Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

I read Make Something Wonderful in the plane ride back to Malaysia from Hong Kong and the whole time I was immersed and when the plane landed I felt more alive and agentic than ever.

It's a curated collection of his speeches, interviews, and correspondence. His whole story was inspiring and I loved a lot of the things he said in his speeches and emails.

This blog is my curated collection of that collection.

On his childhood

• his father was a machinist by trade and worked very hard and was kind of a genius with his hands.
• when he was 5, his father spent a lot of time teaching him how to build things, take things apart, put things back together
• He later met Larry Lang, a man who built Heathkits. These kits gave him an understand of what was inside a finished product and how it worked, and the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe.
• it gave a tremendous degree of self-confidence that, through exploration and learning, one could understand seemingly very complex things in one's environment.

On California

• California had a sense of experimentation, and a sense of openness about it – openness and new possibility – that I didn't appreciate till I went to other places.

On aesthetics and taste

• a bunch of little things influenced him: wine labels, paintings in galleries. Simple things. Nothing real profound, just lots and lots of little things.
• I don't think my taste in aesthetics is that much different than a lot of other people's. The difference is I just get to be really stubborn about making things as good as we all know they can be
• Things get more refined as you make mistakes. Your aesthetics get better as you make mistakes.
• It doesn't take any more energy – and rarely does it take more money – to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time. [...] And a willingness to do so, a willingness to persevere until it's really great.
• good aesthetics results from just your eye. And instinct of what you see, not so much what you do.

On character

• people's spark of self-consciousness turns on at about 15 or 16.
• Humanities lecture in Reed college, i.e. Shakespeare with professor Svitavsky felt meaningless and even cruel endeavors to be put through, but looking back, it helped him in everything he's ever done.
• he learned about situational ethics from people at the Hare Krishna temple
• "Character is built not in good times, but in bad times; not in a time of plenty, but in a time of adversity"

On liberal arts

• Apple's major contribution was bringing a liberal arts point of view to the use of computers
• the driving motivation behind the ease of use of the Macintosh was not just to get more people to use computers, it was to bring beautiful fonts and typography and graphics to people, to see beautiful photographs or pictures, or artwork, etc. to help them communicate what they were doing.
• Computer science and science is a liberal art. It's something that everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It's not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be exposed to, everyone should have a master of, to some extent, and that's how we viewed computation, or these computation devices.

On apple's culture

• there wasn't a hierarchy of ideas that mapped onto the hierarchy of the organization. Great ideas could come from anywhere.
• we hired truly great people and gave them the room to do great work.
• A lot of companies hire people to tell them what to do, we hired people to tell them us to do.

On intuitive feelings (dreams)

• Be aware of the world's magical, mystical, and artistic sides. The most important things in life are not the goal-oriented, materialistic things that everyone and everything tries to convince you to strive for.
• Whatever it may be, I bet many of you have had some of these intuitive feelings about what you could do with your lives. These feelings are very real, and if nurtured can blossom into something wonderful and magical. A good way to remember these kinds of intuitive feelings is to walk alone near sunset – and spend a lot of time looking at the sky in general. We are never taught to listen to our intuitions, to develop and nurture our intuitions. But if you do pay attention to these subtle insights, you can make them come true.
• People will come at you with reasons why you shouldn't do these things (writing songs won't help you make a living). You could be doing so much more in your life. (Einstein working at a low-level job in the Swiss patent office)
• If you don't have any of these feelings, called dreams, then you're in trouble.

On creativity

• Be a creative person. Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights that others don't see.
• You have to have them to connect them. Creative people feel guilty that they are simply relaying what they "see". How do you get a more diverse set of experiences? Not by traveling the same path as everyone else.
• to be creative, feed or invest in yourself by exploring uncharted paths that are outside the realm of your past experience. Seek out new dimensions of yourself – especially those that carry a romantic scent
• The only thing one can do is to believe that some of what you follow with your heart will indeed come back to make your life much richer. And it will. And you will gain an ever firmer trust in your instincts and intuition.

On career and loving your work

• The enemy of most dreams and intuition, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the "Career"
• If you are passionate about your life and your work, they become more or less one. This is a much better way to live one's life.
• Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work
• The journey is the reward. The reward is in crossing the rainbow.
• Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in teh sky, then you disappear
  • The two endpoints of everyone's rainbow are birth and death. We all experience both completely alone
  • To know my arc will fall makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky.
• You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

On mistakes

• regrets are different from mistakes
• mistakes = things you did and wish you could do over again.
  • Some mistakes are deep, and others not. But if your intent was pure, they're almost always enriching in some way.
• regrets = things you didn't do, and wish you did.

