Tchaikovsky: the Seasons, op37a June
1/3/2021 happy new year! Let’s starttttttt a new year with some music?!
June is one of my favorite pieces and I seldom got tired of playing it. I sometimes heard the rain dropped from the roof, sometimes is the thunderstorm. There are also the conversations going on here and there. Very amazing moments!
This time let’s do 5 pages!!! Due to the sickness last year, I was put it off from time and time. So you can hear that I forgot the notes here and there. I also coughed somewhere in the middle 🙂 And there are some buzzes at the end (why??) … Hope it is okay to you :D. At least, it is a friendly version with the mark of processing of making it, ha 😉
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qzVtJ7OTi0jikwrx2_9Sx2ZvRZxzWC5p/view?usp=sharing
The Asteroid
12/20/20 This year, I submitted two ICSE papers. Before rebuttal, one got the scores of 3 3 1, and the other got 3 (weak accept) 4 (accept) 2 (weak reject). Guess what? At the end, the first one is accepted and the second one is rejected with a wrong metareview. For a long time, I was not able to resolve this internally. Then one day, I found myself on Amazon and selecting boxing bag and glove 😀
“It is a kite!” some one pointed at a little dot
“Where is the string?” another one answered with a little nod
It must be an asteroid, born with the gravity by god
The asteroid has some fog
where the clouds shaped like a frog
I carried a rod
Still tripped by a log
Waiting for the sound of a pop
But found myself falling on a soft knot
Aha, blessed a lot
I toasted with a shot
Wish you a Merry Merry Christmas
Hospital Zine (4)
12/6/20 Remember I stupidly attacked by a goose in summer :)? It was a scary experience! Recently, I went back to that goose attacking road. The road is still dominated by those vicious geese, and my legs felt heavy. BUT hey, we need to stand up where we have fallen, aren’t we?!
I hope to leave all the hospital experience in 2020. So I am hurrying up to finish my “hospital zine” 🙂
Page 5: the special covid era
Hospitals have run some covid protocols: for example, before you can enter a building, people will measure your body temperature and ask about any covid symptoms that may exist. Patients are asked to sit 1-2 meters away from the doctors in the visiting rooms. The doctors, nurses and the patients all required to have masks on and some doctors (not many) weared the face shields.
But after you stayed a bit longer in the hospital, you know that the luck is needed to avoid covid infection. One time a young worker was helping me wear the ecg attachment. I noticed that his mask was thin like a paper and did not fully covered his mouth. He told me, “I am going to attend a friend birthday party next week in another state”. I was like … eh … The other day, I was in the pre-operation room. A nurse was helping me with IV and we were chatting. “Do you guys have periodical covid tests?” “No, we just advised to not come when there is a fever or symptoms on the list”. When I was staying over night at the hospital, the nurse told me “you are the only one who wears masks when I am in the room. The mandatory mask order just came in today.” On the top level connected to the building where I stayed, Mayo kept all the covid patients. When I was waiting in the pharmacy of this building and surrounded by tons of people, my feet were quivering. The worker who pushed me into the pharmacy told me that “lucky that none of our wheelchair cohort have caught the covid yet”. I really respect these hospital workers!
All the patients who do invasive operations will need to do a covid-test (both swap in the nose and antibodies in the blood). The swap test is nasty and I did not recommend it.
Page 6: the modern hospitals
I am a beneficiary of modern hospital technologies. So I have happily detonated my blood, specimen and survey data for their research.
Here is this amazing operation done by the radiology department. The surgeon inserts a wire shaped long probe through my vein into my internal organ to read the hormone level in certain positions. The whole process is guided through the ultra-sound and there is a giant TV in the operating room. I was sedated so I can hear the surgeon and the nurses’ conversations. I can sort of feel the probe moving around in my body. Very few doctors in this world can perform this operation with high successful rates.
My main surgery is laparoscopic. In this surgery, my blood pressure needs to be closely monitored (there were patients who died in such surgeries because of unmanageable blood pressure). The monitoring is not done through cuff on the arm. Instead, they stick a needle into my vein and read it directly from there and thus more accurately. This is all happening when I was asleep. I just noticed giant bruises here and there when I waked up. I think this is due to the blood thinning medicine used during surgery.
During the surgery, the patients need to be supplied with a lot of fluid. When I waked up from anesthesia, my first reaction is not “pain” but “need to pee”. The nurse called the urology team and they used some kind of “vacuum machine” and emptied my bladder in a few minutes. Scary!
