2023, An Unremarkable Year | Life

This article has been machine-translated from Chinese. The translation may contain inaccuracies or awkward phrasing. If in doubt, please refer to the original Chinese version.

In the blink of an eye, it’s the end of 2023. It shouldn’t be too much to post an annual review on the very last day, right? It’s short, very diary-like, and packed with lots of photos — you’ve been warned.

The Diary

I remember starting my internship in June 2022, arriving in Beijing for the first time to begin my life as a Beijing drifter. Although the pay wasn’t much, it was enough for rent and daily living. My biggest hobby was eating and drinking.

Some Mid-Autumn Festival gift boxes — now that I’m no longer at the headquarters, I can’t get these anymore, haha.

Around September 2022, I went back to school to continue my internship remotely, and also managed to get my driver’s license along the way~

After that, with no classes in the first semester of senior year, I started preparing my graduation thesis. I went back to Shenzhen and took my sister to a cat cafe — cat therapy! We also ate a lot, drank a lot, and had a lot of fun.

After paying tuition with the money I saved from my internship, I bought a Hello electric scooter for my mom.

In the second semester of senior year, around March, I went back to Beijing for another internship that lasted until the end of April. At the beginning of May, I returned to school for my graduation thesis, and then after my defense at the end of May, I promptly caught COVID for the second time (tragic).

We graduated!

In December, I got a high fever from influenza A. The fever was terrifyingly high.

I realize there really isn’t much I want to say this year. Let’s save it for next year, sigh.

Food

Eating at home early in the year was way more comfortable than eating at school or during internships (obviously). For instance, I got to eat Mom’s steamed pork with rice flour!!!

Saizeriya in Shenzhen — hits the spot!

Xinjiang lamb skewers near home

Back in Beijing, the food and drinks were the usual stuff~ ~~I even figured out a whole air fryer recipe book~~

Feishu Doc | Air Fryer Recipes

I learned to make my favorite stone pot eggs at home! Now I make them myself after work, hehe.

Also went out for Beijing roast duck, kung pao chicken, and sweet and sour mandarin fish a few times (the mandarin fish was incredibly delicious but too expensive to eat regularly).

Living

When I interned in June last year, I rented a living room partition, separated only by a curtain, located in Wangjing — 2,650 yuan per month. Very dark. Typical Beijing drifter life~

When I returned to Beijing for my internship in March this year, I was already in my current department. I rented a larger master bedroom for just over 2,500 yuan, very bright and comfortable to live in.

After graduation, I moved into company-provided subsidized housing — a one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and bathroom. Very comfortable.

Travel

While in Shenzhen, I went to Shuangyuewan in Huizhou with my mom to visit my grandma.

Beijing’s snowy scenery at year-end (yes, this homebody never went sightseeing anywhere — it’s all near the office)

A tiny, ugly-yet-cute snowman in front of a restaurant~

Hobbies & Entertainment

In the second half of this year, I got really into making resin shaker charms and buying decorative tapes, and made loads of them, haha.

I’ve uploaded most of them to my Bilibili video collection - Resin Shakers~

Gaming - In Naraka: Bladepoint, I managed to reach the highest rank with friends on the very last day of the year! (Thanks to my friends whose ranking points I definitely leeched)

Anime - I’ve been keeping up with seasonal anime consistently, haha. I’ll try to put together an anime tracking list next year. For now, I still track them through Telegram.

New anime of the year (in no particular order):

Skip and Loafer
Oshi no Ko [Masterpiece!]
The Dangers in My Heart [Pure love!]
Kaguya-sama: Love is War - The First Kiss That Never Ends [Sweet!]
The Duke of Death and His Maid Season 2
Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc
Mashle: Magic and Muscles
KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World
The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses
Undead Girl Murder Farce
Bungo Stray Dogs Season 5
Helck
Horimiya -piece- [Sweet!]
The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent & The White Cat’s Revenge as Plotted from the Dragon King’s Lap [Meme contribution]
Dark Gathering [Consistently solid]
Spy x Family Season 2 [Good]
Dr. Stone Part 2 [Masterpiece, waiting for the Americas arc]
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End [Masterpiece]
Undead Unluck [Following the manga, great!]
The Apothecary Diaries
The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You
Stardust Telepath [Kirara vibes, so wholesome!]
The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess [Yuri, but P9]
My Favorite Idol is the Villainess [Sweet!]
Shangri-La Frontier ~ Trash Game Hunter Challenges a God-Tier Game

Chinese animation:

A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality
Little Green and Little Blue Season 3 [Quality is so-so though]
The Daily Life of the Immortal King Season 4
Proud Heavenly Nine [Childhood nostalgia, a brief watch out of respect]
Humble Little Monster [Recommended, good but underrated]
Ai You’s Secret Room
Link Click
Monster Diner

Miscellaneous:

Hinamatsuri
The Three-Body Problem (TV series)

Tinkering

This year’s tinkering was mainly focused on my small projects and maintaining my Telegram channel, etc.

Maintaining my Telegram channel: cosine - Frontend Dev’s Daily Channel @cosine_front_end — Daily musings, occasional quality frontend blog recommendations, learning resources, etc.

Started a new Telegram gallery channel: Cosine Gallery @cosinegallery
Integrated a search bot @cosSearchBot to aggregate information into a bot for instant searching (I actually use this quite frequently myself, haha)
Integrated a posting bot @cosPicBot for convenient image posting, like this (hehe). Thanks to my partner for making Nahida_Picbot

Added a few tools to my toolbox that I frequently use (really just for personal use, hehe)

Summary

For me, this year has been an unremarkable one — everything was very calm.

Since I’ve already posted most of what I wanted to say and summarize on my channel throughout the year, I won’t repeat it all here, including various year-end reviews.

Overall, I was especially lazy about technology in the second half of this year~ Mostly just configuring existing tools and spinning up services without seriously maintaining my own small projects. Ever since that influenza A high fever, I lost motivation to write code. The new year calls for more coding! Happy New Year’s Eve!