On hiring young A players

• You'd better have great people, or you won't get your product to market as fast as possible.
• There are no shortcuts around quality, and quality starts with people
• for young people, you must evaluate potential. The primary attributes are 1) intelligence and the ability to learn quickly and 2) drive and passion – hard work makes up for a lot
• I will purposely upset someone by criticizing their prior work. The worst thing someone can do in an interview is agree with me. What I look for is someone to come right back and say "You're dead wrong and here's why". I want to see what people are like under pressure. I want to see if they just fold or if they have firm conviction, belief, and pride in what they did.
• If your company is a meritocracy of ideas, with passionate people, you have a company with a lot of arguments. If people can't stand up and argue well under pressure, they may not do well in such an environment.

On his weakness

• I'm too idealistic. [I need to] realize that sometimes best is the enemy of better.
• Sometimes I go for "best" when I should go for "better", and end up going nowhere or backwards.
• I'm blinded by "what could be" versus "what is possible", doing things incrementally versus doing them in one fell swoop.
• Balancing the ideal and the practical is something that I still must pay attention to.

On a CEO's job

• Cajole and bed and plead and threaten at times – to do what is necessary to get people to see things in a bigger and more profound way than they have, and to do better work than they thought they could do.
• When they do their best and you don't think it isn't enough, you tell them straight "This isn't good enough. I know you can do better. You need to do better. Now go do better."
• 1) recruit, 2) set an overall direction, 3) inspire and cajole and persuade.

Apple's hierarchy of Skepticism

• survival > stable business > product strategy > growth

His favorite quote

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit – Aristotle

On culture and connection

• There's tradition in SV. There's role models, and there's legends, and there's all sorts of folklore – the kind of thing that makes a culture. Many people don't spend time to learn about it. But some people find themselves in it, and slowly start to absorb it and get curious as to what came before them.
• There's human drama to most everything. You look at it sometimes, and it seems as dry as history. But if you peel the onion, there's humanity underneath.
• Just to understand what's going on now – you can't really do that unless you understand how it got here.

He who loves to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant ot be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.

– Schopenhauer's On the Suffering of the World

On tech 🤝 creativity

• tech and content companies have no understanding of each other
• the creative process is as disciplined as any engineering process. And they're as passionate about it as any technical person.
• tech companies have a wide, dynamic range of capability and elegance. there's creativity in the process.

on management

• when he was younger: management by objective. "You accomplished none of your objectives, you're fired"
• now: management by values: find people that want the same things you want, and then just get the hell out of their way.
  • have a good enough place to go, that's got a long enough focal length that it will survive over time, that everybody agrees on, and don't codify how you're going to get there. So that each generation can argue anew about the best way to get to San Diego.

On death

• "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
• Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because a most everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
• Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
• Death is likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
• Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

his famous email to himself

I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.
I do not make any of my own clothing.
I speak a language I did not invent or refine.
I did not discover the mathematics I use.
I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.
I am moved by music I did not create myself. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.
I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.
I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.

September 2, 2010, 11:08 p.m.

my favorite quote of his

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact—and that is： everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.
And you can change it.
You can influence it.
You can build your own things that other people can use.
And the minute you can understand that you can poke life, and if you push in， then something will pop out the other side; that you can change it, you can mold it—that's maybe the most important thing: to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there, and you're just going to live in it versus embrace it， change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
I think that's very important, and however you learn that, once you learn it， you'll want to change life and make it better. Because it's kind of messed up in a lot of ways.
Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
— Steve, 1994

Tsim Sha Tsui Ferry Pier

• been waking up with blood on one particular front teeth because braces is shifting my teeth
• tasteless breakfast at the station
• the rain really affects my mood when travelling, HK has really erratic heavy rains
• Was reminded that I want a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel when I saw one
• Bookstores for buying souvenirs and trinkets

"Same as ever" by Morgan Housel notes

• Never thought about war and military as an engine for innovation, the incentive to not die and be killed by the enemy creating a burst of scientific progress
• “The same people with the same intelligence have wildly different potential under different circumstances”
• Fear as a motivator, procrastination and indecision killer, attention funnel
• WWII started with horseback in 1939 and nuclear fission in 1945
• NASA was created two weeks after Sputnik, and landed on the moon 11 years later
• If you’re efficient you’re doing it the wrong way
• “To enjoy peace, we need everyone to make good choices. In contrast, just one poor choice by one side leads to war” – Yuval
• Complex to make, Simple to break – humans (making one is complex, death is simple)
• A lot of progress and good news concerns things that didn’t happen, making hard to contextualize and measure
• HK has no sales tax so apple is cheaper here than china

The ferry ride

• The ferry is so slow, but makes sense since it's a short distance, only 8 minutes, the foggy view reminded me of SF
• It's cheap, only 2 dollars for 4 people.
• I liked hearing the sounds of ocean waves crash ing on the boat, the smell of the sea in the breeze, and the conversations of other tourists.

