magicranger

[magicranger]

Ever since my junior high, I told myself happiness is the most important thing to me. I pursued this goal whenever I need to make a life decision. I felt easily depressed when living with my parents, so I studied and worked in a city far from my hometown. I hate being manipulated so I avoided most social activities. I feel more comfortable/easier to study Software than Hardware so I switched to Computer Science. I learned tons of methods to sooth myself whenever I feel offended, unhappy or angry. But I don’t feel alright. Happiness is important, but it should not be the only thing I pursued in the life. I pursue a meaningful life from the bottom of my hear. I want to do something to really help people who need help or do something that other people don’t think I can do. 

[magicranger]

A: How do you feel

B: I feel tired, anxious, bored and lost.

A: how do you feel tired?

B: I feel sleepy because I don’t have enough sleep. I had insomnia last night, but I got up early this morning. I had a cup of tea, so I became sane in the morning. But felt sleepy again in the afternoon.

A: How do you feel anxious?

B: I cannot solve a programming problem in the work. The first solution I thought of didn’t work. I had the second option in my mind, but I am not confident it’s going to work. And I don’t have time to try it out before my next weekly, which is tomorrow morning.

A: Do you know how to try out the second solution?

B: Yes, I roughly know what I should do to try out the second solution.

A: How long it will take?

B: Not much I perceived. But it’s hard to say. Maybe it will take me a whole day.

A: If you have some problem when you try out the second solution, and you cannot solve after thinking for long, what will you do?

B: I will ask K for help. And if he doesn’t have idea, either, I will ask another K. It might take time, but I think another K will have a solution.

A: Is there anything else making you anxious?

B: Yes. I have another CL where I got it ready for review, but I need to do some other changes to optimize. The change might be big and tedious.

A: How big it will be? And how long it will take?

B: Around 10 files and 100 lines. Maybe taking a full day. It’s beyond my imagination. I found my project is hard to implement because, 1. It doesn’t match the framework much, the whole thing is kind of a hack. 2. My mentor isn’t much experienced about the codebase, I need to make some decisions with people in a remote office.

A: Did you talk about it with your manager?

B: No. I didn’t know how I feel before you asked me this question. Thanks for asking.

A: Are you anxious about the weekly?

B: Not that much. I have something to report at best.

A: Why do you feel bored?

B: Nothing interesting. Coding is not that fun. I mean it’s fun for 4 hours a day, but not 8 hours a day.

A: What do you think is fun?

B: Watching crime shows. Listening to some English. Talking to people? sometimes. Lego? occasionally. Maybe I can have a boy friend for fun? Not much. And I need to work for 8 hours, don’t I?

A: It’s a hard question. I don’t know any solution. But it’s good to know, actually it’s the work not the life that bores you. You do have some holidays and vocations. And you will retire one day.

B: Yeah, it makes me feel better. Work doesn’t just make me bored, but also tired.

A: Yeah, I can see it. Put your body in a correct way and learn to protect your eyes.

B: yeah.

A: And what makes you lost?

B: You know what? I don’t feel as lost as before I talked with you. Maybe I mean I have a complex of emotions and I don’t know why when I say I feel lost. I do feel lost about what the future I will have. But I am sane enough to know I cannot predict what I will have in the future, and the best way to pursue a bright future is to live my current life.

[magicranger]

C++ tonight

I participated the Leetcode weekly constest today. The questions are easier than the ones I peeked two years ago. But the top coders submitted all the correct answers within ten minutes, that’s unbelieable.

I used a new container today, multimap. I am surprised the map in C++ is implemented by Red-Black tree.

multimap is sorted by Key ASC and value by the insert sequence. 

one unique method of multimap is range, with will return (begin(), end()) of the range of key value pairs with the given key.

[magicranger]

Books

Books I read in this year are I am Malala, the Hot Zone, the Code: Silicone Valley and the remaking of America. 

Book I am reading is Factfulness and Non-Violent Communication.

I would recommend the Code to anyone who is interested in Silicone Valley. The author is a history professor who used to be Al Gore’s staff in Clinton’s whitehouse. She kept the narrative as objective as possible while providing insights on politics.

I like non-fictions but it’s harder to find book list of non-fictions than fictions. One list I find is the list of Bill Gates. Other source is a book club inside our company.

I am reading Gone Girl. It’s kind of a pageturner. Especially when I found out Nick is cheating on Amy.

I was also astonished by the poverty of that Mid-Western small town in the chapter of plasma day. 

[magicranger]

“Shelter in Place” and WFH

I have worked from home for two weeks. I admit, being allowed to work from home while getting full compensation, my life is better than many others, especially hour workers, in this situation. But working from home doesn’t work as well as I imaged. 

I used to have three meals in the campus cafe, cook frozen dumplings on weekends and go out for food once or twice a week. While working from home, I have to cook all meals by myself. I’d love to buy pickup to support local restaurants and treat myself a bit, but I have no idea which restaurants are still open and am too lazy to drive around to find out.

To keep a false sense of security, I stocked up food since before the “Shelter in Place” order made effective. Now I have a full fridge of food materials, together with my flatmate, but have no idea how I can make meals out of these raw materials.

WFH also posed a challenge of work life balance. I appreciate that I am allowed to work from home to avoid contracting the virus and get full paychecks at the same time. But wfh makes it easy to distract in both work and life. 

Plus is the panic. When I went to Ranch 99 to stock food one day before “Shelter in Place” started, all leaf vegetables, frozen dumplings and meat are gone! Not to mention eggs, diary, water and toilet paper. I have never seen this happen in my life. I believe the stores can restock most merchants in a short time. But panic buy does make me panicked. I also heard cases of discrimination against my community. Some are rumors but some are truths.

Also, anxiety grows. Dow Jones plunged a third in one month. Many people suppose layoffs and recession will follow. I don’t know how much I need to pay for the crisis.

Working from home is stressful both mentally and physically. I hope the pandemic will disappear soon and I will go back to the office and enjoy tasty Chinese food with my friends.

[magicranger]

Just stories

My grandparents lived with my parents and me when I was a child. They told me some interesting childhood stories but never the stories of their family. They grew up in the years of the second Sino-Japanese war and the Chinese Civil war, followed by the Great Leap Forward, anti-Rightist campaigns, culture revolutions and other continuous campaigns. They didn’t suffer the most, not as much as the characters found in the movies, history books or fictions. But they all have their own stories about the era, as ordinary people suffer and survive in the difficult decades.

My grandma lived with her mother in the countryside when she was a girl. Ten years old, she was seen playing around in the village by an intellectual in her clan. The man believed my grandma should attain education, which is rare for a girl in those years, and persuaded my grandma’s mother to send her for school. So fortunately, my grandma started school, tho at a later age, and eventually made her way to college.

My grandma started school at 11. To pursue better education, she went to middle school in the city. Crossing a bridge to come into the city alone, she saw Japanese soldiers standing at the bridgehead checking passers-by. 

My grandpa was born in the same area as my grandma, but moved to Shanghai at 5, as refugee. When the Chinese navy fought with the Japanese invaders over the sea, his family put him in a wicker basket at one end of a carrying pole, shouldered him more than 300 kilometers to Shanghai, asking for help from his uncle living in Shanghai. Weeks after they left, Japanese bombers flied through the area, exploding supposed Chinese military bases on the ground, which undoubtedly also ruined all the fishing villages along the coast. Decades later, my grandpa went back to the countryside along the coast, expecting to see his devastated home village. But the only thing he saw is rubble and debris, he cannot tell where the village was. 

My grandpa rushed through high school and ended up in the same college as my grandma. That’s how they met.