My Summer

So today is Saturday, October 7th. Yesterday was the end of Week 1 of the quarter, meaning that we have about 10 more weeks before Winter Break, which doesn't seem like a lot.

Summer this year was eventful. Firstly, I joined Smash Gyms for about two months, which I attended in the evenings after coming home from my internship. I attended the Muay Thai and Strength/Conditioning classes mostly. Secondly, I interned this summer at the same place I had interned at last summer, Cadence Design Systems. I enjoyed my time there and I didn't feel very stressed. Thirdly, during the last three weeks of summer break, which were also roughly the first three weeks of September, my parents went to India, leaving me and my brother to take care of the home, which we did.

Now that I am growing older, I feel that I should be more careful about the words I choose, particularly on a public-facing blog like this one. There are pros and cons to this blog being public. The self-critical voice inside my head is not necessarily bad because it motivates me to write well and to choose my words precisely. But in excess, this feeling can stifle the process of thinking and prevent me from writing a sentence that would have been a good sentence if I had allowed myself to write it. But overall, I just need to keep a good attitude toward writing and not develop a hatred towards writing simply because of the possibility of me making mistakes.

This summer, I listened to a new type of music: phonk music. Now, I don't know much about phonk music, but I do know that I like it. Two of my favorite phonk songs are "Cha Cha" and "Limbo".

My parents traveled to India for three weeks around the start of September. While they were gone, I took care of the house, my brother, and my dog. In the daytime, I worked remotely on my internship. I cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner for myself and my brother. Our diet consisted mostly of eggs, chicken, and rice. I bet if I had to, I could comfortably survive for the rest of my life on a diet of solely eggs, chicken, rice, milk, cheese, yogurt, lentils, cheese, roti, ghee, black beans, almonds, mushrooms, and sparkling water. In the evenings, we all went out to the park and spent a couple of hours there. Most days, kids from the neighborhood would come outside and we would play something. At night, I would exercise, watch TV, give my brother his medicine, and we would brush our teeth and go to bed.

Almost every evening this summer, I went out to the neighborhood park. Now, I'm no treehugger or nature-worshipper, but I think long summer evenings are meant to be spent on the grass under the sun, not inside. It's a shame not to be outside when the sun sets during summer. And the days are so long, especially around summer solstice, you almost can't wait for the sun to set (sunset is ~8:32pm around summer solstice in Milpitas) because you are tired and you want to wrap up your day. But then early the next morning, very early actually (~5:47 in Milpitas) the sun says peek a boo, miss me yet? The winter sun, on the other hand, is a bit shadier. It moves across the sky quickly and along the sidelines like it's insecure about something. Like a fat kid embarrassed about being shirtless at the beach. It's confusing because you can see its brightness but for some reason, you can't feel its warmth. And most days, you can't even see it set, it just kind of disappears into a cloud of shame. Or sometimes it hides behind a tall tree and hopes you don't see it. But anyway, that's seasons for you baby.

Fall is pretty good. It's like summer for a while until the first clouds start to come in. And when the first cloudy day comes along, things are never the same again, even if the sun shines. That's how you know when the cold has taken over. Clouds linger well into Spring sometimes and I noticed too that sometimes they like to make a dramatic final appearance in June before going away again for a few months. It's kind of like how dads will sometimes make their kid wait a few minutes extra before dropping them off to a birthday party because they know that the kid is going to have fun at the party no matter what. But yeah, anyway, that's seasons man.

I've exercised pretty much every day since summer started, and if I missed a day, I made it up the next day or over the next few days. I do twenty minutes of cardio, either running or biking, followed by some strength exercises. Five minutes of squats. Five minutes of situps. Ten minutes of standing dumbell exercises: squat, bicep curl, overhead press, skullcrushers, lat raises, front raises. Start with one rep of each exercise, in order. Then repeat, but with two reps per exercise Then three. Then four. Back to three. Then two. Then repeat. 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2-... At home, I do this with eight-pound dumbells. At university, in the gym I go to, the closest they have to that is ten-pound dumbells, so I do my exercises with those. I can definitely feel the difference, though. With ten-pound dumbells I can do around 3 cycles of 1-2-3-4-3-2 in ten minutes. With eight-pound dumbells I can do a bit more.

