So a new year is coming upon us. I’d like to take this time to share some wisdom obtained over the past year. Hopefully you find something in here useful for your own life.

Ever felt like you were doing way too much? Chances are, you are.

One of the biggest lessons learned this year was to make time for yourself – “me time” if you will. Time for you to do the things you want to do. Time to get yourself away from all the various things that you do. Time to wind down.

You may think that doing things on full speed would make you more successful. Yes, that is true, but only while it lasts.

A car can only run when it has fuel to get it to move. Once it runs out, you can’t use it anymore until you fill it up. Likewise, we only have a certain amount of energy. If we constantly go at things at full speed without taking time to “fill up” (ie. stop and rest), then we eventually burn out and we can’t do anything.

So take some time each week to stop working on your commitments, whether it be school, work, or something else, and have some time for yourself. Not time spent sleeping, mind you, but time spent for yourself.

You’ll thank yourself for it, and so will all those people you work with.

Vancouver does not know how to handle snow – at all. If you are one of those people, then you might learn something about how to handle things.

As you know, Vancouver had a pretty impressive snowfall these past couple of weeks. So many things that I noticed people doing were making me go, “What are you thinking?”

First off, notice how everyone just has a wide shovel for shoveling snow? That is not a snow shovel. That’s a snow pusher. As in, you use it to push snow off places like your sidewalk.

Yet, you see people use the snow pusher to shovel snow (ie. put snow onto the blade, lift, and dump it elsewhere. Not only is this bad for your back, it’s not the right thing to use the snow pusher for.

If you are to shovel snow, use a proper snow shovel, made out of metal. Admittedly, those might damage your sidewalks and such, so you may want to look into a plastic one. But for something that will last, a metal snow shovel would be something worth looking into.

Now that we have that shovel business out of the way and you are aware of what kinds of shovels to actually look for, please shovel and clear out your sidewalk. Walking around these days is ridiculous because some people don’t even bother to shovel, making their part of the sidewalk (ie. the sidewalk in front of their property) extremely slippery and dangerous. My solution to this problem? Walk on the street, where I can’t possibly slip. Dangerous, yes, but still less dangerous than slipping and cracking my head open because some lazy bum can’t be bothered to shovel their sidewalk.

Then we have the footwear. Rain boots are not something you want to wear out there! They may keep your feet dry, but leave close to no insulation for your feet! What you’d want to get are shoes that..

• have good grip to the ground, to keep you from slipping
• will keep your feet/socks dry, to keep you nice and warm

Once you accidentally step into a puddle of melting snow in shoes that are not waterproof, you will start feeling cold. Not a pleasant feeling.

And finally, the getting around in the snow. If you aren’t comfortable driving in snow like I am, simply don’t drive! Take transit to get around. It may be inconvenient, but if you properly plan things out, I’m pretty sure you can make it work. Things to get you started would be making use of Google Maps to look for public transit travel directions.

However if you are brave, have a shovel with you at all times in your vehicle. That way, you can at least dig yourself out of trouble. I did that recently for some strangers whose car was stuck.

Managing your time wisely is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. Also learn to prioritize things.

Time management is important. Probably the best set of tips I found all year came from Eugene’s blog, in an article called The “Not To Do” List. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it seems his server’s down. On the bright side, it’s archived on my Google Reader, so I can read it again and share my thoughts here with you.

Of particular note to the topic of time management is points 1, 2, and 5, which are

1) Check e-mail at schedule points of the day, or to a maximum amount.

2) As a caveat to the first one, don’t check your e-mail first thing in the morning or just before you go to bed.

5) Stop checking your feed reader so much.

In essence, keep the distractions to a minimum. I do depend on email a lot – it’s my first line of communication with most people, but looking back, there is just so many things that should have just waited there until I am actually ready to handle them (ie. done whatever I was working on). Thinking it would be a good break, it destroyed my focus on the subject at hand and I can not go back to what I was working on.

