I think I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.

people always comment on what a great opportunity it is, being in a foreign country, having the chance to experience new things… I must be doing something wrong, then. I don’t see much in the way of interesting experiences - just cheap malls and boring tourist attractions. I’ve never been much of a tourist, really; as a kid I preferred to read books, and now I prefer to be online or with friends. I guess I was hoping that coming to china would magically cure that somehow. now I find myself stuck in a school taking courses I’m not really interested in and hardly ever leaving campus at all.

I feel bad that I’m not putting much effort into studying chinese while I’m in china. I feel bad that I’m not going out and making friends. I feel bad that I’m not traveling around seeing whatever the things are that I’m supposed to see.

but… I feel like I’m trying to live someone else’s life here. I feel bad about not doing things that I’m “supposed” to do, even though they’re not things I generally enjoy. I keep thinking about all the things I could be doing in vancouver, all the new friends I made there before leaving for china, all the new friends I made when I went back in august. I think about all the other things around the world I’m missing out on - the kde4 release party, a bunch of other fun events, the ACM contest, summer of code, internships (although some of that can always be done later).

I find myself wondering what the hell I’m doing here in china.

I don’t regret *coming* here - it’s certainly been an interesting experience, living in a country where I’m just beginning to learn the language. I have a lot more understanding of the troubles immigrants must have in canada. I feel like I’ve learnt a lot.

I’m just not sure how much longer I want to stay here.

for the dual degree program, I’m supposed to stay another year and a half, completing some reasonable number of credits involving comp sci, chinese stuff, and electives. in chinese, of course. this means trying to focus on both chinese *and* CS at the same time - trying to understand assignments and exams that are written in chinese. is it really such a good idea to try to do both at once, instead of focusing on just one and doing a proper job of it? …or maybe it would be better than just straight chinese courses, since I’m pretty bored of those. not that they’re *easy* - I’m just losing interest. it’s been more than a year, and I don’t normally stick with one thing that long.

one thing I could do is leave after the end of the next semester, in july, and switch to the normal SFU CS program for september. I’d take one semester of CS courses in china, and the credits would transfer (if I passed, of course). I’d have time to get home, meet up with some friends, go off to akademy, then back to vancouver and run around putting my life back together before the start of school.

another possibility is to finish up this semester of chinese courses, stick around for chinese new years, and then go home. I wouldn’t have to attempt CS courses in chinese, and I wouldn’t have to look for an apartment here. however, I’d be returning in the middle of SFU’s spring semester, and taking summer courses would conflict with going to akademy - so I still wouldn’t be back at SFU until september, and I’d have to justify this to my uncle, since he’s kind enough to be paying my bills. :) although perhaps I could try for an internship, or apply for summer of code… or pick something to study on my own and argue that this way I don’t have to pay tuition ;)

of course, even if I did go back early, how much of the stuff I want to do would I actually do? it’s all much easier in theory. in reality, there’s only so much time in a day, and it’s quite easy to let most of that just slip away. I haven’t been too good at time management - I need to work on that. there’s just so much I want to do… and some of it isn’t easy, so it would be quite easy to procrastinate. I tend to expect a lot of myself; recent frustrations with plasma seem to come from trying to tackle a big problem that I think I should be able to understand, and then finding out that it’s really complicated and I can’t understand it with the amount of time I’m able to put in, and then being all upset and unproductive for a few days because of it.

how much of this is really wanting something else, and how much is just looking for excuses to not try any more at learning chinese? it’s true that I’m kinda afraid to try and fail, or to get bad marks. actually, my marks kinda suck already :/ that’s what happens when you don’t study a subject that’s mainly memorization, I guess. if you don’t use it, you lose it. I’m starting to not even want to use it.

the other thing that bugs me, though, is that I’m feeling a bit like I did when I was working. it took me until march, then, to see that I was making myself miserable and get the hell out of there. if that’s what’s happening again, then maybe I should get out. but on the other hand, maybe I can turn it around, maybe life doesn’t have to suck so much. in february we’re supposed to move to zijingang campus, and there are more people there that I might get along with better. but the food will still suck, and I’ll still want to code all day instead of studying.

