I arrived on November 27 to Beijing. I am quite behind my posts but it has taken baby steps to adapt. I won’t try to say everything here up to date but just a bit. Turns out there is a direct flight from Tijuana to PEK, so my trip was very easy, albeit long. The plane was very fancy. Even more so I had the option to pick special food during the flight and I choose Indian food. I didn’t have to do it, but I thought it was necessary to get such deligihts. As a consequence, when everyone was receiving their standard meal I had very fancy samosas and curry. I think I did pay more for them.

At the moment I am staying in a hotel because it takes forever to get sorted out with the university. However, once it works I will probably be able to get a place in the campus, which shall be very convenient. The first day that I tried going to campus I got lost. I could not figure out how the map and the city corresponded with each other (i.e. who knows where was north?). In Toronto that was easy because the CNN Tower always was south. Here I did not know. As a consequence I walked in the other direction and I found nothing.

I tried my luck asking around: Tsinghua Daxue zai nali? One of the people I asked was a police in front of the entry to a parking lot. Here there are guards in almost every location, just there standing up checking all is well. My pronunciation probably was terrible because he told me: Wo buzhidao! (i.e. I don’t know!) and that is impossible. Everybody know where is Tsinghua Daxue. I gave up for that day. The jetlag was still very intense so I just call it a day. Next day I tried again and this time police did understand…however, when they instructed me I couldn’t figure out very well what they were saying other than when they pointed directions. Mandarin fast spoken is really hard to understand when you are not used to it. However, as the days have gone by, I start to get more sense of what is going on.

The campus is incredible. It is enormous and it has so many things: nature, ancient buildings, coffees, auditoriums, places to eat, banks, stores, a hospital. Quite probably one can live without leaving it. However, of course, one cannot freely enter. It is surrounded by an enormous wall and many gates to enter. I have so far found three gates…legend has it there are others.

Two things that really call my attention are the birds: there are magpies and they are puffy and beautiful. I confess I thought they were very specific birds from here but no. Turns out Calgary also has them, although they are less puffy. Oh well. The other thing is the biking situation: it is absolute madness. Streets, cars, bikes and walking people come from everywhere! Literally all directions. When one walks you gotta flow and believe. I have seen like four accidents: one guy in the bike fell down and hit, flat-face- the road. It was a direct hit. I have seen several electric bikes fail and slide and people fell down. Amen.

Another things I had to do for adaptation was to find food and coffee. There are several coffee shops around the place. One of them I have made my sweet spot. I can ask for a cup of mocca: yibei mocca kafei! Xiexie! And the first time I did it I was happy. However, immediately they asked if it was to go or to stay at the speed of light. I didn’t get it…so now they talk to me in english as punishment. It is fun that I have been going frequently to that coffee that they started asking: the usual? (in english, of course). Not all of them ask in English, one of them doesn’t seem to know, so she just throws mandarin at me. All is good so far (predictable: what do you want? hot or cold? for here or to go? Now I got this.).

The other coffee I go to is called Mong’s Coffee. It is very nice. It is inside campus so on the weekends is not super busy. I like that. Some benefits of being of the socialite that can cross through the gates…I also ask moccas there and I study, or draw, or crash out dying. It is very tiring to live in this bubble where you do not seem to know what is going on almost all the time due to the language barrier. Many times I see foreigners and we look at each other like saying: hang in there, bro! That said, I have seen many foreigners speaking different degrees of mandarin, which is very nice. Patience.

Food is quite nice although very varied. I admit sometimes I don’t know what I am eating, but I haven’t disliked anything. Furthermore, I had some of the best noodles of my life. I have been meditating on why are they so good but I cannot pinpoint exactly why…maybe is just that they are not noodles of an asian restaurant in Duolunduo, but rather just noodles here in Beijing? I don’t know. Also, I am fan of the mianbao lady. Everytime she speaks to me in mandarin, I reply in broken Mandarin and English, we laugh and have no idea what we said to each other but who cares. I just say: wo yao che wu niurou mianbaos! And she puts the niurou mianbaos in a little plastic bag and I feel cute. Sometimes there are not enough, so she gives me other she has. I think its pig or veggies, but I didn’t get her when she said what they were. I like very much buying those baos because they are boiled in bamboo steamers. They are enormous. I used to cook fish and veggies in those in my first years in Toronto. Is really good. At some point she did ask: ni shi meiguoren ma? The drama. WO BUSHI! WO SHI MOXIGOREN! Oh ooooh oh and she laughed. I think my pronunciation of moxigoren (mexican) was not great.

My goal for today was to start this blog. A lot has happened but I will catch up as we move forward. For the moment I concude with the most intense food moment I have had so far. A real hot pot:

This is the food I got in one of the canteens of the University. It heats with a strong candle. It was really good although the flames at some point were huge.

We must take our victories when they come humbly…but we must take them! One of the first issues that have to be arranged for a foreigner that wants to work in China is the bank account. Otherwise there is no place where you can get paid or where friends can help you while things get settles or similar. To settle my bank account was an exercise on mimicry. I had been told that within campus most people speak english and so it will be all right. Well…by speaking English many times it means exacctly the same as saying I speak mandarin. I can say random things, and not super many, but enough to get by. However, opening a bank account is an important situation and one must know the details. In the bank I needed to open the account they had exactly one guy that new English for this moments. His English was not great however and we struggled. Furthermore, he had to help with other costumers and there were a lot. Thus, when the time came for me to go with the person responsible for opening the account we had to mimic to each other. In a certain sense I have no idea what I signed for…there is no point to say I read the small letters because they were small characters.

Let me take you through some of the dramas that lead to the conclusion of my entry today. It will tie neatly with the bank account comments I just made. I was not aware Beijing was going to get this cold. It is not Toronto Cold but it is cold. Three days after I arrived it was below zero and the wind was really chill and strong. It made sense to get some clothes for the winter. I had jackets and warm pants and shirt, but I wanted a scarf and gloves. I want the gloves in particular to be able to ride a bike without my hands freezing. Close to where I am staying there is a mall and inside there is a Uniqlo. I went there because I thought there had stationary material, but no, there are only clothes.

First try: I went to Uniqulo the day before it got really cold. I was told by a friend that the next day, according to all the alerts, it was going to freeze. I had already biked once and I liked it. Hence, I wanted to bike and be prepared. That night in Uniqlo I grabbed scarf, a little hat and gloves. Went to pay. In here everything is electronic (I have seen cash in some places…) and I use WeChat to pay. In there I had some resources a friend shared, which is called balance and is money transferred in WeChat (like you upload it to there). Then you have access to your bank accounts and I had registered some accounts from outside the country. At this point I have not gone to the bank yet to open the account. The way this works is: I will try to pay with one of these cards, because I don’t have enough money in the balance. The worker that was helping me was guiding me, by pointing and saying some instructions of which I understood the total of zero. She had already packed all the clothes in a little bag when the card said: sending verification code you your phone! This is a security measure and it is a nightmare to be trapped in it. Reason being that this at some point has to go through a process in Mexico that is 12 hours before. So unless we have coordinated, I cannot get access to that code and the whole thing crashes. It crashed. No clothes. It was very cold the next day.

Second try: A couple of days later I coordinated with the people involved for this to work. I go for it and decide to try again. Everything repeats up to the point we are abut to pay. Once I put the data in the phone tells me my card is being subjected to checking because it can be a fraud. WeChat submits me to an intense review of my documents and myself. They put a little verification procedure: the camera looks at you and instructs. Look at the camera. Blink. Open your mouth. Move closer. Don’t cover your chin. Hold it. Then the cellphone shines in different colors for several seconds in which you should not move. I had to do this while all the helpers, by that time two, waited patiently. Card declined. They tell me to try not through wechat but directly in the cash registrer (as one would do in Mexico for example). They insert the card. Card deactivated! Jesus Christ. The drama of it all. No clothes.

Third Try: In here, due to how the law works, I come with an R-VISA but that is not enough to work. I have to get a work and a resident permit. However, this is done once you are in the country. Thus, technically I am not hired yet and I cannot receive a salary because I am still not allowed to work. I of course came prepared for this the best I could. I was told: you will get no official pay in December. I arrived in November…so it is a whole month I have to survive my myself. In order to help for this, one of my colleagues will help with it. However, we have the issue of how do we make a money transfers work At this point I just did the bank account opening the day before. We need to understand how the bank works but for me it is obviously not clear because all the instructions are in characters. We decide to go to the bank, but this time together, and when we arrived the same woman that helped me open the account was there. She looked at me and made a face of: oh, not again! Luckily for us, this time I had a translator. They said it would take a week for the bank to allow this kind of operation. Thus, I had to survive with my balance only. I went to the store and made some computations. I decided to wait the whole week because otherwise I would struggle. You see, at this point, it is very unpredictable when the international cards will fail, restrict, cancel, self destruct…so I try to use them judicioously. By then the card that failed me had been reactivated again and I am trying not to push it. Hence, no clothes.

Fourth Try: A week goes by. We check if the card would function or no. In order for this to work I need to update all my data to WeChat. I do but it refuses to recognize the card. My friend says: well, there is only one way we can do this. You need to actually download the app of the bank. Makes total sense. He guides me through the steps to download the app. When I do he checks the app to indicate to me where is the translation button. There is no translation. My friend tells me: well, motivation to learn Chinese. Here I have this app with almost a hundred buttons and I have absolutely no clue what they do. He points at me something I need to know. Most importanty how to check my transactions and my current balance in the account. Then we trasnfer the money and we check. Done, according to this I’ve received some money and I can make it through the month! Time to go for those damn clothes. I go. I take my time: I try all the gloves. I try all the scarfs. Nothing is stopping me today. I go and a lady approaches to help me. It is very fun how it work: you put the things in a basket that have som electronic scanners that detect the barcodes. Then the price appears in the screen and you scan a QR code associated to your wechat. Via that QR they charge you. Hell yeah: QR code ftw! Card declines. God dammit, now what? We try again. Nope. The lady can see my face of I will murder someone. She runs and brings another person that works there. This time she speaks English. I tell her: let us try the card directly. We do. Declined. I am baffled. There is money. Not to pay a rent, but enugh to get a fucking scarf (I don’t say this of course). She sees my frustration and tells me: do you have another way of paying? Im sorry it’s not working. I’ve no other way at the moment. WeChat balance is low and must be protected. International cards are delicate. I tell her: thank you. I left in such defeat and annoyance. I bought a coffee and went back to my hotel room.

I should had let it rest but I was baffled for real. I went to the bank application to try to check. I don’t know what I was trying to achieve, because I understood very little. However, I recognized a symbol: the symbol of WeChat. So I clicked and it took me to a menu with options. I copypasted every.single.one.of.them. into the translator. This sounds silly, because you imagine that you can just copypaste into google translator…but there is no google here. I was told there would be at least google translator but there is none in my chinese phone (where I have these apps). So I used a chinese dictionary. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to get the idea. I had to approve the use of WeChat for my bank. So I did. The other options were if I wanted to receive or not notifications at night and the kind.

Nevertheless I was baffled that there was no translation. My understanding was that China want foreigners from all over the world to come and live and contribute to the country…but if banking is impossible. Thus, there must be a translation. I searched in my computer about it. Reddit comments mentioned that indeed there is translation and it give me guides of how to achieve it. I followed it and got the translation. When I saw it I laughed so hard. Have you ever experiences Wikipedia in english VS Wikipedia in basically any other language? I don’t know if this is still the same, but many times when I change te language the content and quality drops almost to zero. It is comical. Well, the same happened here. From an app with hundreds of options it became a cute little app with two numbers and basically zero options. Absolutely useless for any serioues thing. Anyway, I had approved WeChat for my app. At least I hoped so.

Nevertheless, that night, no clothes.

Fifth Try: I have been here 18 days, almost three weeks. Next thursday is three weeks. Today I walked to the number theory seminar. It is in a building that is 30 minutes away walking. I enjoy that walk. Hoowever, I noticed that when I am wearing the clothes for cold weather it is bulky and my zipper does not close perfectly. Thus my neck is slightly exposed. I don’t like that because I can get throat sensitivity…and I am paranoid with that. After I had worked until 7 pm (I am trying to start writing some math. Baby steps. It is always baby steps with damn mathematics…honestly, why?), I decided to go for my late mocca (some things follow us like demons). I was a bit low, my mood swings these days of intense changes, as is probably expected. I went to the mall and while checking a tea place I will go and sit down one of these days, I decided to go to Uniqlo. One more time.

Grabbed the gloves.

Grabbed the scarf.

I went to the little electrnic basket and random worker appeared to help. She guided me. In silence because we both know we won’t unerstand each other probably. I am ready with my bank wechat QR code on my hands. I am honestly legit nervous. I scan and it works. I go: WOOOHOOO!! And look back at the worker that looked at me with a face of: why are all foreginer weirdos? One day I will have enough mandarin to explain her the hurdles. Today, at least, I have clothes.