I have visited a variety of test departments in Mayo. I know that the blood station in the Mayo Building is the best (fast and no pain) among 5 or 6 blood stations in the area. The nurses gave you shots and IV before high contrast imaging. When the dye goes into the vein, you immediately feel the warmth. The nurse told me that anything going to the vein reacts very fast. The most funny exam is the bone density test. You laid down under a giant scanner. Then the scanner moves back and forth from the top to the bottom of your body. This exam cost me more than $200 even after insurance. Mayo also can do remote tests. See below this iceboxes (bloodtubes are inside) they sent to me lately. I had done once: first freezing my blood and then shipped it back with dry ice through overnight FedEx, lol, it sounds crazy!
Page 7: wow, the handsome surgeons!!
Working with smart and good-looking people is a joy, even as a patient. The surgeon from the radiology department talked very succinctly in the operating room and wrote a beautiful report from the technical writing point of view :).He comes and goes mysteriously and I even did not see his face. My impression is that he is short and has a clean shape and movement.
My main surgeon looks sporty and wears a fashionable bag across his shoulder when he came to visit me in the operating room before the surgery. He said something like “we will take a good care of you, you are in good hands”. I gave him a big smile even I was already laying down on the operation table and waiting to be cut open :D. I also had a very handsome anesthesia resident who helped put a tube in my throat! When the medicine came in, I looked at the clock in front of me and listened to his gentle and friendly voice. I still clearly remembered the process from consciousness to unconsciousness. I was thinking “ah, I understand why people would select Euthanasia”. Then I fell asleep 🙂
What do we know about the climate change?
11/29/20 Ames area only has this little crack on the ground for our poor people to do elevated hikes. When the weather is nice, everybody comes. After “hiking”, it feels like “ah, this is a nice parade” 🙂 I had to do some off-trail walk to pick up the hiking feeling. Miss Mt Rainer, Grand Canyon, Adirondacks, Rocky mountains … even blue ridge is alright 🙂
After tenure, I definitely felt more free to explore the problems I care. Although I am not yet doing research in “climate change” and “global warming”. I felt the responsibility to talk about it. It is sad to see those terms become buzzwords and hard to connect to people. So today, let me make them concrete.
Let’s start with corals. Corals are animals. They are self-sufficient in that there are plants that live inside coral and make food for coral through photosynthesis. In recent years, corals are dying in a historically fast speed. Scientists estimated that if corals continue dying in this speed, we will no longer have corals on earth after 30 years. Corals to marine life is like buildings to people. Fishes have their fixed home in corals. They go out in the morning for food and come back at night to corals. If all the corals died, what about fishes? then what about us? Coral itself have been contributing to medicine including cancer-curing medicine.
How is global warming related to coral dying? Scientists observed that the ocean water is coming “hotter” in recent years. Corals are very sensitive to the water temperature, even 1C or 2C can cause them “bleach”. What is a “coral bleach”? When the water temperature rises, the photosynthesis in the coral is impaired. The corals “think” that the plants inside are malfunctioning and try to eject them. As a result, corals go starving, turn to white and then die.
Now let’s talk about the north pole and south pole. In the north pole, in summer, the amount of ice is reduced vastly. Seals use ice to build a “defense” for their babies. When there is less ice, their babies are exposed and easily caught by the polar bears. Polar bears live on ice. When the ice is all melt, where the polar bears can go? Walrus used to live on ice near where they get their food. Now, the ice is disappearing in summer. Many walruses are piled each other on a small beach. Some were stepped by their peers to death. Some tried to climb up over cliffs and fall down to death. These are documented in our cameras. In the south pole, the ice traps a lot of algaes. It is a food source for krill (looks like a shrimp but not a shrimp). This krill is then a food source for penguins and whales. If we no longer have ice, what will happen for this food chain?
This above is just a part of the effect of global warming. To avoid buzzwords, we don’t have to use the term “global warming”, but the facts are: we detected the rising of the ocean temperature deviated from the historical trend. The warming killed corals and melt the ice near south and north poles in summer. We observed that many animals rely on ice for food and shelters. The major cause is believed to be CO2 (I have done some research and found that data centers also contributed to quite the carbon footprint).
The dreams created by Antoni Gaudí
11/22/33 Semester is over! Thanksgiving is coming! Vaccine is on the horizon! Ya li Ya li Ya li Ya! … Hilary Mantel (an English author) said that people like Princess Diana because of her human awkwardness and emotional incontinence. I don’t have much impression about Diana, but I do feel a resonance in that people with such nature are very attractive.
