10/2 #
I finished my work today, and it’s now around 2:30 pm. I am lying on my sofa, playing with my smartphone. It’s chilling.
10/3 #
Today, when commuting to the campus, I finished reading Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise (房思琪的初恋乐园).
Why don’t adults often tell the truth? If they provide the real reasons to convince me, I will accept that, because that will be reasonable. But now, I have to guess the real thought behind that, because their talk sometimes confuses me. I don’t like adults, possibly because I prefer to think, speak, and behave like a child. I like children. They are much easier to understand.
Bblythe and I walked around in a shopping mall. We found a couple of human-sized sculptures of the Japanese manga characters レム and ラム in a shop. I told my girlfriend that I thought she was more like ラム. She didn’t understand and asked me to explain why. I was silent. We stood there for around ten seconds, and then she knew. She said she hates me.
I felt so depressed. I ate a 喜之郎沾粉果冻-蓝莓味, and then I felt better.
I told Bblythe that I prefer cute girls. She was surprised because she doesn’t consider herself an adorable style. Instead, she believes she’s a fashion, elegant, and strong-minded woman. I said, “Yeah, but you know what? A two-month-old kitten also thinks she’s super fierce and dominant.”
10/4 #
Waking up in the afternoon, I sat in a chair on the balcony. There were dark clouds outside, which is the sign of a typhoon. I looked at the north from the Huitai Building (汇泰大厦), which includes an abandoned kindergarten, an abandoned hospital, and a two-floor rectangular building occupying the whole left side of the road, also abandoned. On the south side, there was an abandoned hotel, although I couldn’t see it from the balcony. However, one night when I came back late, I was drawn to the light of the moon, looking up and accidentally found the hotel’s brand sign on top of that building, where the neon lights were no longer shining. On the other side of the two-floor rectangular building was the Luohu Estate (罗湖村). I saw five residential buildings that were extremely close, with small balconies that possibly received no sunlight. On the back of the abandoned hospital, there was an old neighbourhood, where a kid was riding in circles on the parking lot, and soon disappeared. The typhoon is coming, and raindrops fell on me and on the balcony railing.
10/7 #
Here is a tip to make your PhD study easier: approach your daily tasks like a soldier by focusing on completing them efficiently without overthinking. This will work. However, you also need to know how to think, rather than becoming a person who can only complete missions. This seems a little confused, but what I mean is to survive, but don’t let this temporary mindset define your whole career. Keep in mind what you should do when becoming an independent researcher. When I said “what you should do”, I meant “What you believe you should act like”, rather than what you acquire from observational learning. Don’t lose heart.
I beg of everyone not to deliver me AI-generated knowledge that you have asked an AI to provide but did not verify for correctness by checking the sources, especially when you are not an expert in that domain or on that question. Once I find that, I will label you as lazy or dumb in my mind. This only applies to my academic work.
10/9 Thinking about Ultimate Questions #
We climbed Bijia Mountain (笔架山) at 4 pm, a total of one kilometre, taking twenty minutes. On the way down the mountain, I played a compound words game of food names with BB. Essentially, you need to create names for unreal food (or restaurants) by combining two real names. Here are some examples:
Compound food name:
- 叉烧 + 烧鸟 = 叉烧鸟
- 手撕鸡 + 鸡蛋 = 手撕鸡蛋
- 鸡丝凉面 + 面皮 = 鸡丝凉面皮
- 牛肉火锅 + 锅巴土豆 = 牛肉火锅巴土豆
- 西湖醋鱼 + 鱼香肉丝 = 西湖醋鱼香肉丝
Compound chain brand restaurant name:
- 必胜客 + 客家菜 = 必胜客家菜
- 乐凯撒披萨 + 萨莉亚 = 乐凯撒披萨莉亚
When we returned at night, I suddenly wondered about ultimate /ˈʌl.tɪ.mət/ questions: What is outside the universe? Where are we from and where will we go? What are we? I expressed my curiosity to BB, and her answers could not satisfy me, so I asked DeepSeek. Its initial answer, which refers to the existing scientific methodologies and findings, seemed overly conventional and implied agnosticism /æɡˈnɒs.tɪ.sɪ.zəm/ (不可知论). I pointed this out, and then it provided an alternative explanation that tries to combine science and religion. I was still not convinced, as I realised this answer is just a matryoshka doll (俄罗斯套娃): if there is a God, where does this God and the world he lives in come from?
DeepSeek acknowledged my concern and explained how the theology /θiˈɒl.ə.dʒi/ (神学) “resolves” this by redefining the concept of God. For example, God is just there, no reason. God doesn’t exist in time flow, as God creates time, so it’s unavailable to ask a question like “what does it look like before God”. God is the source of all reasons for everything. Still, I thought that this provides a more explicit definition of God, but it does not resolve the questions. It just forbids people from explaining further. DeepSeek agreed with my opinions (like it always does) and suggested accepting to live under this situation, such as “acknowledging the limit of human cognition”. I was desperate, “So that is it? We have no choice?”
DeepSeek then informed its strategies in detail, including (a) finding our own meanings of living, (b) respecting the unknown, and (c) keeping exploration. As I understood, what it meant here is (a) existentialism /ˌeɡ.zɪˈsten.ʃəl.ɪ.zəm/, (b) generally respect for religion (but not believing in stuff about formalism), and (c) scientific positivism.
I then asked if we are really living in a designed software, as such lifestyles seem very appropriate to the purpose of the software. How miserable we are! I also asked DeepSeek, as an AI, to provide its own opinion, but it was unable to do so.
