If 2022 was the year of progression for me, then 2023 is the year of boon. I got a lot of things without really putting in too much effort, basically an anti-2020. I got to travel a lot, play games a lot, spend a lot of time with my special someone, and many things went in my way. There were some torments and significant setbacks that I am too embarrassed to even mention, but overall, this year is still overwhelmingly positive.
2022 Goals Revisit
In my 2022 Review I mentioned 3 goals
- Get more offers
- Read DDIA
- Breeze through LC hards
Unfortunately, I only completed the second one, which is to read DDIA. I read like half of the book during the compulsory military training.
As for getting more offers, I did send out a lot of applications when I was in the military but none of them got any response apart from some auto-sent OA. I hardly did any LeetCode problems as well because, why would I? In the second half of the school year, the recruiting season was long over. During the 4-month military training, I only got a few hours of free time every week, and I would never spend my precious free time in something like LeetCodes. As for the last quarter, after I completed the training, I was busy playing games, traveling, and spending time with my significant other, so no time for LC as well.
School
Last semester in college
Just like last semester, I skipped most of my classes and only went to school for two days a week for Spanish and military classes. For the rest of the days, I was either working or playing games at home. I still studied hard before exams, so I did okay. I actually spent quite a lot of time studying International Finance and Macroeconomics, and I found that these two subjects had a lot of things in parallel. They were also obviously a thousand times more interesting than the mandatory courses of Electrical Engineering so I did enjoy them. In fact, I took exactly 0 courses from either the EE or CS department (apart from my research), and my mental health was pretty good this semester as a result.
In the end, I got my minor in Economics without any issues and successfully obtained my hard-earned EE degree.
Master’s
I decided to pursue a Master’s degree in computer science after learning a couple of online degree options offered by top US schools with not only the same degree as in-person versions but also much lower tuition, and I successfully got into two. Will be working while studying remotely in the next few years until either I graduate or I don’t feel the need for the degree anymore.
Research
I was stagnant for a long time in terms of my research progress after finishing my WCNC paper. I did almost nothing meaningful from October 2022 to April 2023. Most of the reason was that, I already got a job and decided not to pursue a Master’s (at least an in-person one), so there was no point for me to keep doing research and writing papers. Still, I extended a bit of my previous research, and was planning on submitting for another conference. However, in the second half of May, the post-doc supervising me proposed the idea of submitting straight to a journal since I already had a conference paper, which got my advisor’s approval, so I started writing the paper for IEEE TNSM in June.
I was still slacking a lot, however, plus writing a journal paper really was much more demanding than writing a conference paper, so I only managed to complete the final version in late June, about two weeks later. Two weeks sounded very short but it was actually a very long time considering I already graduated and had minimal work to do in my internship then, meaning I should have been able to focus solely on research.
My advisor told me that he wanted to submit it himself because that would improve the rate of acceptance (the first author was still me tho). But turned out, my professor was an even bigger slacker than me. He was on an academic trip and only submitted my paper in early August. He really had me on edge during my torment in the military training camp because I wanted to only request a letter of recommendation from him for my CS Master’s application after the journal paper was submitted but the deadline was in mid-August.
Anyway, the journal got submitted and I received a surprisingly favorable review two months later. The reviewers saw that I already got tortured enough in the military and decided to ignore the so many big holes in my paper and only pointed out the minor ones to compensate me.
Military
Shortly after graduating, I got conscripted into the 4-month military training thanks to a lot of people. My family and I worked very hard on getting me into the military ASAP because I had to go to the US to work next January, and I spent quite some time hurrying my professors to submit my grades so that I could send my graduation certificate to the government, which was an essential step in getting conscripted.
I got into the military training camp at the end of June, had a miserable time there, before serving for a little more than 2 months in a military hospital.
The military training camp was literally 1984, no better way to describe it. I had zero freedom there and was always stressful. The military hospital, on the other hand, was very manageable. It should be boring because you would spend most of your time there using your phone, but I was actually more bored when I was assigned some tasks to do because those traditional administrative tasks were extremely rtarded. Having worked in several tech companies, and so much less interesting than the B2 level Spanish texts I was studying, the software engineering books I was reading, or the ingenious Greg Egan novels I was enjoying on my phone.
