"Summer achievements"

Dear diary,

So this summer have unexpectedly been eventful. It started out pretty slow, honestly, I'm not sure why I'm so hell bent on finishing this entry, I've actually jot down on another diary book of mine. Anyways, I guess I realize this blog is the most accessible format to sort of look back on my life, I could access it on any device since it's public, unlike a notebook, where I have to carry it everywhere. Or even my phone, I have a diary app, but the UI isn't as friendly as this blog over here, also typing on the laptop feels so much better than on the phone.

Alright, currently I'm having this weird para-social relationship with casts of Silicon Valley, just having their podcast on is soothing for me. Anyways, I guess it's alright? I suppose to an outsider it does sound somewhat pathetic, but I'm learning a lot from their podcast, it's the energy they carry, the happy energy and just the willingness to communicate, everyone of them have some parts of them that's worthy of learning. Thomas Middleditch for example, the energy and whatever abstract wisdom I extracted out from him, he didn't mentioned it explicitly, but what I've gotten is that sort of treat life in a fun way? Everything in life can be seen in a positive way, seen in a fun way, your mind is the one perceiving things, you could always assign value to whatever you want. Okay, then for Amanda Crew, which I have, her podcast on right now, as I write this, she said something along the lines of, as a child, we only know what feels good and what doesn't, and, sometimes, people can praise an aspect of ourselves, and we become proud of it, we feel happy and that aspect becomes our identity, the problem comes when the same aspect can hurt us, and then we don't feel good anymore, and it becomes confusing, this good thing that people love is hurting me! And I've never thought of it that way, and it's just interesting to hear. As for Zach Woods, he said we need to find an intrinsic value that no one can take away from us, I've yet to figure out what my intrinsic value is, but I suppose things like this do take work.

Okay so for this summer, I'll just go over it quick and post some pictures. Well, I think something that I've never done is sat on a motorcycle for 12 hours straight (of course there's breaks in between). So I went to Hualien (4 days 2 nights) with my room mate and her boyfriend's friends, who are all also foreigners, they're nice. We went on the long route and it lasted so long that everyone is so exhausted by the time we FINALLY reached our destination, I'm not sure how they did it, as a passenger I almost fell asleep and everything was a blur and nothing makes sense anymore, and they had to drive, on top of that, they decided to drink the whole night so they didn't sleep. My room mate vomited on the way a couple of times, because we were taking the "scenic" route, and that means through the hills, so there were a toon of turnings. Went to places like Taroko national park, it was freezing despite being summer, and we were rained on too, so I was literally shivering on the bike. Anyways, some highlights includes eating live jumping shrimp, leg paddle boats, oversweet passion fruit juice ( I think the old lady poured almost like half a full sized cup of syrup on that shit), space themed backpacker hostel, overpriced night market, supervisor meeting in the train station, overpriced garden tickets (but now that I looked back at the pictures, they are pretty nice pictures), rock stacking on a pebble filled beach, I finally fed a deer! That was quite the highlight, and container Starbucks.

Another thing is a weird family trip (again, 4 days 2 nights) to their old family house? Everything there is quite antique, it's interesting to be honest, we saw chicken farms and a bunch of potato farms and whatnot. I went with my room mate, and we helped cleaned the family house, I talked to my room mate about personal issues till 4am while we were there. Went to an old train tracks place, it's interesting, but by the end of the trip everyone was exhausted despite not really doing anything. Also went to an oyster farm, there were cows and crabs and some sort of mudskipper. 

I also participated on a weird summer business plan proposal thingy with my room mate, again, we didn't even qualify for it. But it was still an experience, we would write it in English, and her Taiwanese boyfriend translated everything for us. He was an efficient worker, he finished everything in 4 hours, and he started at 8am, as a student who lacks discipline, I have respect for people who is able to wake up ay 8am and do work.

Another thing I'm quite proud of, I got an English teaching job near Costco, some kids like me, most kids doesn't I think? Anyways, the reason I even got to keep it is because the teacher liked my "English" accent, it's so nice to be praised for something you didn't put in effort for! Anyways, it was a good experience, I have since been excused due to the lack of students for their Fall semester, but it was high paying while it lasted. Sometimes I was there 2 times per week, and one session is 2 hours, and one hour pays 500 ntd, it is the highest paying job I've ever gotten in Taiwan. There needs to be some preparation, and since I don't own any vehicle, traveling to and from there takes up about 2 hours... I also have to stop myself from the temptation of sushi since I'll pass by Sushiro every time I come home from work.

I have since gotten a "security guard" job, it's actually someone who stood by the entrances of building and makes sure people follow the covid protocol before entering the building. It's the perfect dream job, I just sit there and get paid, I was able to attend meetings, do my project, it's like an office space, it even has a window view! But people come and go often, I was actually able to do work, that's apparently an ability, my room mate who also have the same job said that it was difficult to concentrate due to people coming and going, but I've already had concentration issue that isn't related to people walking around, and people walking around does not add to the problem. 

I've also took up a job where I label ground truth for some point cloud data, it's interesting to visualize the building and sort of just imagine how it looked like and what's it suppose to be. There's this little slider bar where I can adjust the height where the point cloud is visualized, and that was fun to slide around and sort of have this god like view of the depths and rooms and hidden rooms in a building. I'm quite suspicious what's the practical purpose of developing this technology, but hope it's something for archeology or like... autonomous cleaning machines? Anyways, the best part of the job is the feeling like I'm using my python skills to do something, it's quite high paying too, like, 90 ntd per image at simple difficulty? Where one simple image take up about 15 minutes. I can also take up as much as I want. The downside is... honestly, I'm on the screen enough, so I after labeling a few, I kinda don't want to do it anymore, that's why the "security guard" job and the tutoring job is like a breathe of fresh air, I didn't need to look at a gahd dang computer screen.

I also helped my room mate move out, I was quite bummed that she's moving out, change is such an uncomfortable feeling, but anyways, it is my first time helping someone move out, nothing significant. But I was very bummed when I realize she won't be here anymore. But she visits quite often and she's gotten a job inside school, so it's all cool now. 

Oh I also participated in a lot of science experiments, usually something to do with VR, and some of them would ask me to do a questionnaire, and some of them would measure my pulse, some would measure brain waves, some would measure electrical signals coursing through my fingers, it's all pretty cool, added bonus that I'm getting paid for it. It did get me out of the room, and kept my occupied from my existential thoughts.

So yeah! This had been my dazzling 3 months summer achievements! Finally done it! Yeah!

Anyways, here's a barrage of pictures from the Hualien trip.

                                        

Last meal of the trip

We were stranded here for awhile, missed the last bus, the time schedule completely slipped my mind

I realize a good blog really takes a lot of effort, like, every time something interesting happen, you gotta type that out the next night or something like that, and actually think about what people wants to read. And every single blog topic needs to be structured and more or less about the same thing. This is not a good blog whatsoever. There's just so many unrelated things stringed together. By right it should be split into multiple entries, I would like to show more pictures about the family trip.