2024/7/29

Experienced a very bad food poisoning. I was suspicious when I had the yogurt, but we had it anyway. I spent the evening head spinning with low energy- I thought it was the long drive with air con.

This morning my head felt even worse and threw up everything after the first sip of water. Then it came the none stop diarrhoea where my butthole was sore and eventually burning. Everyone else looked fine. I didn’t know what went wrong bc we literally had the same stuff. Then my sister started to feel dizzy too- with the exact same symptoms. Only we had the yogurt. I spent the afternoon having chills, muscle and skin pain, while she was in my none stop diarrhoea phase in the morning.

‘I can tell why you want wet wipes.’ She messaged . While I was in bed in my room. My mum and niece stayed in with us.

In the evening I watched Olympic tennis- Nadal vs Djokovic, and a little bit of table tennis. My chills went worse so I went to my mum’s bed. She’s so warm. After stealing her heat for an hour or so I went back to my bed.

Have I ever said I’m a light sleeper? I’m so alarmed in my sleep any foot steps can wake me up and I’m in fight or flight mode. When I travel with other girls I would sometimes rather take the sofa than sharing the bed bc i know I won’t be able to sleep. My niece slept with me for a few days and I automatically woke up when she was slightly too close to me. But with my mum I can feel safe.

‘I’m not against working in a big city.’ I said. Under her duvet. ‘It’s more like the big city charm has worn out for me. I know it looks like it has more opportunities, higher salaries, more potential mates, whatever, but that’s not true. Unless I have something definite for me, I don’t see the point.’

I know everyone who cares about me has been worried about my career. To be honest I am too. I was more upfront with HHZ and told him I can only have the shot when I have nothing. If I have a good job I won’t leave until I’m a senior engineer or  sure my craft is gonna work when I start my own business. That will take a decade or decades. It’s a completely different route from working on a start up when I am nobody and knows nothing. A senior engineer 1 knows what the problem is and 2 utilities the skills he/she already have, a young and dumb person like me 1 grow with the problem and 2 learn the solution on the go. I told him I want to shoot my shot before I take the safe path. Also we’ve been having different visions on where to go- he wants to do LLM inference or at least transformer on chip, while I know my(our) capabilities, I’m really looking for a niche market where big players don’t give a fuck. Something small and easy to prototype. Like our last project. (well it was not that easy)

I told my mum I need my break a little bit more.

Then I told her my view about dating in big cities: because everyone thinks they have unlimited opportunities, because everyone thinks they can break off the person they have right now and easily meet another person in the next corner of the street, it became a game where people take advantage of another, and compare multiple in-fact-not-so-suitable people at the same time. (In a conversation years before I told CC my logic is if a person is ‘comparable’ with other people, it’s not the right one.) I would rather stir clear and talk about academic and career stuff only with men- and that’s what I’ve been doing. Majority of people I knew are men, we exchange insights and news, we do each other a favour occasionally, none of us give any fucks about each others personal life. The downside is, I said, the longer it goes the more I lose my capability to flirt. It’s a skill really. Sometimes I do worry if I meet the right person but he won’t be able to understand I’m interested.

That means 缘分 is not there yet. She said. Someone who’s interested won’t leave.

I thought so too. I said in my mind.

Then I went off to speak my thoughts on high housing and parenting costs in London- or any big cities. My view is any sane person who is planning for a family can see how unsustainable London is and raise a family elsewhere eventually. Except the ultra rich. I don’t want to squeeze my children in a flat and I don’t want to pay for the crazy daycare costs.

She didn’t made any comments on this.