"The World According to color" notes in eslite spectrum near Tsim Sha Tsui port

• “Color is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness” – Orhan Pamuk
• Velázuez recognized the power of black, Édouard Manet revered him and also saw the potential of black
• Turner’s color charts
• Turner’s Ulysses deriding Polyphemus
• Wassily Kadinsky’s improvisation 19 (Blue Sound)
• Tutuan’s Bacchus made with the most exotic and expensive pigments in 16th ct Venice. Features some of the purest ultramarine ever identified in the history of art
• Monet’s house of parliament, Seagulls is a pageant of purples
• Howard Hodgkins’s Leaf – one of the most endearing color association – green and vegetation

Last paragraph of the book

The ancient Egyptian term for 'colour' was iwn - a word that also meant 'skin', 'nature', 'character' and 'being', and was represented in part by a hieroglyph of human hair. The members of that formidable civilization had noticed a striking resemblance between colours and humans. To them colours were just like people - full of life, energy, power and personality. We now understand, as the Egyptians could only sense, how thoroughly the two are entangled. Colour, after all, is ultimately made by its perceivers. Every hue we see around us is actually manufactured within us - in the same grey matter that forms language, stores memories, stokes emotions, shapes thoughts and gives rise to consciousness. Colour is a pigment of our imaginations that we paint all over the world. Larger than any city, more intricate than any machine, more beautiful than any painting, it might in fact be the greatest human creation of them all.

I love discounted small cute stuff at bookstores, bought a tiger pin, a mini sketchbook and Perpetua pencil, an 80% graphite pencil made in Italy

airport -> home

• MOS burger stands for mountain, ocean and Sun
• I'm so tired today, what happened, did I not sleep well. family says it's like I never slept at all
• Sleeping on the buses and trains is the best feeling

I love reading in planes

• Read "Make Something Wonderful" by Steve Jobs and it's so inspiring. I couldn't stop reading it. Especially his speeches and emails. He was a true visionary, reading about the things he predicted back in the 80s and seeing it all come true now is surreal.
• I felt more alive, it was the jumpstart I need being back from the trip. It's time to start building again. May is the month where I achieve all my goals.

Central Pier, HK

Went to Tsutaya bookstore in Future City and the art section is amazing.

Some artists to look into

• Egon Schiele
• Alfons Mucha
• JMW Turner
• Hilma Klint
• Modigliani
• Robert Coutelas
• Marc Chagall
• David Hockney
• Jasper Johns
• Gerhard Richter
• Jean Philippe Delhomme – A paris journal
• Sean Scully – the shape of ideas
• Judd
• Anselm Kirger
• Yamada Masaaki

thoughts on spending + art

• I went to get to the point of wealth where I can buy things without feeling guilty, yet still maintain gratitude for being able to obtain it. I feel like when you have a lot of money and you can afford everything, it no longer feels rewarding because it was so easy to get it, whereas now, since I can’t just but anything I want, and I have to actively and carefully filter out only a few, it has more meaning
• Bought postcards of Hokusai and flowers for 217¥ , decided not to buy Hokusai’s sketchbooks Vol 2. whole earth because it was 180¥
• Mom is asking a good question, why am I so interested in art, why was I not before? Was it because no one introduced me to it? I think it all started when I got the great wave tapestry. But what is my goal here with learning about art and being so obsessed with it, is it all just to feel nice? To study what makes it nice and try to recreate it? I think it’s a good way to be absorbing and exposing myself to all these styles so that I can develop my own maybe. Isn’t that what artists do? They gather inspiration and form their own by injecting their own personality, life experiences, and emotions
• buying local snacks when traveling for coworkers and friends as a necessary practice and culture? Is it mostly a girls thing? Maybe it's cause I don’t have much friends in Malaysia and I don’t see a point, whereas my sister has work friends

back to HK

• customs is even slower entering HK, had to wait in line twice, I like seeing different kinds of faces and accents in the foreigner line.
• it's hard to get a taxi in HK, they have an app for it but the app is terrible
• Bishop Lei International House has a great view, we got upgraded to deluxe twin bed rooms for free 1100 HKD for two rooms.
• Got scolded by the bus driver, shouted at us and asked us to pay 9.5 HKD per person
• Tried Kwan Kee Claypot rice (best claypot in Central based on reviews) and it was just ok, their sausage is weird it feels like I bit into a piece of coal, more bitter than savory. Was pricey too 100 HKD per pot
• Got to experience the HK tram, only 3 HKD for any stop
• Go to IFC mall with tram (north bound), and walk to the pier after claypot

Some building names I can see from pier no. 9 near the HK observation wheel in Star Ferry Pier.

