  Moreover, one of our rooms failed to open, so equipment is trapped inside.  Eventually we all got registered and arrived at the RPAC (Recreation and Physical Activity Center) of Ohio State University, where the competition venue is located.  I help Jiaqi practice, while Michael Woods helped Janet, and Pauline and Radhika practiced with each other.  At night, we walked back to our hotel.  It takes about 25 minutes to walk.  After we came back, we were going to get food, but all the restaurants near our hotel was closed.  Therefore we ordered some pizza.

This Tuesday, I went to 99 Ranch with Kevin Chen in the afternoon.  My purchases were swift, yet the time was still long.  Kevin bought very few, but he was not any faster than I.  It was also nice to just talk to Kevin for a while (again).

At night, I played table tennis with John Liu.  We only played for an hour, since we were both busy.

Then I went to the library and studied GRE.  I finished reading the calculus section.  I left the library and went to Ruddock for Tim Kwa's birthday cake singing.  Afterwards, I came back home and started doing the calculus review questions.  Somehow, I am doing much better on it than the precalc review problems.  I even know how to take the derivative of arccos x!  (No, that was not a factorial.)

This Sunday, after being sick and hence not playing table tennis last Sunday, I was very eager to get back.  Today, I played with Joshi the new postdoc, and then with a lady, then I played with Adri, and finally with Yongning.  It was really nice having a lot of rotation and switching partners.  It is more interesting, and it also gives us more opportunities to learn from each other.

I decided to stop working on Ma109b, so I went and turned it in.  Today, Chester Internet is out, so I had to find my USB flash drive to copy my LaTeX output (PDF file) of my final to the campus library so I can print it out and turn it in.  I searched for it for a long time, looking at many drawers and my four computer bags.  Eventually I found it in the most common drawer, next to my wallet.  Apparently I forgot to look at the obvious place.  I cannot blame myself, though, since I have not used the USB drive for a very long time—I usually use the Internet for this kind of copying purposes.  After turning it in, I went to Ruddock and borrowed some movies from our VHS collection.  I also talked with Kevin Chen for quite some time.

This Monday, I played four more hours of table tennis, after playing two hours the day before.  It is really nice having a coach around, she helps a lot.  It is also nice playing with people of equal skill level.  Today I played with Michael Woods, Changyi Li, John Liu, and Jiaqi Guo.  We also played games of partition round robin.  I beat Ning Bao, who beat Jiaqi, who beat me.  It was only one game instead of a match, so it is quite unfair.  I personally don't know why Ning played so poorly, maybe I was taking advantage of his left-handedness.  As to Jiaqi, she uses weird paddle, I usually need a few games to get use to her paddle.  Afterwards, the winners played each other.  I lost to Che-Fung, but beat Ross.

This Monday, I finally had time to go to multiple table tennis classes.  After Shakespeare class, I went to half of the intermediate class right away.  I played with Victor, who was left handed, so I used my left hand as well.  At the end, I partnered with Han Hsuan Lin and played double against Michael Woods and Janet Sheung.  When Changyi Li came back from meeting with a professor, he substituted Michael and we continued playing.  At night, I first played with Yi-Nan Zhang for the first time, then the instructor switched us so I played with Ning Bao.  We practiced different things, such as back hand hit and moving footwork, and serve and attack.  Later Wei switched us again and I played with Mason Porter, then Ross.  I enjoy playing with multiple people.  After class ended, I got Changyi to play against Janet and Michael.  After we beat them, I partnered with Michael and won again.  But then we are all tired so we stopped playing.

In Large Group at night, we played a game.  We had to form "groups" of four to six people, where no two people can have the same class and house (so I cannot be in the same group as Scott Hsieh).  I ended up with Po-Ling Loh, Sunny Chun, Carolyn Valdez, and Cherrie Soetjipto.  We had to act out "vending machine."  Afterwards, in the same groups we discussed the importance of the Church, and also a local fellowship.

