ciao-qiao

[ciao-qiao]

Had my 1-on-1 sync today with Leanne, Sergiy and Christine. I was expecting myself to get fired in this conversation. I was very surprised when they offered me to switch project and team and reset from my past failures. I was clearly not functioning for the past week. I haven't eaten lunch with the team for a week now. I haven't talked to anyone if not necessary for the past week. I was pretty ashamed and ready to roll off and start forgetting this whole year. I just realized that I haven't been getting any positive feedback in the past 2 months, I've made small loops, but definitely far from perfect, and each time QA pops an issue, a new problem uncovers itself, my confidence in myself and my motivation to crack this decreases a bit. And last week I just lost it all. I wasn't able to share this with anyone due to my embarrassment. I didn't even realize that it wasn't healthy. It was a rough week.

[ciao-qiao]

Rachel started in March as a first year TA in Trading ahead of her cohort given she graduated a semester early. She has integrated into the systemization platform team really well and has a good technical aptitude to quickly learn/understand the stack and start delivering with guidance from her team. Rachel tends to be overly critical of herself and struggles to step back and put things into perspective impacting her confidence and ability to push things forward in an effective way. Over all, Rachel is a good fit as a junior software engineer and has high potential. Strengths: (Low confidence) - Learning on the fly; linear thinking; willing to touch the nerve Rachel is one of the strongest algorithmic / CS type thinkers on the team especially in terms of raw abilities. She has gotten into difficult pieces of the codebase early on and designed/delivered a complex feature with minor defects along the way. Rachel is open and honest with her culture struggles, encourages feedback from her team and provides regular feedback to those around her. Weakness: (low confidence) - Escalating when not succeeding; knowing what she doesn't know and what to do about it; Composure, Self-Assess Rachel is very receptive to feedback when she is in an environment where she is comfortable (knows the people) and feels like people are really trying to help her. However, she struggles to translate that into actionable next steps to be more proactive vs reactive. When receiving feedback outside of her core team, her initial emotional response blocks her from stepping above it, understanding what is true/fighting to gis and get out of her own way. Key Development Hurdles / Path Forward • Healthy balance of being self-critical and reflective while also being extremely confident in her abilities • Continue to come up the curve in terms of depth of technical exposure. Want her to be aggressive and curious about the stack by asking why questions for how something was designed, read the code of things around the edges of what she is working on, and be aggressive in implementing/understanding/refactorings. • Focus on holding a high bar for engineering quality - SW development, code quality, engineering best practices

[ciao-qiao]

[ciao-qiao]

UK

day 0 (Saturday, Jan.28th): 黄诗禹接机好感动啊😍😊，晚上开心的睡了一觉早上稀里糊涂的去坐车，竟然没有做错，感觉机场是自己最熟悉的地方，苏黎世没怎么仔细看，但是周围的德语新鲜又陌生，欧洲小镇的感觉特别的强，人也都很友善。 

day 1 (Sunday, Jan.29th): 快到两点才见到Kim我们一起去吃pizza，第一顿在英国吃的饭不错。之后我们要走着去做London Eye，开始记错时间了慢慢悠悠，后来绝对有加快一倍的速度冲过去。从公园到白金汉宫，其实感觉没有什么和别的欧洲建筑相比特别不同的，走到big ben瞬间感到touristy很强，很好看但是天气令人不太满意，在wheel上面因为什么technical difficulty多呆了10多分钟从盼望到了夜晚，之后我们又去看一个globe theatre的演出，很便宜的票，都是Kim定的，但是��最高处的站票，将近三个小时的站立脚好痛，british accent加上莎士比亚的戏剧语言的重现，我听了好久才习惯的。 回来的时候下完雨身上的衣服还有点湿冻的我俩，回来和Kim的一个室友聊了聊，Kim还跟我讲了那个叫cereal killer的店，好期待啊。

