How To

“灯光闪烁时，请勿上下车。” — 上海地铁

“When the lights are flashing, please do not enter or exit the doors.” — Shanghai subway

Note: Published on 8/22 because this post needed more editing

Flashing Lights

A woman and her two kids rush to catch the subway seconds before the doors are about to close, the kids hesitates before entering and the woman pushes them between the doors.

She takes a solid hit from the closing doors before also making it in.

Immediately, she hits both of them.

After some silence, the boy says, “But it said that ‘When the lights are flashing, please do not enter or exit the doors!’”

Essentially

Aristotle once said that reason is what separates humans from animals, but people are often defined by moments in which they go against reason.

People speed up at red lights, eat junk food, and smoke cigarettes even though they know it’s bad for them. Like other animals, people just need to learn things the hard way before they figure it out.

Just because

I’ve always thought that, if I were a parent, I would reason with my child in every single situation and never need to resort to “Cuz I said so.”

However, in the case of that mother, she just got hit by the door because her kids stopped in front of the door.

Thinking for free

I would mostly be mad at my kids for getting brainwashed by the subway announcer, but violence is never the answer.

In fact, if I brought my kids to the subway for the first time, I would immediately tell them that they should never listen to anyone without making their own decision, except for me, cuz I said so.

Eventually, I’m sure the kids will learn their lesson, even if they didn’t understand it that day. And I hope the mother learned a thing or two as well.

Professionals Have Standards

In Tokyo, if you want to go somewhere using the subway, Google Maps will tell you what subway car¹ number is optimal for speed.

But, is it really optimal if everyone is using the app at the same time? There would probably be too many people that want to go into the same car.

Anyway, Shanghai doesn’t have that feature so you just have to figure it out. However, I’ve done it for you already.

Polaris

It would take a lot of effort to apply this everywhere you go, but you can take note of the destination’s location in comparison to the station and line it up with the direction of the subway.

Map for below example

For example, if I want to go to Century Square at Century Ave Station (top of image) and I see on the map that the square is to the southwest of the station, then if I’m coming in from the southeast, I should try to get to the front of the train.

However, where is the front of the train? Well, you first need to figure out which side of the platform you should get on by using the signs.

Afterward, since the trains are moving left 90% of the time (when you’re facing the track), left = front and right = back.

R = E & L = W

I was talking about directions on the subway with my friend E, who I very much respect.

Naturally, I trolled him by saying that east is right and west is left.

As a good friend, he attempted to explain something to me but I just said to look at the directions on the subway line diagram.

Line 2 stations showing left = west & right = east.

I told him that we were moving right (I was facing north) and our destination was east and that the diagram proved it.

He was astonished that the diagrams always have right as east and west as left, and listed off three lines which also behave like the one we were on.

I was astonished he remembered all that about the stations and that he somehow turned my prank into an actual learning experience. I guess I can’t escape from teaching.

Commonest Sense

Later, he was trying to explain to me by saying that his right is my left with a physical demo but I just told him I was messing with him.

Then, I asked E a physics problem:

If a balloon is tied to a string on this subway and the subway is accelerating to the right (east), which way will the balloon go relative to a person on the subway?

Revealing the answer in 3, 2, 1…

Surprisingly, the balloon will move right even though most objects would move left. Eric said left according to common sense.

When I tried to explain to him that the air in the car will move left which will cause the balloon to move right, he did not buy it because he said that the air around the balloon would push the balloon to the left.

I tried to explain that there is a pressure gradient from high to low from the left to the right but he explained that the air moves right to left because the left is lower pressure than the right and that the balloon will move to the left which is lower pressure.

At that point, I gave up because it really does seem to make sense both ways and there was no way I was going to convince him at that time.

Later that day I realized the problem with his explanation is that the air does not move left because of a pressure gradient from right to left but because of inertia, and that is what causes the left to be high pressure and push the balloon right.

True Evil

In the Chinese martial arts fantasy genre, there are three main martial arts groups: the orthodox sect, the unorthodox sect, and the demonic cult.

Typically, the bad guys are from the demonic cult, which is led by the heavenly demon. Heavenly demon sounds weird in English because demon means something different from the devil in western literature.

One character interprets the true purpose of the demonic cult is to be able to act against true corruption because the law can protect order but not justice.

Coding Style

and the demonic cult are both necessary evils. You won’t have justice without them, and you won’t be happy with them.

One controversial professor says that having bad coding style is the CS equivalent of medical malpractice. In the beginning of frosh year, I thought this was hyperbole, but I’ve realized that it’s actually very true.

During my internship, I’ve had numerous cases where I had to completely rewrite some code even if I’m only slightly changing the functionality. Of course, this was due to my terrible code style which has greatly improved.

How To with John Wilson

may be the most interesting video series I’ve ever seen. Not just one of, but the most interesting video series.

My new friend R introduced it to me because my blog seemed similar.

In every episode, seemingly simple tutorials and unedited NYC footage are mashed together into wild adventures and striking life lessons.

Contrasting the nonchalant tone and insane footage & storytelling, it almost seems like Wilson is just going with the flow of the city rather than trying to make an entertaining show.

Catch a Predator

In the first episode, “How To Make Small Talk,” John meets a man who has the hobby of catching predators by pretending to be a minor online and making small talk with strangers.

Structuralism

If you want to learn more about how each episode tends to go, feel free to watch this video by Storyograph, who is actually one of John Wilson’s best friends from elementary school:

Finding Out

My 8th grade math teacher, Ms. Y, often gives life advice instead of teaching us how to do problems.

A piece of advice that stuck with me is that “College is when you learn about your body, when you excrete, etc.”

It sounds weird, but when you need to take a timed test on a tight schedule, you actually do need to know when your body is ready to go.

Nostalgia

I have a sense of nostalgia for Ms. Y’s math class because it was when I learned the most progress in math in a short period of time.

After talking to my dad’s college roommate, whose son happened to be in Ms. Y’s class, I realized that she actually doesn’t teach that well. She kind of just throws you in the water and expects you to swim.

Regardless, I’m starting to realize that learning, understanding, and adapting to your strengths is a very important life skill because it’s the only way you can control your destiny.

Three’s a Crowd

One of my classmates dislikes eating dinner with large groups, which sounded weird to me, but I’ve realized that I’m actually the same way.

At a certain point, the smallest emotional distance between any pair of people will just be too long to sustain a meaningful conversation.

For me, I think it’s a lot more fun to hang out with a few friends rather than go crazy in a big group.

Goodfellas

Recently, I watched Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese and I can see why it’s such a classic.

Unrelatedly, the mob boss, Paulie, only talks to one person at a time because he doesn’t want people to hear what he says and what he hears.

I suppose my reason is different, but it’s good to know that I have something in common with a mob boss.

Footnotes

1. Subway car, not subway cart ↩