Most weekdays during July and August, I went to Smash Gyms, so I wouldn't follow this regimen. But on weekends I would and when I was home alone with my brother in September I would. Before this summer, my regimen was different. I would still do twenty minutes of cardio. I would do situps and squats, but only three minutes of each, and with a fifteen second break pre minute. Turns out I don't really need that break in between it seems. Plus I can do both situps and squats with a ten to fifteen pound weight-plate or slam ball. And instead of ten minutes dumbell exercises, I would do ten minutes of 5 pullups and 10 pushups ("nickel-and-dime" -Goggins) : ten sets, one set per minute. I started strength training in spring of 2022, probably around May: before then I would only run or bike. Before I could barely do five sets of these nickel-and-dime exercises.

When I write, I feel vulnerable at times because I am revealing information about myself. The way I think. The things I think about. The way I organize my sentences. My grammatical knowledge. The extent of my vocabulary. The depth of my analysis when I analyze something. That's not to say that I don't have the ability to regulate what I choose to write about. But generally, I wouldn't write about anything on this blog unless I was at least a little interested in it. This blog is mostly just me writing down things that I think about and that's the way it has been for at least a little over a year. And my goal is primarily to just not write anything that is untrue. And secondarily, I also aim to not reveal any sensitive information about myself that definitely shouldn't be revealed like my social security number. Now that I think about it, I don't know what else there is that I would absolutely not write about other than my password or my credit card number or something. I mean there are a lot of things that I wouldn't really like to write about but I wouldn't say that I shouldn't write about them publicly. I'm basically open to writing about anything. Though some things may be more difficult to write about than others because I am embarrassed or I don't know the right way to think about them.

If I had to pick one word to describe my internship this summer, it would be "good". Yeah my internship was good, I would say. It was nice and neat. All packaged up into twelve weeks. It culminated in an hour-long presentation on the second-last day of the internship. And on the last day, I pushed all my commits to Github and worked on replication documentation. My favorite part was probably whenever I worked on coding a new feature because it was a task that actually seemed bounded and measurable and achievable. My least favorite part was probably keeping track of the time I worked. Because for every hour that I counted in my work log, I felt an obligation to make that hour count for my dear company- to be a useful and honorable employee. And for every hour that I didn't work, I remembered the opportunity for extra money that I was foregoing by not working. On the positive side, it made me reflect on my productivity on a biweekly basis. Funnily enough, though, this process of time-logging made me rather uneasy.

One thing that I realized about myself is that I am a chronic daydreamer. Feed me and bathe me and put me in front of a computer to work. And chances are that I will drift off into a daydream. Because think about it. Why wouldn't a clean, clothed, well-fed man sitting at a computer want to daydream when there are so many interesting things to think about? Oh boy, and especially with those ergonomic chairs. Why is comfort something that employers ever started to provide in the first place?

Speaking of comfortable workspaces, I visited Expedia's office in Seattle back in August. Actually I visited Seattle. Actually I visited my former roommate and friend from last schoolyear for a couple of days, who interned this summer at the Expedia office in Seattle. He invited me over to stay at his hotel room. Just as friends of course. Since he had an extra bed in his room. I think he might have invited me as a joke, he told me when I was there that he didn't think that I would come. But when I packed my bags and told him I was coming he probably realized that I was talking him seriously.

He is from Pakistan and he is a Muslim, but just to be clear, I harbor no feelings of animosity towards him on the basis of his ethnicity, religion, or national background. As far as I can tell, these aspects of his identity do not come in the way of us being good friends. Funny how if we were living fifty years ago, our ethnic and religious backgrounds would have mattered a lot more but nowadays they pretty much don't matter at all.

Cultural erosion has occurred and we have lost our identities. And now we are left floating around in a kind of limbo, uncertain of the values that we really hold dear to our hearts. The Muslims have stopped praying three times a day and the pope is a climate change activist. The world has flipped upside down. I myself don't know how the God(s) I worship, as a Hindu (nominally, unfortunately, though I hope to change), are any different from the Christian God. Religious people all seem similar to me, at least those who worship a formal, well-established system of religion. The cultural lines are blurring as the effects of globalization become more pronounced through the Internet and social media. Everybody is turning beige. "Beige power" -Theo Von. But as we get rid of certain cultural distinctions, we create others, just to remind ourselves of the ways in which we are different. But this is a whole can of worms I don't wish to open right now.

