My Manifesto

This was written August 18, 21 and 22, 2024

Introduction

Let’s start it starkly, I’ve titled this “My Manifesto“. This might feel a little intense, but I think intensity is what I need (Even if it’s possible I’m misusing the term “Manifesto”).

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my life, where I’m at, and what I want out of my future. For this reason, I’ve realized I should define what I care about and want to accomplish, and use those as guiding principles moving forward. Thus, I’m writing my personal “Manifesto”, guidelines on how I to approach things. I you could also call these commandments, or an equivalence of the laws of Robotics.

Rules/Axioms

strive to encourage people to learn new things, keep growing and become self-reliant, and to enjoy the process.
I strive to learn new things for myself and to keep growing.
I strive to create useful tools and techniques that will bring value to others.

Corollaries

From these three rules, I can derive some other helpful guidelines, which I’ll name corollaries.

In order to encourage people to learn and grow, I should inspire them, while also showing the inevitable pitfalls and growing pains, and how to approach them.
In order to encourage people to learn new things, I should cultivate their curiosity.
In order to help people become self-reliant, to myself learn new things, and to build useful tools, I must keep improving my own techniques, rigor and diligence, while documenting the process for others.

As time progresses, I will undoubtedly want to refine these axioms and corollaries, and possibly uncover new ones.

Conclusion

This is the current iteration of my personal “Manifesto”, which I will use to keep sight of my goals as I work on personal projects; a guiding light. Hopefully this proves useful to me, or maybe even to others. Though for now, I might create a condensed version to print and stick to my wall, as a personal reminder.

Condensed Version

“Manifesto” PDF

Reading in Chinese and the Importance of Iteration

This was written May 02 and May 03, 2024

Hello everyone!
As I’ve already mentioned, I’m currently in Taiwan learning Chinese. And I think it’s time to share some of my experience. Today, I will start with my experience with reading Chinese books. Important note: I’ve been learning Traditional Chinese, as opposed to Simplified Chinese.

A rocky start

A few months before arriving, I purchased a book in a series of “learner’s books”, a retelling of “Journey to the West” with hand-picked vocabulary and grammar. (It is part of a series of books of gradually increasing difficulty).

At first, I tried to read the book every day, looking up every new word and learning how to write them. Unfortunately, being at the beginning of my journey, this book was too advanced for me and I eventually gave up.

An initial improvement

Eventually, after of few months of taking Chinese classes in Taiwan, I decided to give the book another try. Turns out I was better equipped and it went a lot smoother! It took me a few weeks to finish it, during which I learned new words and became more comfortable with reading. I even decided to read it a second time, which went even better.

Choosing my next book

This first book completed, I figured I should continue with a more advanced book. After all, being in Taiwan should make finding an adequate Chinese book a piece of cake. However, finding the right level of challenge is far from trivial. I initially chose a retelling of The Three Kingdoms, but realized after my first session that I was out of my depth.

Accordingly, I started looking for a new book. Perusing in the children’s books section (books for ages 7-12), I searched for a cross-section between adequate difficulty and interesting material. I ended up choosing a Japanese book translated to Chinese (only realizing this after the fact). It’s actually a collection of ghost stories. Opening the book at random and looking at the vocabulary, it appeared to be manageable, and thus purchased it.

New troubles arise

Unfortunately, I soon realized this might actually be harder than I expected. Regardless, I opted to push through. My first strategy was to read a few pages, and whenever I stumbled upon vocabulary I didn’t know (or couldn’t remember), I would look it up and just carry on, trying to read for meaning. Alas, it soon became clear to me that I probably wouldn’t retain a lot of vocabulary this way, and should change my approach.

I thus figured I should put more focus on the vocabulary itself. As such, I would read a few pages and keep a list of “interesting vocabulary”. Once done reading, I would retain approximately ten words, which I would study and try to learn. But this started to overwhelm me, as extra assignment on top of work, other activities, and even pilling onto the reading activity itself. It felt likely to jeopardize my new habit, and so, it was time for a new strategy.

A new inspiration

Overwhelmed with the sheer volume of new vocabulary, I shifted my focus to getting accustomed to it, only learning how to read said vocabulary. Consequently, I would read one page at a time. First I would read it with the vocabulary I knew. Next, I would re-read it and look up each word I didn’t know. Finally, I would re-read the page until I could remember exactly how to pronounce every single character. (luckily, the dictionary Pleco can display a list of recently searched vocabulary, which is tremendously helpful).

