Someone recently commented that our house has a wholesome atmosphere. We have house dinners every Sunday, and we often make each other tea and sometimes the girls bake cookies (I know that may be a very stereotypical thing to say, but the fact is, I don't know how to bake cookies, the only thing I'm good for is eating them).

I'm very glad that we instituted the Sunday dinner. It gives us a chance to show off our culinary skills, and gather round a table at least once a week. During the cooking, we also all mingle in the kitchen and talk about nothingness. It's a break from the everyday hardships and burdens of being a student, and it feels like a family gathering away from home. It brings a sense of coherence that you don't get from the daily dinner-on-the-coffee-table-in-front-of-the-TV.

I can't help but imagine that soon we will all be in different parts of the country (and the world). There may be people whom I hang out with everyday, but will never see again for the rest of my life. I may hear in passing about their new job/husband/wife/kids, I may even type them an email congratulating their career/family, and never knowing if it got to them. A significant portion of my life is coming to an end, and I'm reaching a fork in the road faster than I can acknowledge. Which turn should I take?

I really like watermelons. I remember back when I was small, we'd walk by street vendors with their stacks of watermelons, and I'd always ask for one. One time, someone brought in what seemed like a truckload of watermelons to our house. It filled the floor space of a whole room. Everyday we'd go home, and I'd share a whole watermelon with one of my cousins. They weren't very big, but half a watermelon was still very fulfilling, and we'd just spoon out scoops of watermelon like iced cream.

Then, when I came to Canada, my parents refrigerated the watermelons. This opened up a whole new world of watermelon eating to me. I've always had sensitive teeth, and the first couple of bites would always hurt, but the refreshing feeling would soon wipe away the pain. I haven't had watermelon in a while, maybe I'll go get some.

The Ph.D. Admissions Committee has reviewed your application for admission to the Ph.D. program in the Computer Science Department at --------. I am sorry to tell you that the committee did not recommend you for admission. The number of applicants far exceeds the number of those whom we can admit, which makes the admissions process a difficult and painstaking one. As a result, many strong candidates must be turned down.

I wish you all the success in the future.

So it goes.

The past couple of weeks have not been good to me. And the next couple don't seem that good either.

Last night I dreamt that I made spaghetti and meatballs. And that a hamburger was eating ME.

I fell on the way back from the Bomber last night, and my right knee now hurts a lot. There is a section of the path we take home that has a little hill (only about 2-3 feet high). Recently, due to the warmer weather, that part has turned into pure ice, and pure death on dark walks home. Usually, I take a run at it, and try to slide down, but last night, I caught a rough patch, and hit my knee on the ice. It's not pleasant, but at least I didn't get a branch in the eye.

I think that the next time I get an interview question where they ask me what my weakness is, I'm going to say that I have no courage.

Not courage in terms of valour or gallantry, but rather the courage to speak my mind. I find it too easy, and too often that I will say the "right thing" just to avoid conflict, even though I have many more things piled up in my head that I'd like to say. And afterwards, there's even less courage to break open a conversation to discuss what I've been thinking, because the heated moment has passed.

I think I've gotten better at speaking up while at work, because I have more experience now, and it's always good to get your ideas out into the open for discussion, and to clear up any ambiguities in the specifications. But I'm still bad at personal relationships. I just don't know how to start a conversation. Sometimes I can have an entire speech prepared in my mind, and never know how to bring it up.

I guess that's why I need this.

I've been having some weird dreams lately.

Friday night I dreamt that all my friends were network routers, and they were yelling at me their queueing and transmission delay times between links.

Then, last night, I had this dream where everyone was blind, just like in Blindness, except the people became related in a graph structure with supernodes (leaders) and edge nodes, and they were trying to organize themselves in some sort of political assembly.

I think my various activities are all merging together in my dreams.

At school there will be a Leave the Pack Behind contest in the month of March. It's part of an anti-smoking campaign.

There are 4 categories you can participate in (the categories should be mutually exclusive), and they are:

1. Quit for good (i.e. quit smoking completely in the contest period), this is for regular smokers
   
2. Keep the count (i.e. reduce consumption by 50%), also for regular smokers
   
3. Party without the pack (i.e. don't smoke when drinking, or socializing), this is for casual smokers
   
4. Don't start and win (i.e. don't start smoking), this is for non-smokers
   

All the contestants who finish the challenge are put into a initial draw, and those who are drawn get to be put into a final draw. Now, is it just me, or is the last category not so much a challenge? If I haven't smoked for the first 22 years of my life, it should be pretty easy for me not to in the next month.

Sometimes, these contests just don't make sense.

tired and confused.

I used to take a lot of pictures. I remember when I stole my dad's SLR from him, I used to carry it everywhere, and go through a lot of money developing film. Then I got my digital camera, and it was so small, that I really could bring it everywhere, and I did, and I took lots of pictures.

Now, I just don't bother. It's not that I don't enjoy taking pictures, not at all. I continue see life as still frames, I just don't carry my camera around all the time anymore.

Part of the problem could be that Waterloo is so boring, and so familiar, that I don't feel the need. But I think there's a deeper problem, and that's the proliferation of digital cameras into everyone's lives. When I got my first digital camera two years ago, not very many people had them, so I felt fine pulling it out and taking pictures. Now everyone has them, and I feel that if I bring mine to the bar, then I'm just a trend-chaser. I'm fully feeling the uncoolness of having something that everyone else has.

I'm ashamed of my own trendiness because of my anti-trend friends.

In the winter of '96, there was a giant snowstorm in Thunder Bay. We got over a metre of snow overnight. I still remember waking up to the radio (maybe KIXX 105.3, I think I was into country back then), and hearing on the news that school was cancelled. I was overjoyed at the news, until I looked outside.

My dad and I decided to go out and attempt to shovel the snow. As the garage door was opening, all we saw was more and more snow. It must have taken us hours to get one lane of the driveway done. Eventually I decided that it was a good time to start digging a tunnel in the snow bank (which was almost over my head). I dug a main tunnel, and two or three little side ones, always in constant fear that it would cave in and I would only have a little bubble of air before rescue workers would have to clear the road to my house and dig through the metre thick snow just in time for me to grasp that last little bit of air before I run out.

When we finally got back in, there was a giant crest of a snow wave just outside of the laundry room window. The fact that the crest of that wave was at the height of the middle of a first-floor window still amazes me to this day. I've never seen as much snow since.

As I close my eyes, darkness envelopes my senses, Am I asleep, or am I dreaming, I am not sure, I can still feel my feet, and hear the music playing in the background, Maybe I'm still awake then, But how can I be sure, What if I'm so immersed in my own dream that I'm imagining the coldness of my feet touching my calves and the now unrecognizable melody streaming into my hooded ear, Surely, if I'm dreaming, I would have enough imagination to come up with something more imaginative than just sleeping on my bed with my stereo playing in the background, And what about the assignments that I should be working on, or the textbooks that I should be reading, or the, What am I doing sleeping, or am I asleep at all, I certainly cannot be having this stream of consciousness if I'm asleep, And if I'm not asleep, then I cannot be dreaming, so maybe I'm just out of my mind, I think I'm in OC withdrawl

Grad ball, or no grad ball.

I have nothing interesting to say.