pic from doing tour du lac léman at 7am near Vevey.
It’s been a while since the last post. Life has been good.
Writing is fun
It’s almost riduculous how often I mention this – but this blog brings me immense joy.
Writing is a such a cathartic process for me. To pour my entangled thoughts out, meticulously arranging the words, feeling the resistance of ink pen on paper, the rthymic pressing of the keyboard. The process itself is already soothing.
It’s also incredibly fun to read my past entries, to see how I’ve overcome previous problems, to see how things that used to bother me no longer do. I can see easily that I’ve grown, changed, matured, and to be ensured that whatever I am facing now shall pass.
Lastly, it’s just so nice to receive feedbacks from people, to know that my writing has provided some sort of comfort to some people. That’s enough to me.
Coursefinder
I am so proud of how far I’ve come. Essentially I built the RateMyProfessor for EPFL, nothing new. But GOD it feels good to know that thousands of people used what I made.
It got pinned on the IC telegram group, which to me is like an official badge of honor. Sometimes on apéros or soirées, I’d run into people who have used coursefinder (happened to me 3 times this semester), and I love the feeling when they told me it’s super useful.
It’s exactly why I decided to pivot and learn to code. Building is simply too much fun.
Of course it’s a very seasonal product, and I shouldn’t be so fixated on it. I’ve many, many other product ideas in mind, and I think about some of them every day, but I just don’t have the time. I will keep building.
On the beauty of math
I am taking a class on Markov Chain this year, and it’s beautiful and powerful. We are learning just the basic discrete, time homogeneous markov chain, nothing fancy yet, but it’s such a powerful tool that I can already answer so many questions.
I wish I had discovered the beauty of math a little earlier. But it’s never too late.
Having more contact points with the world
This semester I’ve been especially happy and busy – mostly because that I’ve so many more contact points with the world. My friend V asked to join him at Blaze, an incubator program, and I said yes – this adds a dozen of events that I need to go to over the semester. Signing up for patinage courses at Arena Vaudoise reignited my love for figure skating and I get to make new friends. I found a great tandem partner to practice my French and teach him English. Working for PETLab and going to lab meeting every week.
Just overall, lots of obligations, but I am happily obliged. I am planning to nicely finish everything, and to not sign up for more obligations. Time to work on my own things.
Reading and Traveling
I’ve always marveled at human ability to tell a story. Haven’t we exhausted all the themes that there are? The love between men and women, triangular relationships, loss, betryal, children, growing pain? If you use a deductive approach, you will soon see that all books are the same.
But somehow we keep writing good stories.
I just finished Un Jour by David Nicolls, and it’s so beautiful. It’s origianlly in English and published 2009. I vaguely remember having read it in middle school (I remember that one of the protagonist died), but nothing else. To keep up with my French, I picked up the French version and reread it. God it’s a loving story.
I think I resonate it with it so much more because the characters are around my age now (I was too young when I first read it), and that now I live in Europe, so I have a closer relationship with a lot of the locations mentioned in the book.
Reading about places that you’ve visited, or visiting places that you’ve read about, is a pleasure beyond measure. —- Yiyuan
行万里路，读万卷书 —- some old chinese wise man
Because of Sally Rooney, Dolly Alderton, David Nicolls, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Emily Bronte, I now have this intense desire to visit the UK and Ireland. I want to walk the same streets that Sally Rooney once lived, feel the same howling wind that Emily Bronte once felt, and run on the same beach Ian McEwan once made out (or more like where his characters made out, not him). As a really jaded traveler, this is my only motivation to travel again.
One particular writing technique used by many romantic novels is the scene where “you are in a busy, public place, passer-bys are busy and moving in all these directions that have nothing to do with you, but you find each other again”.
The public, busy, seemingly warm setting contrasts with the loneliness felt by the character, and the reunion out of a sudden creates this strong sense of belonging and resonance again. This is how the book Conversation with Friends ended, where Nick and Frances found each other in the city center on the Christmas day afternoon, and this is how Un Jour ended as well.
For Example
Emma Morley repartit donc, dans la lumière déclinante du soir, en traînant sa déception derrière elle comme un boulet. Il faisait presque froid, à présent. Elle frissonna sous ses vêtements légers, gagnée par une anxiété soudaine. Une anxiété si vive qu’elle dut s’arrêter un instant, le souffle court. L’avenir, c’est ça qui te fait peur. Elle se trouvait devant un des carrefours les plus animés du centre-ville, au croisement de George Street et de Hanover Street. Près d’elle, les passants hâtaient le pas, pressés de rentrer chez eux ou d’aller rejoindre leurs amis, leurs amants, leurs enfants. Ils allaient tous quelque part – tous, sauf elle. Une fille de vingt-deux ans qui ne connaissait rien à la vie, voilà ce qu’elle était…….
Now she gets into an rumination about her life, being young and lost… and here comes the contrast:
Elle poursuivit son chemin. Le château venait d’apparaître au détour d’une rue quand elle entendit le martèlement de ses mocassins sur le bitume. Il arrivait en courant derrière elle. Avant même de se retourner, elle souriait déjà.
“J’ai cru que je t’avais perdue!” s’écria-t-il, le souffle court…..
Some other beautiful sentences
Quand j’étais plus jeune, j’avais l’impression que tout était possible. Maintenant, tout me paraît limité. Emma, pour qui l’inverse était enfin vrai, se contenta de rétorquer: ce n’est pas pas aussi grave que tue le prétends.
Elle menait une existence confortable satisfaisante et rassurante. Finies les crises de nerfs et les crises de larmes d’autrefois. Les amis qu’ils avaient aujourd’hui seraient les mêmes dans cinq, dix, ou vingt ans; Dex et elle ne s’enrichiraient sans doute pas de manière spectaculaire au cours des décennies à venirs – mais ils ne s’appauvriraient pas non plus.
Ain’t it so beautifully written? Admittedly I am also in a honeymoon phase with French, because when I just start reading in this language, I find any arrangement of words smart and elegant. The cliché metaphors are not yet clichés for the untrained eyes.
Still, moments like this, I wish I studied literature. Life is so beautiful, there are so many things to learn, to feel, to love.
Till next time :D