While ideally, I would remember the meaning of the words, pronunciation was the priority, since meaning could also be gleamed from context. (After all, that’s how children learn new vocabulary. I also had experience learning vocabulary this way when learning English as a second language, interpolating meaning from context, as opposed to looking up words). This brought me significant success: I did learn many new words, became more confident with identifying new characters, and it made learning how to write characters in class easier, in large part due to being exposed to many of them from my reading. However, it was still a grueling and arduous tasks.

Eventually, I also started to write down questions I had: Vocabulary or turns of phrases I didn’t quite understand, new grammar points I noticed but wanted to understand how to use, connections in the language I thought I identified, etc… I would then ask questions to the teachers at my school, which has been incredibly helpful!

But I should reiterate that, in spite of the progress, this felt excruciating. It was very slow, sometimes taking an hour and a half for two pages, and draining my focus and mental capacity. I often felt demotivated and it took time for the benefits to become noticeable. But being stubborn, I pushed through anyway.

Fortunately, while I was initially worried I might be completely wasting my time, it eventually became apparent that I was gaining something from this (To be clear, I’m not saying this was the best way to learn). We recently had to take a mock standardized test with a listening and reading component, for which I didn’t practice (not knowing about it ahead of time). My results for the listening part were ok, acceptable when considering the material covered in class versus this standardized test: a 60/80. For the reading section however, my results allegedly exceeded those of of my peers, at 79/80. And this is also reflected in our discussed experiences. While I sometimes re-read the prompts multiple times before properly understanding, I did eventually got it (mostly). Meanwhile, from what my classmates and friends said, they struggled more with understanding the texts. They also felt like they ran out of time, whereas I didn’t really feel the time pressure for the reading section. And most strikingly, I seem to be the only person with such a wild discrepancy between reading and listening, with a difference of 19 points (most of my peers usually had difference of about 5 points). While it’s purely anecdotal (so take this with a grain of salt), it seems likely that my reading practice contributed to this outcome.

An interesting note is that, as I was progressing through the book, I was simultaneously progressing through my classes. Thus, my vocabulary was gaining from both the book and the lessons, creating a mutual reinforcement. And around the end of the book, I felt like my reading comprehension had drastically improved, feeling like I eventually understood what I was reading and better followed the overall narrative (a stark improvement over the first few stories). And eventually, I reached the end of the book, and had to decide what to do next.

But in retrospect, how well did this strategy work? Well, a lot of days felt like a painful trudge through sludge, and I had a lot of trouble remembering characters long-term, mainly remembering characters that had a major presence. Moreover, because I didn’t focus on it, the meaning of the vocabulary often didn’t stick. However, as mentioned above, it still seems to have helped me improve my reading abilities, and I’ve definitely learned from it. There were even a few happy and proud moments through this. For example, I remember reaching a page which I could mostly read on my first attempt. It felt really special to me. Obviously it happened on an “easier page”, but still. I also had moments where I decided to look at the dictionary’s “Chinese definition” first, where I understood without having to look up the English translation.

Time to reevaluate

So, with the first read-through complete, what next? At first, I decided to take a break and read in English for a bit. But eventually, I opted to return to this same book, now ideally better equipped for it. I also figured I should adapt my strategy. First, I opted to once again go page-by-page, but this time, I modified the “in-depth” phase. This time, I took note of interesting or recurring vocabulary, or words I had forgotten how to write. I would then immediately write them a few times, with their pronunciation, to try to learn them (Some new words I would just omit). The idea was that forcing myself to write them should help me remember them. Once done with this phase, I would reread the page until I knew how to pronounce every word (just as I used to). Turns out, it usually took me less time than before to remember how to pronounce new words, which was good. (Though do note I’m also improving, so it might not be due to the technique itself). However, doing this daily for a few pages was still very time consuming, and there were a lot of words that still faded away after a few days. So it still felt like slow and grueling progress.

A potential breakthrough?

Eventually, out of exhaustion and curiosity, I opted to read the rest of a chapter without looking up any of the vocabulary I didn’t know, in order to see how much I understood. Turns out, I could understand the narrative pretty well at this point, despite some vocabulary gaps. This led me to wonder whether this might be a better approach.

Subsequently, I had a discussion with a teacher, and eventually settled on a hybrid approach, which I’ve now tried for two days. This is split into a few phases:

Review previous day
In-depth reading
“Shallow reading”
Review same day

The in-depth phase is basically the last approach discussed, where I learn to write some new characters, and still learn how to read every single character. This is done for a single page.

During the review phase, I reread the one page from the in-depth phase of the target day (Either today’s or yesterday’s).

