1. Something new

• First year cyling!

  • cycling is definitely the most important hobby for me this year. From strava, it shows i cycled 2500km. If taking commute into consideration, would be around 3000km.
  • Join Clontarf Cycling Club. ngl, the club is super Irish and middle-aged people over 40, 50, 60 and i’m a outlier. However, learned a lot from them and every time group spin, it’s a challenge and fun to push myself.
  • Cycling not only gives me the way to exercise, but also brings me to lots of places around Dublin i’ve never been. Before I never go out of Dublin city center. But this year, i’ve been to Bray, Dalkey, Wicklow, Enniskerry, Killakee, Glencullen in the south, Portmarnock, Malahide, Swords, Skerries in the north, Lucan in the south. (Sorry, this is all the village names around Dublin suburbs.) And the group always guided me to lovely cute local coffee shop. This is the most authentic Irish experience for me as an immigrants 😂

  First 100km in Feb

  Wicklow spin in May, Sally gap - Wicklow gap, i look so young with the group XD

• Bike Touring

  • Another thing cycling brings me is bike touring. As traveling after so many years, i know my preference is to go to local places (don’t need to be famous) and see how local people’s daily lifes and behaviors. However, because i can’t drive, i’m limited to the places I could reach by public transportation. This year, because of bike touring, I’ve seen lots of interesting but niche places, as well as enjoying cycling at the same time.
  • There are lots of memorable spins and a bit risky “adventure” because of bike touring, such as cycle on southern freeway (Autopista Sur), carrying bike while hiking in Tenerife…
  • The most memorable one is in Naples, I rented a bike for 3 days there. Here’s the travel notes taken back then.

  In the beginning, I only stayed in the central area of Naples and had a biased impression of this multi-layered city. The closely-built, narrow alleys reminded me of the urban villages in Guangzhou. But if you go to the west coast and climb up the hill, the vibe of the neighborhood is similar to Mid-Levels in Hong Kong. It’s also similar to Lisbon and Istanbul in some ways. As it turns out, there must be some common patterns to developing cities.

  Cycled to Pompeii, around Mount Vesuvius, and experienced the stone road, which made my hands and butt vibrate all the way and met traffic jam in literally every single town!

  People in napoli are very confident drivers, both cars and motors. They turn without signal lights, pass aside you within 0.5m. In the crossings, most of time no traffic lights, people need to negotiate with hands, facial expressions, beeps.

  People parked anywhere, anytime. Parked 2 Columns on the same side of roads. Parked in the crossings. Parked suddenly to speak to passengers.

  As I didn’t see any accident, I would say it’s a super good self-organized society 👍

  Took a ferry with my bike to Ischia and had a thermal spring bath at Baia di Sorgeto, where had to manually mix the cold sea water with hot spring water.

  First Bike Touring in Malaga, firt time with Clip Shoes and Fall, February

  Biggest Climb this year in Tenerife, March!

  Naples in April, on the west coast looking to Vesuvius

  Dusseldorf along Rhine River in June, cycle with Diane

  Erhai Greenway, Dali in October

• Get promotion

  • I don’t talk much about work because i’m not ambitious on career. But still, this year i’ve made so much progress as a software engineer. Looking back, i almost didn’t do any solid work in the first one year and half. For example, i haven’t made any commits in my team’s core packages, either C or Rust. But since April, I picked a very technical challenging project in Rust. So I had a steep learning curve on Rust, then our core package… Then I picked another bigger both technical and design difficult project both in Go and Rust, also need to lead 2 new graduate teammates… In the end, I finished them all, from knowing nothing to deliver results as well as own a big project. Then I got promoted…

• The way of learning

  • I often find myself starting things just as I cross the bottem passing grade, which makes the process somewhat painful, but leads to significant progress. Last year, I didn’t even complete a two-day hiking trail, when i start to hike in Dolomites over 170+ kilometers… This year, after just 2 months of owning a road bike, I joined a cycling club with the shortest group spin is over 70km. When I first got into DJing last year, I immediately started making friends in the DJ community. I’ve never felt uncomfortable that I might be less skilled compared to someone else; instead, I’m always amazed by their talents and skills. I openly share what I’m into with almost everyone, which leads to more chances of serendipitously meeting like-minded people and engaging with them.

