Got back from Shanghai, and soon back into the groove.

After a great time in Shanghai, I decided to head back to Nanjing a bit earlier than expected. Originally the plan was to be in Shanghai until I visited a friend in Suzhou on Saturday, but to save some money I decided to take a slow train back to Nanjing and visit some friends over here.

I’m still mentally in holiday since I asked off work for the week of Christmas and New Years, but I decided to get something done by spending two hours (!) writing the aforementioned Shanghai blog post.

This blog post took a long time and doesn’t have many interesting insights, so I’m probably not going to be a travel blogger. It’s too much work proactively taking pictures all the time while traveling, and thinking about “is this blog worthy?” If it’s good for anyone, it’s good for myself and maybe my friends/family if they care about reading this sort of thing.

Chess

Haven’t played much besides puzzles on the train and starting some correspondence games.

Learning Plan

As mentioned earlier, I have a document that has a list of things I want to spend time learning. I never planned to get started until the end of the holidays, but I spent some time with the fundamentals of matrix algebra, chess, and trying to figure out emacs. Time is coming soon to start making this a regular feature of this journal so I can externalize what I’ve learned.

Things I’m Liking

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: This was my first foray into “serious fanfiction” when I was in high school, and it caught my attention again after I found there was a Chinese version. It’s definitely a bit edgy and wallows in “intellectualism” but I dig the better non-canon explanations of canon magical things (Transfiguration, magical items like time-turner, etc.)
• Shadow / 《影》 by Zhang Yi Mou: An artistically pleasing movie by famous director Zhang Yimou. The environments, props, and costumes are almost entirely in black and white which makes for a very striking movie. The themes are very Chinese, with traditional instruments, calligraphy, herbs and ointments, court drama, assassins, divination, bamboo forests, yin and yang, toasts of wine, warring states, duels, concubines and arranged marriages, and drawn-out subtle moments between characters. It was paced slowly but the climax made up for it. Overall the movie reminded me a lot of The Banquet / 夜会 (2006) but that’s probably only because I don’t watch much wuxia.
• iLOVEFRiDAY - Mia Khalifa: I’ve been outside the American memesphere for too long and never learned the source of this tiktok meme until a couple days ago. This song is bad but too catchy. Probably one of those songs people will forget in another year or two (unless they have already…)