If possible, I would like my readers to savor that same emotion when they read my books. I want to open a window in their souls and let the fresh air in. This is what I think of, and hope for, as I write—purely and simply

― Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation

professor had an emergency so meeting was delayed, met with B instead. he's really good at cutting straight the BS and asks the right questions. he told me the most important part of ML papers is the loss function. what is the goal of the architecture? how is the model learning? you learn so much about what you actually know, and what you don't know when you try to explain a paper. watching myself blank out when asked about something i can't answer, it's unpleasant, but rewarding for my own growth.

i'm am getting tired of literature review, i want to start coding. it's difficult when data is scarce and unpaired, but there will be a solution. what i love about research is it can be a team effort. you can work through things together, and arrive at a solution together. the melding of two minds from different backgrounds.

built a habit of staying home that there's inertia from leaving the house. i keep overthinking. i blame usps for delaying my muji package.

went to the library to return books that are due, books that i got way back in july. it's a sign of the times? i remember feeling so hopeful for getting through those books, the novelty of seeing new books in my house, and the possibility of learning from them, and applying the lessons in my life, writing about them, but i barely touched them. it's difficult to build a reading habit. there's so much going on.

i also thought about how to inject novelty in the mundane, photography is a good way, you can capture the same thing in a thousand different ways. music can add another layer of colors to your life, but how else? gratitude can help you realize the blessings in your life, and not take peace and boredom for granted. perhaps it's also serendipitous connections. big cities can be lonely, you can walk past hundreds of people everyday and not make any connections with a single one. meeting and talking to different people is like a breath of fresh air, it's new perspective, new ways of seeing things. it challenges you to think differently. it forces you to adapt. i need more novelty, and to have that, i need to do more things that make me uncomfortable.