Happy 冬至!

Christmas and China

This evening, as I was walking out of the house I began to smell something burning. Luckily it was just people in the neighborhood burning paper outside! As I posted about previously, there’s a traditional Chinese holiday today where old people burn joss paper and paper yuanbao on the street, even on a rainy day like today. They did the same during the Ghost Festival (鬼节) in late August.

A Buddhist friend of mine went to a temple today, and also said the day could be considered a day for reflection in the days leading up to the new year. A lot of Chinese friends on Wechat are also posting about it, with topics around family, weather, and eating Jiaozi.

We also went to a Christmas party last night where they served Jiaozi. At the party some foreigner friends of mine did an air band dance to Baby it’s Cold Outside and All I Want for Christmas is You. Turns out the boss of the company the party was for told a Chinese friend of ours he wanted foreigners at the party! So goes the white monkey life in China, where a lot of opportunities are based on your skin color.

Christmas in China seems to be a trendy holiday to celebrate nowadays, and a lot of places like KTV parlors or restaurants have reservations on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I think this popularity is in part because of increased consumer purchasing power. A french friend of mine who is dating a Chinese girl will be celebrating the holiday with her relatives, and will probably be exchanging gifts. But although the people might like the christmas trees and holiday music, the CCP is cracking down on the christian aspects of the holiday.

Honestly speaking, it’s nice to to have so much Christmas all around me for once, since it’s helping me realize the family and festivities I’m missing in the US and what I’ll be looking forward to at the end of 2019. There’s some holiday displays around Xinjiekou (the main shopping district of Nanjing) and a Christmas tree in a school building lobby on campus, as well as some Christmas music at Walmart and a nearby cafe, but I can go a whole day without being reminded of it.

Hugo

Hugo is a static site generator that’s particularly good for blogs. I’m using it to generate this site.

I’ve spent maybe 2 hours tweaking this blog theme. I’m trying to make a separation of categories on the sidebar, one for the latest journal post and one for the latest non-journal posts. So far I got the one that has the most recent journal posts, but getting the logic figured out on the other one is a bit harder. All it’s going to take is a day or two to grok the underlying structures. I’m used to the templates used to generate each page, and the code isn’t much different than what I worked on for my puppetmon project.

Stuff I’m Liking

• Fulfillment by Amazon Experiment: “…an ultra-detailed, step-by-step account of how they got started [with Fulfillment by Amazon.]” A good look into what it takes to get started with shipping from China to Amazon, and then selling to American buyers through Amazon. It also includes some experiences with marketing the products.
• NowFashion: A fashion website. Nothing too special, but I’m trying to educate myself on what’s fashionable by getting this sort of content into my eyeballs. Don’t be fooled though – I’m still a very unfashionable programmer type with bad taste in textures. But as much as I’m uncomfortable with it, appearance is important.
• How to Be Creative: The War of Art: A 13m summary of The War of Art. As an amateur aspiring storywriter myself and also someone that’s had a hard time beginning typing my ideas out, these kind of feely-goody videos might help.
• Axios China Newsletter: It’s keeping me up to date with news about China beyond the firewall, I’d recommend subscribing.

Chess

Just played a few games. 5+3 games seem to be a good spot for me to sit for a while. My rating is floating above 1000, but I’m losing more than I’m winning! Losses typically come from blunders. I’m just keeping up the grind and watching the Climbing the Rating Ladder videos. Hearing the thought process behind how moves are good or bad is helping me gain intuition, for example if a player is making too many pawn moves or isn’t developing pieces.

I was taking a taxi/didi home from the holiday party last night and was playing a few lichess puzzles for the last ten quiet minutes as the other passenger talked on the phone. We stepped out of the car onto a busy street we had to cross. As I began jaywalking, crossing the busy china traffic, I started to think of the oncoming cars like knights for whatever reason and almost got hit! Should of thought of them as rooks instead.

Misc

China’s starting to really wear me down. I’m looking forward to going back to the US in March, but will definitely be back here for work at some point.

Starting to look for jobs even though realistically I should start in mid-January. I’m feeling less and less optimistic about where I end up. It’d be great to have a fulfilling job in the city of Milwaukee, and I really wouldn’t want to have to drive somewhere for work since this requires me to buy a car. I’m considering working a waiter job at some fancy restaurant to get some money first, then look for jobs a couple weeks in. Otherwise maybe an IT job, since I have plenty of experience with that and I can maybe pivot to writing software if the company has a department with software engineering.

I just downloaded a slew of books, all mostly self-help and marketed towards people 10-20 years older than me. Mostly stuff from random hackernews threads, about negotiation or money/time management. Currently on “Never Split the Difference.” I’m taking notes alongside the book but it’s again in a disorganized notes repository. It’s really about time to figure out how to take these notes.