This is my first graphic design, to celebrate the graduation of my last HKU PhD student who derived her nickname from the black mamba.
(I managed to help her publishing top papers but not converting her from LAL to GSW.)
Inspiration:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCvFXuEpjPD
Source graphics:
wine bottle
graduation hat
the black mamba
I was trying to draw a temple building but lacked enough time before the evening closure, so I switched to another nearby scene.
The first rule, which you will also hear from others, is to choose a place that can attract top graduate students whom you can work with, because that is the main attraction for being a professor in a research university.
After that, consider other factors, like funding and geography (and thus why I went to HKU as a professor).
I was trying to sketch Dona Arguello‘s statue from a sliver of shaded area in a hot afternoon but could not gather enough interest within the allocated half hour, so I deleted the file, but restored it to continue from memory at home.
After eating the dragon fruit, I drew its peel to memorize it.
I went out after 8 pm to this interesting and yet unlit corner of my neighborhood, to force myself to either draw quickly before it was too dark and/or finish the rest from visual memory back home.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCm_h8RHb5h/
When I picked up this pine cone it was still oozing sap, and has remained on my desk as an aroma source and hand exercise instrument.
The neighborhood black cat often came to visit.
The sketch is a composition based on two photographs.
This composition is astronomically implausible (unless there are multiple suns above the horizon) but I felt like doing it after seeing the evening sun and moon at opposite ends of the sky.
My father shared some photographs of this drawing scenes, which I could draw from and connect to his works and travels.
A spider, resting on a lamp shade, scurried away after being gently poked by me to see if it was still alive.
This exercise aimed to reproduce my impression of its movement, but over a flower as captured by an earlier photograph of another spider instead of the lamp shade.
I drew the flower and the spider in multiple layers via Fresco, exported the pdf file to Illustrator to animate the spider via puppet warp, and assembled the final video from the individual spider layers/frames along with the flower.
Even with puppet warp, the authoring process still involved tedious manual repetitions, which can be alleviated by autocomplete.
ffmpeg -framerate 32 -start_number 0 -i frame_%02d.jpg -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf scale=1024×1024 SpiderOnFlower32fps.mp4
I have been wanting to draw this for a while and finally managed to do it.
Picking a familiar subject could force me to spend more efforts in resemblance which might not be the key point or intention of the drawing.
The appetizers (corn mezzaluna, Spanish mackerel) and entrees (striped bass, duck breast) were pretty light until the chocolate souffle, which was much more fulfilling than the size would suggest and continued to roll in my stomach until deep into the night.
Drawing helped me to not only remember the experience (than, say, photography) but (counter-intuitively) also better engage in conversation.
This is my last celebratory meal before I manage to regenerate a losing body part considered to be irreversible by all doctors I have consulted so far.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBztNAlHXd7/
The black neighborhood cat visited again, which I watched through the front door glass for a bit while and drew the impression with the new charcoal brush in Fresco.
I drew this 3×1 watercolor inspired by Yilan Chen’s Instagram photos.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBaGv77Je4L/
A pile of earth
A physical exam
A carton of eggs
A job training
A PhD defense
This is my first drawing of the view from this spot which I often come to relax my mind and body.
I noticed this little black spot on the white carpet.
The (iPad) camera can capture the details better than my naked eyes.
I removed the dead mosquito afterwards.
Thanks to a not-yet-ready for pick-up dinner order, I finally got a chance/excuse to draw this back-building view that I found intriguing during my morning train station waits but without enough time to draw.
It was a serene drawing process, accompanied by sounds from train horns and chats of nearby street folks.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBR3u-rHVFV/
I skipped most of my art classes in school because I considered it a soft skill less useful than math and science.
Decades later I realized that art can be a good complement to my research and help me relax and create.
Fortunately, unlike languages, I have found drawing quite learnable as an adult, if one is willing to spend enough time practice and experiment.
For beginners, I recommend Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards as a starting guide book.
Practice the exercises as much as you can, and treat the cognitive aspect (e.g., left versus right brain) more from the art than the science side.
I am still learning, and will update this post along the way.
You can see my progress under my blog (which links to Instagram), Pinterest (which links to Behance), and Facebook.
Just a few weeks ago the US was suffering from a shortage of consumer toilet papers, so I was a bit surprised to see a pack of unopened toilet papers marked as free on top of a garbage pile while walking in the neighborhood on Sunday evening.