Eventually, we agreed that the ultimate answer to the universe is 42. I told BB about the discovery of 42 and said that if she searched online, she would find it to be true. She didn’t believe me.
10/14 #
I suddenly didn’t really like Glenn Gould because I found that he played the BWV 867 Fugue too slowly and the BWV 869 too quickly.
I expect to become an academic journal editor-in-chief who can draw a fantastic, unique cover (just like The New York Times) for each volume.
Why do we have children’s palazas and elderly activity centres but not adult activity centres?
A strange phenomenon: why parents (and relatives) especially care about children’s learning performance in primary and secondary schools, but ask questions like “do you plan to go back to the hometown to live and work” and “do you hang out with friends in colleges, are you dating someone” when children enter a university? Shouldn’t it be the opposite? We encourage children to go out, play with others, explore their surroundings, and think about what they want to become in the future. When they enrol in a university, we prompt them to study hard instead.
10/15 Finding a New Flat: Part 1 #
I couldn’t work today, so I spent the whole day playing on my smartphone and video games, and lying in bed. I was kinda depressed because I found a fantastic flat on Lianhua 2nd Estate (莲花二村) last weekend (the best I had seen recently), which I didn’t book immediately. After all, I didn’t have a lot of money, so I needed to think for a while. Two days later, I lost it. It’s a pity. Except for the indoor environment, its location is also excellent: There is a primary school inside the neighbourhood, residents are well-educated, and the neighbourhood is near an environmentally beautiful, pet-friendly, and elaborately designed modern shopping mall called the Upperhills (深业上城), combined with two mountains (which are also public parks) on the east and west side, respectively. There is a subway station in the neighbourhood, and you can take the subway to the Futian Checkpoint, so for me, the commute to Hong Kong is still convenient. Importantly, since its location is exceptional, this neighbourhood will definitely be demolished, and a new shopping centre will be built in the future. Before that happens, it will be great to live there and enjoy this rare living place for a couple of years. I felt a headache and was not sure if that was because of the loss of the best flat or just because I slept too much today. My white lotus!
10/17 After Meditation #
I gradually believe that the universe is like software, and its purpose is to simulate and observe how humans interact and think about everything. From this perspective, I would like to be a unique and interesting data point rather than an ordinary, redundant one that does not provide any additional insight to the model.
10/18 A Birthday Weekend #
We were walking around in the Shenzhen Central Bookstore today. BB told me that you could go to the KFC counter. Pretending to be a customer and asking for a paper cup, then using the self-service water-saving area. This is how you can have water on the street.
On the subway to the show venue, BB asked if I had brought dental floss. I replied that maybe we could use a strand of human hair, so floss is unnecessary anymore (and if you are a girl, it will be more convineient since you don’t even need to pull put the hair). Therefore, it’s very important to take good care of your hair to make them heathly and strong in case for using at critical moments.
Only Tencent Mail will send me a birthday celebration every year.
We were watching Chainsaw Man The Compilation at home, BB picked up the smartphone to check when the food delivery would arrive. I pulled her phone down and answered: It arrives when it arrives.
We went to Haidilao hotpot at the Kingglory Plaza (金光华广场) for celebrate my birthday. A bithday cake is not a composary option for me anymore, but we acidently found a cake store at the plaza so we bought one. A waiter at Haidilao asked if this cake is expensive (probably because there are many rich people in Shenzhen who’d like to buy a luxurious cake, and so when they replies the waiter to show off, the waiter will be able to provide some emotional value). Ours is cheap and we bought it because there was a discount.
10/20 #
I finished Silksong (100% completion level, taking 89h 21m 40s).
I recently watched a lot AI-generated Kobe Bryant videos on Bilibili. He’s back.
I just learnt that there’s a difference in the pronunciation between the words “track” and “check”. My tongue should learn that too.
I sincerely recommned Kyuhee Park’s performance on BWV 998. Her classic guitar album on Johann Sebastian Bach released in 2024 and I listened to that many many times as stay-at-home music and never felt bored.
10/24 Rush into A Wonderful Dinner on Friday Night #
After the in-class test this afternoon, I backed to Shenzhen around seven, and picked BB up outside the Kingglory Plaza, who has just bought cute necklaces and earrings and felt happy. We found a BBQ restaruant called Pòdian, having some food there (grilled meat, vegetables, and passion fruit beer) and sitting at one of the best tables inside, where is the front row for a young singger’s performance, who’s streaming on Tiktok using a phone on stand next to him. You could order a song if you like. There were also two Western males and when the singger asked where are they from, they answered that they are from Spain. This is the best dinner I have in Shenzhen so far. On the way backing home we discussed why the Chinese translation of Spain is 西班牙. I also mentioned that Holland was now called the Netherland but its Chinese translation remained unchange. BB didn’t know the current name of the Netherland at all and she bet with me. I won ¥50 from her.
10/25 Finding a New Flat: Part 2 #
We were exhausted to find and vist more rental flats. Today I wrote a 3,000 words prompt to ask several AI models to summarise the pros and cons for two flats on the final list. Superisingly, it seems like that different AI models have distinct styles: Grok is a sharp-toungued guy who who overwhelms opponents and defend its opinion fiercely. By contrary, Claude is like a no-nonsense nerd, speaking in a peaceful, direct, and concise way that cuts straight to the logical point. ChatGPT and DeepSeek (reasoning mode)’s explanations are verbose.
10/28 #
Okay, this will be a classic one: There are a bunch of dumb self-made anime videos using Chiikawa characters on Bilibili. Last month, I watched one of these silly short videos with Bblythe every night as a kind of before-sleep ceremony. I told her these are the official chiikawa episodes and she had believed.