One of the challenges I have been facing here so far is the lack of an office and of a proper home. Both things depend on the work and resident permits which are in the process of being aproved. In the meantime I can use some of the facilities but not everything. Also, I cannot yet rent a place properly. I have always been someone that enjoys working, whether to do cartoons, paintings, write, study. I have been called disciplined and workaholic…however, now I am experiencing how the lack of proper space affects me.

As a master student I did not have an office, so I used to work in my house. Back in the day I lived in Graduate House of U of T. My desk was enormous, thus I did not have any issue. When I was a Ph.D. student I had several offices but I did not really like them. First, I had one in the PG building but I let a master student use it instead, because I was not going to. It became comical because this student (which is a friend of mine) was being called by my name. People thought he was me. But comically, for some reason, some people then deduced I was him. It took sometime to set things straight with the confused people. Later in the program I was changed to a bigger desk in the main building, but I seldom went. For some reason I couldn’t really work and focus.

It was until I became a Postdoc at Toronto that I had an office where I could work. It was not because suddenly my office was not shared or big or whatever. I actually shared my office with other two people. Instead, I discovered somethings that before I had considered irrelevant. Firstly, I needed a place to work online properly. To use overleaf, to be able to code, and more recently to use AI. I decided to have my work computer and my house (gaming) computer. This helped me to do not have to carry the computer from one place to the other too much. I also changed my discipline with respect to this. I actually forced myself to work in my office constantly. There were long periods of time, usually when I was onto something that I would be in the office from 10 am to 11 pm. I wasn’t working all the time I was there…I confess that more than once I fell asleep on my chair with the door open. I discovered how much I enjoyed working like this.

Then I would stay home somedays, after I had finished the thing I was onto or if I felt too exhausted and there have other projects. One of the projects I had was previous summer. Everyday, for 30 days, I was going to paint with oil pastels something. A trip to Sudbury happened in between and I nevertheless took the paintings with me. I even got a good painting table for trips for otherwise I could not do it properly.

One of the many paintings I did in this period.

Eventually I realized that I wanted to have the possibility to use both office and house for these projects. Each place induced in me a different atmosphere. Eventually it became harder for me to work “mathematically” at my house. There I did art. My mathematics did not diminished, but they found their place in a different setting. I found that balance rewarding and I liked it.

Back to Beijing: I have no office and I have no home. I find myself adapting to this change and I admit it is hard. I sometimes feel I might be being a diva (and probably I am a bit), but somehow I feel I am not exaggerating when I desire space to functionally work despite the fact that indeed I can do, up to a point, surviving in other places. For the time being I have been working in the coffee lounges of the math department (it has so many). it was incredibly comical when I went to ask for an office, even if it is unoficial, in the meantime it can be assigned to me and I got told: yeah, postdocs always find that hard, but you can use the coffee lounge. Top University in the country, ninth place in the world for math. We shall be patient.

I have tried different places to work and I have slowly adapted to a routine. It is not very nice nevertheless because I have to decide what will I bring with me, where will I eat, what other tasks I have (somedays I have seminars to attend, for example), and I cannot pivot in my office or go eat fast at home and change. Hence, there is certain extra burden of preparation that does accumulate (I admit maybe at times more than I expect).

In the morning I am going to Mong’s Cafe. This is a fancy place inside the campus. I have been coming frequently because internet functions well and there are nice tables. Also, there are a lot of students and that is a nice vibe. Also its bathrooms are very funny: one of them has a laundry machine inside, which baffles me.

So far I move around five places. The one in the above picture is Mong’s Coffee where I discovered I can use overleaf (i.e. where we write papers. Where we are serious people.) I have drawn one cartoon there and worked in my next chapter of Epsilon-Delta. The other place I have gone is WDK Caffee, which is the coffee of a mall. I think is some sort of franchise that exists in every mall and takes the corresponding name. I have drawn cartoons here and I had a very peculiar adventure but that will be described in another post…

This is the first mocca I had in Beijing.

I also go to two of the math lounges of the Yau Centre. This place is enormous and is distributed in two builidings. One is inside the campus and the other outside, but close. I guess everywhere there are issues of space when one is restricted by the city and the walls.

Finally, today I decided to try a new place. The other day I was walking in the mall close to home and I saw someone working with a very nice teapot next to his laptop. I wanted to try that. Today I went to this place and prepared myself. Everytime I go to a new place I need to have an open mind because I do not know how it will develop: there might not be menu in english, they might not have QR in the tables and thus you are forced to engage with the baristas, there might be rules they want you to follow and you have no clue, etc…Thus, I approached to the persons in the bar and looked at the menu. It had nice characters/english translations. So many options and I was unfamiliar with the teas…however, I like tea.

I remember in Toronto I went frequently to drink black rose tea in Arch Caffee in Kensington Market. Before that, in Guanajuato I would go very frequently to El Lechón Ilustrado (i.e. The enlightened pigglet) where they had a lot of teas and cookies in the shape of pigs. The time had come to get tea in Zhongguo. I am getting ready to try to moreless explain myself when the barista looks at me and says: we yes have da many english you point yes and we yes have the cakes! And pointed to a lot of cakes next to me, to which I answered bushi out of the surpirse. Of course, that answer doesn’t make sense because it would be as sayin “I am not”, I am not what? A cake?

I asked for a nice Oolong tea. She asked me if it was for there or to go. I said zhe li (i.e. here). And she said: Ok da desk yes. They gave me a beeper: it beeps yes you come yes aaah dui. Dui Dui Dui (Yes yes yes). I sat down in da desk (it was not a desk…its a small circular table). I did not bring my laptop with me because I did not want to carry it. It is heavy. I used my cellphone to get Venkatesh Thesis out (as I need to unerstand certain parts better) and continue to read it in my new notebook, which I bought yesterday. I had never studied from the cellphone directly, but there didn’t seem to be any reason to close that door. One must use all of its resources to survive and do not listen to the voices. Because remember

We all can find the voices if we look for them.

In these days of so much change the voices come a lot and the She-Rat is giving its all. So, instead, oolong tea in da desk with Venkatesh.

Da desk yes dui dui aaaah yes.

Back in the day, when I lived in Mexico City, I remember there were days that activities would be restricted because of the pollution. They used to say that the bluest you see the sky, the more dangerous it was because all pollution had descended upon us. I do not know if that is true. As kids we were told that in the seventees Mexico pollution became crazy and I grew up knowing that Mexico City was the most polluted city on the planet. Now, thirty years later, it is no longer on the top ten (according to the Internet).

When I was living in Toronto pollution was not really a problem until the fires. According to the news online, in 2023 Toronto became one of the most polluted countries in the world (it was number six…which is surprising to me). I remember how the days the winds brought us the smogs from the fires in the other provinces. You could smell the ashes and everything was gray. There was sometimes an apocalyptic feeling. I would go out with a mask in the street and try not to really go out a lot.

Now I am in Beijing and it has been quite nice until two days ago. I went out and everything was gray but I didn’t realize what it was. It did not even cross my mind that Beijing was having a high pollution day. I went out in what has been now a somewhat normal routine: go for coffee and study, then walk back to eat, then tea, then home (which is really a hotel room). Because of that I wasn’t really paying attention to what was happening around me with regards to the air and instead I was focusing on studyin this thesis of Venkatesh. It is really good to read certain details now that I have more experience.

Anyways, that day my throat was somehow hurting and I got worried I might be getting sick of a cold. I really don’t want to get sic before I have a proper house to crash. I don’t want to get sick after either but if it must happen eventually…In any case, I went to sleep and the next morning I was feeling fine. However, when I went out it was extemely gray and there was a fog of dust in the air. I could properly see but it was as if everything was covered by a veil. That is when I though: oh, its pollution! I checked online the air pollution online and it said Beijing air quality was “Hazardous“. In other sites it said: extremely unhealthy.

I went to my normal routine because one sometimes is stubborn. I walked to the campus and towards the caffee. Usually my walk happens among a lot of people. There are bikes everywhere and electric motorcycles. A lot of movement. Once inside the campus it duplicates: students, faculty, workers everywhere going everywhere! Well, that day, noone. It was really empty. There was people, of course, but compared to other days it felt like a ghost town…the ghost campus of Tsinghua.

A video I took that day outside the coffee. The camera is not great capturing the veil feeling but look how gray. This was taken at 1:26 pm.

I did not like the pollution but I did like the eerie feeling this produced. Today I mentioned this to my peers in the seminar. Every friday we have a seminar on Beyond Endoscopy (for the non-math people, that is a math term, it is not related to the medical procedure…or is it?) A fellow postdoc of my supervisor told me that some fifteen years ago Beijing was extemely polluted to the degree that in the worst days you could not see your own hands clearly if you extended your arms. However, it seems the situation now is extremely improved (regardless of Beijing being still quite polluted).

To avoid the pollution the last two days I went back to the tea place and stayed there several hours stuying and almost falling asleep. Today I sat in a part of the shop that is in the middle of the mall as opposed to one of the locals designed for the shops to be. It was slightly odd to be studying this thesis in such a place. However, here I realize people is really uninhibited in many things. They do what they want to do. If they want to go to another store and buy a gigantic cake and then eat it in the other store, do it. So I think to myself: mind your business and be fine.

This tea shop is quite nice but sometimes I do not know what to expect. The first time I ordered (before the smog…) they gave me a teapot. It seemed pretty normal and I thought that was the experience everytime. Yesterday, when I returned, I tried a different tea. This time they gave an enormous mug with the tea in it. Next to it they gave me the glass container where the leaves were put. However, that was not inside the water, it was next to it. I was confused at the start about what was that for.

I looked around me to see what people were doing. In front of me was a woman with the same type f gigantic cup I had and the same leaves next to her. However, she was studying and did not touch her tea in the whole time I was there. Next to here were two other women studying something. I have seen a lot of people here are studying english quite methodicaly. They were intensely telling each other a lot of things. However, their tea was iced and in plastic bottles. Beyond me were other tables with people doing their thing but mostly with iced mugs or teapots as the one I had the before. Next to me was a guy playing LoL or WoW or something like that. Engaged. No tea drinking.

I explored this object carefully. I raised it and saw that the glass container had cuts at the bottom, which explained why it was put over a little weird tiny plate: so that it doesn’t spill. I understood: this was to put it over the mug and then put more boiling water. Of course, this was when to be done when the tea was over. I confessed I felt slightly stupid figuring this out. Had I know the language I would have asked what is this and how do I use it? But how do I ask for this. Technically I know how to ask this: zhe shi shenme? Wo buzhidao zenme yong zhege! Haaaalp! (or something similar to this) However, sometimes is very hard to break the language barrier and go and actually ask.

However, I wanted my second cup of tea. Thus, I prepared myself: I will ask for boiling water when the time comes. I confirmed my suspicions when I saw another of the customers grab one of the plastic teapots they have in a shelf and took it to the baristas. The barista filled it with boiling water. I had my mission ready for me: I would ask for biling water.

How on earth do I say this?

Ni keyibukeyi gei wo re shui?

Or maybe I could go with…

Ni qing gei wo re shui?

I was here remembering all this when I thought: wait, isn’t this supposed to be re de shui? Why there is no “de”? So I looked online for “re shui” and it indeed said “hot water”, however, the re (hot) is an adjective modifying the noun shui (water). There must be a “de”. But what if I misrimembered my lectures and this was not the way and I was saying something else? What could I be saying then? I have no idea. I started to doubt I knew what a noun and an adjective were (Mandarin has made me doubt I know what words are. I confuse verbs, adverbs, nouns…).

I alternated between reading the thesis, drinking the tea and thinking in the missing “de”. Eventually the time came for me to go and ask for that hot water. I approached. Grabbed a nice pot. Went to the barista. Ni qi…You want da hot water yes? Ok. He went and picked up another kettle and gave it to me. I could not even start my sentence when I was already receiving the kettle. At least a friend explained to me that re de shui is correct but people drop the “de” many times in casual conversation.

My next order of business is to try to go through the different types of teas. So far I have tried three. There are like 30 more to go through. As I progress I shall update. For the moment it’s time to go and find dinner outside under the veil.

Puppets have always been a very interesting activity for me. Back in Toronto there was a very good course on puppetry. One month long in the summer. Unfortunately, I never made it. My first years I did not know of it. Then, once I learned from it, the pandemic happened. After that I kind of forgot it and then, when I remember, it was my last summer there and I was busy with other things.

One of the most interesting ways of puppetry is shadow puppetry. I have been trying to remember what lead me to it, but I am not exactly sure. The first time I saw shadow puppets might have been when I lived in Monterrey. My family has friends that do puppetry and once we went to one of their plays. A little section was done with shadow puppets. However, in Toronto I studied a bit more about them and where they are used. That led me to the Wayang Kulit, a traditional form of shadow puppetry, from Indonesia. For a while I read about it in the books of the U of T on the topic. There was not much I could read as some of the material was not in english.

