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Mon, 26 Dec 2005
Subject: Christmas letter
Lixin and I are settling into our new home in Waterloo. We live right downtown, so we have access to all the amenities and Lixin can go to work by bus. Lixin has found work as a private tutor and a Supply Educational Assistant at Waterloo School Board, this means she gets real classroom experience. She went to different schools (primary or secondary) almost everyday. Thus she saw various ways/styles of teaching and learning. She is having fun and is very busy. I, Abram, have been exceptionally busy with a full course of 3 graduate courses while acting as a teaching assistant for a course he calls "Programming for Newbies". The courses were "Software Architecture", "Artifical Intelligence: Reasoning through Uncertainity" and "Databases: Web Data Integration and Stream Databases". The database course required at least 15 hours of work a week. This combined with random 16 hour marking stints virtually killed me. Unfortunately one course is left. The professor said the final report is due in January. Anyways the courses at Waterloo are more work intensive than at UVic, I'm not sure if they are harder but there is more work. I think it is more busy work to be serious. The course work has impeded my ability to think. Thankfully Lixin is around. What I do know is that Ontario is expensive, dirty and busy. Waterloo feels like a good school. Waterloo has lots of good students who care about research. I have made some friends who enjoy UNIX and IRC and other computer stuff I enjoy as well. We hang out in a channel #beer and meet up at the Grad House for dinner or so they can drink (I drink Coke). Christmas is consists of Lixin and I in Waterloo. We spent the afternoon of Christmas Eve cleaning and recycling. After that, we went to the mall which promptly closed on us, then we had a great meal at the Keg, followed by the Narnia movie which was entertaining. We came home and cuddled up watching the Aviator while Abram was chatting online at the same time using his new laptop. I, Abram, look forward to the next term where I take a course about how to generate and draw flower patterns onto spheres. My TA duty will be Tech Support to both students and faculty (at least it is regular hours). Anyways I expect the next term to consist of less work I don't care about and more actual research. http://churchturing.org/w/postgresql.swf is an example of some of the fun I had this term. Anyways I'm doing better now, adjusting to Ontario, Waterloo etc. I hope to get some papers out this coming term and probably go to China for the MSR workshop.
Love,
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