I guess I’ve got to do some real thinking about what I want to do with the next few years of my life.

wordpress and konq do not get along lately. grar. I reported the problem a while ago. oh well.

the last two weeks have been exam time. except that the chinese course kept going through the beginning of exams. during the easter weekend, when I wasn’t fiddling with voip I was studying for math. ended up doing fairly well on the exam, although I wish I could’ve got the bonus question :)
I’ve not been paying so much attention to chinese though. burnt out. a bit more concerned with doing the things needed to actually *get* to china, too. I have plane tickets, I have vaccinations - pretty much everything except insurance at this point. and still I seem to have a zillion things to do. my chinese final was on monday, and I was kinda hoping to get to relax after that… but I underestimated the number of things that need to be done when leaving the country for two years. I’ve got less than a week left, now… have to pack up, move out, sell things, see friends, etc, etc…

had a bit of an adventure the night before the final, though. :) I decided that I wasn’t going to accomplish much by trying to study, and I’d rather take a chance to see friends before leaving. so I went out to a fun bbq, and lost track of time. a bit after midnight I realised how late it was, and sunday the skytrain stops early… I checked the schedules, and was just too late to get back the way I came. it looked like I could catch the last skytrain from commercial drive, though, if I went really fast. so I hopped on my bike and rushed down there… and arrived at 12:34. the skytrain left at 12:30.
so then it was either wait 2 hours for the nightbus to start, or bike all the way home. I had lots of energy, so I decided to try biking :) I followed the bus route in case I got too tired - it also happened to be a nice straight line. discovered that my bike light is only for letting people see me, not for lighting up a dark road. :/ that was spooky. luckily I didn’t hit anything sharp. I did have to deal with a damaged pedal, though. my bike has straps on the pedals, and part of the plastic broke on one so that it didn’t hold my foot properly. I need to stick a roll of electrical tape or something in my backpack.
I got home right at 2:30, exhausted but happy :) it was fun, and a nice feeling to not be so dependent on the buses. as for the exam on monday, well, I survived. with lots of caffeine.

[if this shows up on planetkde, it's not my fault! I asked for my blog settings to be changed but the guy in control seems to be away at the moment or something.]

I haven’t been as insanely busy as usual lately… just haven’t felt like blogging much. :)
stuff has happened - I got a bike, for one thing. have to relearn how to ride safely before going to china. sounds like the traffic there will be madness - and the relatively calm, sane traffic here scares me quite enough :P I only rode on sidewalks n’stuff as a kid, so I know almost nothing about riding on the road, but I’ve been learning. I’m even in a few seconds of the march 07 critical mass vid on youtube. :)

I’m quite possibly the second most disorganised pizza ambassador ever, though. with my evil schedule I haven’t seen much of the students outside my class, and haven’t been able to attend any CSSS meetings. makes it kinda hard to buy pizza (or any food) for people. I tried to organise something with my classmates, but they were always too busy for free food, so I gave up on that. for the last csss meeting of the semester I delegated my pizza job to the president - yay jenn! so they got pizza, and the meeting took so long I was able to pop in after class and grab a slice for myself. :)
then on thursday, the last day of classes for everyone except my crazy chinese class, I found myself exhausted and starving and sitting around in hte common room too tired to bother going home. then realised that there were people there, and I should spend some of the pizza money while I had the chance… well, I was halfway through dialing the number of our usual pizza place when my phone died completely. then someone told me that it wasn’t even open yet (although I’m not so sure that’s true). so I gave up on that and wandered over to cornerstone to see where I could get large amounts of food on short notice. ended up with two big plates of sushi :) yum. I just hope the guy taking photos remembers to send them to me before I forget who he was…

I think I still have some google money left, too. maybe I’ll buy some easter candy next and give it to whichever comp sci students are on campus during exam time.

I’m sure there’s more stuff that happened, but my memory just gets worse and worse.
19 days left until I leave the country, now. gosh. time’s going by so fast :) so much to do before I leave!

(and there seems to be quite a few people)
I’m going to china at the end of april. for two years.
why? SFU’s Dual Degree Program. It’s also the reason I’ve practically disappeared: way, way too much studying to do.

yes, there will be a party before I leave. somehow, somewhere. I only have a couple of weeks at the end of august to rest and pack up n’stuff. I’m not sure exactly when I’m leaving; it’ll be somewhere between april 26 and may 2nd. my last exam is on april 16.
I do sometimes get free time on the weekends, still; it goes to the people who pester me the most, or respond to random text msgs fast enough.

so, I’m kinda of two minds about this semester.

On the one hand, I’m rather pissed off about how insanely busy it’s turned out to be. I was expecting a nice relaxed semester, going to school 4 days a week, so that I could focus on mandarin for those 4 days and spend 2 of the other days on programming.

