Thanksgiving week

Before the main part of my post, let me just share some joy with everbardee...

From an email that the head of our math dept sent out today:
"Because we have just started on the max-min theory in lectures, we decided to postpone all Section 4.2 homework problems until Assignment 9... For now, the announcement is Assignment 8 now has 11 problems, all the problems assigned from Sections 2.6 and 4.1."

I've completed section 2.6. Which means instead of having done 1/3 of the hw (which is due thu) i've done half! whoo hoo! =) It suddenly seems a lot more doable. Thank u God!! :D

Anyway, last week was thanksgiving week and we had the whole week off. Took the time to rest, relax, get some hw done... in the process of all of it I suddenly realized to my horror that we only have 2 MORE WEEKS of school and then it's finals week!! And I have math finals AND an IHUM paper due on Monday of finals week (11 Dec). XP Nvm nothing is impossible thru Christ who strengthens me! :)

Thanksgiving was on thursday; I went with Ai Lin, Dewen, Andrew (Hongkee Singaporean friend) and a guy from my dorm called Peter to Cynthia's place for thanksgiving dinner (Cynthia's the american girl I met on the trip to Redding who's moving to Singapore for work at the end of this week... have I mentioned this before? I forget). It was a really good meal and really nice company. Other stuff that I did during the week included renting DVDs (Cars and Thank You For Smoking) and watching them at Ai Lin's place together with De Wen and Andrew, and a trip up to San Francisco on wed. Check out a few of the photos I took at San Fran:

picture of part of downtown san fran

me at the northern coast of San Fran with Alcatraz (famous high-security prison on an island) in the background

a sign prohibiting ppl from taking these really expensive and high quality crabs should they show up on the pier (with san fran in the background)

a guy BALANCING ROCKS (those rocks aren't glued together. AMAZING STUFF!!)

and the Golden Gate bridge in rather foggy weather.


Throughout last week it started getting much colder than usual. Now I usually wear a t-shirt under another t-shirt or a polo shirt or something like that, so I'm effectively wearing 3 layers with my jacket. But it's comparitively warm here; other parts of the USA have been snowing for a while already. We're really in autumn now... getting colder and leaves are turning red and brown and falling. :) Gotta go do some hw now, I'll leave u guys with some photos of the Stanford campus I took last week. Cheers! =)


Taken from just outside De Wen's dorm:

And from across the road from my dorm, looking towards the central part of campus (my dorm's just to the right of the photo)

Driving Test 2

I PASSED!!! Praise God!! NO errors. And the tester was much nicer this time. Case-in-point: Part of the test was to pull over and then reverse. As I was reversing she was looking at this squirrel climbing a tree and laughing. :P

Had a super busy week last week. Didn't get a lot of work done in Redding so had to work pretty hard, had a math midterm on thu and an IHUM paper due friday. I started pretty late on the paper - even on wed when I went to see my TF (Teaching Fellow - the 'teacher' who leads my IHUM discussion section) I didn't have a clear idea of how to plan out my essay. But I finished eventually and I think it was even clearer and more succinct than my first paper a few weeks ago, although i'll only know for sure when I get my paper back. Which won't be for a couple of weeks I think. Math midterm went well too. Scored 88 this time, which according to the statistics is safely within the A-/A range of 81-90. =)

So it's been a challenging week but it went well and I'm glad it's over. This week is thanksgiving break so I'm gonna try to do some work, get some sleep and have some fun. :)

Only 4 weeks left till I return home! Incredibly fast... And yet Lisa said just now that she feels like we (I and De Wen and one or two others) have been here forever. Which is good. Cos it means we fit in and we're into the flow of things and stuff. Yay. :D

Driving Test

Had my driving test yesterday. And guess what? I didn't make it. :P Was turning right on red (which is legal here as long as you give way) and was checking for oncoming traffic from my left but failed to check for cars turning left from directly in front of me, so I came kinda close to hitting a car and the tester had to tell me to stop. Sigh.

Well, in spite of that I was feeling relatively ok abt it. Guess my ego was a bit bruised but I'll just wait patiently for the re-test (which is in 2 weeks). Meanwhile Lisa (the friend who's driven me to the DMV twice) said I can borrow her car to practice. She was really encouraging, such a blessing to have her arnd. Prob will try practising tmr afternoon since i'm free, provided she doesn't need to use her car.

Had an incredible weekend. Was at a birthday dinner on Saturday night and, without going into too much detail (cos not everyone will get what I'm talking abt) a bunch of us ended up spending over 2 hrs praying and prophesying and moving in the Spirit. And the prophecies and stuff were for me. God spoke so much that night, it was amazing. And very undeserved I'm sure, which just goes to show His incredible grace. Want more details? drop me an email. *grinz*

Going to this church in Redding this weekend. It's a 4 hr drive north from here. Going with the same bunch of friends that were there praying and prophesying, plus some others. It's amazing how God's led me to this really tight-knit group of spirit-filled Christians here, all of whom are Singaporean! Except one. But she's moving to Singapore in a month. Haha. Anyway it's a church with a really open heaven over it, apparently God is really pouring out His spirit in that place. Many testimonies of healings and other miracles. I'm quite eager to see what will happen. =)

Gonna grab a cookie from the fridge and just relax for a while. Have class in 40 mins. God bless!