day 2 (Monday, Jan.30th)：今天真的是完美，太开心了。早上起来梳妆好了简单吃了点早饭就背着包出去溜达了，我从Warren St附近走到British Museum，在里面转了不到两个小时。很多展馆10点正式开门，先去的3楼的欧洲古代历史和古埃及历史，之后去二楼看了中国瓷器展，最后回到一楼和地下看了Africa的，最后走到一楼旁边的18世纪综合展览，那个地方真的是特别特别的震撼啊，有一种受到洗礼的感觉。知道免费过两天想去也可以，而且很想多在外面走一走看一看城市的风景，所以我没有打算要认真读所有的介绍或者听讲解，但是对于亚洲尤其是中国的展品特别情有独钟。在瓷器的小馆里面转了好几圈。我自己就是觉得那个不大的房间是我除了一层的大图书馆之外最喜欢的。而且去英国看到那么多上好的瓷器，尤其是看到了鸡缸杯的实物，感觉有一种即开心又有点纠结的感觉。在那个被我称为图书馆的综合展区外面我看到一句广告词，collecting the world，大英博物馆真的就是干了这么一件事啊。从早上9点多什么人也没有，到11点多很多游客开始挤满了博物馆的各个角落，我就决定出来了。一路上走的很慢，不时还跑进小商品店，无印良品或者化妆品店转转，快到一点又到了Big Ben，随便找了一些照片之后我继续沿着Thames走，走过London Eye，昨天晚上去到的涂鸦墙，然后走过前一天去的Nero‘s和Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre，路上竟然遇到Aby，和她打了一个招呼，然后走到Borough Market两点多快三点了，不是特别的饿，但是的确一整天都在走路，没有坐下来过，太喜欢��个地方了，好香的味道，好欧洲的感觉，我买了点cheese bread放在��里好香啊，然后Kim下课之后我们一起去了一个afternoon tea的地方，那个店小小的，但是吃的的确特别的好吃，我一边和她讲我今天的所见所闻，一边吃，吃的很矜持，我们在想晚上干什么，我就提议看the kite runner，太好看了，我哭了好几遍，觉得这个剧真是的可怕，却在很短的时间和篇幅里显示出来这么多的问题。

day 3 (Tuesday, Jan.31st): 上午去了Bletchley Park，下午去Cambridge见到了高中同学郜盛，看他学习好辛苦啊，剑桥的确压力大，但是我真的很喜欢那个英国小镇的感觉和学术圣地的气氛，路上的确没有学生，学校里的人有很多穿的奇异古朴的英伦大格衣服。我们在chatime喝了杯奶茶，好好喝，然后郜盛还一直把我送回火车站。之后我6点多回到伦敦，去见Kim和她的朋友，她一个室友Alex过21岁生日，我们去了一家蛮fancy的Mexican food的地方，一晚上一共三个人过生日，都被一个服务员给予“惊喜”灌了一个shot。

day 4 (Wednesday, Feb.1st): 早上Kim在Duck & Waffle有一个早餐的reservation，7:15，我们两个真的是在外面没有人的黑夜里面穿梭城市，这个餐厅是她很多同学推荐的，在40层的地方四周都是玻璃，可以看到东北区域整个伦敦的全景，伦敦还是一向的被乌云笼罩，但是深蓝色的天空下面灯光闪烁还是很漂亮，早餐也很好吃。之后我们在回家的路上路过了一下sherlock homes的门牌号，穿过Kim宿舍旁边的大公园，特别漂亮，挺长的一段，旁边还有London Zoo可以从后面看到camel，goat之类的动物，路上还有很多漂亮的狗。Kim去上课之后我就决定去购物街购物，先买了一条灰色的围巾，然后路过zara，挑了超多衣服，还和妈妈边试边发照片，满载而归，一直到下午1点多，我回到Kim这里拿上昨天整理好的行李，准备去机场飞向Edinburgh。在去机场的火车上发现自己买的黄包不见了，费了好大劲给zara打电话最后终于说是在柜台上，周五去拿。在机场碰到一个armani的化妆师过来给机场免税店的员工做培训，貌似正需要一个亚洲人，看到我就���我愿不愿意，我就乖乖的坐在哪被专业化妆师化妆，但是我觉得那个妆容并没有为我的性格设计，是一个已经设计好的样子，我一般不带很多的makeup，自己看到化完妆的样子好不适应，不过还是很荣幸体验了一把，之后那个职员还带我走后门穿过机场去登记。飞机很准时，到了以后我去坐车，到了Grace那里以后大约8点钟和Kevin，Grace还有Talia一起吃晚饭，点了一个酒，放在菠萝的杯子里面，我看咦很好看啊，没想到是sockey和whiskey的混合，特别辣，一大杯下肚。之后我和Kevin，Grace去bar hopping，先随便跑到一个haunted bar，里面有免费的电影，叫Labyrinth但是电影实在是我看过最没法看的，比80年代的音乐MV都难看。我们三个看了几分钟以后面面相觑就离开了。点了一个milk，chocolate，whiskey和burbon的混合，超好喝，比巧克力奶还好喝，我们边喝边看旁边的人打台球，好喝到停不下来啊。之后我们到了一个有演出的很大的bar，我们点了些nachos，我要了一大杯啤酒，不是特别的好喝，但是够饱，然后在那里还碰到了Parth和？，我们在那里了待够了以后就一起去了three sisters，在那里楼上喝了shot，然后下来转了转，最后我们去了学校里面一栋有酒吧的楼，但是已经关门了，我们就从超市买了些果汁回家继续玩，玩到3点倒头大睡。感觉这样的生活可以有一两天，旅游的时候这么野还好，但是庆幸自己不是在这样的环境中上学，其实这样并没有什么特别深刻的交流，花钱如流水，早上还起不来床。