During the “shallow reading” phase, I read the next ~10 pages, without worrying too much about vocabulary I don’t know. If I’m either very curious about a word, or frustrated about not remembering it, I will look it up. Otherwise, I just move on.

So, what’s the rationale behind this new strategy?

I think it’s still very valuable to try to learn new characters, and going in-depth for part of it. Limiting it to one page should, however, make it more manageable. (Less time-consuming, less draining, and hopefully better retention)
Going back over the one page on the next day should allow for better retention.
The “shallow reading” should be less draining, and allow me to absorb more things from context, as opposed to directly from the dictionary. It should also help develop normal reading skills, useful for day-to-day life, or school situations/exams.
Since vocabulary can often be clustered in specific areas of a book, new vocabulary obtained through the “deep reading” phase should usually reappear in the “shallow reading” phase (and thus the next few days), helping further cement it.
The “shallow reading” phase should allow me to preview upcoming material and vocabulary.

Thoughts

If I had to redo it, what would I do? For starters, the book I chose was way too difficult for my level. I would definitely advise to start with a book of adequate difficulty, instead of stubbornly pushing through something that’s out of your league.

In terms of strategy, I would probably first start with the technique of reading a page until I can read every character on it: first focusing on reading and exposure, instead of writing. However, I would limit my scope, instead of going through an entire book with hundreds of pages. Maybe a small children’s book, a single chapter, or even a collection of about 10-20 pages. I’d iterate over this scope a few times until I could properly remember and understand the vocabulary, before moving on. Unfortunately, when using a whole book as your scope, the frequency of recurring vocabulary tends to be more limited, making it harder to commit the vocabulary to memory (at least in my experience).

Once I comfortable with the material within scope, I would either:

Move on to my new technique, focusing on writing characters
Skip right away to the next scope

If I opted to focus on writing here, I’m sure I could handle more than a single page at a time, since I’d be more comfortable with the vocabulary within the scope.

Obviously, I would also keep questioning what works and what doesn’t with this strategy, before considering how to iterate.

But: Why not start with this strategy right away? That’s a good question. For starters, I hadn’t thought of it until I started writing this. Yet, I would like to give my current technique a chance before trying something new. I might actually try this once I complete the current chapter I’m reading (which may take some time, going at a pace of one page a day). Or honestly, whenever I start being unhappy with the current strategy.

Conclusion

Through each of these strategies, I evaluated whether it worked, and what I could try to improve. Sometimes, it was a huge departure from my previous strategy, but it always served as an experiment. I hope what I’ve shared today can help you understand the value of iterating through your process. Each step should serve as a lesson, and should hopefully get you closer to something that works for you. Although it’s important to remember that, what “works for you” might also be a moving target, since we’re also growing and changing over time. Thus, what works for me today might not have worked for me a year ago. And similarly, what works for me might not work for you. So I’d encourage you to experiment on your own processes and iterate to figure out what works best for you!

On that note, good luck with your own projects and endeavors, and remember to keep trying to trying different strategies! What matters is not whether what you’re currently doing the best and most optimal solution, but that you try things out, evaluate them, think of potential alternatives and refine your findings into a next iteration. I wish you all success on your own journeys. And as always, stay curious!

Starting to Swim (Part 2)

This was written March 10, 2024

Introduction

Hello everyone,
As I mentioned in Starting to Swim, I’ve recently been trying to learn how to swim. Since that post, I’ve gone swimming twice more, and plan on going weekly (I’m actually planning to go for a fourth time later tonight). Although I do wonder if I should start going twice a week (As a nod to a friend reading my blog, let’s not open up the bi-weekly vs semi-weekly vs fortnightly debate over here, haha). Since part of the goal is to also improve my physical health, I think going more often should be beneficial.

Welp, without further ado, let’s dive into it (pun intended) and discuss how it went and what I’ve learned. Do note that unfortunately, I didn’t take any notes, so everything is from memory.

Swimming

To start with, let’s bring up one issue I had during my first session: forgetting my towel. Well, both other times I made sure to remember to bring both a towel and cleaning products (e.g.: shampoo). It’s definitely improved my experience at the end of the session. As for the time spent in the pool, I believe I spent between 75mins and 90mins on both instances, although I’m not 100% sure.

One of the main things I’ve been trying to learn holding my breath underwater. This is because it’s something I initially found terrifying, have been struggling with, and yet consider an invaluable skill.

