Status Quo

  • Over the past one and a half month, I have been living in kyoto as a research intern at Kyoto University. I was among the lucky 18 students selected from the IITs for the KU-STAR (Kyoto University Short Term Academic Research Program).

  • I have been working with Professor Kohei Suenaga in Professor Atsushi Igarashi’s Lab in the Graduate School of Informatics.

Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto Konkai Komyoji Temple

What I learnt

  • Life is uncertain and unpredictable. I am extremely lucky to be here in Kyoto. I was able to learn precious things from Japanese culture which I was able to incorporate in my daily life like the concept of “Kaizen” (Continuous Improvement) and “Ikigai” (Reason for Being).
  • What I found out about myself that I cannot be happy without my Reason for being. I need to have a purpose in life to be happy. I need to have a goal to work towards. I need to have a reason to wake up in the morning. I need to have a reason to live. I need to have a reason to be. That reason for me turned out to be my work { :) }, because beyond a point you get bored of doing nothing.
  • I also got in the habit of waking up early in the morning and going for a run. Kyoto in particular is very peaceful in the morning. The streets are empty and the air is fresh. Every run of mine turned into a kind of adventure where I would just see google maps and see various shrines as checkpoints where I could go to explore their beauty.

What I did

  • While working on my research problem I got stuck at a point and was kind of lost on where to proceed from that point. Then what happened was I randomly decided on a Saturday that today I have to make some progress. So I sat in the library in the evening for 7 hours straight with my AirPods and just worked on my problem. I was fortunately able to make significant progress that day in the proof of my proposed algorithm.

  • Thus I was lucky this time in the sense that in my last research internship as well I had gotten stuck at a point but couldn’t proceed further. Sometimes its just luck, no need to be hard on yourself. Just keep working and you will eventually get there. Or you won’t ? Is it really that bad ? I don’t think so because you will learn something new in the process.

  • I would add more pictures here but I am too lazy to do that right now. Maybe I will do that later.

Favourite Places

  • Kamo River