• AIA
• FWD
• 1664
• CITIC
• CONRAD
• LIPPO
• 中国人寿
• Mandarin Oriental
• UBS
• Prudential
• YMCA
• 招商局

thoughts at the pier

• Lots of people jogging here at night
• and of course lots of couples too, I saw two couples kissing like animals, I applaud the courage they have to do that in public
• I feel like Howl in his green slimy state a lot of times, especially when I look bad in pictures, feel worthless a lot of times which is such a waste of time and energy, when I can just be happy and laugh about it
• Feeling very melancholy when looking at the pier at night, La La Land and yellow was playing in my head. But the laughs and jokes with my family makes me appreciate that I have them in my life, and travelling with family, albeit comes with its own complications and frustrations, is something that is underappreciated and very temporary, soon parents will be too old to travel like this.
• Taxi driver asked us why we never boarded his car (which was the first one in line), apparently it’s an implicit rule to do that here, in Malaysia we just get on any one of them
• I waste so much of my time having the same thoughts over and over again and I can’t tell if they’re productive or not, it's something that I have to do it to know, and I keep imagining the outcome, playing that movie in my head whenever I have space to think. I wish I had better thoughts that were more useful and related to creating solutions for important problems.

thoughts while looking out the window from the hotel room

• HK is like san francisco but you can build apartments, so it's hilly in central HK and you can find skyscrapers all cramped together, creating a cool effect.
• house prices are definitely expensive, I saw a lot of foreigners while going out for claypot tonight, I wonder if they enjoy their life in HK, and why they chose to be here if it wasn't just for business
• hard to buy anything here, my sister kept wishing to be back in shenzhen to buy more things, I'm still amazed by the $35 fake nike that I think costs >$1000 in StockX for the real one.
• I checked my email after being blocked in China for a few days and I really didn't miss anything. It was a helpful detox from the things that filled up my time and helped me reflect on whether they added value to my life.

mom's (left), mine (right) with 美星艺术家 at Dafen

• 酷狗 60s previews played and 因为爱请 is stuck in my head now
• Zhou Yongjiu – China’s Van Gogh
• There are so many similar shops and try oil panting places in Dafen, how do I decide which to go
• Would be nice to operate your own mini cafe + jewelry store in a small town, refilling the water in the flower vase, meeting new people, playing Jay Chou in the background, pouring cat food in the bowl for when your cat comes back from exploring outside, recommending food and shops
• I wonder why girls like to shop for jewelry, it’s like my interest for pretty book covers and artsy things
• Install 大众点评 for food
• How long does it take to oil paint on average, if sketching already takes me that long, guess it depends on the style, impressionism can have less detail while realism is very detailed
• 热干面 with vinegar is good, I’m gonna make my own
• Only 30¥ for trying out oil painting (油画体验专业指导）, so cheap, 50¥ for a slightly bigger one
• Oil painting is so hard, i tried pointillism on the wave art lol, i dont know enough color theory to mix colors well, hard to fix mistakes or make changes if i lose the colors. I need to reference someone’s impressionism wave art to tell if mine is bad or not, cause I think I did bad for my painting, the teacher kept fixing mine.
• The teacher/artist asked me to take a rest and look at it from a distance lol, I think i was too tense and serious and doing the same thing over and over again
• I didn’t get to go to their art museum :(
• I wouldn’t mind living in Dafen they have strong art culture and its a chill location
• Their artworks are cheap 25¥ for a small framed painting
• 快狗打车 is china’s Uhaul
• Luckin coffee is their starbucks
• Traffic is bad here took 40 min to get to dongmen
• Dongmen has so many people
• 大麦茶 tastes like coffee
• 鲈鱼 taste good the fish texture is crispy
• Why is it 安全出口 is there an unsafe 出口
• Shopping in dongmen is like shopping temu or shien in real life but even cheaper, i bought two baggy pants and a shirt for only 180¥
• My dad has so much courage lol i could never cut prices like that I’d be so uncomfortable
• I never thought I would buy fake Nikes but they’re actually feel and look so real, hope they last long though. They’re only 35$ too which is insane
• I find it stressful to shop for clothes and interacting with people, maybe its the insecurity again, I don’t like checking myself in the mirror
• Store owners here are so good at selling, they’ll recommend me clothes, then ask me to get shoes and pants as well, and praise the quality of the shoes, but I wonder how much of it I can trust
• We were here from 7 pm till 12am wow
• Taxis are 2.7¥ per kilometer