Oh yeah, back to comfortable workspaces. Expedia. Their entire campus seems comfortable, too comfortable. With all the couches, TVs, free food, scenery, and decorations, one could almost forget wandering through the building that it is an office building and not a hotel or an airport. They had free food, which is a ridiculous concept in my opinion. Like they had rows of snacks and beverages in large refrigerators scattered throughout the building. It almost feels undignified to call that place a place of work. And you know what would feel the worst? Getting fired from this office. It would feel more like getting kicked off a cruise ship than being fired. And how could you negotiate with the person firing you without feeling at least a little embarrassed?

"Oh why do you want to still work for us? Our records indicate you ate fifty packets of carrots and hummus from our fridge just last week! And you spent an average of 90 minutes per day playing ping-pong downstairs, not including your lunch break! You really think you are worth anything at our company?! You are a waste of company resources!" And my heart breaks a little. True, it is their fault for being gluttonous and lazy. But oh, how can you blame them as an employer for indulging in sins that you tempted them to commit in the first place? You spent your enormous budget on making the place as luxurious and inhospitable to work as you could and now you act surprised when people don't work?  You deviously tempt the people who work for you into laziness and gluttony and watch them with an evil smile each time you see anyone open up the fridge through your covert security cameras. And you catch them at their most vulnerable and shameful moment, when their hand is in the cookie jar, and you publicly deride and humiliate them. But your goal all along was to get them to put their hand into the cookie jar, just so you could catch them and make them cry. I see your plan and it is truly evil. You really ought to be ashamed. So yeah, come on Expedia. Treat your employees with a little dignity. End the open workspace. Give them a cubicle, a little portion of the office that belongs to them. Is that so much to ask for? Keep the snacks but start charging a small fee for them. Send them reminders if they are working too little or failing to meet company expectations--keep nudging them in the right direction. Remember, you want your employees to succeed; you don't want to allow your employees to act poorly and to fire them in a fit of rage, even though you will get to feel like a victim and maybe even justifiably so. But sadly, this is not what you are doing right now, Expedia. This is probably your way of getting revenge at the unions. Unions vs. corporations: a never-ending feud.

And I'm not exactly on the side of unions, either. In the cases where rich corporations abuse their poor employees, I imagine that the unions are truly a force for good, like a protective mother who stands up to her son's bully at school. But I don't know if that is the complete story. Unions like to take credit for the employee's entire wages, as though the unions were the ones paying the money out of their own pockets, as though the corporations would pay nil to their employees were it not for the protective unions. Unions regularly remind their members of how much tougher they would have had it without the union and exaggerate the plight of workers prior to unionization. And they capitalize on this feeling of fear and gratitude by charging all members a membership fee. The more afraid the unions can make their members afraid of their own employers, the better, because the employees will feel indebted to the unions. And guess what? When people feel indebted, their conscience tells them to pay, especially if they are good people! The unions get more money. Symbolically speaking, the union is the infant-bearing mother and the corporation is the masculine patriarch. There are two ways of looking at it. Either the union is the benevolent "mama-bear" mother who defends her infant by warding off the criminal, predatorial evil man. Or the union is the narcissistic devouring mother who self-servingly defames the competent, good-hearted leader to prevent her infant from growing up, becoming tough, and following the leader instead of depending on her. So there are two sides to both union and corporation, and both are plausible stories to tell depending on the context.

This past week, I attended an orientation by the union at my university, which we were told was mandatory to attend, although what justified this mandate or what punishment was being threatened is unclear to me. One of the speakers at the event kept referring to the role of the union in "intimidating" and "twisting the arm of" the people in charge of UCLA's funds. Which I found off-putting. Because who in the right mind, when convincing people to join their "good cause", advertises themselves as somebody who intimidates other people? Come on, intimidation and arm-twisting is bad! Religion 101, anybody? In Christianity, the story of Jesus tells us that we have an obligation to love our enemies, or at least try to love them. And the story of Jonah tells us that it is our moral obligation to talk to our enemies when we see them acting wrongly and to encourage them to change their ways, rather than to sit back and watch what they have burn down, or worse, to exacerbate their bad situations.

So, the speaker was wrong to say that the purpose of unions is to intimidate. Unless, of course, that person has become so disillusioned with humanity, and particularly the evil masculine aspect of humanity, that they think that dirty fighting is an acceptable course of action by default. So firstly, I think a little gratitude is in order on the part of the employed. At minimum, for the money that they are being given by their employers, if not as well for the membership in an organization doing productive work collectively, which university research labs definitely do. And how about not blocking traffic or throwing a tantrum in the middle of the street like a toddler, which is all that I am reminded of when I look at union protests? Last year I saw graduate students protesting along their picket line, and nothing about their demeanor struck me as dignified, mature, or compromising. And I don't mean just the fact that they were refusing to work. I mean their shrill cries, their cringeworthy military-style chants, and their "Honk if..." signs. I would be embarrassed to participate in such a childish act of rebellion. So I don't know if last year, the circumstances of graduate student pay justified a worker strike, but even if it did, they definitely did it wrong.