Take advantage of your opportunities or you may just regret it.

I’ll admit I’m someone who would rather be 100% sure of success before taking a chance on something, but I’m pretty sure this has screwed things up for me at some point this year. I can’t think of any examples at this time, but yeah. Take more chances for things you want to be successful for!

Having a job is a good thing.

Ever since my co-op term ended in April, I have been just doing school. I really wish I got a job, since at least I can have some steady income. But then again, time, my worst enemy, stands in the way. Hopefully I will be able to work something out and get myself employed at a part-time job in the near future.

Computer graphics is hard.

As some people know, I took the computer graphics class offered at my university and was practically given a thorough ass kicking. The most important thing I learned from that class is that I will not go into the area. It has scarred me for life.

So as the clock rolls down to that time when the ball drops and a new year dawns upon us, it’s a good time to look back on the year and think of our successes and failures. Some resolutions for myself for the new year (because I know that I’ll probably fail to follow through) include:

• Get a part time job.
• Manage my time better and make it more controllable.

A fairly short list and realistic. Should be doable, right?

Have a happy new year!

Being so close to the end of my degree (at least, unless I decide to do a minor in something or pursue a joint major at this late stage, as mentioned in an old post), I’ve been thinking of things to do before I decide to don the cap and gown to walk across the stage to graduate and step into the “real world” (TM).

I am currently at 108 credits with 3 credits in progress this semester. Assuming I pass CMPT 419, this means I would have completed all my CMPT requirements for graduation and will need to fill in 9 credits worth of coursework.

Of course, in addition to courses, there is also a desire to go and do some more co-op. I hope to make use of the opportunity to explore the various options more. I have yet to do some software development in a work setting, but knowing only Java and fairly basic C that got me through CMPT 300 (Introduction to Operating Systems) is detrimental, which means I need to get myself more experience with other languages that are used in development in areas other than the Web.

In the past, I have mentioned the possibility of using co-op as an opportunity to explore the world (ie. Japan via the Canada Japan Co-Op Program). Perhaps that can still be a reality, but it really depends on how things work out with my academic decisions. If all else fails, there’s always the JET Programme after I graduate.

But in any case, there are a few courses that I would like to take before I leave university, either out of interest, a perceived need, or just something that is useful. I share a list below.

CMPT 379 – Principles of Compiler Design

Reasons: Good to have, Interest

A course traditionally considered to be stupidly hard due to the amount of coding you will need to do. Making use of the course as an opportunity to get good practice with a C-like language (ie. C, C++, Objective C, etc) would be most beneficial. Plus, that talk on parallelism from an architect who works at Electronic Arts a while back has made the course that much more appealing.

CMPT 401 – Distributed Systems

Reason: Useful

Given how we have things like Folding@home or SETI@home, which are examples of distributed computing projects with computing power that exceeds that of the most powerful supercomputers today, we can see distributed systems take on a bigger role in the world around us. Plus, given my interest in Web stuff, knowing about the various necessary things to consider should I decide to distribute servers about would be useful.

CMPT 454 – Database Systems II

Reason: Possible interest

Being a person who enjoys working with information, taking a course that deals with the implementation of databases would be quite interesting. Plus, I did OK in CMPT 354

MACM 442 – Cryptography

Reason: Interest

This course has been on my to-take list for the longest time and next semester has given me the opportunity to do so. It’s just one of those cool little things that you can possibly turn into a hobby or something. I can’t really explain my interest in the subject because I can’t really explain it with words. I just like it.

General Course Outline: http://www.math.sfu.ca/courses/macm442.shtml

That’s the list so far. Maybe we’ll see more on that list in the future. Maybe not.

Who knows?

Throwing this here just so I remember to do these things. Quite a few things that really need to be done, and then there’s the things that I’ve just been itching to do, but haven’t done yet.