day 5 (Thursday, Feb.2nd): 早上9点多从床上爬起来想去走走，但是身体不允许，昨天晚上喝酒真的是滴水不沾，我站了站决定还是回去睡觉，我和Grace两个人12点左右终于从床上爬了起来，那个时候已经好多了，只不过还是很困。我喝了些水然后就沿着地图上指的地方开始走。走不久就路过一个cemetery，特别漂亮，但是更加重了我对于Edinburgh这个地方spooky的感受。昨天晚上在我们去饭店的路上就看到至少三个ghost tour，可惜吃饭的时候已经太晚了就没有时间去参加了。很多小巷，在哪里走路都像爬山一样，城市很小，感觉人也是小城市的感觉。下午和Grace见面之后还吃了Haggis Pie和IRNBRU的饮料，算是体验了一回爱丁堡的奇特饮食。我和grace走到Arthur’s Seat山峰的脚下看了看日落然后又走回了宿舍。我竟然忘了online checkin还被罚钱，飞机晚点了将近一个小时，所有人一直是在外面站着等着的。好累啊，最后回到London，路上看到Kim告诉我她明天下午要去比利时，她记错了。不过一切都好，她让我在她宿舍里呆着。

day 6 (Friday, Feb.3rd)：早上我和Kim去了St Paul’s Cathedral。挺漂亮的一个教堂，并没有很阴冷，我和Kim在里面转，听着风管的弹奏声，之后Kim去上课我自然的继续去逛街，可是今天逛的就没有周三的时候那么激动了，1点左右我和Kim见面在旁边的印度自助餐厅吃了饭然后一起去Churchill’s Warroom Museum。只不过Kim要3:30回家准备去Belgium所以我们飞奔过所有的房间，但是还是感觉很酷，了解一下二战时候情报局的历史看一看古迹。Kim走了以后我在家休息一下，晚上和Flav去了Shoreditch附近的酒吧区，好不容易找到一个复古小酒馆我们坐下边喝边聊，本来点的sparkling wine，被换成了普通的白葡萄酒，之后和flav的另外一个朋友见面，去了另外一个酒吧喝了点rose champaign。 day7: 今天早上出去逛街买了好多好多得东西啊。至少4双鞋，把东西放回去之后我就去st pancres和kings cross又转了一圈。kings cross 9 3/4那里排队的人能有100多个吧，我远远的看了看兴致勃勃的游客，就走开了。之后沿途走到national gallery转了转，路上遇到一个人给我指路我们就边走路边聊了10多分钟。在gallery里面氛围特别的好的确是非常漂亮的大艺术博物馆，看到了莫奈的睡莲还有一整个房间的印象派，一下子看到一副vermeer的画就问旁边一个老爷爷能不能帮忙合个影。之后快到关馆的时间了正在我往外走的时候那个帮我照相的老爷爷问我，为什么要给这幅画合影问我它有什么特殊的地方。我就跟他讲vermeer的那些事，他听完了感到很有趣就和我边走边聊。他跟我说有一次一个日本游客对他说你好幸福啊生活在这样的地方所有的博物馆都免费可以细细的欣���，他那时候才意识到自己有多幸运就决定要好好利用，多来博物馆里面看参观。我们聊到门外，我告诉他我今晚去看inspector's call

[ciao-qiao]

Europe has been pretty good. 😊

[ciao-qiao]

[ciao-qiao]

Temples of Bagan

My family and my childhood friend went on a trip to Myanmar together this week. We came here because one of my mom’s friends works as the Chinese ambassador of business in Myanmar and he invited our family for a visit. We spent our first day in Yangon at the business embassy’s house attending parties and lunar new year celebrations. Myanmar is pretty under-developed. I will come back and talk a little bit more about their society and culture. 

Before I go to bed, I just want to write down briefly the sights that we went to.

Day 1 

Bagan Market - so narrow, old and dirty

Shwezigon Pagoda - first time walking barefoot, very beautiful, learned a lot about the Myanmar birth animals and the classifications of traditional Myanmar buildings

Htilominio Temple 

Upali Thein

Min Myawyaza - panorama viewpoint

Nanpaya Temple

Traditional Myanmar Food

Sunset Viewpoint

Day 2

Irrawaddy River Viewpoint

Ananda Pahto Temple

Manuha Temple

Lokanada Temple

Dhamma-yangi

Sulamani Temple

Shwe San Daw Phaya

Mya Thit Sar Lacquer Ware Workshop

Traditional Myanmar Food 

Bu Paya

Paya Thon Zu - the three temple

Gubyaukgyi (Myinkaba)

Thatbyinnyu Phaya

Nat Hlaung Kyaung

Others

[ciao-qiao]

Junior Year

It’s been more than a month since the beginning of the semester. Many things have happened and many things changed. I haven’t been able to talk about the changes and my feelings for a while and I think now it’s a good time to reflect on the past month and more.