mixC mall

• malls are a great travel destination when it's pouring rain
• so hard to navigate with baidu maps when I only know the english names of the malls
• electric cars are everywhere here in shenzhen, all the taxis I’ve been on are electric
• Lots of white and black cars too where are the other colors?
• I keep seeing 文明 everywhere and advertisements for exercising, respecting and loving others, protect the environment, etc.
  • Slogans like 文明你我也
• Their google maps shows the image of the road when taking exits which is so useful and clear
• Noticing they have a lot of greeneries again
• I like that their staircases have the flat slopes at the center to move your bicycles down, I even saw a motorcyclist go down using that slope
• Always go below ground floor for food when in malls
• I like that MixC shopping mall in 后海 has three themes, art, food and shopping
• They use WeChat for ordering food and they force you to become a member it's pre annoying, it was like this at the bookstore too and trying to borrow a powerbank
• Every website is blocked, even hackernews, but my api still works on my website, I wonder if API calls to google still works
• Realized it's hard to eat with family and not have my mind trail off and think about other things, maybe my family is bad at conversing while eating, or actually it’s hard to eat and talk and it's more comfortable to eat in silence
• It's so easy to go into autopilot mode when eating, so I was practicing how to appreciate the food I was eating by asking what it is, how it’s made, noticing the shape and texture like it's an art piece, and thanking the farmers that made the rice and vegetables and the butcher that killed the animals, and the chef that prepared all the ingredients to make the dish
• So many interesting snacks some of them I don’t understand what they are
• I wonder if chinese people read english with the same cognitive load as I do with chinese, or it's lower since english is “easier” to read
• They sell mini packets of rice in a big packet
• They have many interesting kinds of mushrooms
• So weird seeing Chinese names on familiar food packagings
• They have foreign literature as a category which has Russian, Irish, spanish, etc
• Still wondering why chinese books have nicer covers, hard to describe what makes them better, publishers have more money to spend on design, it's like both simple but elegant
• I will only be in literature and design+art sections in bookstores
• Lots of constructions and development going on
• Cleaners here are all chinese too

Some books + author I wanna look into

• fernando pessoa (sitting beside you watching the clouds)
• Vladmir nabakov poems
• Passed over lethe ezra pound poems
• The Paris review interviews, women at work
• Deborah Levy the cost of living
• Paul rand – a designer’s art
• Austin Howe – designer's don't read
• Victor papanek – design for the real world
• Kenya Hara – designing design
• Norito shinmura
• As little design as possible – Sophie Lovell
• Dubravka – the ministry of pain
• Roberto bolano – last evenings on earth
• Elena Ferrante – my brilliant friend
• James Joyce - Ulysses student annotated edition
• Jon Fosse – Septology
• Morandi (1890-1964)
• W Somerset Maugham – The moon and Sixpence
• Judith Zilczer – A way of living: the art of Willem de Kooning
• Matthew Israel – a year in the art world
• Phaidon – The Art Book
• Peter Doig

more

• uniwalk the largest shopping mall in shenzhen
• The crosswalks here are crazy people just walk on them American style with cars so close to them
• So many kids with elderly people
• So many electric car companies here, tesla cant compete
• Shopping mall clothes are so pricey
• It's so hard to go into shops when there are fewer people and the clerks are eyeing you. Why do they do that. Just let me shop in peace
• I like it when the store decorates the place according to the name
• Chinese bookstores have stores within them selling ceramic ware , glasses, cafes and even restaurants, a lot of sitting areas, and sell a bunch of electronic devices, puzzles, even snacks
• Kinda cheesy to call a car company “build your dreams”
• Walking two blocks in china is like 20 blocks in the US
• China is very bad at listing total amounts of sugar for their food products

福田下梅林地铁站店

Travelled to shenzhen from West Kowloon HK today. A few thoughts:

• I had so many dreams today, in the morning, and later in taxis and trains.
• Lightroom ios is good enough for editing film like photos
• I didn't know beef shiu mai existed
• why is forcing people to buy tea a thing
• HK people being rude is definitely a thing, it's like all of them they woke up on the wrong side of the bed
• HK -> China customs is painstakingly slow
• the bullet train was so fast it felt like 5 minutes.
• Why can't I take pictures in customs is it a security law, I got called out lol
• A young taxi driver did not help us with b ags but the old one did thought it would be reversed
• It's so hard to find a hotel here, there are three hotels named T hotel, and ended up staying in the wrong one in the end
  • lesson: check properly the next time I book hotels, note the location and the possibility of different branches
• subway here is super cheap
• I had spicy and sour fish and I loved it, I think my body is beginning to accept it.
• came to a more suburb part of shenzhen and it felt like Taiwan it was peaceful, I saw this nice street with a lot of trees, and old people with small kids holding hands
• Motorcycles here are electric, very quiet and dangerous as they go on the sidewalks
• Diaphragm crams are so scary I felt like I was gonna die, I had one that lasted 20 minutes at this lanzhou noodles restaurant after eating some sour and spicy food and am now afraid
• Saw a corgi poop on the subway tunnels
• Shopping malls are mostly catered for females where are the clothing stores for men
• It would be cool if I could read greek
• Xiaomi is apple in China?
• Xiaomi 14 ultra has 140x zoom that's crazy
• Getting a fold phone would actually be useful I can read blogs on a bigger screen, but too heavy though ill yet 5 more years
• My respect for a mall goes up 100% if it has a bookstore, and a cat store
• Chinese book covers are nicer for some reason
• wish I can read a chinese book without feeling like I'm doing a test
• I wanna sit in a bookstore all day
• Wow they made Ghibli into books
• How do people internet in China i don't know how to use the internet at all without a vpn
• china TV (Xiaomi) is very interesting, it's like tiktok their interface is very addictive