This Sunday, I finally got back to playing table tennis again.  Last time when I "finally got back to table tennis" I have had a long hiatus, and thus have possibly hurt my shoulder.  The alternative is lifting boxes the next day, but in any case, my shoulder started hurting the day after I played table tennis a week or so ago.  So today, I played with my left hand.  At the end, I even played some games with my left hand.  It is definitely improving.

This Friday, after a long time not playing table tennis, I finally was able to find people to go play.  Chefung was going to play with Yongning, so I found Yue to go play as well.  However, when Yue was running late, Yongning stopped for a while and I played with Chefung.  When Yue came, Yongning played with Yue.  Since I have not played for a long time (eleven days), I was playing extremely poorly.  I really need to play very regularly to keep my ball-feeling.  Today I could not feel the ball while serving, I missed maybe a third of my serves!  I had to revert to my backhand serving, that which I have done since the beginning of my table tennis career.  The reason for such a long hiatus was a combination of gym closing for holidays and Chefung being out of town, no one else seemed to be available either.

This Sunday, after church, as usual I go to the gym to play table tennis.  However, no one came at first.  Finally, about half an hour in, Che-Fung Chan came with Yue Zou.  As usual, they like to play with each other.  After a while, seeing that no one else came, they let me rotate in and we just played three games and rotated around.  I probably played less than an hour of table tennis today.  Very unusual.

This Thursday, I spent some time working on WCCC online registration.  In the evening, six of us went to play table tennis at Caltech gym.  I first played with Che-Fung Chan, I beat him 3-1.  Then we rotated and I played with Jiaqi Guo, it is very hard playing with her because of her pips backhand.  I could not just play with instinct, so I was always on edge, I beat her 3-2, but I lost the first and third game of the match, so it was really tight.  Finally, we rotated again and I played with John Liu.  He is warmed up this time and gave me really strong loops.  I was leading 2-1 when the time ran out and we had to leave.  Of those who came, I did not play with Michael Woods and Akinyinka Omigbodun.

Afterwards, John came to my apartment, and we sang Karaoke Revolution for quite some time, before we switched to just singing hymns from my Hymnary.  He was here for more than two hours!  I slept a bit late, the latest since last time I talked with John Shen late in to the night.

This Sunday after church, as usual, I went to play table tennis with the Caltech club.  This time, we were able to rotate players effectively.  I first played with Mary, then Che-Fung, Yi, and finally with Mason.  Each one was about half an hour, and it is always quite nice to play with multiple people.  Jiaqi Guo and Akinyinka Omigbodun came as well.

At night, I went to John Liu and Benjamin Yang's room.  Jian Yu Fung and Shuyi Ma came (Akin came for a bit too) and they played Pirates.  I did not want to play so I just observed.

This Monday, I went to table tennis class in the afternoon.  This will be the last time I attend this class, possibly ever.  Starting next year, the Thursday night class is moved to Monday, so I would not have strength to play in both Monday afternoon one and the night one.  Since the night one is more advanced, I will probably go to that one only.  It is always nice, however, to relearn some of the basic strokes, especially when I am trying to learn it for my left hand.  I am still trying to give my right shoulder more rest.

This Sunday I played table tennis with Michael Woods and Adri.  I first played with Michael for about half an hour.  Because we had odd number of people, we quickly moved in to games after warming up so we can rotate out.  I beat Michael, so he sat out for a while.  Playing Adri is always very good practice.  If it was anyone else, I probably would have offered to sit out while Michael continued playing.  Before another half an hour was up, Michael already switched in to another table.  Since the person who switched out just got off, Adri and I continued to play a bit longer.  Then I offered to sit out.  Later, once people started leaving, I played with Michael again.  Since I do not want to over-work my right shoulder, I played with my left hand this time.  I think my left hand is actually quite good nowadays.