In no particular order, categorized by when it needs to be done, by weeks relative to now:

By April 20:

• Pack bag for Wood Badge II second weekend trip, happening this weekend (April 18-20) – done hours before going
• Do writeup for Wood Badge II homework – done April 17
• Get a meeting date decided for Troop planning and misc. issues for the coming months (May till June/July) – delegated to another Scouter (the one in charge of the months)
• Send out this week’s announcements for the troop – done early April 18
• Get number of confirmed participants for Nite Hike – found a sad number, but done nonetheless April 17
• Get people in on the stage crew team for the AGM on the 27th – got two people on board for this April 22
• Make sure all teams are on schedule for the AGM planning stuff – kinda done..
• Check on AGM booklet team on their status – technically should be almost done at this point if we are to meet the print deadline – done April 16 by another leader
• Get Nancy to fill in the Supervisor Evaluation for co-op – done April 15
• Hand in work report – done April 15
• See if I can get off work earlier on Friday so I can get down to Langley for Wood Badge II training – done April 15
• Determine Scout of the Year – done April 16

By April 27:

• Clean up my desk at work – done April 25
• Do documentation for my self-initiated project at work
• Fix issues with said project as we find them
• Get student volunteers to help out with the CS booths during SFU Open House
• See if I need to contact all my teacher contacts made during my work term to let them know who to contact now that my co-op term has ended – work approved idea on April 22
• Send said email – done April 25
• AGM – make sure all planning is done, all bases covered, etc., etc. – done April 27

By May 4:

• Meeting for Troop program and misc. management issues – done April 22
• Fix a Scout’s computer – I’ve had it for a while now, but I told her I should have time starting on the 28th because work is done by then
• Clean up my desk at home
• Clean up my room
• Throw out the random junk I don’t need that I find while cleaning up my room
• Review scary math in preparation for CMPT 419 so that I will not “run from the room screaming if [Greg Mori] say[s] “eigenvector” or “covariance matrix”" (email from Greg Mori forwarded through csadvise back in December 2007)
• Buy textbook for said class – done April 16
• Pay tuition for summer

And other, no specific due date items that have, unfortunately, just hung around. Also unfortunately is that this is all the fun and/or important stuff:

• Work on my online game project
• Work on a Scouts-inspired project related to badgework management – idea from fellow Scouter in my group from his discussion with his group during Wood Badge II because:
  1. Existing solutions are reportedly bad and hard to use
  2. I would benefit from such software
  3. I can make it a web application, which makes it fairly easy to get to and use
• Finish work on my Scout group’s website (a run-away project of epic proportions.. really. If we did earned value analysis on this project, the SPI would be very, very, low, perhaps somewhere < 0.01)
• Create my website, so that the main page doesn’t suck
• Related to the above: since I will be creating something on my own, chances are I will only use WordPress for blogging and nothing else, which means I need to make a template for my website, then port said template to become a theme for my blog
• Review my commitments on things and see if I really need to start cutting back on various things. Currently, all signs point to yes.

And hopefully there’s nothing else. There’s already a huge stack here already and more would just.. well, let’s not go there. I want to go to sleep tonight right after this without nightmares of things that I have not yet done, or forgotten to do.

For today, work consisted of going down to Semiahmoo Secondary in South Surrey/White Rock and talking to several Planning 10 classes. I went with Rich from Engineering, who talked about the Faculty of Applied Sciences at SFU, with me running the Computing Science demo, which was the Towers of Hanoi problem.

Before I continue further, some people may go “What the hell does the Towers of Hanoi have anything to do with Computing Science?” Well, it teaches students about recursion and is an example of a problem that you can solve, since CS is about solving problems.

But anyway, the visits went quite well. The kids enjoyed the Hanoi problem and it is truly interesting to see just how people in the audience think it is easy, then suddenly come up and think for a long while.