Bohemian Garden, Level 5F, K11 KREA mall

another thoughts dump for today

• mom was watching a church service on tv which woke me up and I went back to bed, I felt so confused I forgot where I was
• helped dad navigate to shenzhen, sent him everything on his phone with details and he had to write the same things down on paper again, it's smart because you can always trust hard copies
• Dad took my sd card and adaptor in his luggage by accident so sadly no camera for the day
• My entire plan for central HK gone because of the rain. I was pretty upset. Still hard to regulate my emotions completely when things don’t go my way, as if the world revolves around me. I still have a lot more growing up to do in managing expectations and having backup plans.
• Left hotel at 11am instead of 8, when travelling with family, it's almost impossible to leave on time.
• in K11 art mall
  • Was so hungry I couldn't breathe, taiwanese and HK food was pricey, so went to Bugis Junction (Singaporean) instead for RM60 hainanese chicken rice that was pretty good.
  • Found myself constantly observing and studying how people dress, and questioning makes them look good (maybe it's a combination of physical looks + what they wear).
    • it makes me self-conscious about the way I'm dressing, and makes me want to buy clothing to emulate them, your environment really shapes you
• I have this bias that good looking people only care a lot about their looks and are egoistic, arrogant, and shallow people, logically this could makes sense because it takes time, energy, and money, to maintain or have better looks (features and apparel), all of which can be poured into other more productive and selfless efforts that helps society. Or maybe I'm just projecting and making myself feel better for not being as good looking as them.
• My insecurities are stronger here, I care more about how I look than the things I know or can do. I wonder what it takes for self-acceptance (acceptance therapy and self love?) how much of the things I do or say is seeking love and acceptance? Am I mostly acting out of this insecurity and fear? Why is it that sometimes I don’t want to be myself when I look in the mirror. I think these are high school insecurities I have to face and get rid of in therapy.
• Not really enjoying this trip anymore with the rain, kind of regretting coming
• K11 MUSEA
  • Being in mall makes me want to buy things I don't even need and makes me realize how materialistic human beings are, and how silly it is to be buying expensive stuff either for status or for personal enjoyment when it can be contributed towards a good cause
    • But at the same time these expensive items and clothing portray how well humans are at making beautiful and tasteful things, and how much we're willing to pay for nice things
  • MoMA Design Store + the bohemian garden with the central HK view was the only ones worth going
  • Art house is a cinema lol I was fooled
  • there are art installations in the entire mall which is cool
  • visited a sony store and was amazed by how fast new sony cameras are compared to my fujifilm and how heavy the lenses
• central
  • eventually came here when the rain died at 5pm and first thing we see upon coming out of central station was a lot of filipinos, we teleported to the philippines for a moment
  • there was this Chinese restaurants here that requires you to pay for tea (18 HKD per person), we ordered water and the server was so confused lol
• people watching
  • Standing across SASA in Queens road central while my mom and sister shops at a clothing store called Bless, people watching for 30 minutes, I saw a guy walking his dog, lots of couples holding hands (some are laugh, some are more serious, some are both men which I still find it out of the ordinary), women limping while talking on the phone, kids jumping on puddles, teslas and HK taxis zooming past, tourist families, filipino people, some alone some are loud in big groups, two girl/guy best friend walking together, mother and son/daughter dynamics,
  • thought about what my life would be like and what kind of person I would be if I was in HK. Would I be the lone wolf types who walk alone with headphones on, steady and focused, the couple type where I'm laughing and happy with someone while walking side by side, or with a best friend, or the one with a cute dog. I realize how lonely it would be if I was just dropped in HK without knowing anyone and how scary it will feel to just start over knowing nobody in a new place. Yet also exciting, I felt this in SF where I could be anyone, form my own identity, create my own meaning.
  • Then realizing it's a Sunday night and I'm standing in Hong Kong people watching
  • people-watched so much that I lost a sense of being and forgot that I existed for a few minutes, I went into a state of confusion where I forgot I could act in this world. maybe I was just exhausted.
• Realized how scary it is for the train to go underground under the ocean, what if theres an earthquake and everyone drowns inside
• They have litter containers where on top of you can dispose of your cigarette bud
• Not sure how people call taxis here, i went on to the road while the taxi was at a red light and waved at the driver, he rejected at first and then was like, where do you wanna go. also they ask for street road name and number
• learning that just noting down spots to go and restaurants to try is enough, also just noticing where the crowd is and will bring you to the famous spots.
• also I can't seem to just enjoy a trip when traveling without obsessive planning and researching, I'm pressured to be in the best spots with nice views and the best (affordable) restaurants, I'm gonna just relax the next few days and appreciate my family, realizing that everything is temporary and every moment with them is precious.
• once nice thing i'm not stressing out about articles or other work I told myself I had to finish before going to the US, but at the same time it feels like I don't have an identity without those work. what am I without all of that? I am what I do, and if I do them 90% of my day, what am I without them?
• I think I have social anxiety being in crowded places. can't stop feeling like I'm being judged. maybe it's the past 3 months of being home too much.

