AaronXu

The cover is a picture I took during my graduate studies, on the way to the library at noon, where I saw a very leisurely cloud.

Life & Work#

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

On Saturday, I realized that I hadn't contacted my graduate school seniors for a long time, so I reached out to my senior sister and we played Peacekeeper Elite together. My senior sister also 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." Therefore, when I'm playing, it's basically just a chat room. I'm not really good at Peacekeeper Elite, so I'm mostly 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 had given the dog a name, and she said its name is "Laifu". I said, "Laifu sounds too common." She said, "You don't understand, that's how people name their pets nowadays. If you don't believe me, you can search it." So I did, and wow, it's true (image from Pet Knowledge Guru on Zhihu).

It seems like I'm getting old and no longer understand the younger 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 common too. We also talked about how her colleague recommended getting a puppy and how to vaccinate and bathe the dog in the future. I'm quite envious that she can have her own pet. When I settle down, I'll definitely get a small pet too.

By the way, this week I saw a parrot that a girl raised on Bilibili, which was very interesting. I shared it with everyone, and those who are interested can take a look. PS: Parrots are now on my list of potential pets.

I exercised well this week, exercising for five days out of seven (rested on Tuesday and Friday), for a total of over 100 minutes, which met my goal. I owed one day last week, but 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 bill for December was 225, which is hard to accept. Although it's commercial electricity and water, it's still a bit higher than I expected, considering I'm living alone. It might be because I keep the heater on all night. I'll try not to use it as much as possible in the new month, unless necessary.

The company plans to give everyone "early annual leave", but the condition is that everyone has to give up all the Saturdays before the Lunar New Year and make up for them by working overtime as a team. Well, I can accept it, it's better than not being allowed to take time off. It's nice to go home early.

Learning#

In terms of learning, I didn't work very hard this week. I only completed half of the homework for CS Lecture 6-8. But I did organize the notes for Lectures 6 and 7, which will help me complete the homework better.

I've been keeping up with my English listening practice this week. I forgot to mention it last week. It's part of my annual plan to improve my English to a level of IELTS 7.0 or above, which will be helpful for career advancement or traveling abroad. The picture below is my listening attendance record. I forgot to mention that I listened for 60 minutes on Friday because I fell asleep. I forgot to check in at the time, and I was too sleepy at around 2 AM (the deadline for checking in on this app is 3 AM the next day).

I didn't read much this week. Progress on "A Global History" is currently at 19%. There are two reasons why I'm reading slowly:

• I've been staying up very late, usually after 2 AM.
• I read before bed, so the book becomes a sleep aid. 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, and I read over 60 pages. It's a small book that covers everything. I highly recommend it for beginners in Python. Since it's open source, you can download it freely (just don't use it for commercial purposes). Although it's in English, it uses basic high school vocabulary, so don't worry too much, my friends.

Tools#

• Regular Expression Testing and Explanation: This is a great website for beginners or complex regular expressions. You can test the matching degree and get explanations for regular expressions. I saw a foreign friend sharing this on CS50, 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 of the bird songs are very clear, like [this one](tree.fm – Tune Into Forests From Around The World).

Entertainment#

• "Fanhua": This is 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 learned something: I always thought that when people say "xiao ba jiang" (meaning "nonsense" in Mandarin), it was a swear word, but after watching the TV series, I realized that it's actually "xia qi ba jiang" in Shanghainese dialect, which means the same thing. I learned something new. 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 and humorous designs that are not cliché. The artistic elements are combined with business struggles, and the pacing is well done. 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 for the director, Wong Kar-wai, I think it's worth a look.

• "The Grandmaster": I would give this movie a rating of 7.5. 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.