Hi all. Yes, I am still alive!
Just a quick but very important update!
I think we can assume now that daily or weekly updates just aren't going to happen, at least not consistently for periods longer than a month or two at once. However, my biggest aim for the Winter is to be on top of things - especially school stuff - and updating this blog would be a good testament to that.
I have some new friends to add to me list of secret people. I won't list all of them, just some of those I've been talking to the most over the last two months. Also included are previously alias'd people that I happen to have been seeing a lot recently:
A.C. <--Not a new one, actually my best friend of many years.
Ochibi-chan <--Short, quiet, tres kawaii! My g/f as of two days ago x)
Her Annieness <--Frosh week friend that I wish I saw more of these days! Friend of Ochibi-chan too.
Mr. Tengen <--Frosh week friend, really cool guy who is enthusiastically learning Go! 囲碁部員
::Continued writing this entry on 12/23/2011, after meeting up with JEFFBOT, Mimi and others for Karaoke. After that, Mimi and I met up with ANGRYM and two others for sushi, and yet more Karaoke!::
EmoJ <--1st-year friend from Japanese class. I spend a considerable amount of time with him, one of my good friends.
HappyJ<--A good friend from Go club who has a lot in common with me - Go, Anime/Manga, Magic the Gathering, Japan insterests, etc.
ANGRYKOREAN <-- Hehe, he's not a new one. He's a Go club friend, a good friend, and sometimes does other stuff with me besides Go. We always joke about other Go players, generalizations/stereotypes in Go, etc.
LittleD <--Since there's a BigD, there must be a LittleD! Actually, their physical sizes are probably roughly similar hehe. LittleD is someone who is currently helping me a lot with Go club management.
GARU <--Another new Go club member. He seems like a pretty smart guy, and is interesting to talk to.
There are more, I'll list them another time lol.
My first term of university was very poor in terms of marks, but really awesome in regards to my social life. I made a lot of good new friends, run a Go club with tons of new members, developed multiple more new social circles, and got a girlfriend too. For the most part, things are good~
I learned a lot from my university mistakes so far, like to stay on top of or, better yet, ahead on readings, to study as early as possible for everything regardless of how much time there is, to attend all tutorials and most or all lectures, to maintain a fairly strict schedule even on weekends in order to keep sleeping patterns regulated, purchase books as early as possible and deal with OSAP stuff as early as possible, plan everything in advance as much as possible, set up folders on computer for each courses (did this) into which I should put notes and things, etc.
Most of all, I must say it again that I should be ahead on readings and studying at all times. Then getting at least 70's on everything is automatic, and I can get much higher marks from there.
I fell so behind in some of my courses that I had to pull lots of all nighters and never finished studying for anything. My GPA is probably around 2.8 or 2.9 as of the new year, pretty horrible. However, I have calculated a lot of things, such as what I can get in the winter and what I can get later on (cumulative). I calculated GPA for bold goals, "expectable/realistic" goals, and modest goals. Even with modest goals for the winter, as long as I follow what I've learned from experience now, something like 3.3 is a good goal. Anyway, I will aim for 3.4. 3.5 is probably not possible for this year now, but at the same time, should be easy to avoid anything below 3.3 or 3.2. I will do my best to come out of this year with a decent mark, and make it a really good one next year. I can think of it as a trade.
It's like a Magic card that draws you cards in exchange for paying life, or in Death Note when you make "the deal" for the Shinigami eyes ;p
More soon.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Long Time, No See! HISASHIBURI~!
Hello everyone!
I apologize again for going so many months without any posts. At that time, I became really busy and the blog started feeling like a burden. I'm sure some of you know what I mean :)
I've decided to make sure I occasionally post on here, it's a good sort of release for me I guess, this sort of 'journal'. It's also something I can reflect on later, and gets things off my chest. Here are a few updates about my life, though I'm sure I'm going to neglect to post many things. There's just too much to recall.
Go: Barely playing lately, not studying at all. I've gotten weaker, and my recent games show it. Still, I'm hosting Go club every week and I'm still playing. More than playing, I'm teaching! I've been teaching at Golden Key Cultural Centre for a while now, and I teach people at Go club. The GO club is doing GREAT right now! We've been averaging 18 people! A large group of passionate beginners have flocked in, and they're already good friends of mine!