rainy HK near temple street

I'm writing this half-awake in a tiny room managed by one of the many hostels in Mirador Mansion, just a few steps away from the N5 subway exit for the Tsim Sha Tsui station.

A quick and messy dump of impressions and thoughts of HK today, a lot of it is about the subway, cause we used it a lot to get around today.

• maybe because it's a Saturday, the subways were chaotic and packed, it reminded me of 4th of July in SF when all the BART stations were flooded.
• it was confusing to navigate around the subway, I had to remember the station names and lines which were in romanized cantonese.
• it feels familiar and almost comforting to be surrounded by Chinese people everywhere, it made me forget about other races at times which is not a good thing, diversity is important
  • on that note, I saw a lot of attractive chinese people of both genders and couples (its weekends), I felt a lot of mimetic desire to both be more like them.
• the electronics flea market at Apliu street wasn't that worth it, we had good beef tendon noodles but I sadly couldn't find the camera shop that sells and displays y2k digi cams like street food.
• things are expensive. our beef tendon meal costed us ~ RM 150 for 4 plates. Also our tiny hotel room with an even tinier bathroom is 472 per night. I'm not sure if it's HK that's expensive (inflation) or the MYR is weak, maybe it's both.
• the buildings are old and have striking colors which make good photography shots, I noticed
• it's really tiring to travel by train because of all the going up and down the stairs and escalators required, and finding the right exits.
  • sidenote: I like that there can be a dozen exits for a station, this makes it possible to travel underground when it's raining, and makes the station very accessibly in and out.
• ladies market and sneaker street wasn't that exciting too, I can get shoes cheaper at StockX I think.
• I found a bookstore but it was all chinese books, I have yet to find an English bookstore
• Shanghai street is pretty interesting, I went in this building with a lot of cool shops and restaurants. I liked Bunkaya Zakkaten in particular. They had cute and fun items.
• I think my view of HK was romanticized by Cherrien, as of now I don't really find it nice, maybe I need to get to Central HK and that's where it's more entertaining.
• I also like the fast pace of HK more, but I have to remember to slow down for my parents who are in their 60s.
• the rain here gets pretty heavy, I cannot trust weather forecasts anymore I was promised no rain, I didn't get to visit the temple street night market :(

notes from family:

• my sister: she noticed a lot of girls have branded bags like Chanel (more than KL) and that you can tell HK people from the people from China.
• my dad: people are rude (pushing others around in subway) whereas in Japan, everyone was courteous
• my mom: the buildings are old, like a third world country (we were in Apliu street)

A few notes on how AI is improving climate forecasts.

Conventional climate models are built manually from scratch by scientists using mathematical equations to describe the physical processes by which land, oceans, and air interact and affect the climate.

They're important and are expected to work well enough to make climate projections because they help guide global policy.

The problem? They take weeks to run and are energy intensive. A typical model consumes up to 10 MW hours of energy to simulate a century of climate. (this is, on average, the amount of electricity used annually by a US household)

These models also struggle to simulate small-scale processes, like how raindrops form, which have an important role in large-scale weather and climate outcomes.

The solution? Using ML to spot patterns in the data.

