Weekly Notes #3

14 Mar, 2026

Mar 9-15
It has been a busy week with work and uni.

Learning French

• I found this cinematic video a really cute and romantic way to learn a language.
• Les Cités Obscures Graphic Novel
  • I have been learning French in a not so serious way using Duolingo for about 880 days now (good for me). I used to sit in professional meetings held in French, so I am at a beginner level of listening and understanding. I decide to take more actions on learning French, so I discovered this graphic novel series with amazing illustration of architecture and cities. I am on the first book, Les Murailles de Samaris, I try to read several pages each day, using DeepL to translate when not sure, and ask Gemini about certain grammar uses. So far it has been super helpful, it's painful to not know some grammar and common combinations, but it's amazing that I know lots of vocabs already.

Places

• The Model Makers – Customs House, Sydney
  The Model Makers
• Nature Within: The Architecture of Toyo Ito, The Japan Foundation
• The Australian Dream, an exhibition on pre-fab housing and social housing in Sydeny, at NSW State Library.
  Model of Sirius Building

Reading

• The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin. I read the Chinese translated version because I can just skim through it more quickly. It is a sweet shot of advices on creativity.
• I have finished reading Naked in Death by J.D. Robb, and I wrote a review for it. Then I seamlessly started the 2nd book in the series, Glory in Death. So far I liked it a lot, I think both Eve and Roarke (The FMC and her man) are growing and evolving as characters. I am about 1/2 through the book and have no clue on where the crime case investigation in the book would end up. With that said, I am enjoying the mystery.

Podcast

• I listened to an episode of 诗梳风 on Prompt Engineering, they have a nice and neat website, too.

Games

• Caravan Sandwitch It was in my wishlist for a while, and now on 50% sale. So I got it and liked it so far. I am only 3 hours into the game, and really enjoyed its futuristic and post-apocalypse settings. The graphics are dreamy. I noticed there are some tensions between the dev team and players now on the Steam community page though.

#personal