School: So I started school, my first year of university. Frosh week was fun, really tiring and sleepless but I made some good friends. This was the only important part for me. I took The Literary Tradition, Intro Psych, Intro Sociology, Pre-modern East Asian History, and Japanese. I dropped the English course because my course load had way too much reading and I'd fallen behind in some of my courses. Yeah... Although I've had tons of social fun so far, I've fallen behind. I've learned from SO MANY mistakes this term and I will never make them again. I guess it was worth it! I kind of bombed my Psych midterm, 53... Yeah, I was shocked. A smart friend of mine got even less! He dropped the course after that :) In Sociology I got only 73. I had basically no time to study for my midterms, never mind... Anyway, I think Sociology is easy and I will definitely get a high mark on the next midterm. Japanese is around 80, I skipped a lot of quizzes and stuff for other things, but I will raise it to at least 85! Premodern E.A. History wa chotto... (is a little...)
I once again had almost no time to study for the midterm, so I only got a 70 :( I probably won't get higher than 73 or 75 in the end, but whatever.. This is my Fail Term, haha. There are some issues with that course, but at least it's not something I'm going to get 65 or less in, so it's all good~ It's because at this point I don't see it as possible to fully catch up in all my courses before the Fall term ends, I've been trying all this time lol.
Right now I should be reading for Psych - I have 300 pages to read + studying, and midterm is in under 3 days! But it's okay... I wanted to relax for a few minutes and make this post. Hisabisa dakara ne~
At least I've already read a chunk of the pages. I will get back to it soon and continue for at least 6 or 7 hours (only 6 or 7, I have Japanese tomorrow at 9am and I need to stop skipping!)
After bombing my Psych midterm, I started calculating things to make myself feel better. I may be wrong in thinking that GPA calculation is this simple, but here's how I am looking at this stuff right now:
Psych is a half credit, making it one 40th of my total courses in undergrad. Then there's the fact that the midterm was worth just 30%, so roughly speaking, the mark acts as less than one 120th of my final undergrad GPA, ne? And considering I scored roughly half on it, I only *lost* something like one 250th of my possible marks affecting GPA. I still have a chance to get into the 70's or something in Psych this term.
The English credit I already have, ENG185Y (Intro to Literature) finished with a 77 (and taught me so much about writing and literature!!! Thanks Prof. Maher!!)
So If we look at my CURRENT state, which is going to be terrible compared to my final term marks due to my big crashes from being behind (such as my 53!!!!!!), it's not actually THAT horrible, take a look:
eng185 - 77
psy100 - 57 (+4 for freebie marks from experiments)
soc100 - 75 (+2 for free marks from end-of-year questionaire)
eas103(history) - 75-ish (free 5% from weekly reading response assignments)
eas120 (jpn) - 80
By my logic, we should create duplicates of the year-long courses (since the smallest units are half-year courses like Psych) and then divide by total number. So...
(77 + 77 + 57 + 75 + 75 + 75 + 80 + 80)/8
=596/8= 74.5 = What...3.1 or something? It's not good, but better than I would have thought. Anyway, something like 3.0 at least!
Then I got to coming up with some goals... I came up with 3 levels of goals for the end of this term (bad results without any extreme bombing, expectable results, and good-but-reasonable goal). Without looking up the exact numbers I wrote down, they were something like this:
Bad result, end of 2011:
eng185 - 77 (this is obviously set in stone, since I finished it in the Summer)
psy100 - 68 (Fairly LOW goal considering I have like 70% of marks left up for grabs right now)
soc100 - 79 (No problem. And yeah, this number is awfully specific ;p)
eas103 - 69 (Though I think getting less than 70's here would be weird... hard to bomb or ace I think)
jpn - 81 (To me, this is fail considering my prior ability in Japanese)
This would put me sitting at 613/8=~76.6 = ~3.3, not so bad~ I guess.