So this being quite possibly the first time I had to drive down south of the Fraser from Vancouver in various points in the day, here are some observations; these may be good things to note, because I surely did not realize some of this:

• Even when you would expect to be going in the opposite direction of where the traffic flows (since people in the suburbs would be heading towards Vancouver in the morning), you still run into traffic jams. While heading down in the morning, I hit traffic problems on the Knight Street bridge as well as Highway 99 at the George Massey Tunnel.
• Despite the fact that the speed limits were 100km/h, I still found myself and others barreling down the highway at a good 120-140km/h. (I had to anyway, the traffic problems made me late by a good 10 minutes)
• Counterflows suck (when you have only one lane and the other side has three).
• Avoid the merge lane(s) if you want to go through faster.
• People will do anything to avoid the huge lines. When going back to Vancouver at the end of the day, some cars were trying to go down an already closed lane (for the counterflow) and merging in somewhere up front. So here’s a message to pretty much all drivers: if a car is going down a closed lane just to cut in line, DON’T LET THEM IN. Letting them in encourages them to do it again because they got rewarded for it. In psychology (operant conditioning specifically), they call this positive reinforcement. If you don’t let them in, they will probably not do it anymore, because they get screwed.

All in all, an interesting day. I nearly fell asleep while driving too. Kinda scary, when you’re on the highway going at 110 km/h and you find yourself drifting off the lane. Thank God there were no cars nearby and I ended up not getting into any crashes or accidents.

Well, better get to sleep. We have more classes to talk to tomorrow, this time with the usual presentation.

To summarize: I lack a work/life balance.

Maybe it’s the fact that I have kind of over-committed myself to things as of late. Let’s examine just how many hours per week of my life goes into various things… this is in an ideal world, of course.

• Work at SFU: 40 hours (8 hours a day for 5 days a week)
• Transit to and from work: 10 hours (1 hour each way for 5 days a week)
• Scouts: 10 hours (2 hours for the meeting, 1 hour for the pre/post meeting stuff, 1 hour a day for logistical planning)
• Sleep: 56 hours (8 hours a day for 7 days a week – an ideal figure)
• Church: 1.5 hours
• Work at Appnovation: 21 hours (3 hours a day)

Hours in a week: 168.

Hours I spend doing stuff: 138.5

Hours I have free: 29.5

Note that the above figure of 29.5 hours does not include time spent on doing things that are necessary, like making food, washing dishes, doing laundry, taking a shower/bath, and so on so forth, since these are variable. Since parents are out of town as of this writing, I will need to fend for myself with these things. So let’s say it takes..

• 1 hour for the morning routine, done daily (includes brushing my teeth, washing my face, shower, breakfast, washing the dishes; optional of course)
• 1.5 hours for dinner, done daily (making, eating, and cleaning up)
• 3 hours for laundry (includes putting the clothes in the washer, after doing some cleanup on messes, hanging, ironing, placement of clothes after they are clean)
• 2 hours for grocery shopping

Should we add these up, then there goes another 22.5 hours, which leaves…… 7 hours and as a result, cutting into various different things in the routine to make up for the lost time, like sleep, skipping breakfast, and so on. Obviously, this will hurt me in the long run, so I need to make changes before it’s too late.

Technically, I can do the Appnovation work on the commute, but that means:

1. I need to bring my dad’s laptop with me on a daily basis until I get mine shipped (it’s still waiting for parts as of this writing.. wow)
2. I really only merge around 5 hours, since around 30 minutes of each trip is on an actual transit vehicle; the rest of it is walking. It really depends on which routes I use to go home though.

So given all this, I will need to make some changes or else if I do actually manage to follow through on this schedule, I would go insane due to not being able to pursue my own interests and be a bit free for a bit. And to think that I will be taking one class (JAPN 200) next semester, which by an ideal schedule means 12 hours gone (2 hour tutorials, 2 times a week, followed by 8 hours for studying, if you follow the class time to study time formula where for every hour of instructional time, you study for at least 2 hours).