In my latest dream, I was traveling in North Korea. There are many brown hills. I was in a tourist group waiting for a bus that can ship us to a cave. It is a famous tourist site because the entire cave contains a giant clownish smile face … Wonderful! I suspect that insane people have crazier dreams?!?! Anyways, I am not gonna see a physiatrist for my insanity! Last time, when I saw one and attempted to discuss my surgery, I was “kicked out” probably because I looked too bored there, LOL
As I am getting older, I understand and appreciate the “surrealism” a lot more. It can extend the dream to reality and encodes reality with dreaming elements. Dream and reality no longer can be separated. You forget the time and you get lost in the four dimension space-time … Gaudí‘s work brings you such an experience.
The following is Casa Batlló @ Barcelona. Gaudí used curves for each window. See the snow coming from one window? The building in the middle is “hollow” for introducing sunlights, and the fake snows are blowed from the top like the snow blowing around in the cold dark night under the streetlights.
Casa Milla is another cool building designed by Gaudí. It is famous for it’s roof. “Wow, this is a dessert!” I said this when I walked out of the elevator. I have never seen something like this. (bear with me for my lame pictures)
Dreams are also extended to the park. Did you see yummy cakes! This is Parc Güell
Even, church can be made dreamy. This is the famous Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. In Europe, you can see so many churches. At the end, when you see a very impressive church, you are like “oh, this is just another church”. But this one is quite different. The inside is bright and white-ish with many colors.
This church is so big and complicated that even today, it is not finished. Constructions are still going on to finish the Gaudí’s design.
We lived right across this church, so I got a chance to walk around at night when all the tourists are gone.
In the morning, when I opened my window, I see this:
If you reserve online you can also go up to the top of the church. It felt mathematical behind these shots.
My 1995
11/15/20 In the previous years, I can spend $20 renting a skii set from school to enjoy an entire weekend. This year this benefit is no longer possible with hundreds of covid cases confirmed every week in our campus. So I bought a XC skii set (luxurious :)). I also have a snowtube myself too. Now I am looking forward to snow. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow 😀 This is our Oct snow, but not enough!
What were you doing in 1995? I wrote this book. The three characters in the title are translated as “following” “fate” “hall”. Yucky, when I looked at this gaudy title right now, I almost throwed up 😀
This book is written for a friend. We haven’t talked for years, but recently, he sent me a message and asked me to feel free to reach out to him if I need any help during pandemics. That brought me back some nostalgic mood, so I digged out this book. This book collected a set of STEM questions we have discussed in school. The questions were made up by ourselves, coming from our daily study life. Some were discussed sneakily during classes (he and I sat across a small hallway). Some were discussed and argued among a bunch of friends (sometimes even teachers were involved). Here are some examples of short questions.
(1) a car is driving s meters ahead of you with a speed of v1. What is the average speed you should use to catch up the car so that within time t, you can drive in parallel with the car in the speed of v1. (easy?!?! :))
(2) we have a a bucket with the gravity of G and height h. How much “Work” it takes to pull this bucket out of water with a constant speed.
(3) One triangle can cover two identical circles, what is the maximum radius the circle can have? (wow, this one has two pages of answers)
(4) What energy the spaceships use to fly in space and how they decide the directions in space?
(5) In a raining day, one person does not carry an umbrella. If he wants to go home, no matter what speed he uses, he would take the same amount of water. Prove or disprove.
I wrote a postface for this book three years later in 1998. “Those questions are doodled in pieces of papers and carried around in our pockets. We have discussed and argued. In retrospect, it is a very pure and beautiful period of school life.”
Behind the book, there were quite a lot of funny stories between me and this guy. One day, we were arguing about a very niche word. At the lunch time, he went home (very far) and carried back a giant book (very heavy) of dictionary for us to study further. I was like “AH?” when I saw him with a giant book in his hand and ran out of breaths standing at the door of our classroom. Another time, in our craft class, he borrowed my scissor, gave me back, borrowed my scissor, gave me back, back and forth many times. Later his desk-mate told me that “Mr. X said if he kept bugging you to borrow your scissor, you would get annoyed and just let him keep it” 😀 There were some sweet moments too. I lived far from school. Later, he moved closer to my home. When my girl friends and I took bus home, we sometimes can see that he was riding bike hard and trying to catch our bus. We exchanged some looks and the girls were then laughing hard.