Three ways AI is used for climate modelling

1. Emulators (Copycats)
   • take baseball, a conventional climate model is a program that calculates where a ball will land based on physical factors, such as how hard a ball is thrown, where it is thrown from, and how fast it is spinning.
     • What emulators do is equivalent to a sports player who learns the patterns from these modelled outputs, and can make predictions of where the ball will land, without crunching all the math.
   • two examples
     • QuickClim: forecast temperature 1M times faster than a conventional model
     • ACE: A fast, skillful learned global atmospheric model for climate prediction): accurately predicted 90% of atmospheric variables, 100 times faster and 100 times more energy-efficient
2. Foundational models
   • what: picking up hidden patterns, fundamental, possibly unknown, patterns in the data that are predictive of futruefuture climate
   • ClimaX: A foundation model for weather and climate
     • general training: Microsoft trained on the output from five physics-based climate models that simulated the global weather and climate from 1850 to 2015, including factors such as air temperature, air pressure and humidity, simulated on timescales from hours to years
     • fine-tuning on wide-range of tasks: one of it (from a benchmark for comparing AI climate models) was predicted the average surface temperature, daily temperature range and rainfall worldwide from input variables of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, black carbon and methane levels
     • ClimaX predicted state of temperature-related variables better than 3 emulators, but less well in predicting rainfall
   • limitations:
     • true state of future climate is unknown: "Testing climate models against past climate behaviour is useful, but not a perfect measure of how well they can predict a future that’s likely to be vastly different from what humanity has seen before."
     • AI is a black box: “With climate projections, you absolutely need to trust the model to extrapolate,”
3. Hybrids (best of both)
   • what: embed ML components inside physics-based models to produce hybrid models
   • why: ML replaces the parts of conventional models that works less well – typically modelling of small-scale, complex and important processes such as cloud formation, snow cover, and river flows
   • example
     • A machine learning approach to rapidly project climate responses under a multitude of net-zero emission pathways | Communications Earth & Environment

What is the ultimate goal?

create digital models of Earth's systems, partly powered by AI, that can simulate all aspects of the weather and climate down to kilometre scales, with great accuracy and at lightning speed.

more

by nature

• Science and the new age of AI
• Think big and model small
• How machine learning could help to improve climate forecasts
• Harnessing AI and computing to advance climate modelling and prediction

interesting projects

• CliMA – Climate Modeling Alliance
• Earth System Digital Twins - NASA Earth Science and Technology Office
• Destination Earth: Building a highly accurate digital twin of the Earth

DeepMind

• GraphCast: AI model for faster and more accurate global weather forecasting
• Nowcasting the next hour of rain
• What is the Deepmind Nowcasting paper all about? | Real-world Machine Learning
• Google DeepMind’s AI Weather Forecaster Handily Beats a Global Standard

This video popped up in my feed recently: I didn't listen to music for 3 months (a science experiment).

And I never realized I had a music addiction until now.

It convinced me to delete spotify from my Macbook and iPhone yesterday.

Throughout the day, I play music endlessly, leaving no room for silence.

I play songs first thing in the morning, while I'm doing work, while I drive, while I'm in the bathroom, and even outside in shopping malls.

My spotify activity is probably around 6-8 hours a day.

I notice myself being anxious and bored when it's silent and there's no music. My mind would be replaying songs in my head throughout the day and when I got to sleep. I have no pause button for my brain.

Now back to the video.

She references a study done in 2010 on music addiction, and I feel the same way. I had to have music playing for me to start doing my work. I remember times when I forget my airpods and I would feel like I won't be able to get anything done at all. It was like I was crippled and music was my support system.

In today's world, music consumption is ubiquitous and it appears that some individuals, especially among younger people, are unable to function effectively in daily life without continued access to their music of choice – Cockrill et al. 2010

She also defines addiction based on three traits

1. craving or compulsion
2. loss of control
3. persistence of behaviour despite accruing of negative consequences

source: Shaffer et al. 2000

She mentions two benefits of not listening to music all the time from her experiment: heightened presence and emotional clarity

The first one involved being closer to nature and your environment, and little things like hearing conversations from the people around can make you feel more connected to people instead of blocking out the outside world and live in your own world.

The second one is the opposite of emotional confusion. She talked about emotional confusion which helped describe what I've been experiencing the past 3 months.

I'm either numbing my emotions or I'm just exaggerating them with music.

It made me create problems that aren't real, conjuring sadness out of nothing, and just overall made me not live in the moment.

"Listening to sad music induces ambivalent emotion."

– Kawakami et al. 2013

However, she's not advocating that we stop listening to music completely, music has a lot of benefits.

"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest" – Henry David Thoreau

"Music is the universal language of mankind." – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Her advice is to try not listening to music for an hour, a day, or a week if you can and notice how you're feeling. And to be more intentional in listening to music, since we have an unlimited source of music with Spotify, it's easy to overconsume it endlessly.

Today I had this video of Calcifer in the fireplace playing in the background which I think don't count as music, at least not the music I usually listen to all day long.

Also, I did work outside of my room without any music, and I finished writing 3 articles today. I was almost too productive today. I got a slight headache afterwards.

So maybe it's working? I'll need a longer time horizon to tell for sure. Maybe it was a change of my environment. I'll be reporting back in a week.