• Go back to China

  • After 3 years, I’m back in China. Actually i don’t feel strange. I still have lots of friends who could hangout together and have surprisling(…) strong connection and mutal understanding. My fav pub in town still open, fav restaurant still open. Stay probably 3 weeks at home, had some family time with mom, Tiantian and Kangkang. And stay over with so many friend’s house. Thx for hosting me.

  

• Travel and stay with friends

  • I had a reserved attitute about traveling with friends, the reasons are complicated and mixed. Partly because i don’t feel comfortable to stay with people together, partly because i don’t believe I could still keep having fun with one person. Partly because i like having adventure alone. Traveling solo will give me a adventurous feeling. But with my comfort zone with people progressing, I’ve arranged several trips with friends this year (sometimes one person, sometimes two.) Most of time, it goes well. Even something annoyed happened, I will communicate about it in the end. I do detect i don’t have fight or run situation for long time.

• Random stuff

  • get stamp 4 (a work permit in Ireland, which don’t need company’s sponsorship)
  • didn’t make lots of new friends this year, still meet new people, sometimes during traveling, sometimes in Dublin, but not close and don’t have time to hangout. maybe i’m already very comfortable with current friend circle but anyways, why all the friends should be close friends?

2. Something old

• keep traveling: 78 days

  • January: Portugal - Faro (2 days)
  • February & March: Spain - Malaga, Granada, Tenerife (10 days)
  • March & April: Italy - Rome, Neplas (11 days) w/ John, Frances, Wayne
  • June: Germany - Koln, Dusseldorf (3 days) w/ Diane; Spain - Barcelona (5 days) w/ Matthew
  • July: Swizterland & France - Geneva, Chamonix, Zermatt, Zurich (15 days) w/ Wayne, John, Frances, West, Alex
  • September & October: Hong Kong (2 days); China - Chaozhou, Shanghai, Suzhou, Linhai (12 days); Korean - Jeju (5 days) w/ Josh, Ying
  • October: China - Dali (5 days) w/ Donglai & Iris; Hong Kong (1 day)

  The focus regions for me this year is South Europe, especailly Spain and Italy. Quote my instagram post

In the last 3-4 months, I visited the following cities in South Europe around the Mediterranean Sea: Portugal’s Lisbon and Faro, Spain’s Malaga, Granada and Barcelona, and Italy’s Rome, Naples. If looking back a bit further, also visited Turkey’s Istanbul, Izmir, Fethiye and Antalya. Could say had a rough impression of the north Mediterranean area.

Born and raised in a region with a long, stable cultural history (Zhejiang is one of China’s core cultural regions since the Song Dynasty), I feel fascinated and amazed by how many culturally diverse influences have shaped the Mediterranean, including Carthage, Rome, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Arabic, and Moors.

All the cities I’ve visited have historical sites left by the Romans, Arabs, Carthaginians and Ottoman Turks. Over a long period, these empires' borders have experienced expansion and contraction. What were once mosques have become churches in Granada, and what were once churches have become mosques in Istanbul. The alternation of civilizations happens all the time, and each time, the victors try to tell a historical narrative to prove their legitimacy while the fusion of cultures still exists in daily life and some physical objects.

The mental map in the brain often differs from the real physical world. As an Asian/Chinese, I could name almost all of Chinese provinces, their capitals, main terrains, as well as “big cities” in Western Europe, and lots of places in North America. At the same time, I was surprised to find out that the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco is less than 15 kilometers wide, Sicily is much closer to Tunis than Milan, and Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the most famous Greek cities in history, with a massive Greek community until Nasser took power.

Globalization, or cross-region and cross-continent communication, isn’t a new thing. Iconic buildings and landmarks become modern idolatry, and the world has more rough grainness before filters, which requires observation with closer distance and immersion.