One of the books I could read described how one of the big displays happened. The main puppeteer is the Dalang. He can control many of the puppets simultaneously, and do different voices, and directs the orchestras and so on. Very skilled person. The story is based on traditional stories taken from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. I learned that the Dalang picks parts, expands on somes (sometimes invents a bit), and that despite it being the same story it isn’t always the same. I learned about the meanings of the figures, the eyes, the epic triangular shape puppets, and, my all time favorite, the character Semar. If you are my friend, you have probably heard me mentiones Semar sometimes.

Importantly, they also describe how a usual portrayal goes by. Originally, I thought that it might be possible this was something you could go see as you go see some random play. But no, these are very traditional and thus you cannot just buy your way into it, you really have to go to the places where people live and experience these traditions. They explain that usually these start at late afternoon and go on until morning. Several short stories happen within a major arc. People go in and out, pay attention to their favorite part, ignore others to engage with other people, eat, play. Intensely communal activity. And the Dalang just keeps playing with some pauses.

I know that one of the places where these continues to be done is Malasia. I had several friends from Malasia and I asked all of them to tell me about it. All of them replied to me that that was way too traditional and they have never experienced it. I wanted to know because a part of myself found the intense communal part repelent and very tiring just to imagine.

On friday, after the Beyond Endoscopy seminar, one of the other postdocs told me if I wanted to go to the next day to the end of the year celebration of the institute. It was not only for the Yau centre, but also for other of the math departments in other university. Also for the highschools and children that have done very well in the math year. It was a big celebration of the mathematics of China together with the celebration of the end of the year. It sounded exactly the kind of thing I don’t like going. However, I am new here, and both my supervisor and the other postdoc kind of insisted, so I accepted. Next day we were to meet at noon where the buses would pick us up. I was warned that I should eat breakfast because the banquet gets served a bit late.

So there we were, at noon, where the three buses were going to pick us up. There were three buses going from the centre. A lot of people: faculty, postdocs, I believe several students went too and some staff. The venue was a big auditorium in another smallish town outside of Beijing. Techhnically, the place was very close but getting out of Beijing takes quite a lot of time because it is very congested. I sat down next to my fellow postdoc and we sat down to engage in conversation.

What better conversation to have than food. Here peope have asked me so much about the mythical taco. Taco this, taco that. Is taco so good? How is taco? They ask me if I have eaten Mexican food here in China. I have been told by some latinamericans to do not do it. You and I know I will do it…eventually. In here the taco impression they have in their minds is the one from Taco Bell. I had to show them some real tortillas (in pictures) and explain to them how we use them. We also discussed different varieties of tortilla and the different uses it has.

We were in the middle of this cultural lesson when someone asked if we, the mexicans, eat grasshoppers. To which I reply yes, we do. We eat grasshoppets, we eat ants, in some places we eat cockroach (and I’ve read they taste better that one might think. Amen). Then my fellow postdoc asked me if we eat scorpions. Sorry, what? I have never heard scorpions can be eaten. I had to check and indeed, they are. And indeed, we eat them in Mexico. I inquired: have you eaten scorpion? Yes, as a child, because parents wanted me to be brave.

I find it fascinating. I do not know if I will ever dare to eat some of these things (those spides ñom ñom ñom?). My fellow postdoc said that scorpion tastes like chicken and that actually its crunchy. Furthermore, he explained that the intense oil boiling neutralized the poisong and that the stingers are removed. [Also, in the replies to this video it says that in twenty years they will start eating smartphones and furniture. I recommend watching Crimes of the Future (2022)] I have only tried ants very long ago and I don’t remember.

Once the starting conversation fiddled I put my efforts in watching the road. I have always found car trips relaxing. They can be incredibly exhausting but I have done them since I am very young. I just watch the road and see what I can see. I like the mountains and I thing the amount of trees was enormous, but then I remembered that driving in Ontario one could see just as many trees. However, I don’t remember any road where you can see all these many trees in roads in Mexico except those that go to Melaque from Guadalajara. Maybe also when arriving to Monterrey from Mexico city, but there what is really impressive are the Mountain Ranges.

We eventually arrived to a massive venue. It is used for big events, it has hotel, a BBQ restaurant, many different floors with big and small rooms and dinning halls. It has three main auditoriums too. We were located in one of them. It was enormous, there were probably a 50 tables and all of them of around 10 people. Most tables I saw were quite full. There were all ages and professions. It was massive. In the main table, of course, was Yau and when he arrived everyone was like grabbing me: it’s him! He is there. I have seen him many times because he goes and grab cookies and maybe coffee in the coffee lounge that is my office now. I usually nod to him and say hello quietly.

We were also given tickets and sent to our tables. The table distribution was not so important, they were just assigned according to the center one belongs to. I went to the Yau Centre tables following my fellow postdoc. In other table, further down the room, was another table of many postdocs of the center. Many of them foreign so it would have been nice to sit there, but as I don’t really know anyone it didn’t made a lot of difference at the moment. I do hope I get to engage with some of them eventually.

The first order of business were the awards. And there were so many: public service, best teaching, best paper, best highschooler achievement. There were also speeches from every zone under the zone: the postdocs of one center, those of another. The new Ph.D., the highschoolers, the staff, the faculty. Yau himself. Almost all of this was in mandarin so I really did not understand much. I was very curious to know what was public service. The person next to me won every single category (there were many winners in each category). They were explaining me that public service is things to help community. Well, you know, I didn’t think of that.

This took around two hours however. Sincerely I was slightly tired and I was progressively feeling annoyed. The reason was that I couldn’t come up with why they were doing something like this. I mean, sure, celebrate the new year. But if there are gonna be awardees and speeches, wouldn’t it be appropriate that we pay attention and see what is going on. I started to look around and it was impressive that nobody really was paying attention.

I wanted to record how most people really are not paying attention to the presentation. From the video you might think nothing is happening but it is, someone was standing in the middle.

What was really hilarious at that point was that after surviving the period of the awards…it was time for the actual show! There were fifteen different shows to be performed by different groups in the audiences. I knew of this because I have been warned that postdocs are “required” to do one of this. They sing a song or read poetry or so. They practice. Some postdocs do not care, others do it out of responsability. I have heard many complain or, at least, show confusion as to what is the real value of it. In any case, I knew of this.

I was expecting the performances to be very good because I have heard the amount of hours they practice. Actually I was invited to practice but I said: nope, I am not hired yet! The first show was going to be classical music from Rachmaninoff.

The above was the piece announced (without the piano), but nope. I think it was not even well tuned, but of that I was not completely sure. However, between all chaos, the music could barely be heard and it wasn’t very rewarding. The reason why I mention this is because I want to convey that there were fifteen of these things and there were mini breaks at times. I looked around and just said (louder than maybe I should): not even Rachmaninoff moved the crowd. I did laugh, not with malice, I just found the whole thing very strange. It was an enormous: why are we doing this?

The second show progressed in the same way. It was unremarkable, some people paid attention, others did not. When the third show started, this man came up to the stage. Dressed in very fancy and adorned costume. Bright yellow and blue. Some epic music started and he started to dance here and there. That was very amusing and this was the first show that did captured the audience. Everyone was looking: i though it was the music and the dance, this time very well done. Look at the face – my fellow postdoc said.

The dancing man was wearing a mask on his face and the music was reaching a climax and then he moved a fan over his head and the mask was different. And then moved his face, and it was different again. And again and and again and again. It was incredible to watch. The speed at which this performer changed his masks, and really who knows how he did it. And then he came down the stage and started walking through the public, mask change here, mask change there, approaching Yau. And once in front of him, the music really reached a peak and the man moved and there was no mask and the mask was there back again. Then back to the stage dancing, faces changing and suddenly he was spitting fire through the mouth. And then he stood up in the middle of the stage and removed his helmet for all of us to see his absolute proud face to an enormous ovation. I was really very much impressed.

This is known as Bian Lian. The face changing dances. When reading about it after the performance ended I recalled that, when studying mandarin back in Toronto, we had a section of practicing the past tense. In it we were to be asked if we had seen the Bian Lian but I had completely missed the importance of it here. They just told me it was a type of opera. I only took the above video because I did not want to miss watching it with my own eyes. I watched a lot of the videos after I returned home and read about it. Very impressive.

I think they should have closed the evening with this because anything after that was not going to reach the hype. Immediately after they brought a box and started to bring numbers out and read them aloud. They explained this was the first lot of the lottery. They would say fifty numbers to pick up a prize. When we arrived to the venue we were given a ticket. I had thought that was an entry ticket or to get fod, but no, it was the ticket for the lottery. My fellow postdoc told me that he would pay attention to the number in case I win because they were being read in mandarin. I myself was paying attention, but it was slightly difficult to understand how they were saying them.

So, the rest of the twelve shows were to run in similar fashion. Some shows, then more lottery, then shows, lottery. The guy next to me won the lottery in the first round and they were given an electronic board to write. It was nice. Anyways, the time had come for the postdocs to show their work. The staff from the YMSC ran to make sure everything was okay the postdocs got themselves into position They were going to sing a song in mandarin.

These are the postdocs of the Yau Center. The picture is very indicative of everything. Very serious and yet very random. I will be there in that group in 2026.

Unremarkable. They could barely be heard and again almost noone was paying attention except the random friends taking pics. Then came a staff member that played an electric guitar in extremely strange conditions. I could not figure out if she was actually doing something or just there making mimicry. And then the lottery again: pay attention! I was paying a lot of attention because I wanted to understand. I was following the numbers when my postdoc friend told me: hey, it’s you! Wait what? They said my number? I clearly had no clue what I was listening to. The problem was the way they were pronouncing zero confused me very much. Im used to it be pronounc “ling” but at times they say something different and it really confused me. In any case: I won! I got a humidifier…for…humidifying I guess. Does that help with the pollution?

After that came more shows. There were dances by highschoolers, singing by highschoolers…and then…more things that for the life of me I cannot remember. At some point they brough tangerines and peannuts. I was eating those tangerines as if my life depended on me. I stood up for a bit to walk around and explore the zone: there were pictures. There was another event about filming. Then I returned and walked a bit through the tables: I saw highschoolers gaming. Others doing their homeworks. Over there the postdocs discussing. And over there parents playing with their children. Some teens sleeping on the floor. Others talking life, math. Others writing papers in their laptops. Others bored to death. And who knows what the show was happening at the front.

It was when I saw all of this that it hit me. The point had never been to pay attention to the stage continuously. Just as in the shadow puppetry, the point was there to be in this group zoning in and out of the stage into your own things together with the rest. I remembered very strongly all the descriptions of that book about the Wayang Kulit. And while I was having a bit of a realization shock, we reached the last lottery.The big prices. They brought the box to Yau for him to take the tickets. Two other mathematicians stood up behind him: one is a korean mathematician, pretty famous. The other is western, and I met him in Toronto…and I just cannot remeber his name. I think they stood up because they were going to draw some of the tickets. One each…but Yau took them all out! I might be seeing things but the western mathematician seemed slightly annoyed. It was his moment! This might not be true but it was funny.

Finally, the last show: this woman came singing in a high pitch. The song is called Unforgettable Tonight, which as far as I could see is a popular song. However, the type of singing I found peculiar. High pitch. While she was singing, as if this was an anime, out of the enormous doors to the side finally tropes of waiters came out with plates of food, and drinks, and they lept coming. I found it quite funny because the first thing we were given, after enduring all this time, was coca cola and sprite. However, the plates did not made themselves wait. Fish, pork, veggies, rice, pastries, curries, some things I don’t know what they are, fava beans were present and tofu as well. Fruit. Everything was very good and we were all eating wanting more. We were all very hungry.

And then it was over. Everyone to the buses back to Beijing! We went out and it was very cold. We received instructions on where to go. We got into the buses and then we left. I tried not to, but I fell asleep and woke up when we were entering the campus of Tsinghua University.

However, they tell me, the Dalang kept playing.

I have always enjoyed stationary material: notebooks, pens and pencils, markers. In Toronto I started to try many new things related to more complex art forms. I tried oil painting, linocut stenciling, oil pastels, some quilling, etc. The amount of material I had was enormous. Then I had to move out of the country and I had to donate almost everything. I only took with me the set of professional boxes of Faber – Castell and the oil pastels. I thought I was going to be able to send some of them to Mexico by carrier but no. Turns out there are a lot of restrictions of what can go in this way to the country. I lost in this way [yes, lost] a set of markers I really liked and some of the panpastels. Oh well.

I traveled to China only with the oil pastels, the markers for Manga (the black ones of different tip width) and a set of coloured pencils. Of course there is a lot of art here in China, and a lot of artists and thus it is totally possible to find the material I like. However, the art stores for this kind of tools are not exactly close. I have not gone yet. I really want to get material for linocut stenciling, I really like this art form.

In the mean time, I thought it would be good to find some material in the stationary of Tsinghua. Of course they have one stationary! The first days that I look for the place I got confused with the directions and I could not really find where it was. The first days I was really confused on locating myself in the maps and I could not still make the v p n to work, thus I could not use the maps easily on real time [most times, I could not use it at all.]