Junior year is a jump. Classes are much harder. Whenever I get asked about my coursework, on one hand, I would play it down saying “oh I only have four classes” but on the other side, I would also want them to know that “but classes are very hard and this is not an easy semester”. I love most of the classes that I am taking, 677 with Sanjeev is amazing. But it takes so much mental strength to follow his flow in lecture and I am ashamed for not spending much more of my time on it because 677 is the class where it’s really all about learning and training your intuition of thinking instead of tests or understanding concepts or so. So it would be a terrible thing to simply finishing homework and trying to get pass the exam with minimum effort. I like the materials but I also need to put more hard work into it in order to utilize the class more. MEAM 520 is fun and relaxing. KJK is great and I follow the materials in class pretty easily. CIS 520 is tricky, I can’t really tell how hard or how easy it is, Lectures are a mix of old stuffs that I already know and very new concepts and they are always applied really quickly into different models and assignments. Matlab programming assignment is tricky and the dimensions and principles behind everything can still be a little bit hand-wavy for me from time to time. One thing that I do understand right now is to start early and to fully think about the concepts and absorb it instead of just finishing up homework last minute. CIS380 is my least favorite class. I don’t know why I hate low level stuffs so much, especially after working on it for the entire summer. Classes are boring and assignments are hard in my opinion but I got life saver Kyu and projects are all group based.

I also want to talk about my daily routines and controlling my weights a little bit.

In terms of my focuses and involvements this semester: I am trying out a few new things and we will see how that goes.

Recruiting is different this year.

But above all I want to talk about friendships and knowing people better. TA friends, Wai, Wenli and Shreya, roommates, Austin Small, Jack, Anita, ZX and many other people. 

[ciao-qiao]

bye bye sophomore year

Now the semester and the school year actually feel like ending. Wenli is gone, I'm almost done with my exams (glad that my last one is German), and as you all know, I just spent my entire day taking over the vast majority of Free&For Sale group posting what my friends call "everything I have" (please don't look if you haven't and don't judge me if you see all my continuous random posts) . But it is today that it actually feels like ending and being over. I'm glad it's not a bad feeling. You know you think and talk a lot about life at the end of a semester and I have been telling a lot of my friends how I disliked sophomore because I wasn't active, positive and motivated enough and how I felt underwhelmed and wasting a lot of my time. But today I suddenly had a different perspective looking at sophomore year. Sophomore year is after all not that bad, I've learned and grown a lot, met even more amazing people and I have to truly thank three groups of people for this.

I can't believe it's been a year since I first TAed. This has become a big but regular part of my life that I don't even notice it. It's hard to believe how I spent all Fridays this entire school year doing different gradings. I am so grateful to have met and known all those amazing people that I TAed with during this school year. It's always till the end of the semester when you realized how far you've came, how much closer you've become with all your TA friends, how much time you spent working together (of course XD). The TAs that I've worked with are some of the most amazing people that I've interacted with in CS.  

Unconsciously, I've formed so many different habits: I am so thankful that I can take naps in Kim/Caroline's room when I'm tired, I love knocking on the window of first floor Weiss Tech House's when Eric is working, sit in the room and do people watching, I love going into Moore 100 C, talking to all the DMD people at office hours, working in SIGLab with some of them, playing Swish with Sally, studying 320 in the conference room and after all pretend that I am a DMDer. I would go to Adams at 10pm and edit all my pictures until 4,5am in the morning and walk back to my room, smelling the blossoming tulips and listening to the birds singing at night. I would stay up in Grace/Karinna's room working on homework all night just because I had the worst time management and procrastinated as much as possible. I still love going to STWing, for all the delicious study breaks and hanging out in Eric's room, knowing that this is another night to be wasted doing nothing. I love running to center city with Kim in the early morning, feeling the sunlight and wind working together on my body. It's a journey every time, walking and talking at Rittenhouse Square, seeing the quiet and old streets of Philadelphia in the morning, passing by the dog park along the river and finally the beautiful Singh center. I love spending time talking to Wenli in her room, talking to Shreya, working with Kevin, turning the room into a "car" with Grace and Karinna. I love working on projects with Jack while he plays all his emotional Chinese songs and sings along. I love going to Levine 5th floor or Moore 100 feeling that's where I belong to, I love bumping into people in engineering. I love teaching my students and feeding them after an exam, "quiz" them and see them improve in the class.  