Instead I’ve got mandarin 5 days a week, *plus* a math course, and I haven’t even had time to read webcomics since school started. akregator currently says it’s got 134 unread articles. I don’t think I can catch up with that on the weekend :P programming seems completely out of the question. I’m actually listening to mandarin lessons as I type this; need to do *lots* of studying to make sure I don’t fall behind, ’cause there would be no way of catching up.

I survived two years of heavy course load at BCIT; I didn’t want to ever do it again. yet somehow it seems I’ve got myself into a tough program. doh. and there won’t be any programming courses for ages, because I have credit for most of the lower ones. not only do I feel bad about not working on kopete’s filetransfer stuff, and worry about forgetting a lot of the stuff I learnt, but, well, I feel kinda lost when I’m not programming. it’s been a part of who I am since high school. I’m using kubuntu more than gentoo and have hardly written any code in the last 3 months; I don’t feel like much of a geek :P and I don’t feel like I have much else in the way of practical skills. heck, the soldering iron I bought is still in its packaging (although that’s partially because I wanted to use it on computer stuff and the computer hasn’t been off long enough to do so :) .

strangely enough I don’t mind so much about the death of my social life. I guess I got enough partying in september to last me a while. I see people at school all the time, and I still have some shreds of a life left (going out this weekend, probably won’t go anywhere for a few weeks after that) - and I guess I’ve been feeling rather antisocial lately. the stress of this unexpected busyness has increased that; I’m finding it really hard not to snap at people whenever they try to be helpful.

I think the biggest problem with all this is that it just wasn’t what I planned. I really hate unexpected surprises (unless they’re something nice and harmless like chocolate, of course ;) . Other people are in control of my schedule and that’s really not something I’m comfortable with.

still, there’s part of my mind that’s starting to feel optimistic… a busy schedule gives me less time to worry about silly little things that I shouldn’t worry about in the first place, and I don’t have time to start procrastinating. learning mandarin is certainly interesting, and going to china will certainly be an adventure :) I think I’m starting to regain some of the curiosity that got killed off by grade school; it’s nice to be around people who actually want to learn. It’s still frustrating to not have time for other things I’d hoped to do.. but if I can let them go now, I might even enjoy learning this stuff. Especially with pete - he has so much enthusiasm for learning mandarin, it’s a bit contagious ;) and he’s just generally wonderful.

I know I meant to write more, but I can’t remember what. anyways, need sleep. hopefully after the weekend I might be less stressed out - it’s kinda hard to be in a good mood when a corner of my mind is constantly on the verge of panic :P

right now I’m stranded up at SFU. it sounds like traffic is beginning to move, though, so maybe if I can persuade someone to drive up here I could get home.

so, this morning went well. I got up early, went to the evil mall and got various things, including rubber boots. the snow was beautiful.

then I went to class, and the first half was fun. I checked my email during a break and found out that there’s been a curriculum change and I might have to take a fifth course this semester. it’s just math, but still, I’m already feeling a bit overwhelmed by the mandarin :( I don’t have time to think about other things!

for the entire 4-hour class, it was snowing heavily and buses were “delayed” according to the internet. then around the time class ended they stopped - so, I’m probably stuck up here with pete. internet’s being flaky, but if I can get online later I’ll write more.

update: we went back to the common room after dinner (dinner taking a couple of hours because there were so many people and one of our dishes disappeared) and a friend offered us a ride down the hill. by the time we left part of the road had been plowed, so we got home ok, and basically just went to bed.

naturally the roads were all clear this morning so SFU was open again for our class at 9:30am :P all that snow and we didn’t get to miss class - then again, we have so much to learn that that’s probably a good thing. :)

now the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the fishpond is frozen over (I kicked it, but didn’t try to stand on it). it’s really beautiful :) pete took some pictures, so maybe I’ll link to those after he uploads them.

today was the first day of the new semester.
oh god.

so, it was already bad that I had almost switched to a nocturnal schedule during the break, and didn’t manage to get much sleep last night. then forgot to bring lunch, or even water. this just generally started things off badly.

then I found out that what we had been told were optional tutorials for getting extra help were “optional” in name only; they would be extra practice classes, and at least once a week there’ll be stuff worth marks there. this takes my schedule from 16 to 22 hours a week, and means that I don’t get fridays off :( and of course we’re going to have plenty of homework too. speaking of which, I should get back to that. there’s a quiz in the morning.

I’d been hoping that I’d have an easier semester, with time for programming.. silly me. :(
looks like it’s going to be hard work instead - I’ll have to figure out what happened to my BCIT work habits and get those back before my brain implodes. I got far too stressed out today.