• physical health

  • This year i’ve exercised for 200~ days compared to 190~ last year.
  • my workout pattern become a bit different than before
    • during workday, try to work on abs/back/chest for 3 times, and in summer, will go to cycling during sunset time with good weather for 12-20km.
    • on weekends, have a loose rotation between cycling with group (70-90km), climbing with random friends, and swimming with Chenglin. oh yeah, almost missed that, this year i went swimming around 10 times and learned freestyle with help of Chenglin.
    • do 1 hour yoga for weekends and 10 mins stretch everyday in the morning since November.
    • my upper strength increases a lot this year, the pull-up bar are so useful and effective, at first, i need to pull up with 45kg resistance band, now i could do 2 pull-up (not good form but sill 😬). The push-up increases from 7 dirty form to 15 clean form standard form.
  • not hiking a lot, but becuase go for Haute Route in Switzerland this year, so still hike 267.7km in total
  • next year: improve freestyle swimming, also i’m interested in Calisthenics, didn’t see the possibility that i could do flag or planche next year hahaha but will see how much i could improve as standards in Convict Conditioning. Now, I’m in chest5, leg10, back5 and abs10. Next year hope to improve chest and back to 10, also work on spine and shoulder.

  

• dinner party: 2rd year

  • host 12 dinner party this year in total (not including last time)
  • Second year, don’t feel any pressure, also less excited haha, now i feel this is more like a traditional ritual for my friend circle. This year, the close circle has some changes, first, Diane moves to Paris last October, and then Hnayang moved out to Donaghmede in the far north. Obviously, we hang out less frequently than before. Both Matthew and I traveled too much to be both in Dublin (?) But more close to Yangyang. Children will always grow up and leave home. 😂 I need to accept this.
  • Will still have Jarry’s living room next year.

  

3. Something borrowed

Looking back the whole year, I realized the happeniss of this year is from friends (either friends in Dublin or friends around the world), my family, travel, music, movie and cycling. I feel so grateful and lucky that I could have so many wonderful friends hanging out with me, taking care of me, give me support; I have a healthy body and some money to do the hobbies I like, the adventure I choose; all the people who create the amaizng films, albums, live music and books (still alive or in the history).

So next year, I will keep all this in mind, treasure my friends and family, pay and “fight” for what I love by both actions and price.

4. Something blue

In 2020’s summary, I wrote “In the past few years, a persistent issue for me has been the frequent feeling of strangeness towards my past self and a sense of detachment from my past life.” The strangeness is not only from the environment, the friend circle, but also my behavior pattern and mindset. It sounds weird, but this year is the first time that I truly accept the current me is real me. And I will keep it’s this stage of me and probably will change in the future. Why I feel it’s something blue, in many novels, the main character goes through challenges and hardships, returning to their hometown having achieved some success, even becoming somewhat better in some ways. Along the way, they gain friends. Yet, despite the struggles being a story that can be shared with others, you still feel a sense of sadness, a sadness that might not even be rooted in loss.

I cried when I got onboarded on the flight back to China.

Quote notes back then

Last weeks in Dublin, before heading back to Asia after 3 yrs. When reflecting on the past three years, the cliche summary is, “I’ve become a better version of myself.”

There’s often a tendency that we want to accumulate our possessions, the titles we hold, and indulge in fancy travels and experiences to show people our identity. But what if you were suddenly stripped of all that, thrown into a completely unfamiliar world where no one understands the labels from your previous life? Would you still recognize who you truly are? I keep questioning myself.

At the age of 29, I hope to keep living a simpler life with few things and not depending on lots of needs, yet savor all the love and support from my loved ones.

“天上浮云如白衣，斯须改变如苍狗。 古往今来共一时，人生万事无不有。”

Another thing probably should not categorize as blue. At the beginning of this year, I know M.D. got married by accident. It still arouses mixed feelings, which combine with “Oh he got married” and “I feel happy for him because he must be love her, otherwise he won’t choose to be married.” He is the most important person who influences me in so many ways in my 20s, and I don’t think there will be another person who have similar impact on me. But I will have still my 30s, 40s and etc on my own good way.

5. a silver sixpence

• The same as last year

a psychologically rich life is one with “interesting experiences in which novelty and/or complexity are accompanied by profound changes in perspective.”

• Happy and Healthy, me and my loved ones.