Of course how could I forget about STWing. Once a STWinger, forever a STWinger. No longer a freshman and no longer living every moment on STWing, I still consider people on STWing my deepest support group. I remember so well how we got emotional at the end of first semester, contemplating on the fact that one eighth of our college career is already gone. I remember how we all struggled so much to be more like a college student, coming to a place where that's both a school but also a home to all of us, coming to a place where we are seriously challenged, maybe in a sense that we weren't ready for. I remember at the beginning of sophomore year, as I was talking to the girls, I realized how competent and excellent everyone is: Isa has all her own side projects set up; Demi is joining some fancy MSE society as a overachieved sophomore; Kim finally found her niche and what she wants to do and started research; Alexi joined that startup that became so famous; Eric is taking Mechatronics as a sophomore... I just wanted to say, damn everyone so legit. And yes my friends are all awesome. It is through them that I realized that we've all came so far in the past year. Being a sophomore not only means we are one year older, but also means we've learned and progressed so much in our respective areas. I am much more comfortable with what I do in CS and I am less worried about not knowing stuffs. Googling and Stackoverflow became much less intimidating and internships were not as scary as I ever imagined freshman year. We've gathered our passion, enough skills to start experimenting and applying and we are capable of so many things that we could not have imagined. This is the magic of college and I think I truly feel this way as a sophomore. Moving to high rises by myself is one of the most drastic things that happened to me sophomore year but I think it is STWing that kept me happy, emotionally connected and supported. I am bad at expressing these to them in person but if I ever have a chance, I have to thank all of them, thank the group and each individual in there that I interacted with. Thank you for supporting me and making me feel homey.  

I have to mention DMD as well. Even though I am not in DMD, I love how everyone is acceptive of my presence and I just can't stress how much I enjoy hanging out with all the DMD people. DMD to me, is not a major, but a group of people who code, do arts and not only exceed academically but are passionate about what they are doing. I remember trying to study for 350 and ending up realizing that all the people that I'd reach out to are in DMD and that they are working hard on 277 at the moment. I love how Siglab family group gave me David and how I love every individual in the family group. I remember getting so inspired by Debanshu at the random talk, and I remember feeling lost hearing Adams' pun jokes. If you are the people around you, then I'd love to be surrounded by more DMDers, to be so chill, so legit and so passionate about school and life.

I did quite a bit this year: I managed to get a job, checking off one thing off my bucket list; I managed to learn a new language, even though I might be terrible at it; I make money in school enough to support myself (for food) and to pay for my parents' visit which makes me feel like an adult; I learned how to actually use a DSLR well and what it means to take meaningful, good pictures; I met new friends from across U.S. at Code Camp; I saw grandiose meteor shower for the first time in life; I took a hard-ass math class for no apparent reason; I can finally claimed that I know what's going on with RoboCup; I gave up things that didn't actually make me happier and feel excited about; I talked about life and dreams with so many people and I get to know so many amazing human beings better.  

I think I'm ready to end my sophomore year, ready to move on to the summer and then to my junior year. Thank you everyone and everything and I just keep smiling thinking about how lucky I am and read book like I used to as a kid :D

[ciao-qiao]

3.3

太缓没人生，太急没故事。最开始是在雷的微信上面看到的，一下子就记住了，说的特别好。其实生活的balance就是这样的。本人的心情一直都特别起伏不定的，而且记性也不太好。本来觉得一定要用英语写，但是现在又觉得，重在表达自己的感受什么的嘛，既然是bilingual，那么就多多利用这个好处。

写了整整一个周的331的作业最后终于写完了，好多人帮了忙，尤其是Sagar。学到了很多东西，但是最重要的是特别感动写完了不用再写了。感觉今天一直都有些stressed，其实就是作业快due了，没想到把自己搞得那么紧张。现在没有事情了，不紧张了，反倒不需要浪费时间了，谢谢东西，做做不着急但是自己喜欢的事情。

自己需要很多plan。

[ciao-qiao]

Feb.20

I’ve been slightly bothered by things recently. I was writing somewhere else about my life in the past few days, about karaoke, talking about my “secret crush” and relationship stuffs. I remember we sang “the entire state of mind”. I first heard of the song in Street 2 and I could not get it off my mind for the longest time. Before I even care about the lyrics, I loved the rhythm so much and that has been one of my favorite songs ever since then. When I was singing to it yesterday, more things about New York comes back. I wrote down perhaps I just really want someone that I can rely on. And last thing that I know, I went to his facebook. He made a sentimental post, and it was about us. He regretted whatever happened before. I feel really helpless and very sad. I went onto the tumblr account that we owned together, it hasn’t been updated since last July. I wanted to write something there so I tried to get to our email address, and the email is gone. I’m still listening to that song. I don’t know what I should do. 

[ciao-qiao]

