To: The Internet <everybody@bigolinternet.com>
From: One Tired Canadian <phil@boohoo.sniff>
Date: March-ish
Subject: Before I go…

Dear Internet,

I think we should take a break.

I’m not saying we should break up. I love you, Internet. You know I loves you. But do you think it should be this hard?

You know how it is. I’d go out on one of my late nights and hang with the blokes from the office — Isaac, Henri, Leo, Paul, even Willy, with the freakish hair. And then I’d come home late, tired, and grumpy.

But you’d still do your best to coo me.

“I’m not in the mood,” I’d grumble, then crawl tiredly into bed while you looked so disheartened next to your disastrous attempts to prepare a home-cooked meal with Kraft pasta and slightly moldy cheese.

Maybe see other people? Focus on — more enriching areas of our lives. I don’t know, maybe you can find a hobby. How about taxidermy? You always wanted to do that, right? I’m holding you back, honey. You know that right? You’re too good for me.

I’m…I’m sorry, babe. You know it’s breakin’ me up inside. Yeah. Real bad.

I’ll see you in a month.

Exes and Ohs,
Phil

P.S. I heard back from all four schools I had applied to for a place to do my Ph.D. On top of the pile: three scholarships offering to pay full tuition and university expenses as well as full living costs for my tenure at two of the world’s most prestigious institutions — almost valued at $100,000.00 Canadian per year.

Except it won’t be in Canadian dollars. More like goats.

I’ve already made the decision of where I’ll be going. But you didn’t actually think I’d be telling you, did you? Where’s the fun in that? I’ll let you know my final decision when I come back. See ya in a month, babe!

P.P.S. And since I’m such a tease, here are some pretty pictures. See if you can guess.

This first school was the easiest to turn down, though I was pretty eager to work with one of the professors there — a real leader in his field of nonlinear waves. Unfortunately, the university is known more for its prowess in sports rather than in academia.

This second school was harder to turn down because I’d been in contact with the supervisor there, and he was a real fine chap: down to earth, hailing from Australia, and involved in some really fantastic research regarding nematicons in liquid crystal. The school is an ancient one — established sometime in the 1500s. A character from The Simpsons hails from the great nation where this school is found.

And that left two schools on my list. In the end, it wasn’t a terribly hard decision. In fact, it was pretty easy.

One of the schools had been kind, gracious, entirely accommodating, not to mention had offered me one heck of a substantial scholarship. The other school was rather grumpy — and this was the general impression I got from all their staff — from the faculty down to the administrators. Their offer for a place came with a full expenses paid scholarship as well, but the truth is — they weren’t very nice about it. Not nice at all.

Here is are the two schools in no particular order.

Be sure to e-mail me your guesses.

You take care.

No, I haven’t forgotten my promise to write one last post.

I’ve been sick with exhaustion and work trying to get a handle on my thesis, which is already two weeks late. And then there’s the full class load and two classes of hungry hippos to babysit and mark for.

I have to go out today and buy some meal replacement powder from the supplements shop because I’ve been too busy to eat properly.

62 pages done. About another 40 to write.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there’s a real chance I may not finish and may need to extend over the summer. But I figure, I’ve got at least a few good pushes left in the next two weeks.

Y’know, before the old ticker gives out.

A few curious (and I think, slightly miffed) readers e-mailed me, basically asking me why I was so keen on ditching the blog instead of keeping it semi-regularly updated.

Oh, and there was some crack about my fear of committment.

I do not have a fear of commitment. Bring on the marriage, sissies!

The truth is, blogging is a always a massive effort for me. When I created this blog, the one promise I made to myself was that I’d always lean towards quality rather than quantity. About half the blog posts I write, I put quite a bit of thought into, while the other half is more on-the-spot incoherent rambling.

This is one of the reasons why I’m so fond of verbatim conversations, e-mails, and mock letters. They’re usually funny and cute, but fantastically easy to write. Some of my favourites include,

1. The look and the final tutorial
2. I’ll have you know, I was quite the charmer
3. To the girl crossing the street

The more creative/literary ones are always a pain to write. Notable standouts include,

1. Aisle 9: Soup, Pasta, Sauces (A personal favourite)
2. To possibilities (The first ever post)

The worst are the math posts. There haven’t been many, and it’s been more a testament to my ability to break commitments and promises than my ability to explain math to the laymen. The problem is that each one of these posts takes several hours. Figures need to be drawn, scanned in, edited, then presented.

In truth, I’ve already written about 90% of the second followup to my big projects,

1. The Mathematics of Attraction
2. Mathematics of Fluids

But they were never perfect. And I need things to be perfect. Being perfect and being polished is part of what makes me such an obnoxious bastard interesting blogger, and I’d say they’re both good reasons why so many readers eventually come crawling back for more.

My single post on the use of mathematics in facial recognition,

1. Brad gets Aniston and I get…math?

is a good example of the kind of polish I expect. That entry took me close to 4 hours to write. About an hour and a half to do the writing, another hour to draw the diagrams, scan them in, and post-process them, half an hour to do some research on the web, and about an hour to put everything together and get the coding perfect.

But that’s what you want, right?

The truth is, leaving my blog largely neglected to fester and rot while I tend to my studies is a bad, bad idea.

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. My company is no different.

And that’s why it’s always going to be a stupid idea to marry me.

Ten minutes and thirty-six seconds.

That’s the exact amount of time that passed from when I opened this page to write a post, to when I actually started writing.

The truth is, a lot’s happened in the past few weeks.

But from an entirely different perspective, nothing’s really changed, so I guess nothing of worth has actually happened.

I guess all this makes a really boring blog.

It’s been an emotional time for me as I fight tooth and nail to complete my Master’s degree for the spring convocation. Grades have dropped, mood swings are at an all time high, teaching sucks, and for some stupid reason, the more stressed I get, the more I start thinking about the past.

White flashbacks.

That’s what I’ve been getting. You know, like when people in movies get bopped on the head, hit by an express train, or shot in the chest.

Memories of old high school classes, students, and teachers, memories of carefree summers, and most of all, memories of past relationships.

You can tell I’m being really generous tacking on that ’s’ at the end of ‘relationship’.

And although I don’t like to admit it, there’s a good chance this year will be the year. You know, the year things finally change. The year when things get better.

I say that every year.

“I thought you were going on a hiatus,” a reader asked me.

Yeah, I was planning on going on a hiatus weeks ago.

The truth is, I gave serious thought to wrapping up the pre-hiatus posts with some superb and enlightening commentary, then realized that it would actually be more work to come up with something witty and charming, because I’m so sorely lacking in those particular qualities.

So I decided it would really be less work to just keep on posting.

You know, in a half-assed kind of way.

But now with everything being so, well, so everything, I’ve decided that it’d be real stupid to keep up the pretense of updating my blog. Besides, I’ve noticed a serious dwindling in the quality of my writing.

So I’ve decided to invoke my hiatus threat, this time for real.

But you didn’t think I’d be going without a goodbye did you?

You need a good reason to come back. I know that. You know that.

So make sure you read my pre-hiatus post in the next few days for your one last dose of Phil’s Proof. Because you’ll be getting none of the good stuff — at least for a while.

To: S.P.
From: Phil
Date: Recently
Subject: Re: girls — boooohoooo, snivel snivel, bleeeeh

Dude, why do you always have to be so emo?

Loads of people have have experienced way, way more distressing relationships than you: divorce, marriage, children, heartbreak, long relationships flushed down the drain, infidelity — the list goes on.

Now if you don’t pace yourself, how are you going to ever enjoy all these exciting opportunities?