When I finally got out of the military in early October, I was obviously more than happy having gotten my freedom back, but also kind of sad that the environment specially structured to force me to study Spanish and software engineering books and to read novels instead of playing games all day in my bedroom no longer existed.
Traveling
This year is my super nova international traveling year. I went to four countries this year, Japan, Scotland (UK), Iceland, and Switzerland, spending a total of 42 days outside of Taiwan.
January - Japan
I went to Japan to ski with my family in January for 5 days with a commercial skiing-focused tour. We skied for three days.
It was my first time skiing. The tour included about 5 hours of group lessons every day for three days. Since it was a group lesson (about 6 people), the progress of the lesson was just about what the worst learner could understand, so the three-day lesson wasn’t able to offer that much. Fortunately, skiing wasn’t too hard, and with enough time practicing on my own, I was able to build a solid foundation and at least survive on intermediate slopes at the end of the third day.
The skiing resort didn’t offer a lot of value in retrospect. The room and restaurants were okay (breakfast was awesome tho), there were not many things to do apres-ski as the hotel only offered a tiny hot spring (or water), the runs were short, and there were minimal views. However, this trip ignited my passion for skiing. Consequently, two of the rest of my three international trips this year involved skiing.
April - Scotland
I got my notice of acceptance of my paper for the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) last year during the World Cup, which was held in late March. A few weeks before the conference, I noticed that our spring break was right after the conference, so I rescheduled the return flight to about a week after the initial date, extending the 5-day business trip to a business+leisure 11-day trip, and booked hotels in Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, making it my first ever solo travel.
To say I had a rough stay in Glasgow would be an understatement. On my second day there, after a full day of sightseeing, I had a glass of white wine and amazingly, that small glass of white wine made me wasted the rest of my stay in Glasgow. I didn’t even participate in the welcoming party because of it. I was still able to present my work on the 5th day, but had to go back to rest shortly after because I still felt pretty sick.
Fortunately, the morning I was about to leave Glasgow for Edinburgh, I found myself fully recovered. So I was basically only sick during the conference. Very interesting.
I spent two days exploring Edinburgh before heading to the Scottish highlands to ski. Edinburgh is probably my favorite city in the world. It has culture, city views, and nature, and they’re all awesome. My trip in the highlands was fantastic as well. It was the very end of the skiing season and there wasn’t much snow, but it was my first taste of the accompanied gorgeous views of European skiing.
I put minimal focus on the conference because my focus of the trip had always been the solo traveling part, and it was truly a blast. Only in solo traveling did I find the absolute freedom, and I found myself much more confident toward life after returning to my country. It was this trip that urged me to plan another solo trip, preferably skiing-focused.
November - Iceland
I went to Iceland for a 13-day self-driving trip with my family, and I got the chance to drive 95% of the miles (2500km). The waterfalls in the southern part were beautiful, and the snowy fields in the northern part were truly something special. We only saw some medium Auroras on the first night, which was a disappointment, but the views across the island were extraordinary. There are so many different kinds of terrains on the island. There are volcanic badlands, deserts, snow plateaus, grass plains, mountains, beaches, and many others.
It was really dangerous to drive around Iceland in winter tho. The ring road circling Iceland is only a two-lane road, but with a speed limit of 90 kmh. In the southern areas, the winds are immense. Driving past large vehicles on a rainy night with really strong winds was one of the most scary moments in my life. And in the northern parts, the road is icy, so you’ll have to pay extra caution when driving and avoid hard brakes at all costs.
December - Switzerland
The most anticipated trip ever in my life, my 13-day solo skiing trip to Switzerland, went pretty smoothly. I spent 7 days in Zermatt, 3 days in Interlaken, 3 days in Lucerne, and 1 day in Zurich and Geneva each.