1.16

Lately my life has been pretty good. I talked to a lot of people like John, Paul, Seth, Julia, Grace, Karinna, Wenli of course, STwing girls and guys... And I've seen and briefly caught up with a lot of people as well. People all seem nice, I know it's part of the beginning of the semester scenario and I thought treat people nicely and they will treat you nicely as well but well that, debatable. Anyway, I also went to Franklin Institute and saw the moon and stars and watched techy full-dome movie; this is my best record of eating healthily and working out regularly; I like all my classes this semester although I'm just so reluctant to do the homework; I knew more about studying abroad by talking to students and staffs so it's more than just a thought now; I did website work for Robocup, although now it looks very ugly. Housing for next year was slightly cumbersome again but I get to house with Isabela for a semester! I brought gifts for Karinna's birthday and Juia's send-off party. Even tho days are relaxing, I have new thoughts frequently and I am still trying very hard to figure out what might be best for my daily schedule. I feel like it's a good idea taking time off classes and school work this semester. On one hand, 121 should be and can be a lot of work and it's really more than just TAing, it's also a huge learning curve and I signed up for it and should do it well to all extent. On the other hand, it's really time to actually work on Robocup the way I did during the summer. Another interesting and happy discovery is that, at least in terms of CS stuffs, I've known enough to learn naturally on my own. I can just look at lecture videos online, textbooks or other google results and learn from them, plus people here are all great resources as I truly discovered after code camp. It makes a lot of sense to learn robotics stuffs through my work, to learn random stuffs from Bootcamps that I set up with people and through learning more of 121 algo or programming stuffs. Good night! Got another of those fun, relaxing but interesting day ahead of you!

[ciao-qiao]

Jan.7th

Entrepreneurship and business still make me conflicted. People fall for it, but is it really for me?

females founders confernce

There's a lot to write concluding this very significant week trip to San Francisco and this very significant winter break in a lot of standards. I feel really connected to people around me, feel all the connections working out naturally and feel relaxed, happy and educated talking to people and seeing the world out there. I've talked to so many people, arranged or unexpected, and they've all been nice and helpful. So many things happened, not just in code camp, and I'm truly grateful. Talking about meditation and Buddhism. Talking to Luis and seeing him tomorrow. Being in BART when the shooting happened. Bought nice clothes at the mall and did so much wonderful shopping during the entire break. Talked to Wenli, John, David and Sally. Talked to code camp alums, Daniel, the recruiter and key figures at Square. Every journey is to help me see my own path better, to help me go towards my goal and to help me live a life that I truly desire. I do know better what I like, what I can live with, what I can't, what I would like to try out in the future and what I'm truly passionate about. I like California. I had a lot of my first times: I gave money to a cello performer on the street, I gave money to homeless people at the station, I gave my burrito to another homeless person on the street. I was scared when I hand him the food but it was quite good feeling afterwards. I ran at the hotel two times in the week. I actually gave out my gifts for people and they called me Santa. I had posters full of sweet words.

[ciao-qiao]

Jan.6th

I’m combining two days into one post. I was supposed to write about Code Camp but I’ve been thinking a lot, and I think it’s about time to start rambling on tumblr until I am tired of writing.

So how’s code camp so far? It’s half way through but I didn’t even feel it. Every day just passed so quickly, nothing seemed to happen, but at the same time millions of things happen every day. When people are asked how were their code camp experiences, they all said this is definitely something that they never imagined. For me, Code Camp is exactly what I expected. Learning, talking to peers and people from Square. When people are asked what they felt talking to Jack Dorsey, they said it felt unreal. He’s just another person with an interesting person. I am not being narcissistic or anything. I was thinking, what if it’s Jack Ma instead of Jack Dorsey in front of me? probably I will get more excited, probably because my culture connects me and my excitement more to Mr.Ma. I weighted myself tonight and holy crap all my effort when mom was here just disappeared. And I have nothing to say, because I deserve it. I didn’t stop eating the entire day. Then Jack’s story comes back to me, so what is so different about Jack? I think it’s all about execution. This is something that I lack so so much. When it comes to action, I just fade away. 王守仁说知行合一，什么时候才可以达到这个境界。I have the feelings that great people have great vision and what I mean by that is that they not only believes in the impact and power of what they are doing, but also envisions a great potentials of lives in the future. Thinking of the “impossible” or “non-existing” is probably really the first time towards making it possible. Now I kind of want to be an entrepreneur, not for any lucrative reason, I just want to eventually be able to become a person that’s kind of detached from day lives and dives into the future and a grand vision of the society some day. 

Something Sarah Friar said today also interests me a lot. She said I would never imagine being selected to this program if I were at your age in college. So yeah she might not be that great in college, and all those people who came from anonymous colleges, still end up highly successful 20 or 30 years later. But what happen to the elites 20 or 30 years ago? So where are they now? I look around Square and digging into employees’ profiles, almost no one comes from a “target school” legitimate CS background, yet they are doing great here. There’s no more barriers like that dividing people up and what you used to consider as an advantage being from Penn will just disappear. 

Back to the weight problem. I just have no control of myself, my behaviors and I also don’t take actions. This is in short one word: lazy. This is what is keeping me from doing everything positive if ever. I have been thinking a lot about different things, going deep and specific or being a generalist? Or another thing that I thought about is so how did I actually changed in college?