Middle would be like 77, 70, 81, 71 and 83, respectively. This would give me 77.8/~3.4 or 3.5
Actual/Ideal goals at this point, but maintaining some reason:
77, 73, 86, 74, 87
This gives me ~80.8/~3.7, almost 3.8!!
Then there are my Winter courses...
After learning from all the mistakes so far and getting the hang of university quite a bit compared to before, I plan to aim for much higher marks starting in 2012!! >:) Not unreasonable ones, because I know how much I like to relax and go out with friends though :)
Soc and Japanese will continue into Winter (come to think of it, I probably can't get Japanese up to 87 by the end of the Fall term haha, skipped too many quizzes and messed up my Matome Mondai's too much.), so I will increase their marks a lot! Psych and EAS103 will be replaced by AST201 (Astronomy, "Stars and Galaxies" and EAS105 (Modern East Asian History. Oh Joy.).
I will be a lot more studies and NEVER fall behind again. I will stay ahead!! My aims for Winter:
Soc: 88?
Japanese: 87?
Astro: 86?
EAS103: 82?
Even if we assume results like 84, 84, 84, and 79 instead for these for some reason, then factor in the "middle/OK" goal idea listed above for Fall term (So, getting mediocre grades for both terms, but still pulling my socks up in the Winter) I'd get:
84+84+84+84+84+79 + 70+71+77+77 (each of these is 0.5 credit, = total of 5 credits by the end of first year) = (400+350+20+24)/10, =794/10=79.4, about 3.6 GPA. That's OK!!
If the trend from second year continues at least as good as yr1 Winter, the GPA will be at least 3.9 or so later! Even if I continuously slip up, I doubt I will fail to at least keep 3.6 or higher!!
Ganbarimasu!!
And now I'm thinking I should get to reading, so let me just sign out saying this...
Fate Zero~~ <3
I apologize again for going so many months without any posts. At that time, I became really busy and the blog started feeling like a burden. I'm sure some of you know what I mean :)
I've decided to make sure I occasionally post on here, it's a good sort of release for me I guess, this sort of 'journal'. It's also something I can reflect on later, and gets things off my chest. Here are a few updates about my life, though I'm sure I'm going to neglect to post many things. There's just too much to recall.
Go: Barely playing lately, not studying at all. I've gotten weaker, and my recent games show it. Still, I'm hosting Go club every week and I'm still playing. More than playing, I'm teaching! I've been teaching at Golden Key Cultural Centre for a while now, and I teach people at Go club. The GO club is doing GREAT right now! We've been averaging 18 people! A large group of passionate beginners have flocked in, and they're already good friends of mine!
School: So I started school, my first year of university. Frosh week was fun, really tiring and sleepless but I made some good friends. This was the only important part for me. I took The Literary Tradition, Intro Psych, Intro Sociology, Pre-modern East Asian History, and Japanese. I dropped the English course because my course load had way too much reading and I'd fallen behind in some of my courses. Yeah... Although I've had tons of social fun so far, I've fallen behind. I've learned from SO MANY mistakes this term and I will never make them again. I guess it was worth it! I kind of bombed my Psych midterm, 53... Yeah, I was shocked. A smart friend of mine got even less! He dropped the course after that :) In Sociology I got only 73. I had basically no time to study for my midterms, never mind... Anyway, I think Sociology is easy and I will definitely get a high mark on the next midterm. Japanese is around 80, I skipped a lot of quizzes and stuff for other things, but I will raise it to at least 85! Premodern E.A. History wa chotto... (is a little...)
I once again had almost no time to study for the midterm, so I only got a 70 :( I probably won't get higher than 73 or 75 in the end, but whatever.. This is my Fail Term, haha. There are some issues with that course, but at least it's not something I'm going to get 65 or less in, so it's all good~ It's because at this point I don't see it as possible to fully catch up in all my courses before the Fall term ends, I've been trying all this time lol.
Right now I should be reading for Psych - I have 300 pages to read + studying, and midterm is in under 3 days! But it's okay... I wanted to relax for a few minutes and make this post. Hisabisa dakara ne~
At least I've already read a chunk of the pages. I will get back to it soon and continue for at least 6 or 7 hours (only 6 or 7, I have Japanese tomorrow at 9am and I need to stop skipping!)