I’ll still try and find time for kopete on the weekends, but I’m not sure how well that’ll work :( and the summer is looking pretty busy too - I certainly won’t be applying for SoC this year.

oh well. at least life in general seems to be going well :) *crosses fingers* and my laptop’s been much better at hibernation ever since I upgraded to edgy. although I don’t even get time to *open* my laptop in these mandarin classes…

yay, I *finally* got a new battery for my laptop! :) it’s only a 6-cell - I’ve given up on trying to find a 9-cell - but it’s certainly better than my poor old 3-cell that’s giving me less than an hour of power these days… it looks like I’ll be able to get about 3 hours out of the new battery. :) that means I no longer have to be constantly checking for power outlets.

I suppose it won’t matter quite so much this semester, though - I have 12 credits worth of mandarin and nothing else. 4 hours a day in one classroom. I do hope we get more than one break a day; I cannot sit in a chair that long.

as for kopete: I need testers! it seems I’ve completely lost the data about one of the aim bugs, and iirc I’m going to have to do a lot of reverse-engineering for icq, so I need people with the official clients that are willing to accept and send files over and over and over.

feels like the day should be over, but it’s only 2:30…

so, I had trouble getting to sleep last night, about as much as usual. I figure I fell asleep somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30am. then at 3:30, the storm woke me. first there was just a blip from the UPS as the power flickered, but a few minutes later it went out and stayed out. so after about 5 minutes without power, I figure it’s time to shut down the comps and turn off the UPS so that it stops its darn beeping. between that and the wind literally howling outside my window, I was too awake then to get back to sleep until maybe 5am. my alarm clock went off at 5:30am, because last exam I didn’t wake up until an hour after the alarm went off. I had planned to leave at 7:10 even when I’d expected normal weather; I do *not* want to be late for a final exam.

so, at 5:30 I was wondering if SFU was even open… the radio alarm, which I hadn’t expected to work on battery alone, was reporting power outages and trees down all over the place, including gaglardi - meaning no buses to SFU. I started wondering who I could call for a ride, or if I might have to walk up the mountain. at some point I hooked up the UPS to hte modem and used my laptop to check stuff online; the SFU page said everything was fine, and translink at first had nothing and then said the same as the radio - no buses to SFU. I found phone numbers for each of them and shut down the laptop; the SFU number continued to say that uni was open and buses were running, while translink had only the automated idiot-bot until 6:30, then was so overloaded I couldn’t get through at all.

I figured the only way to know which was right was to walk to the bus stop and see for myself - the first bus being at 7:05. so I gathered up my stuff and headed out. all the traffic lights were dead; 4-way stops make crossing the street a little scary. I was almost at the bus stop when I saw the bus whiz by. annoying, but at least it was running :) and I did have plenty of time. next bus was supposed to be at 7:25, but by then there was a traffic jam… still, it wasn’t so bad. got to SFU at 7:50, and the journey usually takes about 10 minutes. there were a bunch of trees down in front of the ASB, and while I was finding a way around the area it started to hail! crazy, crazy weather. it was snowing very prettily about 20 minutes after that.

so, I had a fair amount of time to relax before my 8:30 exam.. which didn’t actually start ’till 8:50. this was partially because the storm had made so many people late, and partially because the teacher was doing a 2-hour exam in the 3-hour timeslot. turned out to be quite an easy exam, too - it only took me about an hour :)

so now I’m done all my exams! yay! :) …although by the time I got home, internet was out as well as power. and I didn’t have any food. I went out to look for places to buy food.. and didn’t find much. burquitlam had no power, except for one pizza place I don’t like that took only cash for orders under $12. lougheed mall was closed too. luckily my bank was one of the few buildings with power, so I was able to get cash, and found some odd little place serving breakfast food. slow, but not bad.

then when I got home again, I had power and internet. :) whee!
I think I’ll go collapse now.

somehow survived exams today :) alarm went off at 5:30am, woke up at 6:23am and ran out at 6:35; missed the bus I’d wanted but still had time to walk to the skytrain and get to the 145 before the crowds. god do we ever need more buses.
saturday exams are cruel. especially at 8:30am. but I think I did fairly well on phys, and didn’t do too awfully on asc. and I got the mark for my asc term paper - 84% :)

now I’d like to collapse but there’s still too much sugar in my bloodstream. I think I need to replace it with alcohol :)

just one exam left… and I have a few days to relax before I start thinking about it.

tomorrow I need to start thinking about getting back into KDE n’stuff.