The first order of business was to get paper to draw cartoons. I use a little notebook to write ideas for cartoons that come to me at random moments. In this way I do not forget. So far I have drawn three cartoons here, although I have not shown them to almost anyone because I want to have a proper scanner to upload them to the computer. Otherwise with the camera of the cellphone the picture is not very nice. In any case, I had to find this stationary. I had already confirmed it existed.

The stationary of U of T was very good when I arrived. However, as time went by its quality dropped. It actually dropped a lot. It became more of a clothes store at the end. It aways was but at some point it became frustrating how useless it could be for certain things. Nevertheless, this experience made me expect that the stationary of Tsingha would be quite amazing. The problem was that I could not find it.

The first thing I found was the souvenir store. Okay, truth be told, I didn’t find it…my friends took me there because I would not have seen it by myself! The souvenir store is divided into three substores: the one of clothes with Tsinghua color (purple) and branding, the one of nice sporty gifts and the one of fancy little thingies: pens, boxes, backpacks. It was not really an stationary. Nevertheless, I did see some very nice clothes.

In any case, I had to wait until I had a v p n to properly find the stationary. I was quite excited about being able to go and see this majestic place. When I approached it I saw it was inside a very big building where other stores were also located. Entering the big building, to the right was a place of flowers (and cactii!!). There was a supermarket. And then, oppostie to it…a stall. That stall was the stationary. I could not believe it at first. The great campus had as its stationary a stall. It’s not even inside its own store, is just in the hallway. I was shocked. I wouldn’t say I was dissappointed but it was strange. I did not know how to feel about it. In any case I walked through the little (and I mean little) aisles and there were so many things. Cute, tiny, weird, useless even, sometimes I was under a storm of information of so much things they had that, on the one hand, does not look of quality, but on the other, looks very nice.

I had gone there to buy paper and I could not find the paper. I was expecting a package of 500 sheets as I am used to. Nothing like that. There were packages of 80 or 120 pages of random colors. I wanted white paper. What do we do when we need something and we cannot find it? Exactly, we ask. But how on earth do I ask for this? Well…the embarrasing part is that I had made this exercise back in Chinese academy (they knew I was going to be in that exact situation) and I forgot how you say paper. So…I took the red paper with me and told to the worker: ni you bai? This is, gramatically speaking, incomplete. This is not how questions are formed in Chinese. Also, none of those words means paper. It translates as “You have white”. However, she understood and said: you, you. She went to the mini aisle and took a package of paper and gave it to me. White-yellowish paper. It has grown on me, I actually like it.

Another mistake I made when travelling was to do not check appropriately the connections of the computer. In here the connectors are different so I needed an adapter plug. I asked my supervisor if he had one or if the math department could lend me one, but there were none that work for my laptop. We checked online and he offered to hep me get one online. We looked for one and he showed me how they look. I recognized them! I had seen those things in one of the little aisles of the stationary stall. Here we go! This time I really have no fucking clue how to ask for this. Not even close. After evaluating al my life choices I go to the aisle, pick up one of the adapters, go to the worker and show her my laptop connector, the adapter plug and make the mimicry of trying to connect. She goes: ooooh! And she opens the box and points to me to the one, out of a million choices, that works for it. I check. It works. I say: oooo feichanghao!! I though on saying zuihao but one must have selfcontrol. It works wonders and I think it can adapt to any situation. Europe, covered. Antartica, covered. Zombie apocalypse, covered.

It has a massive ammount of different connections on all the sides of the cube.

When I finally was able to get my winter clothes I had to remove from them the plastic that kept them in place. These plastics are impossible to break without scissors or knives. I tried to see if it was going to be possible but soon I realized I would tear the cloth appart. After all the drama it was to get those clothes I want to have good care of them. Thus next day I went to the stationary again. I looked in another of the tiny aisle for scissors. I could see some scissors that seemed for children. This is what is very confusing of this store. They have things that look for children next to things that look very good and serious. And then everything in between. So I am never sure if they have the correct option for me and I just havn’t seen it. Those scissors did not convince me…so I went once more with the worker there, which by now know the dramas of it all. I told her ni you…and showed her a dictironary scissors – jian. And of course made the universal sign of cutting with scissors using my fingers. You you! She pulled out of the desk a gigantic box and pulls out of there three different super professional scissors. I can cut metal with some of those things. What is this place? Anyway, I picked some normal, but very good, scissors. I could cut the plastics succesfully.

The day that I went to look for the scissors I saw a notebok. It looked super pretty. Their notebook collections is actually quite feichanghao, I like it. They have notebooks for writing, for journals, for painting and also the infamous notebooks to practice your characters until you bleed because that is what you deserve! Actually, I will start using some of those because my mandarin lessons start soon but thats an entry for another day. In any case, I have so far bought two notebooks. In one of them I write all my notes of the thesis of Venkatesh. In the other I am writing notes of other mathematics.

The video I did after I bought the notebook. I was very satisfied.

The day I went to buy the second notebook I saw different coloured markers. Ah, that’s how they get ya! I had decided I was not going to buy them until I had not settled other thnings. Today those things were settled and xmas is in the air (this is supposed to be communist China and I cannot escape Xmas songs). In any case, I went today after studying, to check on the markers. They had so many options. I wasn’t sure about them because these are of brands I have never seen. I cannot judge. Nevertheless, I remembered that back in the day I bought two sets of markers from Amazon from non-famous (i.e. not Faber-Castell or Prismacolor or so) brands and they were very good. They were not very expensive either and I want to draw with markers too…thus I decided to buy them. I walked carefully through the aisles and went with the worker. She was not expecting me to appear, I suddenyl popped out of nowhere holding these markers. She smiled and laughed, probably thinking…this dude lives in the stall now. There are no doors.

The way they paint surprised me. I thought it was going to be a kind of soft water-based color marker, but no, it has volume. You can actually slide your fingers on the page surface and you will feel the thickness. This I should have known given the fact that it says “Acrylic Marker” but I saw so much characters that I missed it. Nevertheless, I am satisfied.

I cannot say that I have ever been huge on Christmas or, for that matter, any holiday. I have celebrated many hoidays by myself in my house. When I was a teenager and I did not want to go to te huge family reunions I would stay at home. I remember that one time that I wanted to stay home my brother was big on that idea so…he stayed too. If I remember correctly that caused some tension in the family. Another moment I remember of my Christams by myself is watching anime. One time I watched Saint Seiya Lost Canvas right as the midnight approached.

Then, of course, were the Christmas when I didn’t go back to Mexico and stayed in Toronto. My first christmas in Canada was spent in the house of a friend, with his son of 1 year (maybe less?) and his wife. It was not in Toronto but very close. I remember that Chirstmas because my term in Toronto had been very stressful. I was new in the country and I wasn’t very close to anyone. Sometimes I felt very lonely, so I was sad at random times. It was my therapy to go to my friends house for the holidays.

We decided to organize some mini math conference for those that were “left behind”. I also gave a mini course on what I had learned on Topological Data Analysis. That mini conference became known as the Christmas Talks. It’s patron saint was Gauss with a Santa hat that my friend drew on top of him. One of my most vivid memories of this were the two weeks, or so, we spent preparing before the conference started. We were very intense with organization of conferences and the sort and spent great part of the holidays in that way. In particular, I remember at some point my friend and I were in the basement of the Univesity Building. That is where his office was: dark and windowless. We were typying and at some point my friend closed the laptop at went silent and asked: why we do this to ourselves everytime? Because it’s what must be done, I replied (or something of that sort). This was ten years ago. Surprisingly for me, people continued with the tradition of the Christmas Talks and there has been new editions of the conference in later years. I think they still have the Gauss with a hat.

Another memorable Christmas for me was in Singapore. We were sent for a major conference on the Langlands Program. Everything convered by the hosting conference. There I was with my fellow students (we shared advisor) and with his postdocs. The conference started on the 17 of December and lasted until the 10 of January (for us, there was a further week but we were not registered for the events of the last week). There were talks and courses everyday: arrive at 10 am and it did not stop, except for some two hours of lunch, until 5 pm. As far as I remeber, they wanted this to keep going even on Christmas and New Year. Rumour has it that a very important mathematician that was on the conference, and had sway with the organizers, have to tell them: you can’t do that to the westerners…they will die. We were given ssome free days on these very important days.

I myself enjoyed the free days…and evetually started declaring free days for myself randomly. I am not great with talks and mini courses. I wanted to go to the museums and to the parks and take pictures and draw cartoons. Ah, this artist in me is what prevented me to win the Fields medal. In any case, I did go onto a lot of exploration by myself. One of the most important things one ust do anywhere is to see the bookstores. In Singapore I took everyone with me to the bookstore in the upper floor of the huge mall of Orchard Road. The Xmas decorations were massive. I am still unsure if Christmas is or is not important in Singapore. Touristically I am sure it is, a lot of people go there on the holidays, but for the locals is it? I sincerely do not know. It was actually slightly complicated to get into the areas where the locals lived. No decorations, singing songs or anything that I can remember.

In any case, if my memory doesn’t fail me…the Christmas night we went together to a restaurant in little India where they had a very famous coffee making technique. The point is to pout coffee from one pot to another to make it froth and mix. I sincerely, as I write this, do not remember the details. What I do remember is that they let you do it. Everyone did theirs and it was beautiful. When my turn was to do it, I spoiled everything, burned my hands, screamed in horror, everyone was having a great time at my expense. I remember nothing else of that night. It wasn’t that long ago and yet I don’t recall much. I guess we do forget a lot.

Of course, there were the Christmas from the COVID period. The Christmas of 2019 I stayed back home because I was focused on working and I had traveled a lot recentlyish. I did not know I was not going to be going anywhere in a while…I had the christmas of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 in Toronto by myself or with my roomates. Then again, in 2023 I went to Mexico for Christmas, but I stayed back in Toronto in 2024. I went to my records of pictures, because I really do have a lot, and I have a huge gap from December 2020 to April 2023. I am quite impressed by this…

I have fond memories of my Christmas by myself in Toronto in those years. I remember calling back home and we talked about our plans for dinner (mine were never impressive). I remember a lot about the work I used to do in those days. In the first years, 2019 and 2020 I was really trying to finish the thesis. It was the last months of 2020, which coincided with the second lockdown of COVID. We had not reached Omicron yet, it was still a year too early for that. That term (Fall of 2020) I decided to turn down everything: no lectures, no TA, no nthing. I semi disappeared in my room. Just to work in the thesis. To keep me sane, I would go on long walks with a greek friend of mine to buy espressos to starbucks and back. And that was it, I really did not socialize more. In the week of christmas we sneaked in into our offices and worked there. There was something of glorious to be there in the University when there was absolutely noone. These masoleums of emptyness were incredible.

I have no memories of 2021 and 2022 Christmas at all except from me watching together with my roomates comedic movies of the pandemic that were appearing in Netflix. However, I do have memories of 2023. I went back to Mexico! Ah, it was gorious. The maternal food was incredible. I always keep a record of the food I eat in Mexico and this are some of the pictures of that time.

I remember I was so tired that Christmas. From the last time I had been in Mexico, which was in the Summer of 2018 for the world cup, to then a lot had happened. I graduated from the PhD, the whole pandemic went in between, all sort of personal dramas occured. I also took advantaje of that Christmas to put in order many cartoons back at home and helped around emptying boxes of books that were lying around my parents house.

Of course, one cannot dissappear the mathematician in oneself. A friend of mine had recommended a book in Class Field Theory to me. I decided to read it in that winter and so I did. I sat down and read it. So my Christmas break was: great food, ordering cartoons, watching Netflix and studyng Class Field Theory.

The Christmas of 2024 I also stayed in Toronto and what I remember fondly is that I decided to work intensely on solvings a problem that was lingering. That term, Fall 2024, I had been very busy and finacially and emotionally strained so on the break, when I was murderous, I decided to really dedicate myself to painting and to this problem. I spent a lot of time in my office typying and reading and thinking. And what I remember very fondly is that on the 26 (according to my records) is that I had the breakthrough for that final push of that problem. We were looking for certain knots with some structure and we (my collaborators and I) could not find them. We had been trying many things and then there they were!

And now I am here in China. I was wondering how would I feel. I have to say I didn’t feel anything particularly intense. I was worried I was not going to be able to find dinner because everything was closed. Nobody gives a F for Christmas here. University was open, students were busy studying, locals and shops continued their regular life. I for my own decided to call back home. I hadn’t called a single time (we write online only). It was nice.

I decided to go for dinner to a place that I have started to like a lot. It’s on the basement of the mall close to where I live at the moment. It is a beef pie and a pot of hot rice noodles with peanut and spicy broth. It is really good. However, the story of how I find about this is funny.

Delicious beef pie and rice noodle broth.

The first days I came to this mall I did not know there was a basement with things. I thought it was the parking lot. However, a character I had not introduced yet in this blog and whose time shall come only to those loyal readers, told me there were food stalls down there. I decided to go one day and I sat down in this place. I ordered the beef pie only because it smelled really good. However, the workers here are putting orders online all the time, serving people here and there, etc. Very busy.

