Life

For lack of a better title I am using this popular quote from the endurance running community. It says that the marathon is fair and unforgiving. A PB or even a finish is not always guaranteed, even after putting your 100% effort into training and race prep.

¡2025 esta aquí! Estoy emocionada y feliz cuando reviso que paso en 2024 porque hay muchos cambios y muchas experiencias nuevas. En este blog quiero revisar mi 2024.

Como se puede ver, estoy escribiendo en español. Empecé a estudiar español en noviembre de 2023 en Duolingo, y llevo estudiando por mas que un año. En augusto mi colega me dijo italki, un sitio de web donde puedo encontrar maestras que hablan español y practican conmigo. Mi maestra es de México y me gustan nos clases mucho. ¡Estoy segura vamos a practicar mas en 2025!

It is the familiar holiday season again and I feel it’s time to look back at 2023, reflect and summarize what had happened as a result of this year’s hardwork.

This year, I’ve been trying to read something other than statistics. My new-year gift for myself was a Kindle PaperWhite, and I didn’t plan to let it collect dust.

So far, I’ve read:

Time passes unbelievably fast and here comes the end of 2022! It has been a year with a lot of personal growth and I want to pay it a tribute with this brief post.

Recently I traveled to Houston and got my first tattoo done. I have been thinking about getting a tattoo for years although it has been long regarded as a sign of rebellion in most eastern cultures. Honestly this aspect did not bother me. What I worried about most is what tattoo I want to get - text, abstract shapes, or figures? Given its perpetuality, I wanted to be as cautious as possible. Finally I decided to get an abstract version of this photo to honor my late grandma. She was 65 then, and I was one month old. As far as I recall, we have only taken two photos together, the other one being when I was in middle school. The original copy of this photo has been lost for years, but I am glad that my father and I made digital copies of several old photos back in summer 2004. All my cousins on my father’s side are a few years older than me, and after I was born, I was the one that enjoyed almost 100% of my grandma’s unconditional love. My grandma passed away at 81, and I was in my first year in high school. I have been regretting for not being by her side at her last moments for every day after.

The three Zazzi babies have grown bigger! The photos are taken on May 24th.

I disappeared from blogging for a few days…here are some news:

• A paper receives a major revision! New simulations and more clarifications are needed.

• I’m going to Chicago for a weekend.

No - I’m not having babies. Perhaps will in the future, but not today.

But - Zazzle Dazzle (aka Zazzi) gave birth to three babies yesterday! Here’s the beautiful new mommy.

1. Why

WeChat is getting more and more bulky. The newest version on iOS is now of 230MB size. For people who only use WeChat to “chat”, many of the features are not quite useful, such as Moments (朋友圈), Shake (摇一摇), Top Stories (看一看), Message in a Bottle (漂流瓶), etc.. I am one of these people. In addition, in its major upgrade to version 7.0.x, the interface has been re-designed to match the popular minimal flat design trend. The color is too bright for me. These two reasons drove me to look for a substitute for WeChat, that has nothing but the basic chat function, supports dark UI theme, and runs smoothly on iOS.