It would shortly be my half-way milestone in college and surely I will see some obvious changes such as choosing CS and ending up at where I am today. But what about as a person? When I was thinking, or more precisely, reflecting on my weight gaining journey throughout the entire college period, I felt very insecure about myself, about my figure and overall. I don’t really like taking pictures and I don’t like how I look in pictures. I look ugly. Appearance yet is not important enough to diminish all my confidence or what’s in me and I just secure myself with more food and allowing myself to indulge in unhealthy pleasure and the insecurity grows and I learn to live with it. It’s actually pretty scary, but I never really have enough motivation or action to change it. Or it never lasts effectively long. This is not just a weight problem, but about how you handle yourself, how you can take control of yourself, of your self esteem. It’s time to take back your self esteem that you actually already lost a long time ago. It’s also a basic key towards being a better self, from the outside to the inside. 

Tonight was the hackathon period and I again felt frustrated. Everything just works so slowly. You seems to be testing but things just never works the way you want them to be the first time. I complained to Tim about how this is really frustrating but Tim is just so into all of those stuffs. I guess there are multiple ways to look at it, the issue about how to handle yourself at a hackathon, how to deal with the great sense of frustration and what that is actually about. I think solving the problems in the backward order should be pretty helpful. One way to think about it is it’s just stepping out of your comfort zone, if you do it enough, you will expand your comfort zone. It’s like how I seem to be good at git. Nothing special, just because I’ve used it so much in the past. Now it’s just part of my comfort zone. Haha I suddenly thought of this analogy, comfort zone is like the fat cells in the body, when you expand it, it duplicates and grows, and when you don’t use it, it doesn’t disappear, but it just shrinks in size and goes into minor places. So I guess everything really has their different sides and in this case the mechanism is great. 

I mean there’s really nothing special about javascript or html. It’s just that you haven’t spent enough time with them to befriend them. Probably there are people from Penn that you can think of that’s just instinctually familiar with how to use a new web dev tool, but I mean they are not here right now so what’s the matter right?

Thinking about the great frustration, I guess another thing that will help is to make plans beforehand so that you are not completely lost or unmotivated during the middle. If something doesn’t work, there’s still other things to fix and to finish. But it only works well when you “plant hope, as I call making plans for things like these” beforehand.

I am also thinking about time. I mean you are busy, but how do you always have the time regularly, even just to  take shower every day, to wash your face and apply products every day, or just to eat medicines every meal or so? Everything is hard. It’s hard to make rules and follow them in life. It takes great planning and great actions to do both and I need a lot more of both factors. When you have this last hour in your day, do you spend it working out, or should you code and learn something new academically? When do you find the time to work on your personal website? Or let’s be real, be tortured by all web stuffs, admitting that you suck at this and try very hard to find help if possible with some little things that just stop you from proceeding? I guess the free Saturday sort of thing is going to happen. God knows how I could change in terms of acting more.

How do I get the most updated information and get connected? I don’t know but I think I’ve rambled quite a bit and now I want to go to sleep. Life goes on and really only you can make a difference in your own life. 

Just one last word, Jack mentioned that string theory and Buddhism actually find something in common and Sarah Friar mentioned probably some day people will look at me and say “what you mean you don’t meditate” as if they were saying “what you mean you don’t exercise?”. That’s all I want. It’s all mental. 

[ciao-qiao]

Jan.4th

Today is the first day at Square Code Camp. I took an early flight into SF and waited in my hotel the entire morning. The emotional journey was actually quite scary. I kept wondering what kind of people I would meet at Code Camp, are they are super good? are they all super talkative, super confident, super fashionable or all of it? Am I really bad looking or average in this crowd. But after meeting them and talking to a few of them a bit more, I started to like them and feel excited about the days to come. I think Gloria did choose the right people, or at least, fingers crossed, I hope.

Rosario: she’s my roommate and she arrived today late. She is a sophomore at Pomona and she’s slightly introvert but actually fun to talk with. We talked a lot about our CIS curriculum and facts about our schools on the bus to Fisherman’s Wharf. She describes people from her school as ducks in that it seems peaceful above the water but in fact everyone is trying very hard without notice. 

Kelsey: she is tall and stylish. She’s a senior this year and she likes frontend a lot. She talks very calmly and I originally thought she was one of those that’s hard to interact with. She wears CK jacket and a little MK bag and a nice watch that I can’t recognize. Although she still seems cold, I got to know that she worked at EP last summer and she’s going to Microsoft to work on their Windows and Devices Team next summer as well. Besides, she went studying abroad in Germany, speaks fluent German and has a German boyfriend right now. That’s great, we will be able to see each other at Microsoft and she will be able to help me with German if I want to.

Megan: she seems kind of cold as well. She’s a sophomore from UT Austin. She’s also wearing MK jacket and seems very careless and not making an effort to talk. She organizes hackathon at UTAustin but she said she didn’t like going to other hackathons. She also didn’t like the robotics course offered at her university. 