It has been a while since I had to head up to SFU during the morning rush (ie. the need to get up to Burnaby Campus by 8:30 for that insanely early morning Calculus class or various other departments that think you should get classes at such absurb hours in the morning, or in my case, work). Just thought I would share some ways to beat the rush and get up there on time.

Start your trip early!

This is really one of those things that is easier said than done. Yes, you can wake up and leave the house earlier to catch some of the earlier buses, but that means leaving the cozy comforts of your nice warm bed, which constantly proves to be difficult time after time again. So what can you do to still make it on time?

Know the bus routes and catch the right bus.

There are four buses that go up to SFU Burnaby. Know their routes and note that with enough planning, you can find alternative routes on the not-so-well-used buses!

Since my route involves hopping onto the Millennium Line, there are two transfer points that I can make use of to get to SFU: Production Way (via the 145) and Sperling/Burnaby Lake (via the 144). Since you don’t get the ridiculous issues that appear with the 145 (see next point), I tend to catch the 144 these days, with nearly guaranteed seats.

Just know the schedules and you’ll be safe and on-time!

Line up properly.

This one really applies to those at Production Way waiting to catch the 145 up to SFU. The 145 employs a multi-door loading policy (unless the driver who pulls up is a door Nazi and refuses to open the other doors despite the fact there are transit employees checking fares right outside).

So you see that huge long lineup that extends to the staircase to the Skytrain station? Well, there’s one easy way that you can get onto the very next bus AND get a seat! (double bonus!) Just walk up to the bus shelter and line up for the other doors! It’s a perfectly legal move that no one during that morning rush makes use of (mainly because the huge line mostly consists of clueless first years..).

So I hope these tips will help various people beat the morning rush by transit up to SFU. Alternatively, you can just get a B-Lot pass and drive up, but that kinda gets expensive, don’t you think?

What can I say really? It indeed was a journey of happiness, being able to see old friends and make new friends during the four-day, three-night camp while getting away from the stresses of daily life and work.

This was my second time at WCCCLC and the happiness and peace that filled my soul during my first camp came back once again, except in a greater capacity. I guess part of it was me wanting to make myself a more outgoing person, so I ended up meeting and talking to a lot more people. Also, helping out with the camp helped quite a bit too. Being part of this year’s Promotion team let me meet various new faces and get to know them better as well. As well, assisting with the bus on the Hospitality team over at my home parish, SFX, which was used as a bus stop, got me to meet people and talk to them out of necessity.

Being a normally shy and quiet person, I never thought that I would have been able to be so outgoing. It really is nice to be able to meet new people and all that fun stuff and I found myself smiling and laughing all weekend. I guess I was just really really happy.

One of the quirks I had was the fact that the Taizé prayer was in the morning as opposed to evening. For those not familiar with Taizé, it is a form of prayer that focuses on reflection and reconciliation with God through music that highlights certain verses in scripture. I guess you can say that the atmosphere just was not there. But oh well, it’s something for the Core team to note for next year.

The theme this year was “Journey of Happiness: Attitude or Gratitude?” with Father Lucas Chan, a newly ordained Jesuit priest with interests in moral theology and scripture. Through the talks, he led us to discover happiness all around us. The first talk focused on finding happiness in suffering, or simply, finding happiness in anything, and slightly touched on what Christian happiness is. The second talk was focused on giving thanks and praising God in happy times and sad times. The final talk touched on the virtue of happiness, which basically has us being happy and sharing that with those around us.

It is interesting to have a second take on finding happiness in God. There are some overlapping things, such as the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but most of it is quite new in these respects. However, Fr. Chan’s talks were more scripture-based, given his interest in scripture, so we found ourselves flipping through our Bibles often.