After bombing my Psych midterm, I started calculating things to make myself feel better. I may be wrong in thinking that GPA calculation is this simple, but here's how I am looking at this stuff right now:
Psych is a half credit, making it one 40th of my total courses in undergrad. Then there's the fact that the midterm was worth just 30%, so roughly speaking, the mark acts as less than one 120th of my final undergrad GPA, ne? And considering I scored roughly half on it, I only *lost* something like one 250th of my possible marks affecting GPA. I still have a chance to get into the 70's or something in Psych this term.
The English credit I already have, ENG185Y (Intro to Literature) finished with a 77 (and taught me so much about writing and literature!!! Thanks Prof. Maher!!)
So If we look at my CURRENT state, which is going to be terrible compared to my final term marks due to my big crashes from being behind (such as my 53!!!!!!), it's not actually THAT horrible, take a look:
eng185 - 77
psy100 - 57 (+4 for freebie marks from experiments)
soc100 - 75 (+2 for free marks from end-of-year questionaire)
eas103(history) - 75-ish (free 5% from weekly reading response assignments)
eas120 (jpn) - 80
By my logic, we should create duplicates of the year-long courses (since the smallest units are half-year courses like Psych) and then divide by total number. So...
(77 + 77 + 57 + 75 + 75 + 75 + 80 + 80)/8
=596/8= 74.5 = What...3.1 or something? It's not good, but better than I would have thought. Anyway, something like 3.0 at least!
Then I got to coming up with some goals... I came up with 3 levels of goals for the end of this term (bad results without any extreme bombing, expectable results, and good-but-reasonable goal). Without looking up the exact numbers I wrote down, they were something like this:
Bad result, end of 2011:
eng185 - 77 (this is obviously set in stone, since I finished it in the Summer)
psy100 - 68 (Fairly LOW goal considering I have like 70% of marks left up for grabs right now)
soc100 - 79 (No problem. And yeah, this number is awfully specific ;p)
eas103 - 69 (Though I think getting less than 70's here would be weird... hard to bomb or ace I think)
jpn - 81 (To me, this is fail considering my prior ability in Japanese)
This would put me sitting at 613/8=~76.6 = ~3.3, not so bad~ I guess.
Middle would be like 77, 70, 81, 71 and 83, respectively. This would give me 77.8/~3.4 or 3.5
Actual/Ideal goals at this point, but maintaining some reason:
77, 73, 86, 74, 87
This gives me ~80.8/~3.7, almost 3.8!!
Then there are my Winter courses...
After learning from all the mistakes so far and getting the hang of university quite a bit compared to before, I plan to aim for much higher marks starting in 2012!! >:) Not unreasonable ones, because I know how much I like to relax and go out with friends though :)
Soc and Japanese will continue into Winter (come to think of it, I probably can't get Japanese up to 87 by the end of the Fall term haha, skipped too many quizzes and messed up my Matome Mondai's too much.), so I will increase their marks a lot! Psych and EAS103 will be replaced by AST201 (Astronomy, "Stars and Galaxies" and EAS105 (Modern East Asian History. Oh Joy.).
I will be a lot more studies and NEVER fall behind again. I will stay ahead!! My aims for Winter:
Soc: 88?
Japanese: 87?
Astro: 86?
EAS103: 82?
Even if we assume results like 84, 84, 84, and 79 instead for these for some reason, then factor in the "middle/OK" goal idea listed above for Fall term (So, getting mediocre grades for both terms, but still pulling my socks up in the Winter) I'd get:
84+84+84+84+84+79 + 70+71+77+77 (each of these is 0.5 credit, = total of 5 credits by the end of first year) = (400+350+20+24)/10, =794/10=79.4, about 3.6 GPA. That's OK!!
If the trend from second year continues at least as good as yr1 Winter, the GPA will be at least 3.9 or so later! Even if I continuously slip up, I doubt I will fail to at least keep 3.6 or higher!!
Ganbarimasu!!
And now I'm thinking I should get to reading, so let me just sign out saying this...
Fate Zero~~ <3
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Too busy...