Kayaking in Lake Brienz near Interlaken and hiking in the snowy Mt. Rigi near Lucerne are awesome, but nothing beats skiing just beside the Matterhorn in Zermatt. It is one of the best experiences I have had in my life. Simply extraordinary. The views of the Alps on the skiing runs and lifts were astounding. The scenery along the railway leading to Zermatt was an absolute eye candy as well.
The amazing sceneries made up a huge part of my enjoyment in Zermatt, but finally being able to breeze through all the red (intermediate) runs on my last day there also gave me a lot of happiness. Unfortunately, it was only the start of the winter season, and many runs and lifts did not open, including all of the black runs, so I don’t know if I am able to ski black runs just yet. I’ll definitely return to ski in the future, perhaps in the peak winter months.
The beauty of the nature of Switzerland cannot be overstated, but the big cities are really mediocre, except maybe Bern. I would definitely not waste time sightseeing in Zurich and Geneva on my next Switzerland trip.
The trip is a 9/10 overall. It would probably be 10/10 had I thrown out Zurich and Geneva in exchange for a couple more days in Zermatt, since a lot of runs only opened one or two days after I left Zermatt (according to the brilliant interactive map app made by the resort), which was depressing.
Books
This year is also the year of English reading. Quantitatively speaking, I didn’t read a lot of books this year, but all of them were in English. That was a huge breakthrough for me. With the help of the built-in dictionaries in Kindle, I am now fully confident in tackling any English novels.
This year, I finished the disappointing Broken Earth trilogy, read a few underwhelming classics from Ursula K. Le Guin including The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, finished the peculiar Children of Time, started my journey in Greg Egan’s wonderful works (see Axiomatic and Diaspora), and began working through Severian’s bizarre adventure, The Book of the New Sun.
Gaming
My 2023 is also the year of gaming. I played so many games this year, mostly classic ones I hadn’t played that I got from sales. I got to play for a lot of time for a lot of reasons. While I was still in school, I got to take a long holiday once every few weeks by skipping a lot of classes and spending the time at home playing games. After I graduated and got back to my home, I also spent most of my time playing games before going into the military. When I got back home on the weekends during the military phase, all I did was play games as well. After getting my freedom back, besides traveling and spending time with my SO, I was also playing games nonstop.
(Steam Review didn’t include the last two weeks of 2023 so Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t inside)
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn is cool with a pretty unique combat system, but the world is a bit too Ubisoft-like, tho beautiful and pretty interesting. The story is also a bit too long. I was actually pretty dreaded in the last third of the main game. I still ended up completing it but didn’t touch the game ever again, not even the DLC.
I would rate it 7.5/10.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
This is my first ever soulslike (Sekiro-like actually) game. I only played in the second-highest difficulty, but it was still pretty hard at times, especially the final boss. The combat system was really satisfying. Being able to parry lightsabers, deflect blaster shots, and use force powers were just awesome. Some people complained about the platforming, but I actually quite like it. The lack of fast traveling that people criticized the most didn’t really bother me either because I always find fast travel to be immersion-breaking, so I was actually happy that the game didn’t allow it. I wouldn’t complain if it added a shortcut to the entrance for each planet at the end of the explorable area like what Skyrim dungeons have tho.
Toward the end of the story, I was afraid that they would go for the traditional heroic Hollywood-style route and restore the Jedi order, but instead, the more practical one was chosen, to my surprise.
8.5/10. Fantastic game. Stunning visuals, cool & creative & challenging & fun combats, nice story, basically space Uncharted.
This game whitewashed Star Wars for me. I always imagined Star Wars to be super stupid, but after playing the game I was actually interested in its settings and stories, at least for some time.
Sekiro
After playing Jedi Fallen Order and enjoying it, I knew I had to try Sekiro, so I did, and it quickly became my favorite video game ever. The combat is simply perfect. Fighting a humanoid boss/miniboss in the game really makes you feel like you’re a sword master dueling with another martial art master, unlike in most games (including Souls) you’re mostly just escaping from the overpowered bosses and deal some damage opportunistically. But that doesn’t mean it’s easier. It’s pretty much a consensus that Sekiro is the hardest soulslike game ever. For most bosses you’ll not beat them until you’ve already memorized all their attacking sequences.