And so, my reader, this was originally meant to be a post about my summer, but as you can tell, I digressed a little. I hope that this post will be a testament to the fact that I am an undisciplined thinker and that I am prone to allowing the stream of my thoughts to branch off into little tangential rivulets (which are interesting too in their own right). "He has ADHD, put him on meds!" I dislike medication in general but particularly psychiatric treatment-related medication. I don't like that it interferes with the conscience or thoughts. Suppressing the conscience, by the way, is what I think anxiety-reducing medication does. But from a religious perspective, people have regarded the conscience as divine for a really long time--it is outside our control and it tells us things we don't always like, but it is the way that God tells us important things that we ought to know and follow for our own good. But now our conscience is not really outside of our control, since we have medication. Plus I don't feel comfortable with the idea of intrusively messing with my bodily faculties, including the faculty of thinking. Even the idea of surgery makes me uneasy sometimes because of its unnatural nature.

Oh yeah, I also learned how to drive this summer. I got my driver's license. I practiced for probably about ten hours, two hours with an instructor, and a few hours with my dad and a couple with my mom. I took the test at the DMV and passed with a 14/15. 14/15 allowed mistakes that is. If I had made two more mistakes I would have failed the test! I was going to say a terrible joke but I think it's too risky. Oh hell, life's too short for this nonsense, I'll say it. I was kind of disappointed that I made so many mistakes. I thought I would be better at driving because I'm not a woman, but I guess I'm technically an Asian too so that just brings me back to square one. You see, there's this terrible stereotype about women and Asians being bad drivers. And it's terrible, you see, because it's probably not true (the woman one might be tbh), but it somehow became a terrible stereotype, you see. And now that it's a stereotype and now because it is common knowledge, terrible stereotypes like these just pop into my head, even though they're terrible. They're terribly funny! And the tyrants of cancel culture can't make up their minds about what the parameters of punishable behavior are. They play with the idea of reputation destruction like a cat plays with a mouse. The killing is a game to them--they get away with as much destruction as they can get away with, it thrills them! Just so long as no blood gets spilled on their clean clothes. And if they're not in the mood to catch the mouse, they'll just leave it alone.

"Hey, Hannah! I'm bored today, what should we do?"

"Ooh let's find a man who has done something wrong and send him off to jail"

"Oh cool, we'll do it on Twitter so no one sees who we are!"

"Haha sounds like fun!"

So anyway, I got my driver's license. Probably the most embarrassing part of my driver's license is not my picture but the part that says my height. I'm only five foot seven, can you believe it?! It's alright though, sometimes I like being a clown. I enjoy making other people laugh, it fills my heart with love. Plus it's a good exercise of humility, which helps protect myself against the sin of pride, which I think I am particularly prone to commit. So if being a little lowly is part of that process, so be it. The role of the fool was always a lowly one, and it was also a risky one. Especially if the joke was misunderstood by the ruler. "Off with the fool's head!"

So yeah, that pretty much summarizes my summer. Internship, smash gyms, going to the park. Oh yeah, on weekends, I would often not do very productive things. In fact, sometimes I would do counterproductive things which shall not be mentioned presently. For entertainment, I would just do what I enjoyed doing. Which oftentimes is listening to the people I like on YouTube. Jordan Peterson, Theo Von, Norm Macdonald, Joe Rogan, Mark Normand, The Athlete Special. I watched Norm Macdonald's movie Dirty Work recently, which I like. It isn't his movie but he's in it, and he's the only reason I watched it.

When my parents went to India, some moms from the neighborhood dropped off dinner for my brother and me. Which I felt was nice but also very embarrassing at the same time. My brother and I would have survived even if they didn't give us food. But not to be ungrateful, it was very generous of those aunties. My mom had so much food delivered to our home that I was almost afraid the fridge would explode. We must have had about 10 packs of boxed sliced mushrooms and 30 pounds of frozen chicken in the freezer. If there was one thing that I felt was always running out it was salt. But that's only because salt is a sneaky little condiment. It disappears into your food while you are making it and you hardly even notice. Especially with chicken. Chicken transports salt into a different galaxy or something because I can often hardly taste the salt in chicken even if I put a good amount.