I wonder if that is a sign that the toilet paper production has finally ramped up?
The spot around this bench offers good views from several angles.
Question from someone about to graduate with a PhD:
Do you think I can reach out with our paper draft and videos to profs for postdocs? It’s still under review, but I kinda need to send the paper to make my case, and can’t wait any longer.
This is always a yes and no question and we have to make our own judgement. On one hand, we don’t want to let potential reviewers and recruiters feel that we are compromising review anonymity, which can hurt our paper submissions and job applications. On the other hand, we do want to present ourselves in the best possible way.
I never have this problem personally, as during my job hunts so far I have shared only public domain information.
However, if I have to add confidential materials (e.g., under peer reviews or patent applications), I will share vague information, such as an alternative paper titles with high level descriptions and a disclaimer that the work is under evaluation, and let the recruiters decide whether they want to ask for more.
I took a reference photo of this view which caught my eye on Tue May 26 early morning at the start of a heat wave.
I came back for on-spot drawing at Wed May 27 evening when the weather cooled down a bit, and finished the drawing indoor with the reference photo after night fall.
A few days ago I read two articles about AI and art:
Computers do not make art, people do
A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist
I cannot predict the future, including the possibility for AI to create art.
However, at the current stage of technology, AI can automate only a very tiny portion of creative tasks.
So just like all existing automation tools, I see AI as an assistant to elevate humans to higher mental tasks rather as a replacement.
Human perception is very sensitive to human faces, and thus small variations in a portrait sketch can cause large perceived differences.
A student greeted members of her PhD defense committee via an email, and got scorched by one of the examiners for trying to schedule her own oral defense, using a “buddy” tone (including the use of emojis), sending from a non-school email account, and not addressing the examiner with a professor salute.
I like to tell this student that (1) a person is measured by the size of things that matter to him/her, (2) do not become such a person in the future.
I once saw a groundhog poking its head out of its mound in a nearby county park.
This one was drawn via a reference photo.
This package of face masks took about 40 days to reach me from my parents in Taipei.
A Facebook friend nominated me to a 7-day book challenge.
I took it but without nominating the next person so that I would not offend or spam anyone.
I am glad that I could include a diverse set of topics (computer science, finance, sci-fi, physics, history, math, art) without any serious technical/textbooks.
During an evening walk I noticed a lone red flower sitting in the middle of a grass land, which inspired me to draw this variation.
Experimental results indicated that it is very tricky to cut my own hair for desirable outcomes, even though it is worth trying as I need to know for sure whether I could pull it off.
For the first time, I had this magic experience that a self-portrait is a dialog with oneself.
I added body parts from my previous drawings over the shovel-and-wheel-barrel scene I drew earlier.
Base drawing
Rodin’s hand
Caltrain passenger’s leg
This is a starting point for further variations to come.
There was some left over hair dye made from natural material which I experimented for painting medium before its oxidation.
I saw a beautiful rainbow while walking outside in a sunny drizzling evening.
I did not bring a camera for photograph, but drew a quick watercolor from memory afterwards.
I was planning to draw something else but somehow redirected my attention to these nearby construction signs.
A pack of foxes were videographed in my neighborhood a few days ago. The captue was quite blurry, so I decided to create a new composition.
There are these tourists who just want to visit as many places as possible to take (or even fake) photos without spending enough time experiencing the local life and culture with sufficient depth.
Researchers who abuse authorships are like such tourists.
They pretend having all the fun without actual experiencing much.
Life is a deep journey, and genuine experience is what matters the most.
During an evening walk, the moon caught my eye.
I came back to draw it, sitting at the front of my home.
The neighborhood black cat came rubbing.
The physical coin is quite small and thus challenging to sight the very detailed relief pattern.
A few days ago I read an article about an open-source ventilator that can be built with $400 in readily-available parts.
Today I saw a Facebook post discussing an article titled “Do top conferences contain well cited papers or junk?”.
Our impact is measured more about what we do for others (e.g., solving a social issue, curing a disease, saving the environment) than for ourselves (e.g., ego or career).
I would care much more about developing useful products or services than counting the number of papers or citations.
Biochemist Michael Morbius tries to cure himself of a rare blood disease, but when his experiment goes wrong, he inadvertently infects himself with a form of vampirism instead.
External visibility is public domain information for everyone to see, such as publications and patents.