On my second session, I had definitely regressed a bit compared to the end of my first session, but it’s to be expected: There should be variance between sessions, and I need to warm up when it comes to new skills. But through practice, it gradually came back. Although it should be noted a lot of water found its way into either my mouth or my nose. Still, I must say the most important thing I’ve learned here is to keep my fear under control, and keep a check on potential panic. During both sessions, I ended up swallowing some water on a few occasions, but managed to stay calm. Instead of getting up and coughing out water, I simply brought my head above water and kept swimming, trying to get rid of the small amount of water.

Here’s another thing I realized while practicing holding my breath while pinching my nose: sometimes while underwater, I might have a reflex that feels similar to breathing, but which I think is just displacing air between different parts of my insides. It’s similar to a hiccup, but doesn’t necessarily result in swallowing/breathing water, as long as you don’t follow up with a proper breath. It’s definitely stressful the first few times, but it’s manageable.

Beyond holding my breathe while stationary, I also decided to combine it with swimming itself! So, thinking back over what I believe I’ve seen professional swimmers do, I decided to try to put my head underwater and turn it sideways in sync with my strokes to take a breath.

Forward Stroke and trying to breathe between strokes.

I would do a right stroke with my head underwater, and then a left stroke when I would raise my head to the side and take a breath.

Yet, I’ve faced a struggle: the breathing time feels too short, having to both breath out and then back in. Thus, I amend something I’ve said in my previous post, it might be useful to breath out while underwater, reducing how much breathing is necessary while your head surfaces. As an addendum, practicing this resulted in my mouth gradually being filled with water. I didn’t swallow any of it, but it’s still something to adapt to.

Another thing I’ve decided to experiment with was staying underwater while stationary. This lead me to think about my buoyancy, and experiment a bit with it. While my lungs are full, my body naturally tries to surface, making it harder to stay underwater. Thus, if I want to stay underwater longer, I need to partially empty my lungs. Unfortunately, exhaling underwater would often result in my goggles filling up with water (I have yet to determine whether that’s due to the bubbles, or the way I move my face/frown). However, I’ve found ways to take a breath and exhale a bit before diving my head underwater. I found that an interesting experiment, trying to balance the amount out so I could last a decent amount of time underwater, while diminishing my buoyancy, but without sinking like a rock.

Due to heavy struggles with the “sideways head breathing technique”, and getting annoyed with it, I opted to look for an alternative exercise. Thus, I decided to try to dive into a dog crawl with my head underwater. Then, between strokes, I would pull my head out of the water (upright) and try to breath out and in quickly, sometimes a few breaths, before diving back underwater. I would stay stationary while breathing to avoid “cheating” the distance. Doing this, I aimed to train my breathing technique and lung capacity.

Speaking of avoiding the sideways breathing techniques, one extra experiment dealing with holding my breath came during my latest session. I decided to see how long I could go with a single breath, and so practiced using the front stroke with my head fully submerged. On good attempts, I managed to go for roughly 8 good strokes, and covered a little more than 1/3 of the pool, which I think shows a decent improvement to how I hold my breathe. I also tried to go back out of the water and limit myself to just a few breaths before diving back in and continuing while holding my breath. On most such attempts, I’d cover the entire length in about 3 dives, which isn’t bad. (If you’re curious, the length is of 25m).

Finally, other than practicing how to hold my breath, I also tried to practice some strokes. The main ones I practiced were the front stroke, the dog paddle and some personal version of what I imagined for the “froggy” (the breast-stroke). Looking it up online right now, my custom variation is definitely very different from what people do. Here are two things I learned from my experiments:

With the front stroke, getting your hands above water really makes a lot of sense, since air has a lot less friction than water, so the forward motion of one arm barely has drag, while the other properly uses the underwater drag.
For my version of the “froggy”, I realized that “finishing” the motion, continuing until my hands basically touch my body, was really important. There’s a lot of strength in the last portion, and it translated in good forward momentum for me.

My variant of the “froggy”. Not that I push my legs straight back, and when going forward, I move my arms along my belly to limit drag.

I even decided to experiment with ridiculous techniques such as swirling my arms “like a tornado” (Sorry, no drawings for this one, this is left as an exercise for the reader’s imagination). I moved my left arm clockwise and my right one counter-clockwise (To prevent me from being dragged left or right). I experimented with both arms in sync, and also with both arms out of phase. These might not be very useful, but they were still fun. Moreover, I think experimenting, trying out new things and being imaginative can be really useful and important when learning something: it can help deepen your understanding, it keeps the mind active, and well…that’s the basis of discovering new things. So don’t get discouraged because something seems goofy, silly, or potentially useless. Try new stuff out!