Sorry readers, I'm just too budy to post these days. I have too many aspirations and too little time. I will mention a few things very quickly, but don't expect another post soon, sorry. i was planning to make a giant blog post to summarize everything that's happened, and I still will, eventually.
School: Passed with a 77 and I start first year in September.
Go: Improved a little recently. Getting KGS 5d is very easy now and I did it with multiple accounts and made them more or less solid. I am also Tygem 7d! Not only that, but although it seemed a little difficult at first, I am winning most games now and, very strangely, it seems I will be 8d in a few days... 8d! wtf! Hehe
Thanks~ I will not forget about you guys or my blog.
School: Passed with a 77 and I start first year in September.
Go: Improved a little recently. Getting KGS 5d is very easy now and I did it with multiple accounts and made them more or less solid. I am also Tygem 7d! Not only that, but although it seemed a little difficult at first, I am winning most games now and, very strangely, it seems I will be 8d in a few days... 8d! wtf! Hehe
Thanks~ I will not forget about you guys or my blog.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Busy!
Sorry readers, haven't posted in quite a while. I promise to start posing again after my final exam (June 7). Until then... Yeah...
Monday, April 4, 2011
-Mini Post #10-
Yo~
Hmmm, although I won my first two games on Tygem since getting to 6d quite easily earlier today, I experienced many straight losses thereafter... I think I've been getting into Go again in an exciting way and trying hard, and as a result, I've lost that rewarding carefree manner of playing I had developed. I don't care though, I'm still going to try to get to 7d. Some of the losses today were out of over-thinking or being too tense - for example, ignoring a Ko threat I thought didn't work, fighting over a half point Ko in a game I had won. It was late and I was tired, so I didn't see a snapback, even at my level ^^ Quite embarrassing.
My second in-class essay mark was posted on the U of T web portal... I got a 70... Horrible... Seems like I'm bad at in-class essays after all. My average is now 75.33, barely over the 73 I need to move on to full time studies. The timing is okay though, as I was thinking I should stop playing so much online Go for a while. These next two weeks are going to be hectic, I have a lot of errands to win, a Go seminar for Kyu players that I need to prepare for, not to mention figuring out how I'm getting to the place in Mississauga, a mid-term mere days away, stuff to read, etc. I had decided to wait until I could study Go from my books again and solve some Tsumego (Go problems), and it seems it will have to wait until Summer. So for now...School, school, SCHOOL! Need to focus everything on my work, and extra studying. If I assume that my third and final in-class essay will be bad, it just means I need to do as well on the next out-of-class essays as I did on my first won, and get a similar mark (78+ will do) on the midterm and final exam. There's no way around both studying and 'extra' studying now. I'm still in a dangerous place, as there's no guaranteeing that I'm actually good (~80) at out-of-class essays in general, I need to do at least one more before I can make an assumption about the one after. Same goes for university midterms/exams. In the dark... I also really need to get back onto a normal schedule, my current one is completely vampiric!
Bye~
Sunday, April 3, 2011
-Mini Post #9-
Yo
Sorry for the lack of posting, so here's a little update. But first, an anime opening theme! This is Ore no Imouto wa Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai!
I like it around 00:09 - 00:10 ^^
I was going to do a big post, with lots of Go kifu of mine, but I'm low on energy, and I don't see a download function on Tygem...
Yeah, I started playing on Tygem under the account RKNINE.
Yeah dat.
There was a scoring bug and I lost 2 or 3 games illegitimately, but I kept playing and eventually got to 6d after about 33 games, with W>L(2), that is, more than twice as many wins as losses. I had registered as the maximum starting level, 5d, so i am now 6d and will henceforth work toward 7 Dan on Tygem. I wanted to just call myself rk9, which is cool because it sounds random, but sounds out the name of this Pokemon in a non-obvious way. Tygem didn't allow 3-character'd names... Oh well.
