This summary should have been completed during the National Day holiday, but every time I wrote a few paragraphs, I would delete them because of my poor writing skills. However, I couldn't let go of the idea of writing something, so I decided to write a casual account instead of nothing. Winter is coming, so I won't procrastinate any longer.
Based on the latitude of Guangdong, I define summer as the period from early May to early October.
Due to length reasons, I won't include too many pictures. Maybe I'll develop a photo album component in the future, which would be more suitable.
Summer Flashback#
My summer began with a busy period.
My roommate had moved to another city for work half a year ago, and by May, the lease for the house had expired, so I had to find a new place to live.
I came back from home before the May Day holiday to pack up the two-bedroom apartment. It took two trips with a cargo van to finally move all my belongings to the new place.
After finishing, I lay on the bed, looking at the cardboard boxes filling every corner of the new rental house. I estimated that I wouldn't open them again until the next move.
The Last Shot#
In mid-May, it was the firefly breeding season, and I had planned to go and take photos of them, so I naturally wouldn't miss it.
But I went at the wrong time. There were many people who knew about the fireflies, and even at six o'clock in the evening, there were at least a hundred people waiting in line in front of the botanical garden's entrance.
There were many uncivilized tourists and misbehaving children. Every time the fireflies appeared, they were scared away by flashlights and torches. As a result, I also witnessed a quarrel among the tourists. By nine o'clock in the evening, I had no choice but to give up with little success.
At the end of the month, I climbed Hulushan Mountain with my classmates. Everything at the beginning of summer was beautiful. The sky was so blueforget about the haze in Guangzhou, and the cumulus clouds formed by the condensation of a large amount of water vapor complemented it perfectly. If you don't consider the hot temperature that made people's heads dizzy, this should be my favorite time of the year.
In early June, I visited the Nanyue King Museum in an unexpected rain shower. The last time I came here was almost five years ago. Since then, my weekly outings for photography, which started in February, have come to an end. After a few months, I have visited all the places in the Guangzhou urban area that I know and are convenient to go to.
The memories of the following period are a bit chaotic. My diary records several days of chaotic work and life.
Playing Genshin Impact#
Around July, I was thinking about meeting a friend from the Genshin Impact community, 减紫, in person. Since I missed the ticket sales for the Firefly Expo, we decided to meet at the end of the month at ACGHK.
However, our plans were disrupted by unexpected events. Typhoon Du Surei hit, and the high-speed rail lines along the Fujian coast were temporarily suspended. Our friends couldn't come, so we had to cancel the plan.
Unwilling to give up, I shifted my focus to the Dongguan Songguo Animation Festival on August 5th. This time, I invited another friend from the community, Lao Lu.
Since we missed the online ticket sales again, we thought there would be offline tickets available. But when we arrived at the venue under the scorching sun at noon, we were dumbfounded. The tickets were sold out long ago, and there would be no additional offline tickets. It seemed that we underestimated the impact of CVs appearing in person.
Helpless, we settled for a nearby KFC to satisfy our hunger, and then we went our separate ways after browsing the adjacent food exhibition.
I have to mention Lao Lu here. How can he play Genshin Impact intensively every day while balancing family and scientific research? It's a mystery.
The awkward situation caused by our casual plans continued.
After experiencing a setback in Dongguan, I planned to attend the Guangzhou COMICUP GZ05 at the end of the month with 减紫. However, the organizers didn't announce the ticket sales date until the last week before the event. The platform's app notifications were overwhelmed by the sudden surge in traffic, so our phones didn't receive any notifications. When we realized this, the tickets were already sold out.
But because COMICUP GZ05 had a higher level of popularity and attracted many peripheral photographers, we decided to go to Pazhou and take a stroll. As someone with social anxiety, I naturally didn't actively approach cosplayers for photos, so I handed my camera to 减紫 to capture the moments.
A Ten-Year Promise#
My initial online social circle came from a Minecraft purchasing group ten years ago. Those who have watched Minecraft-related live streams at that time should know what I'm talking about. Although I haven't played Minecraft for a long time, the relationships I built back then have been maintained and become a retirement group. The initial plan to meet in person was scheduled for the 2015 China Joy, but for various reasons, it never happened. Now, almost ten years have passed.