Conclusion

Well, 3 weeks going on 4 is definitely a great start for this new habit, and I feel like I’m learning and improving a lot, which both is and feels great! And I think there are multiple reasons why I should keep on swimming: It’s a great full-body exercise, it’s a useful skill to learn (for example, I’d love to try kayaking, and being able to swim would definitely make it safer) and I find it relaxing. Unfortunately, as I’ve realized during my last session, while it can help manage stress, it can’t fully alleviate it, and it’s possible to stress about one’s life while in the pool (which can be a bit distracting and get in the way of the actual swimming). Regardless, I’m happy with where I am right now, and look forward to see where this gets me.

Take care everyone, and stay active!

Youtube Extension – Introduction

This was written April 02, 2024

Introduction

Hello everyone,
As mentioned in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Second Pause Discussion, I have been planning to develop a Youtube extension to improve my productivity. In this post, I’ll describe my current problems with using the platform, potential solutions, along with a roadmap of the features I want to include. Not that it will be a Firefox extension, as opposed to a chromium extensions. (Since that’s the browser I use)

I’ve been thinking about such a project for a while now. The goal is not only to develop an extension to benefit my personal requirement, but also to share my thought process when tackling a programming project and show people not just how one might accomplish such a project, but also how one even approaches problems with unknowns. I also want to help you gain the confidence to solve such problems yourself, and be able to tackle more personal issues when dealing with technology. And obviously, I’ll want not only to show the solution I end up with, but also the issues and struggles I encounter along the way.

Disclaimer

A disclaimer should be in effect: I do have a background in mathematics and computer science, along with industry experience in software engineering, which means I have experience with abstract thinking and this kind of problem solving. I’ve also already tried to solve this specific problem before (a while ago), which means I know some of the issues I might encounter. However, my expertise with the front-end (what you actually see when browsing the internet) is actually limited. Thus, I’ll be exploring new territories and share how I approach such unknowns. My solutions won’t be perfect, and I’m definitely not the best engineer around, but I’m hoping I can impart some knowledge regarding problem solving, how to break down a problem, how to debug a solution, and also give you the confidence necessary to tackle yourself such issues/annoyances with products you use on a regular basis.

Problems and Solutions

As I’ve mentioned previously, Youtube tends to be a time-sink for me. During the week, I get to my desk around the end of the day and just start browsing Youtube endlessly, mindlessly going through recommendations, and usually barely getting any lasting value from it. I often forget what I’ve watched, and rarely get lasting value from these sessions. And all that time “wasted” gets in the way of both my studies and any projects I would like to tackle. And let’s not forget this can lead to “sleep procrastination”, where I just keep watching videos instead of going to sleep, further compounding my issues.

Based on this, what are the issues I can identify and do something about? Here are the main points I can think of:

The Youtube shorts are an endless stream of content with a low-barrier to entry. It means I can simply press a button to get the next bite-sized piece of content.

Mindlessly scrolling through Youtube Shorts

The Youtube recommendations make it too easy to continue watching beyond the “current video”. It’s also easy to add a lot of interesting looking videos as extra tabs to watch afterwards. This isn’t surprising based the nature of modern content, which tends to be click-bait by nature, but it still tends to be unhealthy for me.

Video recommendations next to a video – (Ads erased from screenshot)

Video recommendations presented at the end of a video

By the nature of the incentives Youtube has put in place, I tend to have “FOMO” (fear of missing out) with a lot of recommended videos, which pushes me to continue watching more and more videos.
I’m passively consuming Youtube, instead of actively using it. This is to say, I just take in whatever it gives me, without actually looking for it. In my opinion, there’s a big difference between passively and actively consuming content: looking for something and trying to engage with it, as opposed to being served different things and consuming them as they come. In the latter case, there is no incentive to fully engage with it, or search deeper to better understand it. It’s just something to be taken and thrown away afterwards. (This might not be your experience with it, but it’s been my personal and subjective experience over the years).
By default, Youtube autoplays videos based on the next recommendation. However, that’s something that can be disabled and remembered. (I recommend disabling it)

*Note that all screenshots were created using a “blank youtube account”, and starting with “Tested”, which felt like a “neutral” Youtube channel.

Based on these points, I can see a few solutions I could enact. But first, I can notice a theme in terms of the mentioned issues:

There is inertia when it comes to continuously consuming this sort of content. This is because the energy required to continue is too low. I would thus like to make the alternative easier, or more tempting.
The platform wants to gain your attention and make you want to click on more videos, whether it’s something you truly care about or not. (Unsurprisingly, considering “clickthrough rate” is considered an important metric).

Based on these, here are the core potential solutions I see at a glance:

Remove Shorts from the homepage.