At night, Lauren Savage and Jessica Arnold came to our apartment and John Shen cooked for them.  We watched fragments of an episode of Numb3rs with scenes referencing Caltech which I picked out.  Then we sang some Karaoke Revolution.  I am pretty tired, so I am going to sleep now.

This Sunday, after not playing my right hand for a while, I got a chance to play with Adri.  Now, playing with him is very desirable, we get to practice a lot because he can manage to keep most of the balls in play, as long as I am not intentionally trying to win a point (even then it is quite difficult to directly score).  So I warmed up my right hand and had a training session.  We looped each other's loops, I looped his chops, I served underspin for him to attack, and counter his attack, and the like.  It was a very enjoyable table tennis experience, one that I desire more often then I get the chance to do.

This Thursday we practiced the same thing as we learned on Monday.  I continued to use my left hand for almost the entirety of the class.  I played with John Liu, and was able to get some nice loops and also practiced blocking while he looped.  As alays, table tennis is one of the enjoyable times I have on a regular basis.  All my work is done for this week.  My next set is due Tuesday, and another due on Wednesday, including a presentation as well.

This Monday, I decided to go to the table tennis class again.  I played with Changyi Li.  Most of the two hours I played with my left hand.  My block is pretty good, and my forehand loop had its moments as well.  It was only when I need to give Changyi underspin balls when I switched to right hand.  I think my left hand is getting better quite rapidly.  I also played with Hyung Min Park at the end.

This Sunday, there were very few people at the Caltech table tennis club.  I first played with Mary, then I rested for a while, despiting beating her.  She played with Xavier, and after a bit she left so I played with Xavier.  I switched to left hand while playing with Xavier, because I like to exercise both hands.  I was very tired so I went to sleep at around 23:00.

This Thursday, after preparing for tournaments for a while, we returned to the basics.  Today we practiced forehand loops.  I practiced with Changyi Li today.  I practiced my lefthanded backhand block while he practiced loops, then I practiced some lefthanded forehand loops.  I have never been able to loop before.  It is quite nice to advance quickly in my lefthand.  It is like learning table tennis all over again, but faster.

This Sunday, I woke up early because of the NCTTA Table Tennis Tournament at USC.  Caltech is sending 14 players to this competition, forming three teams of five people each, except our A team only have four people.  We spread out the best players between A and B teams, and it was decided that I will be leading B team.  The format is four singles match against each team, and if the score should be 2-2, we play a doubles match where the lead player must participate.  We first played against USC Women's team, where we won 3-1 (I lost to their lead), since the doubles were optional, I let two other players go up and have fun.  Then we played against UCSD Women's team.  Because they only have three players, they default two matches.  We won one game, and hence beat their team as well.  (I lost to their lead, who was good enough to also play on their A team, and beat Ning Bao.)  Then we played a third school which I remember not.  The score was 2-2, so I was forced to play the doubles match.  I just ate, so I did not want to play.  However, we decided I should just stand there and serve, or push balls.  Consequently, I did not attack at all, just returning balls (which was easy).  I played with Albert Wu but we lost.  Lastly, we played against UCLA and I finally won my first match.  We beat UCLA as well.  It was a fun day, but I am very tired.

This Thursday, after talking to coach Wei about team divisions, we have finalized our team roster for this Sunday's NCTTA tournament at USC.  We will be sending 14 players, 4 on A team, 5 each on B and C teams.  Today we got new tables!  (Thanks to Michael Woods for getting funding, making numerous trips to the atheltics department, etc, assembling the tables; Albert and Janet helped with the assembly as well.)  Today we used 11 tables all at once, expanding to more than half of the gym.  We had a lot of people show up to play today.  Some are not usually in the class, but came because of the tournament on Sunday.  We played imitation tournament where we had teams of 4 play against each other on four singles and a doubles match, like we would in the tournament.  It was lots of fun, and I won both my singles and doubles match.

