Winter Break
New Year's Resolutions came a bit earlier this year for me. Between PhD Apps, Research, Classes and other various activities, last semester was one of my busiest. Because of my workload, I didn't have as much time to dedicate to my random side quests which was something I heavily regretted coming into Winter Break. As such, I decided to use my winter break to try and resume some of these and learned some new things along the way.
I've listed some of my highlights below!
Writing
Slightly confusing that I write my essay explaining why I'm writing after I've already written my first article but I wanted to ensure that I'd follow through first.
Although I generally enjoy writing, it's always been a fleeting hobby of mine due to the fact that I only write when I am free and have ideas. These moments have been seldom these days so my writing output has generally slowed down. Except for required writing such as my PhD apps or for my classes, I hadn't written something of substance since early 2025. This is unfortunate because I think that I am at my most coherent and cognizant when I'm in the habit of writing; I find it also gives me a good excuse to talk about some of my interests.
When I started Winter Break, I decided to consistently write about various topics I was interested in. In order to keep consistency, I've started a note where I write down topics that come to my mind so that I don't have to come up with something on the spot. This system actually works really well for me because I love revisiting old rabbit holes and the notes really give me another reason to do this.
I started with a review of NE 150, a class which I really enjoyed and wanted to refresh my knowledge on. That article, which is my first actual "essay" I've written on this site, is one of the more involved ones I've done considering how long it took me to read my notes, translate them into a readable format and mockup simulations. I don't plan on putting that much effort into every single one of my essays but I would like to create a series where I break down technical topics I'm interested in.
I've been making some drafts of essays to come and greatly enjoyed my return to the activity. I find myself more curious and willing to go deeper into subjects that pique my interests in the hopes that I may find myself with a good essay topic. However, in typical STEM major fashion, my writing is not close to perfect. In time, I hope to improve on this skill and present my thoughts in a more organized manner.
Frequent mehulnair.com visitors may also notice that I've completely overhauled my site. I realized that my previous site was not functionally different from a resume and I think it verged on too basic for my taste. This was partly inspired by wanting a clean place to put my writing so I could have a little self-hosted personal hub.
Crochet
This one really confused a lot of people, I'm confused by how I managed to sink so much time into it myself
Towards the end of last semester, I had a conversation with one of my Mechanical Engineering friends about how I lamented my inability to build physical things. I've always been very impressed by his intuition and his ability to navigate building things and I've wanted some sense of being able to create in the physical world. I spent the few weeks leading up to break trying to find something I could do and settled on crochet. This was a natural choice for several reasons.
For one, my mom already knew how to crochet and having skipped thanksgiving break to continue work in Berkeley, I wished to spend a bit more time with her. In addition, anyone who's spent some time with me knows that I have a love for textiles whether it be clothing or tapestries and crochet was a low barrier entry point to creating these for myself.
Starting crochet was surprisingly cheap, I managed to get quite a few hooks and some yarn for around 20 dollars and I decided to start crocheting a chunky scarf. Starting was extremely hard, I had no idea how to keep the pattern consistent and I kept missing the last double crochet for the first few rows. My learning pains led to me restarting a total of six times from various lengths before I finally managed to get the hang of it.
For my second project, I decided to try something a bit harder but still accessible. Using some burgundy yarn I found at Michael's and booting up another beginner scarf youtube video, I decided to try my hand at a beautiful lengthwise HDC scarf. Crocheting lengthwise was annoying initially because of how meticulous I had to be; each layer involved 250 stitches and errors were pretty evident as they usually permeated throughout the layers. This project took me around 2 days of constant crocheting but after over 2500 stitches and equally as many hand cramps, I managed to get a somewhat decent looking final product. I'm personally a big fan of it and it fits well with my wardrobe but my mother seemed to have taken a liking to it so its her's now.
Crochet was a great new skill to learn and it really built upon my childhood love of Rainbow Loom in a way that let me create actually useful things. My newest project that I will start probably later this week is yet another scarf for one of my good friends!
Blender
I keep on telling myself I'll make another full project at some point but all the days seem to blend together and I never have enough time
This break I didn't actually end up doing much Blender which is a shame because I came in with a lot of ideas on what I wanted to do. The two brief one day projects that I posted on my story earlier in the break were experimenting with new textures and animation so that I could apply them towards a bigger project. Creating animations and painting textures was a lot harder than I initially thought and I think that I'm going to spend a lot more time with this.
Thankfully, it wasn't a complete waste as I now have a whole project in mind as a synthesis of some of the other things I was working with earlier.
National Parks
Somehow, we managed to get this trip out of the group chat. I'm still surprised
I'm writing this the day I came back from the trip (6 hours of driving ;-;) but I had an absolute blast exploring the AZ/UT national parks and I've learned that I need to do this type of thing way more often. We started at the Grand Canyon and hiked the S. Kaibab trail which was absolutely incredible, went to Zion which had the best sights by far and finished off at Bryce. Overall an amazing trip, probably something I should write more in depth about.