Homepage recommendations – Long form and Shorts

Prevent Shorts pages from scrolling infinitely.
Remove recommendations from a video’s page.
Remove recommendations shown at the end of a video.
Limit recommendations to subscribed channels.

Note that I’m not sure whether I can implement these or not, but if I could, I believe I would have a healthier relationship with Youtube.

Goals

Accordingly, here is an initial list of goals/milestones I would like to accomplish. My initial scope:

Create a basic extension with a straightforward change that can be tested locally. (Learning the basics of web extensions)
Remove Shorts recommendations from the main page.
Remove recommendations from a video page.
Remove recommendations shown at the end of a video.
Permanently add extension to my browser (Potentially by adding it to the Firefox extensions “library”).

With these in place, I think I would have a solid prototype to work with, and my experience should be improved.

Stretch Goals

There are a few extra features I think could be really useful to add (a few of which I’ve already mentioned), which aren’t core, nor part of the initial scope:

Prevent Shorts page’s infinite scrolling. It might be ok to watch Shorts from time to time, but I shouldn’t allow them to turn into a never-ending stream of content.
An interface to enable or disable different features.
A way to disable recommendations for a specific channel, and store it into a list that can be edited in the future. There are some channels I find really “easy” to watch to “pass time”, but it’s not always good for me to go down that road.
Add a way to track how much time is spent during a day on Youtube
Add ability to trigger certain actions based on certain conditions (E.g.: After x-mins a day, disable Youtube).
Add ability to treat music differently.
Add ability to treat videos in other languages differently (E.g.: I presently consider watching Chinese videos more productive, no matter the content, since it’s helping me with my language acquisition).

Above, we have a sizeable list of features that could be useful, although I’m not sure how easy or realistic implementing them would be. It’s definitely interesting to think about such features, but it’s important to disregard them for now. I presented them to illustrate how easy it is to simply generate a lot of extra features, causing unnecessary “scope creep”. For this reason, I believe it’s important to keep in mind what the “MVP” (minimum viable product) is, and try to keep the scope at a minimum level (especially at this early stage). Otherwise, this project might spin out of control, and become too intimidating. For this reason, I will stick to the “core features” for now. Once those are complete, I might consider adding new features, based on my needs at that point (Which might be different from what I might predict now).

Conclusion

This is definitely something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, both to help others learn how to solve issues with software on their own, and as part of a different goal to “Reclaim My Focus”, since a lot of technology I use is trying to fight for my attention, whether through push-notifications, click-bait or retention-techniques. I may eventually have a separate post on that topic alone, along with other projects I’ll want to share.

With everyone’s needs being different, it can be useful to know how to personalize your own experience with the different tools you’re using, in order to improve it.

This said, I’m planning to start working on this project soon, and I hope it’ll have the desired effect. I also hope you will find it helpful, either through learning, being able to use such a tool, or making you consider about how you use technology.

Stay tuned for more content in the near future. Stay curious and keep on learning!

Retrospecting on my Winter Term

This was written March 10, 2024, published March 24, 2024.

Introduction

Hello everyone,
as you likely already know, I’ve been studying Chinese in Taiwan for a few months now. And with the Winter Term ended roughly a week ago, and being a little underwhelmed with my performance, I figured I should retrospect. Note that I didn’t fail or get awful grades overall, but am still disappointed with some of the results, and feel like I haven’t learned or retained as much as I should have.

Ultimately, while it’s painful, there’s no point hiding from my shortcomings, and I should instead explore them to evaluate how I could improve moving forward. So here we go.
(Also, my apologies for the delays. I procrastinated on reviewing this article for a good two weeks.)

Retrospective

First and foremost, I think I struggled with a discipline issue. Unfortunately, this semester I had very few incentives to stay ahead and prepare. I think one of the biggest deterrents was that we had a chapter exam two days after finishing the material. Thus, I always felt like I should keep studying this material until after the exam, instead of preparing for the new chapter, even as we started it. For example, suppose we finished Chapter 1 on Monday, and had our exam on Wednesday. This meant that on either Monday or Tuesday, we would start Chapter 2, and during the second hour on Wednesday, continue with Chapter 2. However, I wouldn’t feel ready to start studying Chapter 2 until Wednesday after class, multiple days into the chapter. This means both that the first few classes going over a new chapter were inefficient for me (not being prepared), and that I fell behind and felt like I constantly had to catch up. The latter being further compounded by having been sick a few times in the semester, which meant missing material and having to recover. (On top of some classes missed for weaker reasons, which I’m not proud of, but it’s pointless to pretend it’s not the case).

