So after admiring and seeing a lot of great bloggers (and got nothing urgent right now lol), I finally decided to begin blogging….hope it will be a good start. I expect myself gradually begin to post more things in my life - what I read and some random thoughts.
But…maybe no academic content since I have not achieved anything great. Those broad and great things should be told by much better people. But we’ll see~
Speaking of what to tell, I think a good summary of what happened since this time last year till now maybe a good idea. Because almost exactly 12 months ago, I made possibly one of the toughest decision in my life, if not THE TOUGHEST - leaving Emotech and joining UEF as a PhD candidate, starting from January this year. So this blog I guess will mainly be my thoughts on this journey so far. The story start from October though.
Thanks Emotech! But I left…
This kinda message should have been written half-a-year ago but I think it’s not too late, or I hope.
So first of all, I don’t have anything negative to say about the startup itself - the two years I spent at there was simply amazing. I worked at our Edinburgh site remotely (shout out to TMP - greatest co-working community for sure!), almost let’s say 70% of my knowledge on speech processing came from working, and I was even able to publish during that period, for three times! Well, as a graduate who did not reach anything, I can’t ask for more. And people at there were just good guys; yes we have tough times, yes we sometimes arguing with each other, but all of us know it’s for the company and I believe we all grew a lot from there. I won’t list all goods I’ve experienced with my colleagues, otherwise this blog will be nothing but showing off.
Oh and by the way, they are still hiring right now at London/Beijing. Please do not hesitate to get in touch~I haven’t got in touch with them actively for a while but they can be found on Linkedin .
Then why I left? Actually I didn’t expect it came that fast. When I dialed our CTO about this, I said: “…..to be honest I don’t expect this call either, but you know me well. How can I say no to PhD?”. Yeah I know that sounds crazy to many people but…..PhD is my dream. My biggest dream. And I don’t even know if I’m ready for this, but if the offer is coming, I won’t hesitate and I didn’t. Yes, no technical complaints, no other complaints…this is it.
I know some people will ask, and I did get asked “have you ever estimate that? Do you think it’s a good investment? 4 years man, 4 years!”. Well, yes and not sure - I went for PhD just because I want it. I don’t even know why I want it from realistic perspective and I don’t care. Anyway, here we are.
PhD
PhD life so far has been great. Both Joensuu and Nancy are beautiful cities where people enjoy peaceful life. I started from Joensuu, staying there for 2 months before moving to the French city where I am right now. I always like those kind of small-sized cities - not too large then people will feel lonely, but not too crowded like major cities in China where you will almost always surrounded by a bunch of suits with eyes looking nothing but their phones. I know they are probably doing business stuff via phone but I’m not a phone guy so I don’t like that.
But it’s PhD so we have to address a bit on research. And speaking of that I must say it has been a tough turn-around for me. Mainly because of several reasons:
At startup industry, although we don’t really have KPI thing so no toxic cognitive load, we were always chasing deadlines - deadlines after deadlines. In order to survive from them we have to make things work as efficient as possible. But research is different, you have to spend a long time working or at least thinking on a specific topic. No strict deadlines, no goals - you just need to be yourself. Deep in my heart I like that, but I also already got used to the startup pace meanwhile.
We care about process more. Yes in industrial projects I’ve involved we also care about the process, but it was some problems such as interface between different components - whether they are working or not. Yeah at the end the question we wanna answer was “If they are working properly”. But during research, we would rather answer “Why they are working?”. We plot a lot of intermediates, we do a lot of analysis by monitoring on for example, weights of an neural net, loss propagation and gradients. They are basic things but seems we care about them more in research while not from industry.
Speaking of style of working, well we must say it has been a slower-paced process. Sometimes I just can’t get in touch with my supervisors in immediate manner - probably they are too busy or too lazy XD (sorry guys, just saying I know you are not. I’ve been treated great). Anyway, it is what it is. When you cannot get immediate reply, you must find someway to spend the time efficiently. I think speaking of that the pandemic gave me a several-month time to try what kind of activity is the best thing to wave time off. For me, the answer is reading and listening/learning new hiphop music.
But despite those little struggles, I never regret going for this PhD. Sometimes I admit when I see my friends making money by either working or investing, I am a bit jealous. But I am chasing my dream, which can never be brought by having money. Maybe I will get back to my hometown and ask my family or friends to find a poorly-paid job for me because I won’t find one, but I’ll embrace it. We’ll see.
2019-now: Minimalism
I was seriously a bit of a hoarder before earlier last year. Then I got obssessed into a concept called minimalism . I believe it was something from art or design concepts but nowadays it kinda envolves into a lifestyle. I became really interested into it for reasons I forgot, and begin to admire people who are broadcasting it or sharing their experience such as Matt d’Avella and Sueddu . Since it became a really important part of my life, maybe I can share some thoughts.
I think a good thing about minimalism is it increases the frequency of you exchanging with your heart. Most common example is “Do I really want these?”. Well, of course this question are not everything about minimalism but at least I often ask myself. But starting from there, many things between you and yourself are kinda opened. At least, this works really well for me, especially during COVID pandemic period - lot of time to communicate!
Minimalists don’t necessarily own less stuff. Actually if you see Sueddu’s video, you can see she does “hoard” on something like books and interesting items and she has a great Hyundai car. It is about knowing what’s good for you and what’s not. All beings we are holding should play some roles in our daily life: things we have, people we relate, and thoughts come into our mind, etc. We can then focus on our goals and milestones more.
I am still on the way of embracing minimalism so I believe I will have much more to tell. Looking forward to it.
Conclusion
So I think in brief this 19-20 season has been less interesting than earlier ones, but at least the fact that I am doing PhD is stimulating enough for me. Can I graduate from it? I don’t know but will just try my best to see if it works out.
Speaking of my hobbies like body building and basketball, since I think it’s more random and less formal to me I’ll not talk too much about it. I don’t wanna get too serious on them since protein powder is something that I feel a bit reluctant lol~
I am right now working on finalization of my projects before having a short break at end of August. Season 20-21 starts at September and I can’t wait! Not a guy who likes to set goals so we’ll just see the scenes at sidelines and enjoy every second of our lives!
UNDERDOG
2020-08-23
Nancy, 23C, Raining