Participated in a Go tournament in Waterloo, drive up in ChengHappy's car with James and BigD. I need a nickname for James, but I don't know.. lol His KGS is his last name, and there's nothing particularly funny enough about him to call him something like ANGRYKOREAN or ANGRYM or SlipperyPete, etc. etc. (Some of my other friends haha)
Played Di in the first round - a good game with a favourable opening. It was close after I made some middlegame mistakes, and finally I lose after playing a false Ko threat and falling apart. Played Giftshop and won, played a great game with James and lost by 2.5, played a strong '3d' and won; both of my wins were kills, more or less, though I was also ahead on territory in both as well. All games had 6.5 Komi with Japanese rules, and were 25 minutes + 25 stones/10 minutes Canadian Byo-yomi. However, in the later rounds, the main time was 15 minutes and the Byo-yomi accelerated, increasing by 10 more stones each time.
As I need to hurry up and take care of my debts, I'm probably going to have to look for another crappy part-time job soon, but in the meantime, I'm trying hard to get more Go students. I'm going to be hosted on/help out with my friends up and coming website (though already accessible), LearnGo-Canada, and I will also try to involve myself with Allaboutgo and Goforall.
I'm planning to try following a set of daily routines centered around what I call a 'Wellness Pentagon', which requires me to do things concerning Work, Mind, Body, Social and Sleep each day. That is, mentally-cultivating things, work/project/school-related things, physical things, social things and proper sleeping habits.
As for school, I'll get my third mark - another in-class essay (this time on Oedipus the King) - back on Monday. I have a 72 from my first (bad) in-class essay, and an 84 from my first (good) out-of-class essay.
As for Anime, watched Ore no Imouto wa...(See music at the top) and loved it! It's still going, too, got to wait! Now watching To aru Majutsu no Index (season I, just started) <--not bad.
See ya!
Sorry for the lack of posting, so here's a little update. But first, an anime opening theme! This is Ore no Imouto wa Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai!
I like it around 00:09 - 00:10 ^^
I was going to do a big post, with lots of Go kifu of mine, but I'm low on energy, and I don't see a download function on Tygem...
Yeah, I started playing on Tygem under the account RKNINE.
There was a scoring bug and I lost 2 or 3 games illegitimately, but I kept playing and eventually got to 6d after about 33 games, with W>L(2), that is, more than twice as many wins as losses. I had registered as the maximum starting level, 5d, so i am now 6d and will henceforth work toward 7 Dan on Tygem. I wanted to just call myself rk9, which is cool because it sounds random, but sounds out the name of this Pokemon in a non-obvious way. Tygem didn't allow 3-character'd names... Oh well.
Participated in a Go tournament in Waterloo, drive up in ChengHappy's car with James and BigD. I need a nickname for James, but I don't know.. lol His KGS is his last name, and there's nothing particularly funny enough about him to call him something like ANGRYKOREAN or ANGRYM or SlipperyPete, etc. etc. (Some of my other friends haha)
Played Di in the first round - a good game with a favourable opening. It was close after I made some middlegame mistakes, and finally I lose after playing a false Ko threat and falling apart. Played Giftshop and won, played a great game with James and lost by 2.5, played a strong '3d' and won; both of my wins were kills, more or less, though I was also ahead on territory in both as well. All games had 6.5 Komi with Japanese rules, and were 25 minutes + 25 stones/10 minutes Canadian Byo-yomi. However, in the later rounds, the main time was 15 minutes and the Byo-yomi accelerated, increasing by 10 more stones each time.
As I need to hurry up and take care of my debts, I'm probably going to have to look for another crappy part-time job soon, but in the meantime, I'm trying hard to get more Go students. I'm going to be hosted on/help out with my friends up and coming website (though already accessible), LearnGo-Canada, and I will also try to involve myself with Allaboutgo and Goforall.
I'm planning to try following a set of daily routines centered around what I call a 'Wellness Pentagon', which requires me to do things concerning Work, Mind, Body, Social and Sleep each day. That is, mentally-cultivating things, work/project/school-related things, physical things, social things and proper sleeping habits.
As for school, I'll get my third mark - another in-class essay (this time on Oedipus the King) - back on Monday. I have a 72 from my first (bad) in-class essay, and an 84 from my first (good) out-of-class essay.
As for Anime, watched Ore no Imouto wa...(See music at the top) and loved it! It's still going, too, got to wait! Now watching To aru Majutsu no Index (season I, just started) <--not bad.
See ya!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)