This Thursday I had the last training session with coach Wei Wang.  I practiced hitting backhand and returning serves.  She can give me some tricky serves that confuse me between underspin and topspin.  I believe I will get good at this.  I also did more work as CCF Treasurer today.  Also, in the past three days, I have been playing a lot of Karaoke Revolution, mixed with a lot of Bible reading—I sing one song and then read a chapter.  I got Karaoke Revolution 3 from Ning Bao this past Monday, and in these four days, I got 21 perfect scores on easy level.  Eight of which were achieved on the first try (without knowing the song of course, I never listen to pop songs, so I knew none of them besides from playing this game).  I now no longer have a PS2, so the game is useless to me, so I returned it to Ning.  Today I also accidentally solved the Skewb cube (pictured); a few triangular faces have fallen off, but there are no ambiguities as to whether it is solved or not.

This Sunday, I played table tennis at Caltech as usual.  This time we also did a lot of rotation.  I first warmed up with Mary, and then beat her many times in matches.  Then I played with Jihon, who is very good.  Afterwards, I played with David Damanik, the math postdoc that substituted for Wei a couple of times last term.  I lost to both of them, but it was still enjoyable.  Playing with people much higher in level can sometimes be frustrating, but these two are not very frustration-inducing.

This Friday, I met with Yue Zou, Chefung Chan, and Yongning He to play table tennis at the Brown gym.  I first played with Yue, after playing defense for a while, we decide to play some games.  I am, of course, offensive in the game, and I won every single game.  Afterwards, we decide to just hit for a while again.  I reverted to playing defensive, it is a lot of fun and energy saving.

Afterwards, the four of us play doubles in all three team configurations.  When I was with Yue we lost 1-2, with Yongning we won 3-0, and with Chefung tied 1-1 when we ran out of time.  Totally, Yonging won 6 games, I won 5, Chefung 3, and Yue 2.  It was a delightful night.  This week I played eight hours of ping pong.

This Thursday, I went to the Pasadena club.  I played with Wilson to warm up, and then I got private lessons from Wei.  She taught me how to hit a ball today.  No, not to simply make contact with a ball, but to hit without spin.  She says I loop too much and put too much spin on my hits, so detract the speed of my hits.  I totally agree, I never too the beginner's class with Wei, and thus had always started lesson one as "looping practice."  Afterwards, I played with Diego, Wei's husband, for the remainder of the day.  I will have to practice what I learned.

This Sunday, I went to Caltech's table tennis club as usual after church.  We have a new person who joined us at table tennis.  He is a chemistry postdoc, referenced by Adri.  He plays very well: with high speed balls.  He utilizes pen-hold, and has long pips on the backside.  I still cannot get used to returning long pip balls.  Today we switched partners every half hour or so, it was quite a good idea, so we get to play with multiple people.  We really should do this in the future every week.

This Thursday, I verily enjoyed table tennis.  I first played with Ayman and won.  Then I played doubles with John, Miguel, and Mehdi (sp?).  We played with all three team configurations, with Mehdi losing thrice.  I scored some pretty good shots there.  Later, I played doubles with Olga, Paul, and Miguel.  I was with Olga, and we won.  Again, I performed well.  Today was very fun, and playing doubles is quite more social and with less pressure.

This Sunday, after missing about three (3) weeks of Caltech table tennis club, I finall was able to make it this week.  I first played with Mary, and then played with three other Chinese guys (Yongning He, postdoc, 2 grad) in doubles.  We played best out of three, and utilized all three different team configurations.  Che-Fung won all three configurations.

This Thursday I went to the Pasadena table tennis club again.  Today I first played with some left-handed guy who is ranked pretty high, I think.  Then I played with Diego against Roman and Jason (from USC) in a double.  We won.  Then I stayed and continue playing with Roman.  I beat him in a match.  Overall, this club play level is pretty decent for me.  I also saw Wei today.  Scott Hsieh came again for Caleb Ng's surprise birthday party (of which I skipped for table tennis), and stayed with me again.