Internal reputation is often proprietary and known only inside our institution, such as design or implementation for a product.
Our internal reputation is more important for the particular jobs (e.g., performance reviews and rewards), but that often contains confidential information which only a few colleagues can vouch for.
Both are important for our careers. For example, when we want to switch jobs, most people can only evaluate our external visibility and will require references to vet our internal reputation.
Thus, it is important to maintain a good balance of both.
I am lucky enough to enjoy doing both (e.g., publications and products).
Coin reliefs are usually shallow and thus contain intricate shading variations.
Without continual practice, some skills, once mastered, will mostly remain with us, such as driving a car or riding a bicycle, while others tend to atrophy, especially during the early learning stages.
In my observations for computer science, research requires constant engagement to keep top performance.
I stopped research publications around 2001 to 2003 while focusing on GPU architecture, which reduced my research output and took me significant efforts later to get back to form (e.g., single-author a paper during weekends and evenings).
Research (at least in CS) can easily become rusty probably because it involves many delicate skills, such as literature, ideation, algorithm, code, demo, writing, and presentation.
Even if we can more easily get back to some of these (e.g., coding, which feels like riding a bicycle to me), missing any others could still throw us off balance (in particular ideation and familiarity with state of art, which are related).
Thus, if you are a graduating CS student and you want to keep research opportunity open for your future career, it is important to find a first job that you can continue your research in some way.
(Not necessarily academia, as I think I can have more time doing research in a top industry lab than as an assistance professor.)
Otherwise, you might never be able to come back.
The Rodin sculptures in Stanford have been my favorite portrait-drawing subjects but they are less accessible during the current lock-down.
Today I realized that we all have some mini portrait sculptures around us: the head reliefs on the obverse sides of the coins.
PS: I obtained this coin from Hallenbad City in Zurich for the swimming pool locker room.
This is an exercise for me to see and draw the relevant visual cues (such as the signature tree rings) without being distracted by extra details (such as the complex bark patterns).
I usually share my screen instead of my face during virtual meetings.
I believe people mostly care about my content than what I look like.
I drew a plate of grapes in different mediums: oil, watercolor, graphite, vector, to explore their varying visual effects.
The process took longer that I thought, so at the end of the night I was too sleepy to remember signing the paintings, which I did the next morning.
I have experiences in remote collaboration and mentoring.
I did not need research meetings and I did not meet the first authors of some of my papers until before the conference presentations.
(I have yet to meet the first-author of my latest CHI 2020 paper for which the physical conference is canceled.)
However, there are important aspects that are difficult to emulate remotely beyond research and technical works in research internships, such as serendipitous encounters with different people and immersions in different environments.
Thus, I have been thinking about what would be good alternatives or replacements for remote internships (or research collaborations in general) that can best emulate on-site experiences?
If you have ideas, feel free to share with me.
One (Adobe-specific) possibility I have been thinking about is artistic creation via various tools, suitable for remote and asynchronous communications and yet different from and complementary to technical research.
It takes intelligent and independent minds to desire what are really wanted.
This lemon tree seemed to be dead for a few years, but this morning I found out that it just grew some leaves, greened some branches, and even sprouted a pink bud.
Yet another thing in my life which seemed to be dead and then came back to life.
(If you know how to determine if a plant is dead or alive biologically, ping me.)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_JAOAenFHQ/
Never waste a disaster!
Concrete numbers and data can help rational discussion of issues, including the trade-off between lives and jobs in the current lock-down situation.
I created a very simple key-frame animation via layers with Procreate; more to come.
After installing Tesla solar panel and power-wall last month, I have been watching the daily power flows among the grid, solar, home, and battery with intrigue.
With weather forecast, I can imagine programming the electric system to optimize the schedules of home appliance usage (e.g., laundry when the sun is bright) and charging from the grid (e.g., backup for an incoming power outage).
I started with vector drawings to enforce simplicity and moved on to raster sketches for better expressibility.
Why the US is celebrating Easter, a Christian holiday, but not holidays of other regions or cultures, such as Holi, Ramadan, or Passover?
What does it mean for a non-Christian to put her hand on a holy Bible in a state ritual like court oath or citizenship ceremony?
National holidays should be centered on nations (e.g., Independence Day), not religions.
I saw these every day during my morning stretch.
Every information is a piece of an entire knowledge, so instead of treating what we learn as separate fragments, it is more effective to memorize and understand them as a whole.