9.5/10, a masterpiece.
Skyrim
I bought this classic in the summer sale. With the abundance of its mods, Skyrim became really fun after spending quite a lot of time on modding. The combat still isn’t very satisfying even after installing and adjusting a lot of mods, but managing followers, changing tav RP mid-playthrough multiple times, building houses, and most importantly, exploring new mods, are a lot of fun.
It later beat FIFA 22, Sekiro, and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (not sure what my FIFA 18 game time is) to become my most-played games ever.
The Skyrim modded by myself is definitely a 9/10 in terms of enjoyability.
Elden Ring
The massively acclaimed and the most successful FromSoftware game to date, Elden Ring, had always been on my radar, and I grabbed it in a sale in October. I’ve played Dark Souls 3 for a couple of hours before but had no will to git gud due to the boring combat, stupid controls and uninteresting world. Elden Ring, however, tho keeping most of the stupid Souls combat, added a jump button and a horse, colored the world, and made it an open world, making it a lot more interesting than the old Dark Souls. I chose a katana-wielding Samurai as the starting class in order to replicate, or at least imitate, the Sekiro experience, and although the unsheathe combat art is cool and very satisfying to use, Sekiro combat is still on another level. I am also never in favor of the lifeless (tho bizarre) world of Souls games and the lack of an observable storyline, so the game was not able to hook me in.
I probably won’t finish the game ever in my life. Still, the game is a solid 8/10.
Baldur’s Gate 3
I bought it with a massive discount on Steam winter sale: 10% off. Turn-based games have always been time devourers, and it’s only more true for Baldur’s Gate 3.
I’ve never played DnD before and even thought of it to be dumb, but this game changed my view forever. I cannot believe all those combat systems, spells, abilities, and items were (mostly) a direct port from the tabletop. Still can’t imagine how they will work.
Nevertheless, the game is a bit underwhelming to me. IMO it’s way too overhyped. I really can’t see how the freedom of combat and choices in this game is groundbreaking. Many people like to give the ability to shoot an oil barrel or other environmental stuff to clear out the enemies without direct confrontation as an example of the freedom of combat, but you can literally do that in every single action game ever, even the infamous Ubisoft titles. Shooting oil barrels to instantly kill a group of enemies is like the cliche of cliches in action games. Those who see it as a groundbreaking mechanism are probably just DnD nerds who have never played an action game before.
I also feel like the game also makes you suffer from the illusion of choice. In fact, the choices you make in this game only feel like a minor improvement to that of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and I mean that as a criticism. In AC Odyssey, most of the choices you made would only lead you into different dialogues and maybe the outcome of a quest, but not the overarching main plot line. I haven’t finished Baldur’s Gate 3 yet, but to my knowledge, you still ended up in the same areas and maybe the same quests even whatever route you took. Obviously, you can choose to side with the good or the evil during many main quests which will significantly affect your story, but from the overhyped reviews I saw before playing the game, it was described as if every choice matters and 10 people would have 10 massively different playthroughs.
All in all, a really well-made game, an 8.5/10, but overhyped and hardly groundbreaking except for those DnD nerds maybe. I am sure they would regard this game as mind-blowing when the DnD video games before have none of those AAA voice acting and motion capture, but for those who mostly play games AAA action games, the game is really fun and high quality, and that’s about it.
Music
Not much going on this year. Aurora dominates, as expected. Cavetown and Mree are THE artists I discovered this year. Both make vibey music suitable for listening when you want a peace of mind. My favorite song from Aurora is Everything Matters not A Potion of Love btw. The latter beats the former in terms of listening counts because it’s more versatile. I can listen to it in many moods and circumstances.
I scrobbled a lot less this year compared to 2022 and even 2021 due to military, traveling, and gaming.
Relationship
😊😊😊
2024 Goals
I have several goals for 2024 but they’re all kind of private so I’m not writing here. But they’re all pretty reasonable. I would expect myself to hit most of them.