The day I sat down in this place, there was only other client in there. This young woman that, you could tel, had an ego the size of the country. Thus she was there, the diva, on the opposite corner. I sit down in a wooden bar, not in a table. I was eating my beef pie when they put to me they boiling pot of rice noodles and tell me something. I don’t know what they told me but I ignored it. Continued eating my beef pie. I didn’t touch the pot or the food or so. I could tell it looked very good.

The diva realized the pot was given to me. The waiters eventually realized that pot was not for me, but for her. So they took the pot and took it to her. Very fast she called the waiters and pointed with her hand to the pot, to me, to the pot, to me again, then made a no no gesture and pushed the pot again. They had to repeat the pot again for her. I don’t know what offended her so much: that it was colder than the surface of the sun, maybe? That it was given to a horrible foreigner? Perhaps. That she was made to wait for it, absolutely for sure. In any case, that pot was wasted. Diva didn’t want it.

I decided to mix it with my beef pie from then on. It is a gorious mix and I really enjoy it. I am very thankful to the Diva. The funny thing is that the next time I went and ordered the pot for the first time…the Diva was sitting next to me. She realized that I ordered that dish this time for me 🙂

And then back home and went to sleep. On the 25th I dedicated myself to draw some paintings. I am exploring some new ideas, now that I have markers and paper. I was home painting when I received an invitation from my argentinian friend. There is a party of some foreign postdocs happening and they invite me. Usually I am very bad with parties, I am lazy and try to escape them like the plague. However, I wanted to meet other people and thus I did not want to be difficult in this regard. I got myself into a cab, which is a technique I have been able to do now, and went to the place where one of these postdocs live.

There were around 10 people there, including myself. All of them related to science in Beijing. All of them foreigners: argentinian, russian, indian, italians, I was the Mexican and there might be another that I am forgetting. We ate food, drank some beer, I devoured a whole box of chocolates, and we played games. They were very friendly with me and it was really nice. Also, they told me about some places to find stationary material. They inquired whether I had tried the mexican food in China. Not yet. Many told me their experiences in Science in Beijing. One way or another the conclusion was: Chinese are extremely, extremely, good and talented. Why are we even here? At some point someone did ask: well, and where are the Chinese Postdocs and students? And the reply, half-jokingly only, was: they are studying. They only study. That’s their all. I don’t know if that is true or not, I shall find out as time passes.

We played a game in which we had to guess cities: everyone would write down the name of a city and let the rest see it. You cannot see the city you got. You ask questions about the city, with certain restrictions, and then try to guess. I put a hard one, seems to be, to my rivals. I chose Cancún and no matter how many questions he asked, he had no clue what this city was. The cities I got were “El cairo” and “Tokyo”. In the first round, for Tokyo I was trying to see if I could detect it by some language and I asked: Do we speak french in here? This was met, for some reason, with roaring laughter and a huge “absolutely not”. One of them laughed so much that took my hand and told me: thank you for existing. Your beingness is really absurd. (Not in a mean way) That became one of the memes of the night, whether french is spoken there. At some point I had ruled out cities in China, India and Russia. I said: well, I know I am in Asia but I am not in China, India and Russia. So..obviously I am North Korea. This was also very funny for everyone, but I was sure I’e got the answer right [except for the fact that North Korea is a country and not a city…].

We also played this with characters of Disney. Two people could not guess Mickey Mouse, despite having asked: am I a mammal? I had to give a character to the person on my left. He had claimed to be very very good at disney. So I chose Jacko the parrot of Jafar. He could not get it. He had absolutely no clue. Not only that, it took a while for the people who could see the name to remember this character. I won that round, my character was cinderella. When my rival saw that I won and then he, the Disney expert, could not figure out Jacko…he said, yes, you are the mexican villain.

Lot of laughter until we received a message from the neightbors: YES, MERRY XMAS BUT ITS 2 AM! The owner of the house got a bit worried because he says that the police of the building will come and scold him if we do not stop. We decided to leave. I reached the hotel at 3 am and went to sleep. Next morning comes and I have a message from da boss: are you coming?

Ha! Slept through my 9 am seminar. Oops, I promise won’t happen again! I really needed to meet the Postdocs.

Yesterday I completed my first month in Beijing. Today I am trying to meditate on what happened during this month and what do I think I have accomplished so far. Maybe “accomplished” is a bad word, but for me it is very important to feel that there is progress in whatever my goals are. This is something I have always struggled with because to measure progress can be very difficult, and sometimes it can simply be downright toxic. However, such thing as progress exists so I think I must keep myself somehow on god ground on this, without reaching toxicity. That, in this mathy math world of ours, is hard.

Routine: I have moreless settled into a routine. That is good but I do not really like the current one. The reason of this routine is because I still don’t have a home nor an office. When I planned for the first months I was not expecting this to be so bothersome to me, but it is. However, I have been able to mitigate it most days and it goes relatively well. I am usually a very slow and inefficient person, I decide to do things but it takes me long to make them. I am better, I think, now than ten years ago but is still definitely not solved. I think the next month I will finally get my office and I will restructure many things around it. My routine so far is: (1) wake up and shower, (2) have breakfast, (3) go work/draw to the coffee, (4) eat, (5) Go to study in the tea or other coffee, (6) go back to room to rest, draw, watch youtube, (7) dinner, (8) sleep. Variations of it. In particular, one thing I learned through my years in Toronto was how easy it is for me to skip meals (this is bad!) out of “convenience” or feeling “overwhelmed”. Thus, I have made extra effort to do not allow myself to do that. Not doing that to myself, I tell myself.

Facing Situationships: Close to where I am living at the moment there is a restaurant that I have come to enjoy. In here payments are handled mostly electronically, via wechat or via alipay. Very rarely you use your cards. Cash I’ve seen only once. The way you would do this is in a restaurant is as follows: you go to a table, where a QR code is glued to the table. You scan the QR code and it takes you to the webpage of the restaurant. You can order there, and there is a translation (very bad one some times), and then pay also in there. Then they bing you your food. I remember in some places in Toronto they usually did this to order, but you could avoid it easily by asking for the cards. Also, I do not know if in Toronto you can pay through there as well. I think you always ask for the check. In here, nope, wechat or alipay. For foreigners this is incredible because it allows us to have more independence and be able to do more things. However, there are places where such QR code is not available and you have to engage. This restaurant I just mentioned is such a place. I went there to try something new besides the noodles. Well, when I saw there was no QR code I had a bit of a panic. Panic is not the right word, I was not scared, but there was a part of me feeling overhwlemed. However, I forced myself to figure it out even if it is with mimicry [Just as with mianbao lady]. I point to the menu and I had absolutely no idea what I ordered. I wanted dumplings…jiao zi…well, they brought me a broth of what I can only describe as “breakfats made soup”.

It was delicious. It was a tomato soup with scrambled eggs and noodles.

The next time I was there I practiced. I wanted “noodles” so I had to say “jiao zi”. I practiced my pronunciation to be able ask for it. I entered the place and went straight to the cash register and a very eager lady said to me a million things of which I understood none. Then I said: Wo you jiao zi. To which she replied a giant: EH? I tried again and to no avail. She had no clue what I was trying to say. Instead of having a crisis I pointed to a picture of dumplings they had and wrote jiao zi in my keyboard. She went AH Jiao Zi!! Her “zi” and my “zi” were very different, I paid attentions. Her “i” became a sort of loose “e” at the end, while my “i” was not there, rather it was like an abrupt stop after the vibrating “z”. Anyway, she told me with her hands to look at the screen and she described IN MANDARIN the dishes and all. I pointed to one: zhege! zhege? Yes zhege dui! Zhege! And she charged me 28 yuan. Once more I had no clue what I ordered. The name was: rou san xian. This means: three meat delicacies, and it usually refers to seafood. I learned that while I was checking up what I had ordered while I waited. It was DELICIOUS.

Rou San Xian!!

While I was eating this I was thinking on whether everyody goes through this or people make an active effort to avoid it. The foreigners, through mathematics, that I have met here are of three kinds: (1) Those that learn the language [or actively trying to learn it]. Very few I have met, but they exist. One of them also does number theory and has been in China for six years now. (2) Those that tried to learn the language and dropped it. I have met many of them. Some showed me their books, their notes, their experiences but ultimately decided that it was too much. (3) Those that did not even try. Learned to say meiyou and xiexie and that’s about it.

To me it seems unavoidable to be in the situation of you wanting your jiao zi and having to be open to absolute chaos. I asked around and some told me they try to avoid this because they do not need to, they can (thanks to wechat et al) avoid it. And it is a big stress for them. I think it is fair, but is not what I want for myself. Thus, I go through stuff.

I want to put another example: I needed to take some pictures for some of the VISA processes. Here. I asked where to take pictures in the main office. They told me and I went by myself. I decided to prepare and to learn how to ask for three pictures: I want six pictures. Wo you liuzheng zhaopian! I went into the store and I said this. They understood, however, they do not make sets of of six so I received a speech of what they do, what they charge, etc. She took me to a board with all their options, and I forgot how to read options. It said 9 pics / 45 yuan. But I froze and I pointed to the 45 yuan and said zhege. Thinking it was a division of two options. Then I realized I needed some other size too, so I said: Wo ye yong zhege! This I don’t think is well said. The best would have been something like “Chule nazheng zhaopian yiwei wo yong zhezheng zhaopian“. The point is that this gramatical formations do not come to me on the spot, because I am receiving the information of their speech which I mostly don’t get, I get anxious and feel pressured because I feel I make them wait and exasperate them, and also become unsure of my own pronunciations. However, it worked: she took the pics, send it to me. At some point they wanted me to do something and I didn’t get it and I was able to ask “ni zuo yong shenme?” [This is wrong, I asked “what do you need to do? instead of “What do I need to do?] But she understood and guided me through my phone. They even gave me a discount (for effort maybe?).

I went out of the store feeling proud and exhausted. And that is what I mean with facing situationships. I have made my best to pay attention to how they speak, to prepare what I say, to be ready to make the absolute ridiculous and to ask help when I really need the thing well understood (i.e. the bank situation with my friend, for example). I am of course still feeling overwhelmed and take it with ease but I don’t feel completely cut out.

Work: I have been trying to do the work I have to, to study and make plans of what I need to do moving forward. Since I arrived I got a paper accepted and I figured out how to handle the whole process from here. A priori, this would sound straight forward but one has to deal with the fact that internet really works differently. So I had to go through all the steps, be patient with setback and the changes, and do not let it get to me so that the work gets done.

The setting up of the V P N was difficult because it was a sort of acircle. Not all V P N are created the same, so what happened to me (and probably could be avoided had I been more savy) was that I had to get one, to be able to get the next better one. It took coordination with mexico so my money wouldn’t be blocked for this. Several tries. At some points I was borderline hysterical (on the other side of the border, of course). However, it worked. Took around a week actually. However, everything was settled and since then I can access internet and do everything I needed there. I uploaded some recommendation letters, corrected some papers, sent all the data for the accepted one…and of course writing this blog.

I have also been studying, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts. So far I am reading two works to undertand better what is going on in them. I write notes, think on what is happening and try my best on what is the work I need to do. This has been very hard for a lot of emotional reasons. I am 36 years old, I am older than anyone here. This school has enormously intelligent people of twenty that are half way through their PhD already. This is not about comparing myself with others, but at some points one feels completely superfluous and irrelevant in the whole process (and, that is always a bit true for everyone, even the geniuses. Noone is really and absolutely necessary) but that doesn’t help anyone or anything. The challenge is to figure out how to work in a way that it fullfills me but also is around the level expected of someone in these institutions. That is just hard and stressful, but I try to do not listen much to my own neurotic thoughts on this. I try to appreciate the brightness of these people, which is really incredible, without minimizing my own abilities. They are what they are and they got me here.

Thus, I have gone to almost all seminars (I did miss one he he), discussed with my peers the best I can, take opportunities I can take and try to take it seriously.

Personal Goals: I have many goals that interest me, some mathematical and others besides math. For example, art is important for me. I have been able to found material to do cartoons but also some painting projects. These drawings I am making are different than what I have done before. I do not mean in quality or so (I do like them very much if I may say so), rather I mean that I am trying something new. I try to keep up with this that is important to myself and make sure that as soon as possible I can get to a place where I can really do this.

There are of course things I’ve lost, for the moment at least. The courses in the museums I used to take are not available here. Of course, not because there are no museums or art courses, but because they are not in english! However, instead of thinking on what is gone, I am thinking on what I can do here. This is something I have always tried to have…I do not know why I learned this, it has been my take for a very long time. I cannot lie that part of it comes from what I learned from cartoons when I was young. Especially, of course, Saint Seiya. I have said this to death in essays or so, but I do feel that one must let go in many different aspects. In particular, Canada and Toronto are not my home anymore and they are in some way in my past. I have shed my tears for Toronto and for the people I left behind, but Beijing is my place now. Of course, I don’t want to lose the people from there. I have enormous love for the city and the friends I have there, but at the same time I must focus here and to the possibilities it opens to me…which is why starting now I will write this blog in mandarin. That is a joke.