Camille: I am excited to talk about her! I was just randomly telling her that I go to Penn and then she told me that she did a summer research program at Penn GRASP Lab. You can imagine my face. Wow, that’s like my second home! And then we went on talking about all those professors that she knew from Penn, such as CJTaylor, Max Mintz, Kuchenbecker and Fiene and she mentioned those tiny robots in the lab and what she was working on two summers ago. She’s thinking about going to grad school and that’s also pretty cool. She already graduated currently. Although she’s not the most talkative, it’s super nice to find someone who share some similar knowledge or experience. She is interested in rendering and computer graphics and she knew about dmd at Penn. She told me that she went to SIGGRAPH last year and her story about getting the renderman teapot. She wants to work at Pixar.

Kathryn: she’s a sophomore at Vassar and she’s cute. She is a comp sci major with a film minor and will be working at NBC Universal next summer. She seems very humble but also very active in initiating projects related to computer science. For instance, she started this VC++ club to help people from Vassar to learn coding. She also makes youtube videos on helping people learn coding in 30 days and she partnered with HackerRank on publicizing this project. She’s also very interested in computer graphics, not much on animation, but on graphic algorithms.

Ashley: she seems chill and she’s a senior from Wellesley. She went to school in London with Teresa Fan which is pretty cool. This is a small world. She is also thinking about going to grad school and on our way back, we accidentally talked about this video of robots learning how to say no which I accidentally saw on youtube yesterday. 

Caeley: she’s from NY and she goes to school in Florida. She wears a Microsoft neckband and she said it was because she sort of works there a lot in the past.

Last but not least: Gloria: she seems chill. She was a code camper two years ago and now she works at Square as a backend developer. She explained to us about the entire agenda. The part about hackathon was kind of scary but less and less so as time progress. She also mentions a lot of the familiar names, among which Jack Danger, my interviewer with Square at Grace Hopper. He is indeed a very nice and famous guy at square. I hope to see him again and I hope it’s not going to be very awkward. 

It’s been a fruitful afternoon talking to all those people. I still have some names to remember better and some more people to talk to. We are forming teams for hackathon tomorrow night and start working on the project. We are also going to meet with Jack Dorsey tomorrow and I’m not sure what it’s gonna be like. Probably should do some homework before actually meeting him. I am also supposed to have the lightning talk tomorrow morning after breakfast. I’ve been practicing quite a bit this morning cutting the time and getting used to the pace and all those tools to help me present better. I will probably get some more practice warming up tomorrow morning before we depart. I also went to the gym tonight and saw Kelsey and Briana there. So far so good. Good night. I bet I will have a long day tomorrow! Also, keep an eye on your eating habits and please keep losing weight in mind.

[ciao-qiao]

New Year’s Resolution

Take Good Care of My Mom

Be Happy (that good things will happen)

Lose Weight (55kg)

Take Good Care of Myself (face, clothing and health)

Get A’s in Comp Sci Classes

Be in a Relationship

Speak Good German

Yearly Recap:

Went to Maine and Hefei for Robocup, did research during the summer

Became a 160 TA, got my social security number and driver’s permit

Went on a cross-country road trip with my mom

Figured out what I want to do with my degree and my life

Got my first internship offer and signed my first work contract

Started to learn a new language -- German

Had my first relationship and broke up

Saw meteor shower for the first time in my life

Gained a lot of weight overall

[ciao-qiao]

Dec.4th

Today has been really weird. I guess that's why I want this semester to be over, before something out of control happens again. I went to German which was easy and fun and then I came back, trying to pick up my social security card and head to engineering but got bored sitting in front of my desk doing literally nothing and decided to tell Scott that I'm sick and won't be grading. I was even lazy to make food and there's nothing other than cereal to eat so I payed in my bed, watched like 7 episodes of avatar airbender and fell asleep. I got up at 6 and Talia is getting ready for her formal. I made really terrible food once again and decided that I should do work. Of course I didn't. And I've been feeling kind of bad for my behaviors throughout the day when I got the call from Shivani about getting accepted to Code Camp. You know getting accepted into something is always exciting and I haven't felt that way for a while. So I've been trying to call my mom tonight telling her this and they didn't answer my first call at 11. Then I decided that I really don't want to do work so I watched a movie, Matrix. I called them again around 11 and mom was extremely sad. I think I've never seen her so sad before. She said it was just one of our really close family friend having some serious tumors and going to get a surgery soon. Tumors are always a heavy topic and I think mom and dad's health might not be great as well. How can I forget about that all the time! Now when I think about mom's texts saying that she misses me. I felt very different, I don't know how bad the situation is to be exact but I hope whoever can helps help her. She is my one and only mother and I want her to live in peace. I don't even know what happened. I even thought about asking my aunt about my mom. I finished the movie, went back to my room, packed all the shirts that I don't want and all the swags and they already filled the suitcase. I read the prayer for the first time and put on my pendant. What is the best thing that you can do to your parents? I shall start thinking about the answer now. I still want to come home, but knowing that things might not be as simple as usual makes me very scared and upset. Good night. Good things happen.