A man and a woman can have different kinds of relationships, friends, soulmates, family, sex partners, lovers … I think between me and him, it is mostly a friendship. Then what happened later is no longer fun to me. At some point, he copied me a love poem. Quite a lot of years later when I arrived in US, he asked if he can be my boyfriend … I don’t know why I did not follow up the love path with him. I am sure it would be a safe and sweet path. But what is love? Maybe what “fleabag” said is true:
“Love is awful. It’s awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own. I was taught if we’re born with love then life is about choosing the right place to put it. People talk about that a lot, feeling right, when it feels right it’s easy. But I’m not sure that’s true. It takes strength to know what’s right. And love isn’t something that weak people do. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope. I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope“
Hospital Zine (3)
11/8/20 I only watched a bit presidential debate, but I was laughing so hard. Biden said, “we need to improve energy efficiency of our houses” Trump said “he wants you to have this tiny window. You know what, why not we just don’t use window, no window is the most energy efficient …” “Left?! I don’t know what I should call him” “even 200 feet away, he has this biggest mask that I have ever seen” 😀 Salute to our crazy past 4 years!
Page 4 Medical decisions
This issue may read heavy. But everybody perhaps needs to make medical decisions at some point. So I want to share my experience and hope to bring you some reference.
The earliest evidence of my sickness can trace back to the beginning of 2018. My blood pressure is abnormal when I was at the eye doctor’s office doing routine check-up. But I did not pay attention (advice here: be serious about your health at any time; an early treatment is always good). One year later in 2019 Jan, I again was told to have the abnormal blood pressure at the eye doctor’s office, so I went to see my local provider. She prescribed me some medication. I asked why I had this condition. She said “some people get this condition early in their age related to their family history. Maybe you are just that unlucky!” I asked her to refer me to Mayo. She said, “well, we can do any tests here that Mayo can do, I don’t see the reason for referral. Okay, how about let’s do a stress test for your heart.” The exam shows that my heart functions normal, but my intuition is that the story is not yet over. I talked to my family. My parents don’t know US hospital systems and felt incapable to help. My husband thinks that all the doctors are the same. Advice here: be an independent thinker!
In 2019 Nov, finally I waited until I can change my insurance. I then called Mayo and tried to make an appointment. Mayo made me fill all the survey forms and questionnaires before I can see the right-matched expert. By the time I saw my doctor, it was already May. My doctor was the top expert in this area. In the first visit, she proposed a hypothesis on what might be wrong with me and prescribed a set of lengthy exams. Later for a few months, I went through these exams and it turned out that every result was as she predicted.
Because of the covid, every hospital visit is like to go to the front lines. One time, I got up 5am something and drove about 3 hours to do a CT. At that time, my friend already told me that her father died from a similar medical condition. On my way, I suddenly thought “what if my CT results are not good, and I could mentally collapse and not able to drive back?” “SHIT, I’LL DRIVE BACK ANYWAYS”, I shouted at myself in the car 🙂 I remember that Ian Goodfellow said when he was waiting for his CT result, he was worrying that his research ideas are not able to be finished. I went for a hiking during the 4 hours I was waiting for my CT results. I was thinking what I am not able to finish but not what I am not able to get; indeed very few things matter. It was a very thought-provoking day for me 🙂 I drove back after all around 7 or 8pm that day. I felt so thankful for the smiles the CT nurse had given to me.
After the diagnosis is done, the choice is whether to take medications for the rest of your life or to do a surgery. The surgery cure is relatively new. I sat on my porch for a few days and literally read many papers to understand different perspectives. I finally decided to do a surgery and decided to go through it by myself. I felt happy to keep my family safe from covid and caused minimum troubles for them.
The Boring Exhibitions (2)
Today, I am a curator! Some of the videos made by my friends are just too cool to not share!
About the author: Jinjin’s videos are artistic and have a comprehensive effect of music, words and video. The first video is great to address everybody who lives very hard for the covid life. The caption says: “one person, fighting” “actually, you are not alone” “to us who is fighting but not alone”.
The following video records colorful landscape in the south west part of China. In China, people now can eat at the restaurants, watch movies and travel domestically (with some restrictions). I appreciate western culture’s freedom spirit. But I also hope people can make exceptions for the pandemics. That way, after 2 months of lock down, we can come back to a normal life.
I missed the edgeless metropolitan skylines, did you?
