Jeffrey Lee

So… My long 4-month break is coming to an end… Although there is still about a month left until school actually starts, I can feel that it’s just around the corner. Right now, I should actually be boarding a plane on my way to Hong Kong, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, I am sitting at home (in Vancouver, still) updating my blog instead.

**If you don’t want to read the HK/Japan story, just scroll all the way to the bottom for my SFU schedule**

You may be asking, how did these circumstances arise? Well, to tell the story, I must start from when we purchased the plane tickets, back in March of this year. At that time, it was arranged in such a way that my dad would leave on November 30th, my mom December 10th, and I December 20th. The reason for this (as far as I know) was because my dad wanted to go back a week earlier than my mom so that he can go golfing with his friends. I wasn’t leaving until the 20th, because at that time, I was still looking for a co-op job for this Fall semester and I wasn’t sure if I could find one. If I could, however, then I wouldn’t be able to leave until (I estimated) around the 20th.

Fast forward a little bit now; when the Fall semester came, I still hadn’t found a co-op job, so I gave up and decided to just take the semester off. Now, since I don’t have any obligations for the semester, there was no reason for me to have to wait until the 20th before I left for HK (wouldn’t be very fun, to leave for only 2 weeks anyways!). Therefore, my mom tried to change my departure date to leave the same day as her. However, her flight was already full, and the closest date would’ve been the 11th. It really didn’t make much sense to have to drive her to the airport one day and have her fly by herself, and then I fly by myself again a day later, so we changed BOTH of our departure dates, and ended up changing it to the 7th. In hindsight, it would’ve been a much smarter idea to change our dates to the same flight as my dad so we could all leave together, and also get an extra week to play in HK… Anyhow, whatever the reason, the conclusion was that my mom and I would leave Dec. 7th, and my dad would leave Nov. 30th. Everything was fine leading up to the end of November. I started my countdown somewhere around 250 days, and slowly counted down, day by day, until it finally reached 30. I was getting more and more excited as the days got closer and closer to 0!

Anyhow, fast forward a little bit more now… So, November 30th was last week today. I drove my dad to the airport while mom was at work. Everything was great, and as I saw my dad off, I couldn’t help but think, “it’ll be me walking through those gates in a week!!” Before he left, he had told me to make sure I took care of my mom so that she stays healthy and able to board the plane when the time comes. Little did I know, the unforeseen circumstances that came up today was exactly that. My mom is feeling sick and did not feel up to getting on a plane for 14 hours.

Long story short, she’s suffering from ‘vertigo’ — in Chinese: 耳水不平衡 — and feels really dizzy and disconnected all the time. So she called and postponed our departure dates to the earlier date possible: Dec. 11th. That’s in four days, on Friday, and we leave in the afternoon around 3pm. Judging by her state right now, it seems pretty slim that we’ll get to leave. Unfortunately, if we don’t leave on Friday, then we won’t be going back to HK at all and my dad will come back. We’ll just end up spending Christmas here.. or maybe we’ll go somewhere closer? Anyhow.. if we do end up going to HK, we will arrive sometime around 9 or 10pm in HK on Dec. 12. That’s also my dad’s birthday, so we’ll end up missing MOST of his birthday… Also, our Japan trip was scheduled to be Dec. 13-18… However, given my mom’s situation, I highly doubt she’d be able to fly 14 hours to go to HK, and then next morning get on another plane and fly another few hours to Tokyo. To be honest, I don’t even think I’d have much energy to do something like that… So, I’m pretty sure the Japan trip will end up being cancelled, regardless of if we make it to HK…

At this time, I’m really not asking for much; I just hope my mom gets better, and we can make it to HK to spend Christmas.

With all this happening, that’s also why I suddenly feel that the new school semester is just around the corner. At first, with the HK trip, I was still thinking, “there’s still a one-month trip in a faraway place that I can enjoy before having to think about school!” But now, if we really don’t end up going to HK, school will seriously feel like it’s just around the corner, since it’ll just be the same routine here in Vancouver that I’ve been doing for the past 3 months… Anyhow….

For Spring, I’ve enrolled myself in 5 engineering courses. That’s 15 credits total — now, it’s not actually 5 3-credit courses, but there are a couple of 4-credit courses and a couple of 1-credit courses. My schedule — in general — is pretty decent. I don’t really have that many complaints about it… I have lots of time to go to badminton drop-ins on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I can even fit it in on Tuesdays if I really wanted to. The only big complaint I have is Tuesday… My first class is a tutorial at 9:30 in the morning (haven’t had a morning class in ages!!!), and I then have a huge 3-hour break… After my 3-hour break, I have 5 straight hours of lectures and tutorials!!! I have no idea how I’m going to survive through that, but I guess only time will tell… Anyhow, click the picture to enlarge it so you can actually see what my classes are, hahaha… I compressed it compared to the schedule that’s displayed on GoSFU.. The GoSFU one shows each box as half an hour, but I compressed it so that each box is one hour. Makes my schedule looks a lot prettier than it really is hahahaha