Weekly Reflection/24/6#
This article is a record and reflection on the life of the week from 2024-02-04 to 2024-02-10.
Family during the Spring Festival#
This week is the Lunar New Year, and it is also the first Spring Festival that I couldn't spend with my family. I originally wanted to call my family early, but I didn't sleep well the day before New Year's Eve. After taking a nap in the afternoon, it was already 11 o'clock in Beijing time when I woke up, so I chatted with my family and then started preparing my own New Year's Eve dinner.
During the conversation, I found that the topics I have been discussing with my parents seem to be the same: how is my sleep, whether I feel uncomfortable, whether I eat more vegetables and fruits, and so on. I didn't notice this issue before because of the fast-paced work, but since I went abroad, I have had more time and can feel this change. Thinking about it carefully, it seems that the communication between my parents and me is always in a mode of "not reporting worries", and both parties know about each other's situation but don't know how to talk about it. It seems that since I left home for college, I rarely tell my family about the difficulties I encounter, and my family imagines that I work hard, so they don't want to talk about the problems I encounter. In the eyes of my family, my life may be a blur. I think of what Ra Mi-ran said to Dog-hwan in "Reply 1988," "Mom wants to know everything about you." This year, maybe I can make some changes and invite my parents into my life.
When I hung up the phone, I suddenly remembered that last year during the Spring Festival, my dad said that if I went out this year, we couldn't be together next year, and then there was silence in the house for a while.
New Year's Eve Dinner in the Netherlands#
Before, I organized the friends in the apartment to cook together. When we were preparing the meal and it was almost ready to eat, our Romanian roommate, who was invited, had not yet returned home. Later, she hurried back and told me that she thought we would have dinner at midnight on New Year's Eve 😂 So she planned to come back when the meal was more complete. This understanding deviation also extended to clothing. She didn't know where she saw the customs of the Spring Festival, so she deliberately wore green clothes in the morning and red clothes in the evening. As a result, she became the only person in the whole house wearing red.
Both Xiaohua and I had some small accidents during the New Year's Eve dinner. I originally wanted to make Shredded Pork with Garlic Sauce, but because I didn't wake up in the morning, I didn't see the Douban sauce in the ingredient list, so I could only stir-fry chili oil, which was missing the core flavor in the end, which was a bit regrettable. Xiaohua made sticky rice chicken later. We couldn't buy lotus leaves in the Chinese supermarket here, so we used banana leaves instead. But she forgot to add salt and soy sauce when steaming, so it didn't taste very flavorful, but the overall taste was still good.
After the New Year's Eve dinner, we played Splendor. Everyone became familiar with the rules after one game, and as the game pace accelerated, everyone became more engaged. After the third game, we realized that it was already past midnight. Amidst everyone's happy new year wishes, we entered the new year.
Xiaohua took out the red paper she bought near the station today and wrote the Chinese character "福" (fortune) with everyone. I was already very sleepy after drawing one, but they were still very enthusiastic, and finally almost finished drawing the red paper:
Insufficient Interview Preparation#
This week, I interviewed for the UPS Data Science Internship and realized that I still have some shortcomings in the technical coverage. The main areas are:
- Linear Regression Model: It is a very basic model that I have always heard of but have not been able to apply in practice. This part happens to be included in my courses this semester, so I can summarize the learning and study other models later.
- CI / CD: My understanding of this part mainly comes from GitHub Actions, but I haven't applied it in practice. Looking back, I have indeed seen this requirement in many Data Science-related positions, so I still need to learn it.
- Big Data: Need to be familiar with enterprise-level applications for processing big data, such as BigQuery.
- Cloud: Experience with cloud services. I previously bought the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course on Umedy, but I haven't continued it. This is also an opportunity to restart my learning.
Overall, these shortcomings are mainly due to the lack of experience in applying new technologies in projects after learning them. Therefore, I plan to build my portfolio and promptly convert the knowledge I have learned into visible project applications. This seems to be a way to break out of tutorial hell.
A Week of Battery Anxiety#
Last week, when I went home, I forgot my laptop charger at Xiaohua's house, so I spent this week in battery anxiety. The experience of frequently paying attention to the battery this week made me reflect on my relationship with electronic products. When my battery is low and I shut down my computer, it seems that I suddenly return to real life: in the past, I could always find fresh things on the Internet: new Data Science tutorials, new internship positions, new podcast episodes, newly published books... I was also exhausted from chasing these things due to the fear of falling behind. But this power outage and loss of internet connection made me suddenly return to life, focus more on myself rather than external things, and experience a more authentic freedom.
Reading#
This week, I started reading "The Gulag Archipelago".
Before starting this book, I thought I would read a passionate and tearful denunciation throughout, but the first chapter, "Arrest," is written in a very humorous way. "Arrest," as an act forcibly imposed on individuals by an organization, often represents the power of authoritarianism and should be a serious process. However, Solzhenitsyn breaks it down and allows readers to see the arbitrariness and surrealism in this process. Solzhenitsyn does not use exaggerated descriptions, he only describes a reality that is absurd enough, and it already creates a satirical effect in the text.
Weekly Gems#
Code#
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MoneyPrinter is a trending project on GitHub last week. It calls APIs for GPT, free images, and free videos, and generates short videos using MoviePy. I tried it out, and it can indeed generate videos, but the video quality is average. The author's approach of calling and integrating APIs is worth learning. I plan to read the source code later to see the specific implementation of each component.
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Python For Finance is a video series that explains the application of Python in finance. It will be helpful for my future thesis writing and can also be included in my portfolio.
Podcast#
I watched "The Wind Blows" a long time ago, and after many years, my memory of it has become vague. This time, I re-listened to the podcast while cooking, and I was suddenly inspired, especially when I heard about the participants in the Hakone Ekiden, who would cry uncontrollably because they couldn't pass the relay baton to their teammates. This year, I plan to reread it and hope that this book can support me in continuing to run.