Changes#

Several major life changes this year: buying a car, getting married, and renting a larger apartment.

Buying a Car#

I had already looked at cars in 2021, visiting and test-driving models from Audi, BMW, Cadillac, and Honda, but ultimately didn’t make a purchase.

In 2022, I started looking for a car again. This time, my initial budget was around 100,000 RMB, and the target was a Polo, intended for my girlfriend’s commute. However, as I kept looking, the budget crept from 100,000 to 300,000 RMB, especially after attending a car show. After various comparisons, I took my girlfriend’s advice and settled on a Volvo S60, even though I personally preferred the CT5.

The car has already clocked 7,000 kilometers, and my biggest takeaway is: the sooner you buy a car, the better; the quality of the car isn’t as important as simply having one.

Having a car has made things much more convenient. We can explore nearby cities and go to shopping malls more easily. While taxis can solve these problems, having your own car offers a much more private space, which is a significant difference. However, there are downsides too. For example, after getting a car, I’m less inclined to cycle, so opportunities for biking have decreased, and my weight has gone up. Car maintenance costs are also quite high. Nevertheless, overall, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, making it a very worthwhile purchase.

Getting Married#

After knowing each other for three or four years, we finally got our marriage certificate, which I suppose is a milestone. However, I feel getting married doesn’t really mean much; whether you’re married or not, two people live together, and it has no impact, unless you plan to have children. Otherwise, a marriage certificate is just a piece of paper.

Moreover, after getting married, we had many disagreements about wedding preparations. It’s a hassle; things were better before we got the certificate.

Renting an Apartment#

We moved again, this time to a larger apartment, over 150 square meters. When we first moved in, it felt a bit intimidating, but now it still doesn’t feel big enough because we simply have too much stuff.

I’m not sure why we’ve accumulated so much stuff despite always renting. We hired a large truck for the move, and it felt like a family of three wouldn’t even have as much. Our two-person household had so much that one truck couldn’t fit everything, and I had to move some items separately. We hired movers from Lanxiniu, and they were very reliable and excellent. We only had to pack, and the two movers handled everything else. The total cost was just over 600 RMB, which is a very reasonable price.

The apartment itself is great; it’s right next to the subway, and there are many villas in the complex, making the overall environment quiet and pleasant. The only downside is the parking space the landlord rented to me – it’s incredibly difficult to park in. This led to an incident one ordinary evening when I was driving out of the spot: the car door hit the wall directly, denting the entire door. It ended up costing 14,000 RMB to replace the door through insurance. Later, I had another minor accident, backing up and hitting the rear of another car, which cost me four or five hundred RMB in compensation.

Other#

COVID-19 Prevention and Control#

COVID-19 prevention and control measures have finally ceased. I was quite pessimistic, feeling like they would last forever. The experience in between is truly unimaginable for those who didn’t go through it: personal freedoms severely restricted, travel plans impossible. Frequent PCR tests, centralized transfers, or city-wide lockdowns. For the National Day holiday, I had checked the policies, which stated a three-day home quarantine would suffice. However, three days later, after taking a PCR test and planning to go out, things changed. Fortunately, I keenly sensed something was wrong and decided that very afternoon on the third day to immediately return to Hangzhou. I changed my ticket and drove straight to the airport. Upon arrival, I saw a flood of messages on my phone saying that my area had already been locked down. If I had left even an hour or two later, I would have been in trouble. That lockdown lasted quite a while, and if I had stayed home, my work for the year might have been ruined. It’s hard to say if it was luck or sorrow; I had planned to go home and relax, but instead, I had to be constantly vigilant and cautious. Thankfully, our great gov has announced: the fight against the pandemic has achieved a great victory.

Parking#

Before moving, the old complex had no parking spaces. Even though the price for a rented spot was 600 RMB/month, none were available. So, every day, my car had nowhere to park, leading me to cruise around the streets after work, looking for roadside parking. When there truly were no spots, I illegally parked a few times and got two tickets – truly miserable.

Work Business Change#

Regarding work, I spent a year on traffic-related business, and it felt truly strange. We had over a dozen business stakeholders, yet no one was responsible for the specific landing pages. The backend team was also very laid-back, making collaboration quite troublesome. We in frontend are trying to optimize performance, but the backend’s response time (RT) is over 1 second, haha, I’m truly speechless.

Archery#

My archery skills have improved. Because I use a left-handed bow and the archery range only had one, not-so-good left-handed bow, I bought my own. Even though it doesn’t have a sight and the range staff joked about someone buying a Decathlon bow, it doesn’t stop me from having a great time every time I go.

Travel/Leisure#

Our company team-building trip took us to Hainan. I tried surfing, but because I hadn’t eaten breakfast, I ran out of energy after just three waves and couldn’t stand up on the board. A pity.

After buying the car, I drove around Qingshan Lake for the first time, and later went to Anji once. It was quite nice.

NAS#

I set up a QNAP NAS for myself. Early in the year, I bought a 453dmin, but after a few days, I swapped it for a 464c, which is practically a flagship 4-bay model. I’ve set up several services on it now, primarily serving as a home media center, but more importantly, it exists as my personal toy:

I’ve spent quite a lot of time on it, mainly because I’m not familiar enough with some Linux concepts and operations.

Some Disorganized Thoughts#

My sense of control over life has significantly decreased. Goals I set are hard to achieve, and my execution ability is getting worse. Especially in my free time, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to complete a single task, often interrupted or disrupted by various things. For example, I might set five small tasks for myself, but by the end of the day, either I haven’t started any, or I get distracted and don’t finish a single one. This might also be related to insomnia and going to bed late.

I constantly feel unmotivated, especially at work. Ever since the company’s organizational restructuring split up the large frontend team, I haven’t really recovered my state of mind.

It’s crucial to be cautious when making major decisions. I used to think of myself as a wanderer, a romantic, stopping wherever I pleased, doing whatever I wanted, letting everything be driven by impulse. In reality, however, some decisions require careful consideration and thorough communication and thought before acting, rather than a ‘whatever, it’s done’ attitude.

There are many easy paths, but by chance, I ended up on a difficult one. It’s incredibly hard to pull back from the brink; the inertia is too great.

Adjust your mindset: be rationally optimistic, rationally pessimistic, and avoid blind optimism. Spend more time with optimistic people; it’s good for one to be bright and cheerful. The same words, spoken by different people with different tones, can have vastly different impacts, directly affecting the listener’s feelings and reactions, and ultimately influencing the outcome of a situation.

Log of Activities#

• Movies OR TV Series:
  • Demon Slayer 👍🏻
  • The Last of Us 👍🏻
  • Suzume 👍🏻
  • The Knockout
  • Chainsaw Man
  • Harry Potter (seven films)
  • Weathering with You
  • A Touch of Sin
  • Shin Ultraman
  • The Silence of the Lambs
  • Return to Dust
• Books:
  • The Three-Body Problem
  • Foundation
    • Second Foundation
    • Foundation and Empire
  • Rickshaw Boy
  • The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State 👍🏻
• Games Completed:
  • Persona 5 👍🏻
  • Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty 👍🏻
  • Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate

Goals#

Review#

Since I didn’t set any goals last year, this year’s goal completion rate reached an astonishing 100%, unprecedented, and I’m very happy about it.

2023 Goals#

• Be able to shoot a 30m target at the archery range (meaning, on a 10m target, 9 out of 12 arrows hit the yellow center).
• Keep my weight under 70kg; I’m a bit overweight right now.