This year at university I am staying at a co-op, which is nice. Prices are cheap, meals are included, just like in the dorms. Rooms are old, but good. The building I am in was built in the 1930s. And it shows. Parties supposedly happen frequently so some of the doors are covered in graffiti. Prices are cheap because all the members work four-hour chore shifts per week. We are also required to clean our own bathrooms. College students being responsible, can you believe it? Supposedly, there is corruption inside the organization, specifically in the Board of Directors, which is not unexpected for a student-run organization independent of the university. So I'll keep my eyes peeled. I like the people, there are not that many, so I recognize a lot of them already. People play table tennis and pool in the lounge area, which is cool. I played chess with a few people too, which is nice. Location is closer to the university so it is faster to walk than it was from the apartment. Food is nice, they even make Indian food a lot interestingly enough, though they must be embarrassed to admit it. "Lentil soup" is their code word for Dal. Sneaky, sneaky. They have a small gym in the garage, with a punching bag. I sparred with some people yesterday, which I enjoyed. Overall, it is a place that is a little shabby perhaps by the standards of the university dorms and apartments but certainly not lacking in vivacity.

I am doing research under the same professor as before. I met the lab members, they seem nice and smart. Professor is organizing a sort of dinner next week. Planned socialization is awkward, especially with coworkers or professional peers, but it should work out. I have been assigned two projects to work on and one project on the side to do. Two classes on top of that. Need to learn how to be more efficient with my time, that would be a good thing. Work seems interesting enough, fortunately. Analog circuits class will be difficult for me, I predict. Computer architecture class should be decent.

Birthday was last week, had a party last Sunday. Neighborhood friends came over, and the whole affair was nice. We talked outside in the backyard. Then we came inside and had pizza and cake. Most people brought presents. Most of them brought money, one brought chocolates. I would rather have a $5 yo-yo than $31 in cash. Because the right thing to do when you receive money is to save it, not to spend it. But you can't really save a yo-yo, it doesn't really fit in your piggy bank. And selling it is not an efficient solution, it takes too long. And how embarrassing would it be if the person who gave you the yo-yo found out that you tried selling it. I also prepared a small shopping list on Temu, which my dad ordered for my birthday. The total was $17, which is high enough to get some good stuff from Temu, but low enough for me to not feel like a spoiled brat, which is what I would have felt like if the total had been $31 or higher. I got a belt, a pendant, a bracelet, a watch, and some card-shaped throwing darts which also double as bottle openers. I also got a backpack, but that was not for my birthday, specifically.

On the morning of the day of my birthday, I went on a walk for a few hours. I first stopped at the Milpitas Library, where I looked at the illustrations in "Beyond Order". I enjoyed gazing at them. I then walked to the Great Mall, where I browsed around trying to find something good to buy. I stopped at Dick's Sporting Goods and was looking at the soccer balls and basketballs, but when I saw their price tags my mouth gaped in astonishment. $31! I wouldn't pay more than $20 for my great-grandma's dentures, let alone a brand-new soccer ball! I'm just kidding, I don't even know who my great-grandma is or which ones are still alive. I sat down in one of the massage chairs because my legs were tired. I didn't spend any money to get the machine going because I didn't think that was a worthwhile investment. But anyway, as I was sitting, I saw my old classmate from high school walk past me so I called out his name. He didn't hear me, so I called out his name again. He didn't hear me again, so I called out his name again. He still didn't hear me. Well, there was this Mexican grandpa sitting next to me on one of the massage chairs and I didn't want to seem like a coward so I got up and chased after my friend. It seems my old friend may or may not have had hearing problems, but he certainly didn't have feeling problems because he turned around when I put my hand on his shoulder. We then had a roughly two-minute conversation after deciding that we had done enough catching up probably for about the next five years. I felt that way, although I didn't say that. Why, that would be impolite! It was my first time seeing him in nearly four years (last seen Winter 2020). And then I walked around and then walked back home. Oh yeah, I also bought some food. I bought a Gatorade and an energy bar from the Milpitas library. And then I bought two more energy bars from a store at Great Mall. That kept me satiated for a while. And then that night, I hopped on a bus and went to LA. Anyway, in the words of Norm Macdonald, "That's it! Bye!"