This is possible because knowledge often repeats in different forms, such as through history or books.
In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it.
To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.
– Funes the Memorious
I drew these based on reference photos taken a while ago around the Adobe San Jose campus.
Recently I noticed a few interesting articles that I would like to read but are behind paywalls that asked me to subscribe to the encompassing publications.
Since not all articles of a given publication are of sufficient quality or interests to me, and different readers can have different preferences anyway, I wonder if it would make more sense to pay for individual articles instead of entire publications.
The publishers may be able to charge more per article and yet readers can choose to pay what they need.
The readers, writers and even advertisers can be better aligned, rewarding good individual writers and articles over bad ones.
Unbundling is already happening for music and academic papers, and could be more prevalent for news.
I visited a few virtual museum exhibitions during the weekend.
The experiences worked better in some types of artworks, such as films, photographs, and paintings, but less so for other types such as sculptures or interactive installations.
I can sit comfortably at home without being constrained by commutes and museum hours.
But I also missed the ambient environment and serendipitous encounters beyond the individual artworks.
When I was a grad student at Stanford I thought the idea of virtual machines was entirely crazy. And then came cloud computing.
This CACM article nicely summarized the background story.
When this is all over,
The disease will dissipate,
The economy will recover,
But the world order will be very different.
This is the best time to be an Asian American.
Half a century before, it was better to be an American.
Half a century after, it would better to be an Asian.
Both this NPR hidden brain podcast on the influence you have and this book on confessions of a sociopath point to the interesting aspects on how we know (and don’t know) about the psychological influences we can have on other people.
I drew this one from a photo (taken during a hike) and a movie still (watched during a long distance flight).
I usually found patent disclosure meetings a bit tedious. But the (remote) one held yesterday afternoon with two patent attorneys on a single-authored patent felt quite reassuring. During upheavals, routines can calm.
I used to think that individual creativity is essential to succeed in a research career, either academic or industrial, until I saw people who managed to compensate their lack of creativity (or more general talent/effort) with socializing and networking to leverage up their apparent productivity.
I don’t have the skill (or, more importantly, the patience) to draw trees so I just settled for the built-in watercolor wet spatter in Adobe Fresco.
The neighborhood cats came around, probably looking for the recently emerging groundhogs.
I drew these two cats from two separate photos, and found the process a refreshing break from working at home.
The best part about attending a top school is not (just) the education, research, and networking, but the constant reminder to be humble and avoid underachieving for the rest of my life.
https://twitter.com/liyiwei/status/1240321335110164480
the official ACM announcement https://t.co/EfWw8qy0D2
— Li-Yi Wei (@liyiwei) March 18, 2020
There are two ways to clarify writing: modifying existing texts, and rewriting from scratch.
These two can be combined in some way and thus not exclusive.
Sometimes, if the writing has fundamental structure issues, it could help to sketch out a fresh outline aiming for a general audience without deep knowledge of the topic.
This exercise could then provide a roadmap for subsequent steps.
In this podcast from a few days ago, Mervyn King made the point that uncertainty might cause anxiety but ultimately also makes life fun.
I spotted this spiky plant ball on the ground while hiking and brought it back as a drawing subject.
For about a zodiac round from 2005 to 2017, I have been working and living mostly alone in different parts of the world. So, the recent travel restriction and remote work policy simply put me back in my previous solo mode.
This business quarter (or maybe the next few ones) could shed light on whether and how working away from the office would affect productivity. I guess it depends on the job functions (e.g., research scientists versus sales manager), individual styles (e.g., introvert or extrovert), and family situations (e.g., young kids at home).
Like biology, diversity can be beneficial in political systems as well, shedding lights on how they fare under different scenarios.
It is not clear how much practical benefit the Trump EU travel ban has, but at least he is sending the kind of political message that is expected from him, and probably a less racist one compared to the Mexico border wall.
The team that is hurt the least from the NBA shutdown is the one I supported, which went from 3 championships and 5 straight final appearances until last year to the bottom dweller this year (largely due to a key player injured by a flagrant foul). I am personally not that interested in seeing other teams winning championships.
I was flying to Mongolia (world map with fly route and Mongolia border).
Upon arrival at the airport, I looked for gate 20 for bus exit (looking at the terminal map).
Somehow, I went to south gate 8 for Eva lounge filled with hello Kitty stuff (casino like setup).