On the topic of discipline, I also have a tendency to leave things to the last minute, causing sub-optimal results and poor long-term retention, due to both the lack of time, and added stress.

Another thing that caused me trouble was that I tried to do too many things at once. For example, I had December in Photography which I maintained throughout the month of December. I also tried to have a social life, and on top of that, I decided to join two classmates in trying to prepare for a “skip-level” exam, studying material meant for the next term. This last one was usually two 2h sessions each week, and unfortunately, this mostly caused extra (and unnecessary) stress and worries, but very little language gains.

Accordingly, I must admit I will have to learn to say no. And not just to others, but also to myself. Before accepting a new commitment, I should figure out how much it will impact me and its value, before evaluating whether it makes sense for me.

Another issue is that I haven’t properly reviewed the previous material as the term progressed, only waiting until the final exam for a proper review. But all of this extra vocabulary and grammar is generally useful, so I should really make efforts to practice it, not only for exams, but also language acquisition.

Next on the list, my mental health issues. Throughout the term, I had instances where it got particularly rough, feeding into my stress, and resulting in a vicious cycle. And this turned into inactivity, further making me fall behind and once again feeding this downward spiral.

Another unfortunate reality, I have a lot of trouble with sleep. This stems from two issues: Insomnia, and late-night procrastination. For some reason, I have a lot of trouble convincing myself to go to sleep, and instead idly waste my time. And having an early class forcing me to wake up at 6:30am made this matter a hell of a lot worse. And this also made me much more tired and less attentive in class.

Finally, while it has been a little helpful with my Chinese long-term, I think forcing myself, on a daily basis, to read a book that’s too advanced for me has been an impediment. It’s generally been mentally taxing, and also fairly time-consuming, sometimes requiring 2h for about 3 pages. And unsurprising, I feel fairly mentally drained by the end of it, meaning that studying my normal curriculum because even more arduous.

Lessons?

Based on all of this, what should I do to improve this semester? Well, first and former, I think I need to have more self-discipline. Having dictations daily is definitely going to at least help me not fall behind on the vocabulary. But beyond this, I should also make sure to stay ahead of the material, and maybe have a schedule in place, dictating by when I want to be done with what material. And obviously, learning to say know and limit my commitments will be invaluable.

I should also make sure to review previous material on a regular basis (both vocabulary and grammar). In terms of vocabulary, I think trying to transcribe (by hand) the dialogues through listening to the should be a good exercise, and a good way to identify what words I struggle with the most. As for the grammar, normal review, along with trying to use it during discussions, should be sufficient.

Next up, my busy schedule. One important thing will be to evaluate the actual value of a commitment before accepting it, or being willing to cancel it if its value becomes negative. I will also need to find a way to limit the impact of this blog on my studies. But this blog is a work in progress, and part of the experience is learning what works best for me, and sharing with you these attempts and my conclusion. So I’m convinced I’ll manage to figure something out.

Finally, my sleep, health and mental issues all have a significant impact on all of this. For the sleep, I will need to figure out how to limit the nightly distractions. Having a later class should definitely also help a bit, although I’m worried my days will in turn feel shorter. Beyond that, trying to get into more healthy habits like swimming should also be good. Otherwise, it’s a constant struggle that I’ll have to monitor, but it’s also nothing new to me.

Conclusion

And thus, a new semester begins. Last semester was a disappointment, but this one doesn’t have to be. I think reflecting on why I struggled and investigating potential area of improvements are important. Hopefully this new term goes a little better, but only time will tell.

Hope you have a nice one everyone, and keep on learning!

Starting to Swim

This was written March 10, 2024

Introduction

Last Monday, I decided I finally try my hand at swimming again. I’ve been wanting to get into it for a while now, even buying a swimsuit, swimming cap and goggles last fall. However, I’ve been procrastinating (and some inconveniences with my living situation also get in the way). But I finally had a first session, and it went better than I expected. Thus, I figured I’d share some of my thoughts regarding the experience. Luckily, I wrote down a lot of my thoughts right at the end of the session.

But why swimming? First, because it is known as a good full body exercise, and I want to get into shape. Next, I also think swimming is a valuable skill. Finally, I also find it a relaxing and enjoyable exercise, in part due to the sensation of the weightlessness water provides.

Stress and Issues

To start with, I was a little nervous about going. While my Chinese has reached a level where I can have simple and casual conversations or ask for simple information, there is specific vocabulary with such activities that I worry about lacking. Regardless, this went relatively well. The price for a session was 100NTD, and I could rent a locker for 10NTD plus a deposit of 100NTD. Overall, considering it’s to be healthy and in shape, I think it’s reasonable. However, if I get properly serious about this, I might want to check whether they have monthly rates or something.