The conclusion of the previous paragraph is that I want to find what can I be here with what there is here. This is an incredible city that for real never sleeps. So far I feel happy with my painting direction. It started because I realized the acrylic markers are not going to work in the same way as regular markers (as I had thought I bought). They have to be used judiciously or they will run out super fast. This made me think how to make it work the best possible. Then I was traveling in the bus and remembered some of the works of Tom Thomson and something came to me. I have been trying it. I shall not spoil it with descriptions. It has to be seen.

Not all my goals are functioning. My health is not functioning so great: not having my own place, in particular my own kitchen, has of course affected my diet. I cannot blame this entirely this on this because in Toronto I did have my own Kitchen and I did not cook for myself as much. It is sincerely hard to have that discipline. However, in Toronto I had a lot of teaching to do and in here I will not. So we hope it balances. I really want a better diet. I also want to go to a gym. I found one gym but their instructions were mysterious. I still need to figure that one out. This is one of the main goals for me and it has to work soon. Working out is very important due to my accident, my age and just emotional and physical health.

The language is also important. I am happy to report that this Wednesdays (yes…the last day of the year) my classes of mandarin start again. I found my teacher. She was the teacher of another postdoc here and she has experience with this. I hope it goes well!

There is still a lot of things forward, but I will end up with an anecdote of the past. Once I had a student in a mentorship program. There was a talk that had to be given and she had to talk. She was dying of fear and she asked if she needed to do it. At the same time she said she wanted to try science and mathematics and all this crazy world. So I said, and this is literal, that of course she doesn’t have to do anything but that in this very crazy mathy world “if you cannot get over the shock, then you cannot do it.”

So, in the name of trying to be congruent, here I am getting over the thunderstorm.

Xinnian kuailei!

That means happy new year in Mandarin. This is the last entry of December and also of the year 2025. I have been trying t be consistent with my blog writing. I find it fun and it also distracts me, in a good way, when I am in my regular day because I do think: ooo this would be nice for the blog. However, I try not to write everyday because then the quality of what I can write goes down. Despite what people might think…not everyday happens something spectacular or sometimes it takes me sometime to think how to convey something. I actually do try to think what I am writing about.

I want to bike more in Beijing. So far I have done it from the hotel to some parts of the campus and viceversa. However, it hasn’t been frequently. One f the reasons why I do not do it is because I actually do enjy walking a lot. Another reason is that it is cold and is not so easy to bike in cold weather, one must get used to it. My main motivation to buy the gloves, which was not an easy task, was to use them when biking.

I learned how to bike when I was a kid. I used to have a bike and I would use it in my tiny garage. It was not so easy to bike in Mexico City back in the day (and I think it is still not easy these days). However, I did learn to bike. Nevertheless, I did not bike again for a very long period. I have very few memories of me biking in Monterrey and to be honest, I don’t trust those memories. Once I was in Guadalajara I did bike. Every sunday they closed for several hours a big and long avenue for biking. It was an effort from the goverment to improve peoples sport and community. I think it was really nice and it as very popular.

My father bought two bikes, because my parents would be the bikers. I usually would travel with them to the avenue and walk to the bookstore or to Sanborns (a famous coffee chain in Mexico) to eat Tortilla Soup. However, at some point one of my parents decided to stop biking and prefered to bike. Thus I started to bike instead. It was pretty fun, but very crowded. Little guys and teenagers were a menace back in the day! [I was a teenager].

Another memory of biking from Guadalajara comes from the math olympiad. A friend of mine would move around the city in his bike. We met in the math olympiads training center of our highschool. We lived relatively close so he would take me in his bike to my home. What this entailed was: I would be standing up in the “diablitos”, which are to heavy metal rods attached to back wheel, and keep myself steady by holding myself from his shoulders. We would this quite frequently. The path was not what I would say safe but oh well. I do remember we were biking inside the school and the prefect, the main one, appeared chasing us: stop biking, stop biking! You cannot bike inside the school! But the school was a public school and we could bike if we wanted it. So we kept biking and escaped!! We got punished next time, but I don’t remember how. I think we had to help with organizing some event or help cleaning the classroom after.

One time when I was biking I crossed a friend there. We started walking and talking when in the opposite lane, where biking flow was in the other direction, a kid not older than 15 fell down. My reactions was: hell yeah, 100 points! Everyone looked at us and my friend had to take me away apologizing on my behalf while I hid my face under my caps.

Then it all stopped for many years. In my undergrad I never biked because in Guanajuato you cannot bike. Period. I don’t think I ever saw anyone biking that was not for exercise, very professional, purposes and that was going up the highway. It was very steep and difficult. Other than that the city is really not friendly to bikers: basically the whole city is single file, a lot of people walking, irregular terrain. A bike would find it very difficult to move.

When I arrived to Toronto I remember people use to tell me that it was great for biking. However, because I lived in campus and I rarely went farther than some kilometers, and I could walk, I never even considered it. I did not bike during all my Ph.D. However, in my postdoc period a friend told me that I should consider biking. Several biking lanes had been put, public bikes were put in several places across the city and it was relatively easy to do.

However, what really convinced me of doing this was a certain adventure. I wanted to bike to a museum that was far away (it was 18 km away) by biking. This had started way before: after the pandemic finished and museums were open again I started visiting them. I went to several museums in Canada. Usually because I was in the city and I could walk or go by subway. It looked like an interesting challenge to go to this museum by biking. I had some friends that were sporty in this way and I suggested this goal to them and they agreed.

It was not going to be an easy task to do go to this museum out of the blue because we were not trained to bike for so long consistently. We are also not professional and our bikes are the public bikes. Thus, we decided we would practice. The practice were like this: every saturday we would meed at 9 am in a particular corner and bike to a coffee place. Each time, the coffee place should be farther and farther away. We biked to so many coffees in this way. Each of us also had its personal training times. I was going to the gym four times a week and having good diet, just to be able to do this. We had even chosen a date for this quest at the end of August.

Once the museum trip came we were able to do arrive to our destination without major problems. We also returned. The start of the path is relatively smooth and the slope is not very pronounced. It lasts around 7 km. Right in the midway there was a coffee that became our staple: goat cafe. It had excelent breakfasts and a vibe that told you: still not in Toronto but not downtown. I enjoyed very much that place. Also the mocca there was gigantic. After that came a path of probably other 5 km that was inside a huge park. It began with a very pronounced downhill next to the cars. It was very thrilling! Toronto bikes however are not always incredible and the brakes are scary so I was modulating the speed for otherwise…Then for a long period we biked through paths in between a lot of trees and plants and beavers. This part is the heaviest one because it has a lot of curves, slopes, unexpected turns. Once we were out of that park, what follows were the final 5 kilometers. These are mostly flat, although at some points we had to cross in a part we were not supposed to by sneaking our bikes throu some gates…the vibe of that part of the city is very interesting because it completely feels suburbian, not at all a buzzing metropoli as Toronto downtown can be. What was really cool was that once we were out of the park you can see the museum becoming larger and larger and larger until suddenly you are right there.

This museum is the Aga Khan museum. It was an interesting place to visit. They had several exhibitions: one was on muslim art, tradition, literature, etc. Other was on games with light and statues. Then the central garden, which might be called a garden of light was extremely peaceful. In a certain sense that was the plan of the garden and it is, as far as they explain there, a type of architecture that is classical in muslim constructions. However, the real success was arriving in the bike.

Of course, we had to return. We also biked but this time it is easier because the slope goes downhill this time. In truth it felt smooth, except for a long slope at some part of the way, everything in the way back was very nice. I remember returning home, eating and then dying for hours. Next day I was very tired and my legs were sore. However, the training helped a lot because tiredness went away soon and I wasn’t destroyed. I felt very proud of the accomplishment. Some of my friends called it a great feat because it wasn’t easy to do without discipline.

Biking contributed in a different way: it let me do things by myself in an easier way. I knew at that point that there were very high chances that I was going to come to Beijing in approximately a years time. Thus I decided I had to practice to be by myself. Learn how to entretain myself, how to calm myself, how to figure things out by myself. It was in this period that I started to learn mandarin. I used the bike to go to different coffes everyday (of course, after some time I started repeating). Biking became an importat way to have physical and mental health.

The problem with biking in Toronto is that one cannot do for long periods of time. At least not if one is not prepared. Winter is quite intense, it gets very cold and it can snow a lot. As a consequence, sometimes you simply cannot bike. For me the months that were like this, where it was constantly at -5 to -15, or very snowy and windy, were from November to April. Half the year basically. I was already not very good biking around zero degrees. Breathing is really tough.

I like to say:

“We have all been that bike.“

I am now in Beijing. It has a huge biking culture and the amount of bikes its simply massive. I find this very interesting. In Toronto, th way you would find bikes would be as follows: there are locations, which are bike stations, where you could get a bike as long as they were available. You would scan a QR code, the bike would be free and you would use it. There were year memberships that allowed you to use the bikes for up to 45 minutes before you had to “return” it (park it and unpark it to keep going was fine of course). This introduced several problems. Firstly, it was quite common that there were no bikes anywhere. Many times at the hour when students leave campus there were absolutely no bikes in the whole area (I’m tallking of 3 km radius area sometimes). Frustrating. Secondly, many times bikes would refuse to unlock, or were broken, or would unlock but the bell, the wheels, the seat were damaged. It mostly worked but there were moments of real frustration.

Here in Beijing this does not seem to be a problem. I find the amount of bikes baffling. There are many public bikes of different colors: yellow, blue and aqua blue. Inside some Universities they have other colors sometimes (Tsinghua has purple ones sometimes…today I didn’t see them). You use an app to scan the QR code of the bike, then it gets unlocked and it counts your time. According to the trip you take is how much it charges you. Compared to Toronto is very cheap.

There are no bike stations. The bikes are just there. Of course, this is not as random as it seems. What happens is that the bikes can be located by GPS. Thus there are zones where bikes can be left and places where they cannot. When you want to park your bike, the system will not let you lock and will continue to count your time of use, unless it is located in a place approved by the app that is tracking the location of the bike. This leads to finding public bikes in sometimes random places where there are no other public bikes.

The experience of going in the street where there are bikes is quite amusing because the bikes never end and sometimes there are streets where you simply cannot walk. You swim within the bikes.

This is me walking from start to end of a street block with bikes.

Now that new year is upon us, it is time to make the new year resolutions. I have some, not that many as now I know plenty about limitations. However, one of them is that I want to exercise and take care of myself more than what I did last year. Previous year and a half was hard for many reasons. The fact that I was leaving Canada after a decade of living there was intense, not withstanding that I was coming here to China after. The other side of the world. And there of course were issues of personal nature that were very intense. Thus I really stopped paying attention, surviving was enough sort to speak.

Now that is not the case. I need to be able to live and find myself at home, as possible as it can be, here in Beijing. Thus, an important part of this, is to be able to move and do activities that I enjoy. In particular I want to go to cafés and also I want to go to museums. As a consequence, I have decided that I will try to go to coffees that are at bike distance and I will try to bike there. However, the real challenge (motivated by the Aga Khan experience) is to go to one of the Art Museums of Beijing. There is one that is an appropriate distance. Around ten kilometers from here and one can bike there. I shall try, but I do need to train and prepare myself or I won’t make it.

Of course, to train for this I need to bike, to go to the gym, to eat better and to go down in weight. I am so big right now, I think I am as big as I was during the worst period of the pandemic or maybe a bit more. Oh boy. However, I have asked around with the postdocs and they told me that there are three gyms in campus. They told me which one is the best and that I should get the membership for the whole year. I shall do that as soon as I get hired. These things are for the people that “belong” to campus, thus I need to sign that contract. I have been told that by the 15 of January they expect all the process would be concluded.

I also need a place with a kitchen. This has been a difficult situation so far because I cannot cook and thus I eat outside a lot. The price of the food is not bad, its accessible actually. Just for a comparison, one meal out in Toronto is easily 20 dollars. That is 100 yuan, and here you can eat in campus decently with 20 yuan. Thus, thats 5 meals. The important part is that the food is not always very healthy and is not easy to control it entirely. I hope to be able to control this better with kitchen!

I think all these things will start to function in the next months. The hiring and getting an office I do believe will be in the first weeks of January. Getting a place might be fast or take longer. The problem is that we are approaching vacations and thus if I do not get a place in campus by then, housing department of the university might be slower in vacations…let us hope!

In any case, the next steps are: get that office, get those bikes and get the gym membership. I shall report on the progress here! For the time being I conclude our entries for the year of 2025. I shall continue in January and I think I shall put titles to the entries. I might try.

I have not written in some days. I had all the intentions to write yesterday but all the issue in Venezuela made me quite sad, so I just got detached and distracted. Nevertheless, here we are today.