At some point this year, a group member announced that he was getting married and asked if we wanted to attend his wedding in September. This was also an opportunity for everyone to finally meet after eight years. Except for a few people who couldn't make it due to other commitments, a total of eight people attended the gathering.
Suzhou doesn't have an airport, so to reach the groom's hometown in Zhangjiagang, we had to fly to Nantong first and then take a taxi to the high-speed rail station before finally crossing the Yangtze River by train.
The groom thoughtfully booked rooms for us at the hotel where the wedding was held, so we just had to go downstairs before the wedding started. The wedding was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, and since the groom didn't take a day off on Monday, he had to work and didn't have time to accompany us.
While waiting for the wedding to start, the remaining friends and I played an unscary escape room game. In the afternoon, we found a board game shop and started playing games of deception.
After being used to the crowded subways in Guangzhou, I felt a sense of unreality during my time in Zhangjiagang.
During the wedding, we realized that our seats were arranged in the second row, right next to the tables of the elders. It was truly an honor.
The highlight of the wedding was when the bride and groom hugged and kissed during the emcee's speech. All of us, including me, were a bit teary-eyed. Even the tough guys shed tears.
In addition, this gathering produced many candid photos that became popular memes in our group chat.
Other Records#
Coding#
- NeoVim
- I started using NeoVim after being recommended by innei. I have been using it instead of VSCode for work for some time now.
- Blog
- I rewrote my blog using Nuxt3, but I haven't quite figured out the style yet. I need to focus on filling it with content first.
- Company Business Components
- I encapsulated most of the business components used in the projects at my company.
- The workflow has become copying HTML from prototypes, cleaning it up, using a specialized prompt with GPT, and generating the required JSON for the code.
- Work has become more and more boring, and I don't feel comfortable slacking off during the fragments of free time I save.
- Graphics-related
- I started with the basics of ray casting and created a random maze generator.
- Currently, I'm following tutorials on shaders to learn more. I don't have much to say until I create something myself.
Games#
- Chicory: A Colorful Tale
- Surprisingly, I discovered this game when I saw the OST album for sale on Taobao. I was curious about what kind of game it was, so I looked it up on Steam.
- I played it without realizing there was no Chinese language support until I was almost finished. It was painful.
- Kenshi
- I learned about this game from Xiaoyin's livestreams a few years ago.
- I had an immersive gaming experience before becoming too powerful.
- Paradise Killer
- I learned about this game from Fengmao's videos. What attracted me was the City Pop-style BGM. The album has been in my music library for a year, but I only started playing the game this year.
- I prefer wandering around the map while listening to the BGM rather than solving mysteries.
- Genshin Impact
- I gradually became a casual player after version 3.4. I didn't have time to play, and I couldn't stand the storyline. After version 4.0, I decided to stop playing and cancel my monthly card subscription.
- It feels great not having to go to work after work.
- Slay the Spire
- I played it before, and recently I picked it up again and completed a run with all characters. It's a good time killer.
- Cyberpunk 2077
- The new DLC was released, so I started a new playthrough.
- As of writing this, I haven't played for two weeks.
Overall, I played fewer games compared to previous years, as work and other pressures have increased.
Apps#
- Pokemon Sleep
- Although I rarely followed my sleep schedule, I'm open to adding friends. My friend code is
1854-1365-0050. 
- Although I rarely followed my sleep schedule, I'm open to adding friends. My friend code is
- Duolingo
- Initially, I planned to learn both Japanese and English, but later I decided to focus on Japanese only.
- Tana
- Combining with the book "The Cloud Collector's Handbook," I tried to record the clouds I photographed during the summer.
- Anytype
- I started using it from July to record work documents and short diary entries that don't require much text.
I might write a subjective evaluation of various note-taking apps in the future.
Music#
The most frequently played music this summer was probably the songs by Pogo, especially Go Out And Love Someone, which perfectly captured my mood.