For those who hear about camp from the promotion team: did you guys have fun? Would you come again next year? (if so, we in promotion have done our job well \o/ )

For those there at SFU, come join the SFU Chinese Catso group! (you know, the one Joseph Kwok talked about)

Back to work tomorrow, both at SFU for co-op and part-time contracting. Hopefully these experiences can help me develop myself so I would not be so afraid of speaking to groups of people, since I’ll be visiting high schools quite a bit for work to recruit for the SFU Computing Science program starting mid-September.

This semester, I felt, started off strong.

I was on the ball. Things were going right for once. I was enjoying school and everything had a good balance.

Then something happened. I don’t really know just what happened, but it happened fast and brought this sweet, sweet taste of potential academic success down the drain. Perhaps it was the stress? The large amounts of commitments with extra curricular activities? I don’t know.

But in the end, what started off as an alright semester turned into one which I need to seriously look at what I’m doing. Of the three courses I’m taking, I did best in JAPN 100 with a B. Everything else? I did terrible.

After talking with Nancy, one of our advisors in CS, I’ve had a pretty significant wakeup call. My upper division CGPA is approaching 2.0. If that dips below 2, I will not be able to graduate with a BSc in Computing Science. And of course, my overall CGPA isn’t looking that pretty either. It’s not as low, but it’s gradually getting there and once that happens, I have one semester left to redeem myself out of academic probation and then I’m RTW-ed.

So I’m starting to tread on some dangerous ground now. I’ve been strongly advised to take out time from the extracurriculars to go and study more, as well as focus. My problem is that I just know exactly what I need to change, but the focus to make these changes are not there, nor is the motivation.

This should be a good wakeup call to get my stuff together and get myself out of this academic rut once and for all.

Whoop-dee-do. Finals.

I’ve finally managed to get some studying done today and frankly, a very small amount of it was actually looking at course notes and such. Taking a good look at the 471 PowerPoint slides does not do much because they are just crammed with ridiculous amounts of information it’s uninformative. Attempts to summarize the slides were for naught because I can not stand reading all that information.

So what did I end up doing? Reviewed everything on Wikipedia, while taking down notes that I can actually make use of and read without falling asleep. All the information on every single topic that we cover in class is there and it is explained in a much more directed manner than the slides could ever provide, for the most part of course. Things like how to use Ethereal/Wireshark and tcpdump cannot be found there, nor can I look up stuff on network security, but for the most part, I can study for my final just by browsing Wikipedia. That’s ridiculous since I should be able to learn the material from the lectures (which I stopped going to three or so weeks before the end of the semester, initially because of the amount of other things to do, but eventually because of the uselessness of going because it’ll just be dictation of PowerPoint slides) and notes from the class alone.

I guess me and PowerPoints don’t mix well. Well, rather, poorly made PowerPoint slides. Here’s my heuristics on evaluating effectiveness of PowerPoint slides:

• Does each slide look like it has way too much text? As in, there is so much information on it such that it overwhelms the reader.
• Does each point consist of multiple sentences instead of one single point?
• Does it take too long to read a slide?
• Does it not make you want to read it?
• Does it make you lost when you go off-topic?
• Is information all over the place?
• Is it not precise and to the point?

If “yes” is a response for any of the above questions, it has failed my own personal heuristics for a PowerPoint presentation.

Frankly, only a very small subset of professors that I have had at SFU who used PowerPoints use them effectively. They are meant to provide points of engagement for the presenter to initiate discussion on a certain topic. They should be used to make the listener think, recall, and easily link things together. They should not be used to be the main basis of the entire presentation.

Why do I say that? It’s very simple. For most, something they can see, like words on a wall, catch the eye of the audience more than the words coming out of the speaker. By throwing a bunch of text at the wall, the listeners would try to read all that information instead of the more important part, which is listening to the speaker. Therefore, it makes the entire lecture pointless since it’s all on these slides.

However, when the slides themselves are just stuffed full of information that one cannot make good use of them, it gets silly.