So, before getting further into it, I have to admit a few embarrassing issues. First up, I forgot to bring a towel, which means I had to air dry for a while and then return home partially wet. I also hadn’t brought any shampoo or conditioner, so ended up having to re-shower once home. Moreover, I initially forgot to tie my swimming shorts, which I realized later. Luckily, I had no accidents on that front. Finally, I had a few struggles with adjusting my goggles, usually being too tight and hurting, yet eventually being slightly too loose and water getting in, which was rather underwhelming.

The exercise

When I arrived, I first looked around to see where I could actually swim. There were multiple lanes, but also some signs to indicate the purpose of each. And while these signs were all written in Chinese, it was luckily vocabulary I know, such as “practice”, “slow lane”, “fast lane” or “lessons”. I opted for the practice lane and got started. At this point, I should have checked the time to know when I started, but unfortunately forgot to. Regardless, I believe I was in the water for roughly 45 minutes.

The session overall went really well, which was unexpected. The last time I’d tried swimming was over five years prior, at which time I was more overweight, and thus more buoyant. Regardless, I was easily able to stay above water and move around decently. Don’t get me wrong, it was far from effortless, but it went better than how I remember previous instances going, a pleasant surprise. Though it should be noted that the pool was shallow throughout. Not to the point where it would impeded swimming, but I could still stand up and keep my head above water.

Over the course of the session, I did multiple back and forths, which was definitely tiring. Whenever I was too exhausted, I would take a brief pause at one end of the lane to catch my breath, once or twice leaving the pool. I would have liked to measure my heart rate, but unfortunately the clocks were all digital, only showing minutes, so it was impractical. Alas, I’m not sure what solution I could take here, not having a suitable watch to bring.

I also decided to experiment a little, for example changing the “shape” of each hand to increase/decrease the drag, aiming for less drag while a hand went forward, and more drag going backwards (in order to better pull me). This is partially a factor because my hands remained underwater to limit the splashing, being reluctant about inconveniencing others. In terms of technique, I usually went for a rough front crawl in one direction, and was on my back in the other direction. There were also a few time where I tried to swim using only my legs. I’ll probably want to study and try out some specific strokes in the future.

An additional thing I experimented with, which always worried and scared me, was holding my breath underwater without pinching my nose. I also didn’t have a nose pincher, so it had to be through pure control of my breath. I did spend some significant time just practicing this, and improved significantly, where I’m not worried anymore. I don’t know what usually works for people, but here’s what I found out:

Whereas at first I thought it would be about slowly exhaling throughout, while underwater and getting back out, that’s not what worked for me. You can simple hold you breath without any issues while underwater. The most important thing is to build the habit to not breathe in once your head emerges out of the water. Instead, you need to breathe out first. (Though it’s ok to hold your breath longer). I believe the ideal state would be for this to become instinctual.
While holding your breath and going underwater, it’s possible for water to get up your nose, especially if, for instance, you quickly “bring your head down”. Relatively speaking, this is akin to pushing water up your nose. However, because of the pressure you’re holding, it shouldn’t go too far, so as long as you exhale once you’re out of the water, things should be fine. But if you inhale instead, that where you’ll have issues.
It’s important to keep the fear under control. I think panicking is more likely to get you to breathe in than out when your head surfaces. I did have an instance where I was starting to worry about needing water and had to consciously remind myself that it was more dangerous to breathe in than out, no matter how much I craved air.

I eventually practiced swimming while holding my breath under water, and then measured how many Mississippis I could last. I was usually able to last at least 6 Mississippis, and managed to do it at least once up to 10 Mississippis. Considering this was my first time learning this, I’m truly impressed with the results.

Also, I must say that being underwater is a very calming and relaxing experience for me, despite the worry about air deprivation. The usual noise and bustle gets replaced by this ethereal sound, it’s as if time slows down, and if wearing goggles, the distorted vision with a different hue is also something. I would venture that holding your breath also impacts this experience, though that’s less of a conscious thing.

Conclusion

Well, I think this was an interesting session, and that swimming more should definitely be on the agenda. In fact, I’m planning to swim later today, and this time I made sure to bring a towel. In terms of logistics, I think I might also want to buy a new towel dedicated to swimming. Regardless, I hope I can turn this into a habit, since it should benefit me both physically and mentally.

Hopefully, you learned something from this article and my experience, and it can benefit you. Have a nice one, and take care!

This post is followed by Starting to Swim (Part 2)