Preface
This piece is a record and reflection of my life from May 16, 2024 to June 2, 2024.
Study Tour in Nanjing
I had attended several Yixi talks in Beijing before and quite enjoyed their style. By chance, I saw they were organizing a parent-child study tour in Nanjing. One of the arrangements was to visit the studio of designer/writer Zhu Yingchun, whom my senior greatly admires. So I borrowed a child (my sister) and signed up to participate together. Because I hadn’t really recovered from the fatigue of rushing about these past two weeks, I didn’t have very high expectations originally. Unexpectedly, we ended up having an interesting two days and one night.
Beside Bugs
Perhaps because I spent nearly ten years of my life in the countryside, at first I couldn’t quite understand why there would be an activity like this to let a group of children look at bugs. Even for someone like me who debugs code at work every day, I can’t say I have much fondness for bugs 🤣. But as we followed the teacher to observe the “words” written by various bugs, the “paintings” they drew, and the “melodies” they sang, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t really looked at bugs properly in a very long time.
I still remember when I was young, I would take a net to catch cicadas and collect their shed shells as treasures. I would catch crickets in the grass to have them fight each other. I would curiously watch ants line up in a queue to carry something. If I saw a ladybug with unique spots, I would crouch down to observe it for a long time. Even after moving to the city, there were still cicadas singing at night, but to my ears they had become just noise and the stuffiness of summer.
In the book “Beside Bugs”, the teacher befriends the bugs in the garden, seeing the world from their microscopic perspective, imagining their daily lives. There was even a session where they filmed a short movie of a little ant trapped in a pool, and asked the children in the group to use their imagination to draw pictures to rescue it.
Perhaps there are too many things that need to be contained in our eyes, yet these bugs are living truly and colorfully beside us, never having been gazed upon by my eyes. Along with them, my childlike innocence and curiosity about life have also disappeared.
Yet my senior seems to have preserved this childlike innocence in some way. She would draw several teams of helicopter rescue squads to save the ant, and when the teacher was signing her treasured copy of “Beside Bugs”, she asked him to draw a caterpillar. When her wish was fulfilled, she even cried because her fan moment had come true.
Suddenly, I remembered an afternoon over half a year ago when I was wandering in front of the bookshelf at my senior’s home, looking for a book to pass the time. She had recommended this book and another one with various forms of tigers drawn in it. I casually flipped through them and chose another one - I forget whether it was “The Plague” or “Homo Deus” or some other weighty classic. It’s only now that I’m slowly beginning to understand the importance of moments like understanding bugs in her past life.
Educational Philosophy
Another interesting experience was the Youth Yixi Speech session at the end of this study tour. Each child needed to prepare a themed speech to share their thoughts and observations from these two days, while my senior and I, as parents, would assist with brainstorming and provide some guidance.
Although the discussion time was only about ten minutes, it clearly revealed the differences in educational philosophy between my senior and me. My senior tended to use guided questioning to help my sister gradually discover the impressive points from the several trips and the changes in her own thoughts. I, on the other hand, was more inclined to provide a clearer framework to help her organize her thoughts to ensure the best speech effect.
I deeply felt that the concepts and ways of thinking people have after growing up are often compensations for what was lacking in their own growth experiences.
I sometimes feel that if many moments of childhood had received more attention and guidance, I would have taken fewer detours. For things that would be judged in the spotlight, like grades and performances, I would pay more attention to the results themselves. Subconsciously, I would hope that she could gain more confidence and sense of achievement in these aspects. My senior, perhaps because her parents are teachers, always had more plans made for her. It seems that many things in her student days only needed to be completed step by step, thus lacking many opportunities for independence and self-exploration. Therefore, she pays more attention to stimulating my sister’s own ideas and creativity, viewing any result as a precious experience in her growth.
EpubKit
For the past few weeks, I’ve been participating in the development of Randy’s product EpubKit. When I received his invitation, I was both surprised and delighted. I’m primarily a backend developer, with only a mediocre grasp of React, and hadn’t touched Electron before. But I cherished the opportunity to work closely with him, and the product itself greatly appealed to me. So I read the documentation a few times, learned about the IPC mechanism, and then started to write.
From initially adding small features like an update button to later collecting user requirements in the user group and completing them one by one in GitHub Projects, the whole process was very interesting and brought a great sense of achievement.
These weeks, as I’ve been serving as a mentor for Open Source Summer and some training camp projects, I needed course materials. So I converted the blockchain/Solidity related tutorials I had written on my blog into epub format e-books. The experience was smooth, and it also reminded me of the concept of “Eating your own dog food”. It’s truly wonderful when a tool you’ve participated in developing happens to meet your own needs.
Interesting Things and Objects
Input
Although most interesting inputs are automatically synced in the “Yu’s Life” Telegram channel, I still select some to list here. It feels more like a newsletter now.
Books
- Kafka on the Shore, similar to “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” with its dual parallel narrative. The story loosely revolves around the curse of Oedipus, ubiquitous metaphors, and the mundane journey stories of young Kafka and old Nakata. The people and cats they encounter on their respective paths are impressive, each carrying different degrees of kindness and mutual redemption. I prefer Nakata’s storyline.
- Beside Bugs, became curious after the study tour, and the bugs mentioned in it seem to have become more familiar.
Collections
Articles
Videos
- vlog #56｜Female Programmer’s After-Work Study Record｜Researching Based Rollup｜Taiko Documentation｜Daily English Learning｜Reading “The Unbearable Lightness of Being"｜Maintaining Thinking and Recording
- “Beyond Code” One Year Anniversary Livestream
- vlog #57 | Female Programmer’s After-Work Study Record｜Learning Rust｜Researching Substrate｜Daily English Learning｜Focusing on Self｜Finished Reading “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”
- “Not Every Day Has to Be a Perfect Day.”
TV Series
- Joy of Life Season 2, I read the novel as a student and had a good impression of the first season, so I was quite looking forward to it. But after watching it, I was really disappointed. The character settings, plot, and pacing have all changed greatly, with stale jokes inserted everywhere. It really doesn’t live up to this “polishing” that took five years.
- Genius: The Game Rules, although I don’t watch much variety shows, I really like the segments of intellectual battles. I watched it over the weekend on recommendation, and it was brilliant.
Music
- Chasing by Mameyudoufu
- Unsure by Alan Walker
- 1 to 10 by Midnight Jogging Club
- A Moment Apart by ODESZA
- 満ちてゆく by Fujii Kaze
- Spring Snow by 10CM
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