I like the color of this construction site …
About the author: According to Jinjin and Davis, atppp excels at his technical skills, e.g., the angle of flying the drone. He is the first one who bought the drone. Then he talked Davis, Jinjin and some other friends into it. After a long time, they failed to make me buy one (I am too mean :)), he finally said that “give me your address, I will buy one for Jeremy!” Wow, no wonder all of his friends buy drones 🙂
I like the ones that chase trains and also the serpent road embedded in the vast open colorful forest …
About the author: Davis is the first one who liked photography. Then he talked Jinjin and atppp into it. Davis spent much time in Tibet, and so his scenes are quite different.
He has a very cool video called “the dance of clouds”. It is too big to upload so I pasted some pictures here. Let me share a funny story about him. One time, one of my friends decided to go to Tibet with him. But after driving more than 10 hours before reaching Tibet, my friend got off his car and took the airplane back home. She still looked horrified when she was telling us the story “Davis drove crazily, so scary!!!” I laugh so hard every time I think of this story.
Picasso Museum
10/10/20 Early January, I sent a postcard from Vatican to a friend in China. Because of the pandemic, this card arrived in its destination on 5.27, and it is my friend’s birthday, yo 😀 The most exaggerate birthday of her is that one year, I wrote a riddle on the card indicating where I was. She solved it. When she arrived, I pushed out a birthday cake in some very dark lecture hall. Later, I wrote an article on the magazine “am I a lesbian?!” The editor said it is very good. HAHA
The cool thing about some European museums is that you can see the entire lifetime work of an artist! There are two museums in Spain dedicated to Picasso, one is in Málaga (where he was born) and the other is in Barcelona (where he lived).
The first one has a long line, and the second one only accepts online reservations (1 or 2 days ahead will just be fine) so no lines at all.
Who misses lines and people ?!?!
(Malaga)
the street in front of Museo Picasso (Barcelona)
Unlike Van Gogh, Picasso is an academic painter. He studied painting since he was little (his father was also a painter). He went to the art schools and was surrounded by the art communities throughout his entire life. As a result, he produced large amount of work, and much of his early work is in this two-story Museo Picasso.
Below is a few memorable moments I recorded from this museum.
Becoming famous: When I browsed through his work, I had a question on “how he started becoming famous”. Then I found in 1897, he received the honorable mention from Madrid exhibition of fine arts for this work “Science and Charity”. People started to recognize him since then.
Studying a color using a few years: Around 1901 (when he was around 20 years old), he started to study “blue”. In a few years, his work is dominated by the blue, so the entire hall in the museum has the paintings like this:
Images and words: in 1937, Picasso did almost daily drawings with text on the sheet of Arches paper. He connected images and words via “rhythms”. When the lines and shapes in the paintings have rhythms, which he called poetic. He had many poets friends. He said “If I were Chinese, I would not be a painter but be a writer, I would writer my paintings”. Hmm, maybe I should try it: first I should write some Chinese poem, and then convert the characters to the old Chinese characters (called xiang(4) xin(2) wen(2) zi(4)), which are based on the drawings. Then I arrange them in a painting/drawing, noted with the poem, lol. His “images and words” probably is my favorite part of the museum.
He loves hot women haha 
Las Meninas: it is a famous painting by Diego Velázquez in 1656. Picasso did a thorough analysis and interpretations of this painting in 1957. The hall in the museum is called “Las Meninas”.
On the left is the original painting, on the right is Picasso’s interpretations
Late life: when he was old, he lived in a house near the ocean. He painted many of his pigeons raised on his porch.
Some other fun pieces: you can see these mixed perspectives, collage styles and a not-very-Picasso-style cartoon.
Hospital Zine (2)
9/26/20 don’t you think it is cool if my skates CAN have a mileage recorder like a car, haha. I was rolling across the plain, listening to the wind and feeling sentimental, until … some bike rider passed by with a loud Christmas music speaker :D. It is like a pin popped a balloon and immediately brings me back to the real life 🙂
Page 3 Ma Ma
In the past, my mom accompanied many family and friends to go to hospitals, waiting in lines for them and mentally support them. But this time, she is not able to find an airline ticket to US so she cannot go to the hospital with me. This drives her crazy …
The first thing I waked up from the general anesthesia is to send her a selfie. IMMEDIATELY, she replied “yeah! great ….” well, it was 3 or 4 am in China, and she has been staying up. Later, she told me that her friend’s friend is a doctor and told her that some patients of the same surgery have died in the operating room.
One day, we were chatting:
– “I can help so many others, but I cannot be there for you”.
– “well, I really did not feel that I need somebody to accompany me. I was lucky in this case maybe because you did so many good things for others, I was blessed by your kindness.”
That is a very emotional moment between us.