When I booked the hotel for my first days of stay (almost two months) it looked so far away and now it turns out I am close to the end of my booking period. I am currently waiting to decide where will I be in February. The reason is that here the vacation period of winter lands on February, where the Chinese New year happens. I can stay in Beijing but chances are I will go to a place close to the city but outside where another math center is. It is cheaper place and also later, once I am fully working here, I will not have a complete opportunity to go there and spend long period over there.

I had my first mandarin lecture previous week. My teacher told me that she realized I am better prepared that she had anticipated. That made me happy although I do not exactly now what that means. In anyway we have one hour of lecture every wednesday from now on. I want to improve. At the moment I recognize around 50 characters, my vocabulary is weak and my listening is weak. Although, when I listen to random mandarin spoken I do not feel lost in the sense that it is meaningless, rather I realize I am missing so much vocabulary that I cannot even say I do not understand. I don’t even have the words. Thus I have to start studying more vocabulary! From what I understood the teaching telling me, the part of the whole course she has prepared for me starts with increasing vocabulary. The reason being that I have certain fundations of grammar already.

I have a certain dichotomy. I do not know what I would prefer: reading mandarin or speaking mandarin. The reason is that I enjoy reading quite a bit. One of the things that has been bittersweet here are libraries and bookstores. When I was living in Toronto I had access to a lot of books. Toronto has decent “official” bookstores and really very good second hand bookstores. Probably the most famous one in the city is BMV. There are three (I think…) locations, and the biggest of them has three floors. Through the ten years that I lived there I bought a lot of books from them. I liked their random philosophy where I bought quite a lot of my Slavoj Zizek collection. I enjoyed their art section because, somehow, they had books that had been made for exhibitions in museums. I learned about a lot of artists from those random books. Their sections on literature, psychology, sports, criminal law, etc…were marvelous. On the top floor they had only comics and graphic novels.

In the “decent” bookstore, called Indigo, there were many chairs and tables. I could see many teenagers sitting there just working in the tables. There is a piano that people can play and people would go and practice. Mostly atrociously I must say. The first time I went to that particular store it was when I participated in the Fields Undergradate Summer Program 2014. I spent two months in Toronto. The bookstore impressed me a lot and I even got a points card. That same card continued to work when I was accepted to the PhD in Toronto!

An activity that I really enjoyed doing was going to that bookstore and pick a book that I found interesting. Then I would keep going and I would read the book there. I would never pay for it. I read so many books like that. Previous year only I read there nine books.

• Where Reasons End, Yiyun Li. This author is the mother of two sons, of similar ages. Both of them died by suicide. After each of the suicides she wrote a book. I have always found suicide a very interesting topic to talk about and study, however scary it can be. Even more so, for some unfortunate reason, in moder day academia among students of different degrees suicide and suicide attempts are very common. This is the book written after the first suicide. I decided to read it when the new york times made a review of the book after the book of the second suicide. To find meaningful, whatever that might mean, books on suicide is hard. So I read them.
• Hunchback, Saou Ichikawa. This book is about the life of a woman with a crippling disease. It is very short but it is really very witty. I really enjoyed it. She lives in a take care home, but she has a lot of money, so she really has everything she could want except that she has to live with her very intense disability. However, if I remember correctly, she wants to get pregnant. Thus the story unfolds. I remember reading this book and laughing out loud at several parts and the teenagers in the same desk as I was looking me like a weirdo.
• Zero Point, Slavoj Zizek. After the attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 Zizek was invited to give the opening speech on Frankfurt book fair. In there his speech caused a lot of problematic and uproar. This book is his meditations and reply to this upraor which he considers unmeditated and unfair. It was a very interesting book to read. I used to bike from my home to the bookstore 4 or 5 times a week to read. I would sit down and make gargantuan efforts to do not fall asleep, and sometimes I did fell asleep reading the books…
• The Native Trees of Canada, Leanne Shapton. This is a book on drawing of trees. It is unremarkable but I wanted to see it. It’s a book so it counts for goodreads.
• When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, Jordan Thomas. This is a book about the author’s experience being a hotshot. These are the people that fight forest fires on the front lines. he describes here the story of fire and the way man, in California and that region, has progressed. I loved this book but it deeply impressed me. The conclusion in great part i that fires, due to global warming, are now so different to what we knew that we are in serious trouble. I decided to read this book because I like fire, I also have a cartoon on certain apocalyptic situation that I have been designing for some time and this helped me with some ideas, and finally the reviews were very interesting.
• My Death, Lisa Tuttle. This is horror fiction, but not exactly a horror story in the sense of a haunted house, or a ghost or so. It is a regular novel, with a plot, that suddenly shows you a creepy ending that is quite interesting. I found this book by chance. I used to walk through the bookstore and open random books. When I found one that seemed interesting I read it. Certain goal of mine was to read authors that I did not knew and that I haven’t heard. Just give in to the literature.
• The Swallows of Kabul, Yasmina Khadra. This is a stroy that develops in Afghanistan. It starts with the stoning of a woman and how it unfolds when one of the main characters, which is a regular man, is having a terrible day and out of who knows what passes in front of the stoning and grabs a rock and throws it at the condemned woman. From there one thing takes to the other until there is such an endng that is slightly unbelievable but I enjoyed it.
• The Expulsion of the Other: Society, Perception and Communication Today, Byung-Chul Han. I really enjoy reading Han but sometimes he has this concrete, dry, way to say things. I read this book in one go. I remember that I was about to finish the book and they were going to close. They came to tell me: sir, we are abou…but I raised a finger like in, shhh, almost done. They waited for me like two minutes to close. I laughed and thanked them and they were like: this dude…
• Clean, Alia Trabucco Zerán. This book is translated from the spanish and I did not realize until the end…Its the strory, as told by the main character, of a woman that becomes a live in service lady of a rich family. This family has a daughter that is a child and is an obnoxious spoiled child…until the main character can’t take it any more and…well, you know. I enjoyed this book. I hated the family.
• Hokusai’s Fuji, Katsushika Hokusai. These is a book showing all the painings of Mount Fuji by Hokusai and some essays on it. I enjoyed it. One thing that I found quite interesting was the infinite confidence of Hokusai. He kept saying: when I am X years old I will be infinite, a god, a master of perfection in paining Mount Fuji.

The reason why I know exactly which books I read there is because I have a list of all the books I read. I use goodreads. I started to use good reads like ten years ago or something like that. I think I opened it some one or two years before moving to Toronto. I started using it precisely because I kept forgetting which books I read, so I figured it would be a nice thing to keep the books there. However, they have this “reading challnge” which consists on picking a number of books you propose to read that year. For some time now I have challenged myself to read 20 books each year.

I have consistently done that challenge since 2016. Let us see what did I do:

• 2016: Read 15 out of 20 books. The books I read were god (of course I had forgotten which ones…). From the list I can see my favorite one was The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness, Lori Schiller. This is the semi-novelized biography of the author which developed schizophrenia when she was a teenager and recovered almost a decade or a decade and a half later due to the progress of drugs that could help. I talk a lot about this book because once she is recovered one day she says she missed the voices and looks for them and finds them…she freaks out. She says: I can very well find the voices if I look for them. I repeat this to myself, whatever the voices might be at each time.
• 2017: Read 16 out of 20 books. Interesting books I read this year. However, this year I discovered one of the books that is super close to my heart. Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age!, Kenzaburō Ōe. Oe had become an important author for me some years prior because of his way of writing and topics of exploration. There is disturbance in his writing and I really appreciate that. Well, this book has to be one of my top three books in my entire life. It is an incredible, albeit difficult, book. I read it in November of that year because I was feeling very anxious. November in Toronto is a difficult month many times because the lighting and weather change abruptly and tasks and chores increase. It is a crazy month an it had a way to getting to me. So, to distract myself intelligently, I chose to read that book.
• 2018: 13 out of 20 books. I read a lot of books on suicide this year. I found Edwin Shneidman, the father of suicideology (there is such thing) and I read many of his books. Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind is probably a book that stayed with me by several of the powerful interviews it had. It is in this same year that I read my first complete book of Zizek, Event. A book that made me roar in laughter but made me think a lot as well.
• 2019: 20 out of 20 books. This was the first time I achieved the goal. I remember feeling very proud. This year I continued reading books on suicide and pain (my physical accident was being difficultish here). I remember veyr much In the land of pain, Daudet, where he explains about how his pain mixes with his literature and renders it useless. But Daudet was a good writer so it is very precise. I also read here Human Acts, Han Kang, which is a book that was very sad and intense. And a phrase stuck with me: That’s when you died, Dong-Ho. Ah yes, Han Kang can be brutal. I have read six books by her by now, and she is always very impressive, but I think for me so far the book that really got me is this one. Human Acts.
• 2020: 7 out of 25. I got cocky that I could read 20, so I increased it to 25…and well it didn’t work. My reading was quite affected by the pandemic because I could not go out to the bookstores! More suicide and Totem and Taboo by Freud. Freud is a haunting writer, what an ability to mistify with what he says.
• 2021: 13 out of 25. Still insisting on 25…In here I read many interesting things but the book that takes the win is The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing. It is an INCREDIBLE book but it has a part where the brutality is cosmically comicall that I laughed as a primitive man. It is a laughter that noone should hear. It broke all my expectations. What a book! I still go back to that part and read it.
• 2022: 7 out of 12. I was allowing myself to do one book a month only. I remember telling myself, it’s okay to chill. The book I remember the most was Getting Lost, Annie Ernaux. I found it fascinating. I had to go out of my way to find the book “fast” because, after she won the nobel prize, it became difficult. I also remember reading The Sense of an Ending, Barnes. What a bad book. I rarely say this, but this book is beyond appaling. Predictable and flat.
• 2023: 17 out of 20 books. This year I read a lot of poetry. I really enjoy poetry. And the book that impressed me the most this year was All the Flowers Kneeling, Paul Tran. I found his poetry outstanding. A lot of poetry of minorities (whatever the minority) people focuses, obviously, on the fact of being a minority. Of course that is all right, but sometimes when they write poetry that overcomes the poetry itself, and is just boring flatness that rhymes. However intense and cathartic it was to write it, it is not really captivating. I found that Paul Tran managed to do it.
• 2024: 18 out of 20 books. I read good books this year and yet, however, the one I think was the best of all is The Dark Forest, Liu Cixin. It is the second book of the triology of the three body problem. It managed to surprise me and to be very enjoyable. I also read The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared, Randall Sullivan which is an oda to stupidity. It starts really good and I was enjoying it. But when his conclusion is that the devil is planning his return in Mexico City because that’s where the Aztecs commited canibalism and nonsense like this one has to wonder what the fuck.
• 2025: 18 out of 20 books. Definitively the book that I enjoyed the most this year was Exhalation,Ted Chiang. I really enjoyed the books of suicide I mentioned earlier too. However, Exhalation is really good. It is a collection of short stories of science fiction. They are very well written. The one named Exhalation (which is the second story of the book) is really good!

Almost all of the above occured in Toronto because I had bookstores and libraries and friends that read and recommended things.

Now I am in Beijing. There are bookstores and I have gone to them, however, all is in Mandarin (to be fair is not all in Mandarin, some have sections of books in English but is very limited). So I can’t read anything. There is a bittersweet feeling at the fact that I’ve lost, at last momentarily, the option of going to a bokstore and pick random book and read there, leave it, return. Or buy it. I can’t read the character.

Which bring me back to the question? Would I prefer to read or would I prefer to speak it? There are people that can do one but not the other. Of course, this is imprecise…you cannot read without speaking it, but what I mean is that you can say sounds and nobody understands your pronunciation in Mandarin because tones and rythm drown you. So, you know what you have to say but it doesn’t come out in a way you understand. The other direction is way more common: a lot of conversational chinese lectures focus on this, you speak and are able to communicate but you cannot read. Some postdocs that are fluentish, speakingwise, have told me they cannot read.

I really wish for reading because I want books! For the mean time I will have to survive from buying online and going to the sections in english. I do practice my characters and I hope I improve…for the mean time, this year I have set my challenge: 20 books in 2026. Who knows from where will I get 20 books I can read.

I had a mission today: go back to a certain goverment office to pick up my passport. Some days ago I went there, together with another of the employees of the Yau Center, to make sure that my R-VISA gets updated to a Residence Permit. Today this was ready and now I can live and work in the Yau Center. Finally! We are not finished with steps, of course. Now follows to…wait for it…fill in more forms! Next step: sign the contract. Then, maybe, before I turn 40 I can get a place to live and get an office, we shall see.