I went back to terminal, trying to print my photo from a computer as required to board the bus, and found out it is 11:35 am so missed the hourly bus by 5 minutes (computer terminal on the right, terminal window on the left with the road and bus stop visible).
I then woke up at 5:27 am (March 5 2020).
Watching the real-time electric power flow among the grid, solar, battery, and home, I like to be able to see similar flow visualizations for our buildings (e.g., heat, water, gas) and bodies (e.g., calorie, cholesterol, blood sugar) so that we can be more informed to take care of our internal health and external environment.
Just remember that it might be of use to you in the future.
My approach can be titled as “multi-resolution mentoring”, depending on the skill set and development stage of the student.
For students who can already single-author SIGGRAPH papers, there is not much need for a mentor.
For students who can already develop and implement ideas, guide them on high level direction and building a project from proper components.
A good project often has more potential that can be done for a single paper, and thus it is important to scope it properly so that it contains the right amount of contributions and materials, neither too much nor too little.
We likely need to write the paper (and script the video) to guide this process.
If the direction is big enough, plan several projects/publications.
For students who can develop and implement detailed algorithms but lacks ideas, brainstorm with them as much as possible, to best fit their interests and leverage their strengths.
For students who can implement but not develop ideas and algorithms, give them specific instructions, such as algorithms in the level of pseudo-code via paper drafts.
For students who have difficulty with basic implementation, they are not ready for research and should go back to practice coding, e.g. reproducing algorithms from their favorite papers.
Never write code for them as that would consume our time and hamper their growth.
For students who get stuck in the development ladder, at some point we might have to suggest alternative career options which might be more suitable than research.
At some stage of your career, you might find developing talents even more satisfying than publishing papers or building products.
Guiding a student grow is a magical process (probably like parenting, which I have no hands-on experience yet) and can form a long-term collaboration relationship.
Please don't put your feet on seats. We know where your shoes have been: on Caltrain. #CaltrainManners pic.twitter.com/UVIcrDPdwl
— Caltrain (@Caltrain) June 27, 2017
I went to the Cantor arts center an hour earlier than usual, and thus had more time sketching.
I joined as a first-time “reader” for a human library event, and talked with two “books”.
The first one, titled “choosing failure and challenging success (mental health ADHD/ANX)”, was a young girl (at least relative to me) who looked and acted entirely normal during our conversation. She said that she has family-inherited ADHD and has always felt anxious about everything in her life, even just walking outside. It took her 10 years to get her college degree because she had to drop out for mental health issues.
To overcome her fears, she took on adventures such as scuba diving and jumping off waterfalls during rafting.
I picked this “book” partially because I am interested in psychology in general, and partially because I also had some difficulty focusing outside my own mind (one main reason why I ended up self-studying most of my course materials and skipping since I was about 10 years old).
The only telltale sign that she showed was the need to pick up a toy object to play around to keep her focus. (She kept another one on the table for me to play with, which happens to be a piece of clay, which I played with obsession in kindergarten.)
We discussed how the (American) society focuses more on being normal and demonstrating performance than the need for people to take care of their health, both mental and physical.
The second one, titled “suicide survivor”, was a 59-years-old man.
He grew up in an alcoholic family, started drinking at age 12 for socializing and dealing/escaping with family issues, tried to prove himself by taking on demanding (and thus stressful) tasks, got married and had children, divorced and lived with his girlfriend, broke up with the girl friend and lost both the house and his job (the girlfriend owned the former and also worked in the latter), and decided to kill himself after a week of drinking and drugging.
He first tried to drown himself by laying down into a river only to wake up a few hours later found himself floating and (thus) alive, overdosed on some drugs which still didn’t kill him, and cut his wrist (he showed me the scars and described in detail how to properly cut to really kill) only to wake up a few hours later soaked in a pool of blood.
He finally called a hospital and spent a few weeks (or months) in intensive care for recovery.
He has now learned the existence of God through his AA (alcoholic anonymous) gatherings and worked in suicide prevention.
He asked whether I ever thought about killing myself; I did not tell him that I am the type who would just kill all my opponents if the needs arise, but replied with other related thoughts.
One is the optimal age to die. Modern medicine is better at preserving life expectancy than maintaining life quality. Instead of waiting till the very end when one has lost both mind and body, an earlier death might be more optimal.
