Preface
This piece chronicles my life and reflections from May 1st to May 15th, 2024.
During the May Day holiday, I traveled to Inner Mongolia with my family. It wasn’t until we set off that I realized this was the first time we had ventured on a distant journey together. Previously, our furthest excursion had been a drive to Shanghai Disneyland. It was quite a different experience. Thus, in this piece, I’d like to discuss family and kinship, as well as an unforgettable desert expedition.
Family and Kin
Truth be told, I’ve never been one to cling to home. I grew up in my hometown until I was seven or eight, then transferred to school in Hangzhou. Perhaps due to missing some childhood moments of togetherness, there was initially a sense of estrangement between my parents and me.
As a child, I was academically mediocre, inarticulate, and often loitered in arcades. While I may not have been a troubled youth, I was far from being the obedient and sensible child. My parents are the most honest and harmonious people I’ve ever known. From my earliest memories to now, I’ve never witnessed them quarrel, either as individuals or as a couple, and they seldom reproached me.
Around the age of twelve or thirteen, I seemed to suddenly mature. I began to focus on my studies and no longer caused my parents worry. From minor decisions like which subject to tutor, to major life-altering choices like forgoing a guaranteed college admission or filling out college applications, I made all decisions on my own. I realized early on that one must bear the consequences of their choices. My parents gave me the respect and freedom I deserved, but to my younger self, it felt like a lack of involvement and companionship. I even envied classmates who were “overly cared for” by their parents.
After the college entrance exam, I wished to leave the familiar Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region and see more of the world. So I went to Wuhan. My life thereafter seemed to take on a nomadic quality, with many instances of moving houses or hurriedly departing for another city. Yet, I rarely felt homesick.
Of course, my relationship with my parents is good. Sometimes, when passing through Hangzhou on business trips, even if it’s late at night, we’ll chat in the living room for hours about my recent experiences and thoughts. I’m also close to my sister, who chatters endlessly about interesting happenings at school when she sees me, and calls me first to boast when her grades improve. My parents are very caring towards me, driving thousands of kilometers to bring me back to Hangzhou from Beijing, and bringing me meals when I’m holed up at home.
Perhaps because I’ve grown accustomed to relying only on myself for so long, we interact more like friends. Thus, it’s been difficult for me to draw strength from familial affection. But as I’ve grown over the years, I’ve come to understand the more precious things they’ve given me, and I’ve become more grateful for their “letting go” back then, which gave me more courage and confidence in facing life’s vast ocean.
Desert Journey
However, I’m slowly exploring modes of family interaction. It wasn’t until the initial period of the pandemic when I was at home, and these past few months living in Hangzhou, that I experienced more moments that could be considered “family bonding”. Last summer, we went to Shanghai Disneyland together to celebrate my sister’s birthday, and occasionally on weekend nights, the whole family would go out for hotpot. These seemingly ordinary events were indeed rare in my family’s past twenty-some years.
My parents came to Hangzhou in their early years, settling down and establishing careers here. Their hard work provided us with good material conditions and a comfortable family environment, but they neglected their own lives. As a result, we hardly ever traveled far together from my childhood to now. Both my sister and I are self-content by nature, so we never complained about this, but we still lacked some family memories and hardly have any family photos.
Recently, due to certain circumstances, we had to go to Inner Mongolia. Having long yearned to see the vast grasslands and deserts, we decided to go to Ordos, Inner Mongolia as a family.
Having grown up in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and with my later life trajectory barely deviating from the southeast coast, this was actually my first time seeing a desert. It easily reminded me of the “Dune” movie I had just watched.
What matters is not the scenery itself, but the people who accompany you through these landscapes and the memories that settle in your heart together.
Miscellaneous
Recently, due to work pressures and some personal life questions, I’ve been feeling mentally tense. One afternoon, after finishing work, I turned my head to find Nini had been by my side all along, gazing at me intently. I felt a sense of healing. As our time together grows longer, it seems I’ve become more dependent on her presence.
Interesting Things and Objects
Input
Although most interesting inputs are automatically synced to the “Yu’s Life” Telegram channel, I’ll still select a few to list here. It feels more like a newsletter this way.
Books
- Viktor Frankl’s Autobiography, I read the wrong book. I feel that late-life autobiographies inevitably carry a lot of ego. The one I wanted to read should be another one 🥲
- Kafka on the Shore, continuing to catch up on Murakami’s books.
Collections
Articles
- A Year of Drifting in Hangzhou
- The Evolution of My Reading Habits
- Setting Off Again
- Ollama Architecture Analysis | Inoki in the World
- May Day Reflections | Goidea
- The First Year of Not Working
- Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead.
Videos
- Create a Desktop App With JavaScript & Electron
- Is it modeling or real footage? It can really deceive the human eye!
- Two Leaps of Youth: “Black and White” and “Nothing Special”
- Never Take Your Wife to Northern Europe [Norway’s Five Darkest Moments]
- vlog #54 | A Female Programmer’s After-Work Study Routine | Rainy Day at Home Charging | Digging into the EigenLayer Whitepaper | April Review | Continuous English Learning | Completion of “The Fogg Behavior Model”
- Is the Vision Pro, with Such an Amateur Concept, Really an Apple Product? [Gamker]
- Fanning the Flames for Friends Who Bravely Quit Their Jobs
- “After 31 Years of Marriage, My Mom Wants to Divorce My Dad”
- vlog #55 | A Female Programmer’s After-Work Study Record | Enjoying Solitude | WorldCoin Whitepaper | Continuous English Learning | Learning Taiko | Finished Reading “Who Moved My Cheese”
- Introducing GPT-4o
- An English Idiot in Norway, Northern Europe Will Punish Every Introvert
TV Series
- My Home is Empty, decluttering.
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