So what makes a good PowerPoint presentation? I try to go by the following:

• Tools >> Custom Animation.. >> Add Effect on text area >> Make it so that points show up one by one. Showing your points one-by-one allows the audience to understand you so much better since they just see a point, take note of it, realize what you are trying to communicate to them about, and then listen.
• Points should be short and to the point. They shouldn’t be completely convoluted. Multiple sentences in one point should not even be seen simply because that’s not even short at all!
• Be dynamic when presenting. Don’t just go idly because that’ll just get people to sleep.

Just to illustrate my point, compare the above set of points with the ones below:

• Make points show up one-by-one
• Do this by adding a custom animation effect on the text area of a slide
• Allows audience to be more receptive to what you say
• Each point should be short and to the point
• No massive blobs of text
• More than one sentence in a point = bad
• Dynamic presentation
• Failure to do so leads to nappers

See the difference proper point placement can make?

I wish they would force people who decide to abuse PowerPoint slides to teach their material to go through a class on doing proper slides before they are allowed to even use it. I’m pretty sure students would be thankful.

Not blogging is the obvious thing.

I have been given temporarily a Nintendo DS Lite from Benton, who tells me to hold onto it so he cannot play and study/do homework better. Thanksfully, since I have kind of given up on giving up games for Lent (well, changed it to reduce playing games for Lent – see later), it actually has been beneficial to have as it helps put me back on track (surprisingly enough) instead of drag me deeper into lack of focus.

I went to Games night last Friday. That wasn’t bad, although I wish I could have stayed longer. I could not do so because there was a church retreat the next day.

The retreat was pretty nice, with the English group speaker being no one other than the recently ordained (one year ago) Fr. Justin Huang, who also went with the SFX/Corpus Christi joint group to World Youth Day 2005 in Germany.

The topic that Fr. Justin talked about can be summed up into how to find happiness in God. It was done in three sessions. The first talk was on things we need to have to be happy, which he called fruits of the Holy Spirit and consist of the following: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chasity.

The next session analyzed why we turn away from God. There are two reasons. The first is obviously sin, which we can resolve by doing a complete and integral confession, which requires one to confess all their mortal sins, along with the number of times the mortal sin was committed. The other cause is disorders in our lives, with the orders being the Four Levels of Happiness. Disorder occurs when either one of the levels are missing or they are sorted in the wrong order.
The final session was one focused on how to turn back to God and, hence, become happy in Christ. Unfortunately, I did not last that long (it was a pretty long day after all) and somewhat dozed off while listening.

After most of the retreat was over, I decided to go to confession. Some things troubled me, such as the burnout stage that happened a while back and my gaming Lenten promise which is in tatters.

It was one of the better confessions I’ve had. It kind of put things back on track, such as how to deal with stress that leads to the eventual burnout and resolving the guilt from breaking the gaming Lenten promise. With some internal searching during confession when Father asked me questions, I realize that I am quite a perfectionist, always wanting to get something exact, which in turn leads to my procrastination, which causes a good chunk of my stress.

To deal with it the stress, Father suggested I go and do something else like go for a walk. He also suggested I take part more in church things. As well, when I asked about how to keep the promise to give up games, it turns out that I only thought too short-sighted and failed to fill in something to the time freed up from giving up games. He, therefore, recommended that I just reduce my gaming time instead of outright outlawing it for Lent, giving my own nature to game.

It’s strange how the better confessions are the ones where I’ve done an examination of conscience with the list of questions to ask myself in front of me and where there was no screen, but a face-to-face one.

But yeah, I certainly feel better now after that and quite refreshed, to say the least. I’ve managed to clear off my JAPN homework stuff this week and actually found time to study for the classes. I guess I could do better with the other classes though, especially CMPT 307. I really should go and talk to Binay, but I’m not really all that sure what part to ask for help with. My problem is that when I look at it, it makes sense for the most part, but when confronted with it in an exam situation, it just does not come out, although I could probably use some help with that recurrence relation stuff.

I’ll see.