Weekly Report E4

The cover is a very leisurely cloud I saw on the way to the library at noon when I was studying for my master's degree.

Life & Work#

Overall, this week was fine, nothing special to mention. Work went on as usual, and life remained the same. On Thursday, I watched the movie "The Grandmaster" directed by Wong Kar-wai. On Friday night, fortunately, I had nothing to do, so I wrote a post-reading review of "What is a Grandmaster?".

On Saturday, I realized that I hadn't contacted my graduate school seniors for a long time, so I contacted my senior sister and played Peace Elite (a mobile game) together. My senior sister invited Amy, a girl we used to play games with, to join us. I often give them advice: "The world is not just about fighting, it's about social skills." So, when I'm there, it's basically a chat session. I'm not really good at playing Peace Elite, so I'm basically a delivery person.

Amy shared with us how she has been taking care of her Husky recently and how mischievous it is. I asked her if she named the dog, and she said it's called "Lai Fu". I said, "Lai Fu sounds too plain." She said, "You don't understand. Nowadays, post-2000s name their pets like this. If you don't believe me, you can search it." I searched it, and indeed, it's true (image from Pet Knowledge Expert on Zhihu).

It seems that I'm getting old and no longer understand the post-2000s generation. If it were me, I would definitely name it "Tuanzi" or "Snow Leopard" or something like that. But come to think of it, that sounds a bit plain too. We talked about how her colleague recommended her to raise a puppy and how to vaccinate and bathe the dog in the future. I envy her, she can have her own pet. When I settle down, I'll also get a small pet.

By the way, this week I saw a parrot that a girl raised on Bilibili, which was very interesting, so I shared it with everyone. If you're interested, you can take a look. PS: Parrots are now on my list of pets to consider.

I exercised well this week, exercising for five days out of seven (resting on Tuesday and Friday), totaling more than 100 minutes, which met my goal. I owed one day last week, but I didn't have time to make it up this week. I need to make up for it in the new week.

By the way, when I went to pay the water and electricity bill on Sunday, I found out that the water and electricity bill for December was 225, which is hard to accept. Although it is commercial electricity and water, it is still a bit beyond my estimate, after all, I am alone. It may be because I keep a small heater on all night, so I will try not to turn on the heating as much as possible in the new month.

The company plans to give everyone "early annual leave", but the prerequisite is that everyone has to give up all Saturdays before the Chinese New Year and make up for them by working overtime on collective Saturdays. However, it's acceptable, at least better than not being allowed to take time off. It's also nice to go home early.

Learning#

In terms of learning, I didn't work hard this week. I only completed half of the homework for CS lectures 6-8. But I organized the notes for lectures 6 and 7, so I can better complete the homework.

This week, I continued to maintain "full attendance" in English listening. I forgot to mention it last week. It's part of my annual plan to improve my English to an IELTS score of 7.0 or above, which will be convenient for future career advancement or traveling abroad. The following image is the attendance record for listening. I forgot to mention that I listened for 60 minutes on Friday because I fell asleep while listening. I forgot to check in at that time, and it was past 2 a.m. when I listened to the listening materials, so I was too sleepy (the deadline for checking in on this app is 3 a.m. the next day).

I also watched a TED talk this week called "Why You Shouldn’t Trust Boredom" by Kevin H. Gary.
The speaker mentioned several points that I think are worth thinking about, so I'll share them below:

Boredom should not be trusted:
- Our judgment of something or someone being boring is usually wrong.

We need to protect our attention:
- We need to avoid and eliminate boredom by playing with our phones or finding hobbies.
- The pain of boredom is not easy to notice.
- Don't try to endure boredom.

We need to discuss boredom:
- Reflect on it and focus on the people and things you love.

I didn't read much this week. Progress of "A Global History": 19%. There are two reasons why I read slowly:

I go to bed much later, usually after 2 a.m.
I read before bed, so the book becomes a sedative. I will try to adjust my biological clock and go to bed one hour earlier, and read/study in the morning.

I also read "A Byte of Python" this week, read more than sixty pages. It's a small book that covers everything about Python. If you are a beginner in Python, I highly recommend it. Since it's open source, you can download it freely (just don't use it for commercial purposes). Although it's in English, it only uses basic vocabulary, so don't worry too much, my friends.

Tools#

Regular Expression Testing and Explanation: A great website for beginners or complex regular expressions, where you can test the matching degree and get explanations of regular expressions. It just so happens that CS50 uses regular expressions in one of the lectures, and I saw a foreign friend sharing this website, so I recommend it to everyone.
[White Noise from Forests Around the World](tree.fm – Tune Into Forests From Around The World: Well, it doesn't seem to have any special use, and they are all very short, each one is just over a minute. But some bird songs are particularly crisp, like [this one](tree.fm – Tune Into Forests From Around The World).

Entertainment#

"In the Mood for Love": A TV series directed by Wong Kar-wai, and it's his first TV series. I have always had blind trust in Wong Kar-wai, so I didn't hesitate to watch it. In this TV series, I also figured out one thing: I always thought that when people say "xiao ba jiang" (meaning "nonsense" in Chinese), it was a swear word, but I learned from the TV series that it's actually "xiao qi ba jiang" in Wu dialect. It's good to learn new things. It's really good, I recommend everyone to watch it. Here are three reasons:
- Film Style: I thought Wong Kar-wai would maintain his consistent style, artistic and romantic. But after watching it, I found that there are many small humorous designs that are not cliché. The artistry includes business struggles, and the pacing is good. In the first episode, the relationships between the characters are clearly explained, which is very good.
- Script: The script is guaranteed, it is an adaptation of a Mao Dun Literature Prize-winning work.
- Actors + Director: The actors include Hu Ge and You Benchang, and as the director, Wong Kar-wai is worth a look.
"The Grandmaster": I would give it a 7.5 out of 10. It didn't impress me as much as Wong Kar-wai's previous work "Days of Being Wild". But compared to other movies, it is still a good one.