This office was far away. Some 20 Km away from my hotel and I had t book a Taxi. When I was in the taxi the driver told me something. He asked me a confirmation about whether I was the correct person to get the taxi. It is similar to when we ask for an Uber and he say our names, to confirm all is correct. Well, here what they tell you are the last 4 digits of the cellphone you are registered with in WeChat (because I am using DiDi, the taxi app, via WeChat.) He said ni you #### ma? [The numbers are redacted out of security, of course.] I said Dui dui. But in truth I wasn’t sure what he said, but I have been actively trying to make sure I actually get what people are telling me and how people pronounce things. My vocabulary is not great yet, more on this later, but due to this I started to meditate: what did he say? I repeated it on my head and it clicked. Oh, he is saying ####. I checked my phone and indeed I had understood correctly the numbers. Thus my affirmative answer was correct. I was the right passenger. It made me happy that we move slowly, but we do.

***This writing is interrupted for the urgent task of buying mian baos with mian bao lady before she closes***

We are back! As I was alking outside of the hotel I heard a random sir say: wo yau che wu fan. Which means I want t at lunch. Maybe he said wan fan, which would be dinner. I am slowly getting some phrases here and there but it is definitely not perfect. However, as I was hearing this I meditated on how strange it is to adapt to a new language. I dominate English pretty well. I will never have native level of course, I did not grow up with English as a home language, but I can do anything important and nonimportant with it. Of course, it wasnt like this always. I studied English for some 10 years approximately before I stopped having lectures in the language. By then, I started reading books in English because Math is mostly written in English. Then after that I lived ten years in Toronto. I have had all emotions in English.

The period of learning English feels like another life. I remember how much I struggled reading short stories and not understanding anything about them. My listening was atrocious as a kid. I am not completely sure how did it change. When I arrived to Toronto for the first time, in the Fields Undergraduate Summer Program, I was worried I was not going to understand anything or struggle. But no, everything was rather smooth in this regard. There were challenges, but English was not one. Thus, it feels so strange to be in a period of slowly improving a new language. According to online sources, it takes 6 years of stuy to become fluent in Chinese. I have been studying one so far. The little victories feel like lamps that shine randomly in a very ark night but that are enough to hint at a bigger structure that you are not yet prepared to see.

I had decided to get some baos but this time I also wanted a boiled egg. I wanted to ask for it, with my voice, as opposed to pointing with my fingers or so. This is a strange process: the passage, from the primitive cave man that throws words and hopes those are enough to be understood, to the one that can form sentences. While mianbao lady was picking up the baos she was not looking at me. In that moment I said: wo you yige jidan. I want an egg. She was not looking at me, so I’m sure she didn’t see when my hand betrayed me and pointed to the eggs. However, she said hm hao. And gave me an egg. I felt elated because she understood what I wantd without any drama, repetition, show. It was a casual thing. It is so peculiar to celebrate ordering a boiled egg, but if I will read literature in Mandarin one day…

While I was waiting for the mian baos to be warmed (I had already been given my egg) I was looking at the menu. There are some things I understand but I already knew of them before coming here. It’s the classical stuff: chicken, pork and beef meat. This was lesson one of my Mandarin classes. The first thing we would do was to say fast a story and part of it was to say these words. These stories were checked: we had to try to say them many times until we could say them under 2 minutes, sometimes under 1 minute. I remember trying that story and it took me aroun two hours to say it under two minutes. I sent the recording to some friends that speak Chinese and they told me: the tones need working but I get it.

This being a very important thing: the speed of talking. My professors explained to me that tones are very important but that context is also very important. Thus if you are able to speak fast and more less correctly, the tones can be infered from context. However, for that you need speed because otherwise the spacing between syllabes without tone avoids context forming (because you cannot recognize anything at all spoken slow). My professor would tell me: fast, fast, speak speak! What do I need to do for you to speak fast. Oh he would scold me. I practice saying things fast and then sometimes I get understood and sometimes I don’t.

While I was looking at the menu I sau something: four characters but I recgnized only three. Rou San ??? bao. I saw the character and sincerely I didn’t recognize it but I remembered the dumplings. Rou San Xian Jiao Zi, the dumplings of three delicacies. I said: this gotta be xian and these are the corresponding baos. I checked in my online dictionary and indeed, the character I was missing was xian. This is a menu entry I did not arrive to China knowing. I did not know Xian as a character or word, nor knew the concept of this dish. Fascinating. However, I didn’t order these dumplings because I had already ordered the other ones.

Back to my trip to the goverment office…I was paying a lot of attention to the characters because I am trying to become one with them. I have a book with the most common 800 characters of the langauge. It conforms the 77%, according t the book, of the common written language. Thus, it makes sense to learn them properly. I decided this will be a one year objective. This cannot completely be rushed and it needs systematic progress. It is totally doable, but I need to work on it. I had already started this book, so I have done up to chapter 4 but I am going to review the first four. Each chapter has several characters, it teaches you how to write them, pronunciation and some stories to remember them. However, now I live in Beijing and there are characters everywhere! Thus I have decided to introduce:

CHARACTER GO!!!

I will actively go and look for the characters of the corresponding chapter in the wild (gotta find them all!). I grew up with pokemon. I was in thrid year of primary school, so I was proably 8 years old or similar, when it was aired for the first time in México! I remember we were all very excited to watch it for the first time and when it came out we were all Ash Ketchum! And we loved Pikachu and we knew the 150 original pokemón. Now there are like 20 million of pokemon and I have lost track.

I was in Toronto when Pokemón Go appeared in the world. Everyone was catching Pokemón and I found it interesting. However, one day I heard that some people found a Magmar in their stairs. Magmar lives in living volcanoes, people! Why on earth are we finding Magmar on the stairs? I remember I was almost offended by it. Of course, the question is about whether I expected people to go to a volcano to find a Magmar and my answer is: no but maybe…actually yes? I do expect some reality about it? In any case, at that time (we are talking 2016) I was thinking many things and several of them converged, this being one of them, into me developing a story: The Majestic Dragon Sauce. It took me almost a year to develop the whole story, with appropriate ending, of what I hope will be my first (and maybe only?) Graphic Novel. [I cant do everything. I create stories, I will create them forever, but I can’t draw all…but this one I might, we hope.] Thus, because of this Pokemón GO is close to my psyche. Thus, thinking on characters I thought it made total sense to do this. I shall report on my progresses as we go and find those characters!

In any case, because of Character GO I was paying attention to see what I found. When we were arriving to the goverment office I realized there were several things around the place I hadn’t notice the first time. In particular I saw there was an art museum next to the office! So random, but if I have stamina for something is for museums. Thus I went to the office and picked up my documents and then I went out toward the museum. It took me forever to find the entrance. At some point I was like…maybe I shall give up, there seems to be no entrance. But I felt bad at that thought: one cannot be giving up at life. Thus, paid more attentions and finally entered the place.

I walked inside and a woman came to me. She said something in Mandarin to me and I blanked. I did not understand what she said. I said: Wo bushuo hanyu. I do not speak mandarin. I said it perfectly. I think it’s the best thing I have ever said. It is an irony. She went: oh! And got out one of those translation machines and wrote something. She explained a process, then saw I had wechat so she came to guide me. At some point I needed to put my name and she said Mingzi and I understood Name. I felt happy I understood that lol. Then I was all set, it was free [I hope because I didn’t pay anything…].

I was not sure what this museum was all about. It was two smallish floors and there seem to be solo exhibitions. This means that on each floor there were works of a single artist. I entered to the first floor exhibition…Do this with me. Close your eyes and imagine: you walk, there is darkness except for some lights. There is epic music of war anime on the background for some reason. You look to your left and you see two robotic arms shaking two trees as if it was a perreoof Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee.

Titi me preguntó?

When I entered it was shaking those trees with all might. It really was a: what the actual fuck did I just watch. Then on top of the building were some hanging trees upside down. Evangelion is here. Turns out this exhibition was about art, technology, and the role of AI in it. Many of the machines I saw there were AI controlled and because of it there was something of unexpected in it. These trees could react to th environment: if the observer approached it went smoother, or stopped. If you were far it made tantrum.

The epic Anime music came from an installation where you were asked to imagine the human works with a humanoid in fixing a space station. There were images of debris and space and an arm moving a human robot. And it moved it and at some point this humanoid was infront of me extending his arms, as if embracing me in a lovely hug, and I swear despite there being no face it looked at me.

The first robot to offer me love.

I wanted to take these videos and pictures for the blog. Thus I needed to ask permission. I have not found a museum where they don’t allow you but I guess it is better to ask. I checked how do you say “take a photograph” in my dictionary: paizhao. Thus I wanted to say: Wo huibuhui paizhao? There was this young guy working there. I approached: ni hao! wo hui bu hui papaya? [I didn’t say papaya but to give you an idea of how much I flunked.] He smiled and say EEEEH? I smiled and showed my dictionary and he gave me an enorous smile and said Keyi! (you can) and gave me the three fingers of OK! [you know what I mean right?]. Enormous beautiful smile. It surprised me how happy he seemed. I have heard Chinese people feel very happy when they see you try to speak in their language with them. I don’t know if that is true…I sincerely never had the experience of someone trying to speak with me spanish randomly because they are lelarning and has no option. Furthermore, knowing myself I would be like: yes, whatever. In any case, I felt good with myself for succeding at this task.

I progressed to the museum and reache a wall with several screens on them. They were tablets of some sort. They showed images being generated randomly with some AI following instructions. Those instructions were parameters and it produced a lot of images. I read the description and it explained that with AI the artist becomes a master of parameters. The AI explores the infinite amount of possibilities with those parameter and then the artist judges which ones are remarkable. Some other part of the museum mentioned the phrase: there is no art, there’s only artists. However, maybe we should change it to: there is no art, there’s only data.

Art reduced to data science.

At the end of the hallway was another screen, but this one showed the final result. Those that were picked to be the chosen ones of the thousands produced by the AI.

Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?

Sonny: Can you?

This quote is from I, Robot, the Movie. I don’t think an equivalent part appears in the books. I couldn’t find it.

I don’t think any of the images shown is a masterpiece, but I would lie if I say some did not catch my eye and feelings. Furthermore, from the perspective of thinking that “humans” don’t paint like this…it is true, but then there is cubism, futurism, etc.

After this part I went to the next one which was extremely interesting but not well explained. It protrayed nine independent AI’s living in a maze. It was trying to understand whether they cooperate or if they start attacking each other. It mentioned that most of them go toward cooperation but that eventually some become deviant and start scheme. I did watch one of them killing other. However, I was very confused of what were the parameters, or what did it mean “AI living in a maze” exactly. That sounds almost dramatic but I do not know how much can “AI live in” somewhere. However, the question is interesting. Furthermore, it also showed all the characters in different comics that appeared in the creen. However, it did not explain if those comics go on a loop or if they are also produced and drawn with AI somewhat randomly.

The drawings were pretty good.

This was the end of the AI and art section, or so I thought. I went up and on top of it there were two robotic arms holding a very thin veil. They moved one way or the other and thus made the veil create different sorts of waves. It explained that the robots at some point go together and at others they go against each other. It was pretty cool to see those robotic arms.

I remembered when I was a sixth grader and I took courses in Robotics in my primary school with Lego. My father had bought some computarized Lego which you could program to do things. It had a camera and it could see. The point was to mimic mars exploration. It was really primitive. When I see the robots of today and I think of that. The first robot I saw was in the laboratory of my dad. I can only describe this robot as a giagantic can that looked like a Dalek, like those of Dr. Who. My dad bought them for his students to do his Ph.D. research with it. It was edge of research back in the day (we are talking of 1995!). I so vividly see the Ph.D. students building robot spiders that crumbled again and again under their own weight after a few steps! And today I see robot arms moving a veil to do pretty waves.

I need one to make my bed in the mornings. We are all these robot waving our sheets and never getting at the first time.

In complete contrast to all this very futuristic art, the second section was about a painter Xu Zidi that somehow insists on learning and painting classicaly. His technique was extraordinary. He had portraits of babies, of women, of men, of sick and dead people. He explaines he follows the works and technique of Johannes Vermeer. He painted the very famous Girl with a Pearl Earring.

You can thus imagine the kind of painting the painter is doing. When I moved to the other zone, the topics changed. There were several of the exercises, planifications, changes, etc. that go into a single painting. It was very interesting to see those “exercises”.

Lot of practice and decisions.

The other thing that was in this section were his paintings of trees. I really like painting trees and leaves. Not necessarily realistic, but there is something very honest, and at the same time hard, about painting trees. They can be very majestic, scary, funny, bizarre.

The ways branches split is really hard to convey.

Finally, there was a video of some ten minutes of him. He talked in Mandarin and I could somehow detect some of the words he was saying. There were subtitltes, also in characters, so I could not read all but those I understood I tried to detect in his speech and it somehow worked. He showed there part of his technique. One of the things that was quite impressive is when he is copying one of the paintings of Vermeer. He has the painting in a compputer background, so he can zoom in and check detail, and then in a canvas he is drawing the same painting. It looks very impressive.

And that was the end of the museum. The painting that Xu Zidi was copying was The Milkmaid of which Wislawa Szymborska has a poem.

Vermeer

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum

in painted quiet and concentration

keeps pouring milk day after day

from the pitcher to the bowl

the World hasn’t earned

the world’s end.

h