His replied is interesting, in that one could not judge the future self. For example, even though he has all these physical pains at age 60 that he would find intolerable at age 30, he felt he is awesome right now. So maybe a complete senile person might enjoy the existence that a younger version could not comprehend and thus unable to judge.
A friendly of mine recently posted on FB that he liked an unfinished drawing perhaps more than had he tried to finish it.
When I started drawing about a year and half ago, I strived to finish works with polished quality.
Later, I found the intermediate progress no less interesting, and showed with the final drawings all intermediate strokes without hiding or even erasing them.
Related: one of my most favorite research papers has never officially been published anywhere.
I was in a shared Uber ride today, waiting for a couple heading for the SJC airport.
After the driver and I arrived and waited for a couple of minutes, the husband showed up waving at us, while tying his dog to a fence. The wife showed up after another couple of minutes, taking the dog to the car, while the husband went back to retrieve luggage, for a further couple of minutes. When both finally settled in the car, the wife said she could not find her wallet, and took another couple of minutes searching around.
After we were officially ready to take off, the husband said to the driver: do you know how to go to the airport? Turn right here, without even realizing that they might not have the first stop.
Meanwhile, the driver told me (in a language that the couple would not understand) that he could not understand why anyone heading to the airport would want to take a carpool, and (fortunately) ignored the husband and followed the Waze instruction to drop me off.
One best part about Uber/Lyft rides, especially carpools, is the chance to see different kinds of people that do not tend to show up in my usual social circles.
After waking up at 5:30 am today, I tried to catch an earlier train but missed it by a few minutes. The next train took around 40 minutes to arrive; meanwhile I sketched this wall lamp near the platform.
I am on a roll of drawing food residues.
This is a frequent sight of my family dinner, which I managed to draw when we sat together on the same table after a long while.
Since I have this habit of thinking about stuff all the time, even when I am dreaming, I sometimes could not tell if I have done something for real.
For example, earlier today when I looked at a comment I made in a paper draft, I found it missing a part that I thought I have added, but then I realized that I only did it in my dream a few days ago.
The best way (for me) to relax is to tackle the source of the stress/pressure head on.
Following the instruction under “the natural way to draw”, I have been practicing touch contour, in which one fixates at the contours of a subject and synchronizes the eye gaze and hand pen movement so that they move together (i.e. the pen point should correspond to the eye point all the time) without looking at the drawing (except when backtrack from inward bending contours).
So far I have found it difficult to synchronize, as my eyes tend to saccade away frequently and my hand can go out of the boundary of the canvas.
For such exercises, it is the process, not the outcome, that matters.
Nevertheless, interesting results may appear sometimes.
I was hoping to finish a normal drawing afterwards with the same subject, but it was too dark to see anything.
I felt the need to draw something before going to sleep, and recalled this visual image from a morning news post to spend some twenty minutes.
I saw this sculpture in Anderson collection at Stanford and captivated by its structure.
I started with the contour exercise and still found it hard to coordinate my sight and touch and finished too quickly in about 10 minutes.
I then switched to ordinary sketching for about 30 to 40 minutes.
Because it sat high on a pedestal, it was difficult to photography.
I was frustrated by the hand-eye contour coordination exercise from the natural way to draw, and compensated myself with a normal sketching of the same subject.
I was sharpening a drawing pencil pondering what I should draw, and found the setup intriguing and ended up drawing it on an iPad.
My dad gave me a watercolor sketch book and a watercolor paint set, both in pocket size.
This is the first pencil sketch and watercolor experiment.
I did another watercolor for a guava. My dad said I approached watercolor with many dense strokes, and showed me how to use a sparse set of quick, watery strokes.
Every time I traveled to another country (Taiwan at this moment of writing) I almost always observed something nice that I wish could exist in my current resident country (which would be the US right now).
The top item will be medical service, always.
With a universal health insurance, you only have a small amount of out-of-pocket co-payment and hospitals (for non-serious issues) are as common as convenient stores.
But that has been the case since decades ago.
A few relatively newer things I noticed are:
Have you ever had difficulty finding your cars in a large parking area?
Some parking garages in Taiwan already have systems to automatically scan the license plate of your car when it enters, guide you through available spaces, and tell you where your car is when you access the pay kiosk. (I could imagine a mobile app version.)
There is this company, Owndays, which can make eyeglasses on-site in about 20 minutes, from measurement to lens making and glass fitting, with very reasonable price.
In the US, even with Warby Parker, you would still wait for days.
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