I turned 35 this year, and it feels worth pausing to write things down.
Work
The biggest thing by far was work.
As a PMO, I helped bring a very large fintech project online—one that involved a team of around a thousand people and more than ten thousand person-months of work. I logged over 1,000 hours of overtime, and by October the project finally went live successfully. After months of pressure, seeing it land in the autumn felt like harvesting something I had been tending for a long time.
What I gained from that project was more than just delivery experience. My understanding of project management and organizational management became much deeper, and I also iterated on my own systems: document management, note-taking, and my GTD setup all improved along the way. I can feel that I grew through it.
Notes
Obsidian is still my main note-taking tool. I use it mostly for local work notes, reading notes, and blog drafts.
This year I stopped using Daily Notes. Putting all tasks, events, and reflections for a day into a single file is easy in the moment, but it fragments information and makes it harder to reorganize later by project. My work is fundamentally project-based, so I switched to a P.A.R.A structure—Project, Area, Resource, Archive.
Now I write work logs by project and by event, placing them into separate folders and files. File names follow a date + time format, such as 20251226 CIPS project requirement review release notes. As projects move toward completion, the process assets naturally accumulate in place.
For travel plans and shopping lists, I still prefer Apple Notes. Before every trip, I create a planning note organized around food, accommodation, transportation, and expenses. It is simply more convenient there for saving links and images.
For everyday highlights, I use Day One. I have 1,043 entries so far. Being able to revisit “on this day” and remember what I saw, thought, and felt in previous years is still one of my favorite small rituals.
I also use other apps now and then—Notion, Craft, Dinox—but I am no longer attached to the idea of going all-in on a single tool. I would rather follow whatever makes me actually want to write.
Exercise
During the busiest stretches of work, there were days when my state was off: overtime kept piling up, output was poor, ideas would not come, and time slipped away while I stared at materials and got nowhere. On top of that, I wanted to stay healthy, so I bought a gym membership as a way to reset myself.
The gym is near the office. Two or three days a week, I head there at 5:30 p.m. without eating dinner first, run on the treadmill for 30 to 40 minutes, stretch, shower, and call it a day. That routine has been working well. Overall I feel noticeably better than before, and my health check indicators at least have not worsened in any obvious way.
The timing is very personal. I know people who run in the morning, at noon, after dinner, outdoors, and indoors. For me, running less than three hours after eating feels terrible, and morning runs do not leave enough time to shower afterward. So after weighing everything, evening fasted workouts followed by a shower and dinner turned out to be the best fit.
Besides running, my family also did some outdoor hiking around Ningbo on weekends. We mostly chose loop routes, usually around 7 to 10 kilometers each. Autumn hikes were especially pleasant. We went to loop trails around Shiziku, Tazhulin, Qixiakeng, and Tiantong Old Street. To avoid getting lost, I downloaded the Liuzhijiao app and followed other people’s recorded tracks.
Trips
Guangzhou in April
Over the three-day Qingming holiday in April, I took a trip to Guangzhou.
This one was built around food. I mapped everything out in advance, saved the spots in Amap, and then checked them off one by one: yum cha, satay noodles, coconut chicken, rice noodle rolls, and bowl shark fin soup. We also took our child to Chimelong Safari Park and did a Pearl River night cruise.
For two adults and one child, including flights, hotel, and tickets, the total for 3 days and 2 nights came to about 7,000 RMB.
Kuala Lumpur in May
In May, I flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
It was only a short three-day trip, but it felt completely satisfying—we managed to do and eat everything we wanted. I still think about nasi lemak fried chicken and kaya toast. Unfortunately, there are very few Nanyang-style restaurants where I live, so Penang is now high on the list for a future visit.
The most memorable part was going overseas with my wife to see a JJ Lin open-air concert for the first time. It rained during the show, and JJ said he would keep singing until the rain stopped. The entire crowd erupted.
For two people, including flights, hotel, concert tickets, and taxis, the total for 3 days and 3 nights was about 10,000 RMB.
Chongqing in December
In December, I took the whole family to Chongqing to experience its famously surreal, multilayered cityscape.
I had only spent one night there before, but the night view had stayed with me ever since. This time I finally got to see the city properly. The Yangtze, the Jialing, the mountains, the air-raid shelters, the constant changes in elevation—water and slopes everywhere, buildings stacked into impossible perspectives. It really does feel like a paradise for architects and photographers.
My two favorite places were the Mountain City Trail and Eling Park. Both felt essential.
As for food, Sichuan and Chongqing cuisine are spicy, but most places still offer non-spicy options. Even hot pot is easy to handle with a split pot or a clear broth base, so traveling with a child who cannot eat spicy food was not a problem at all.
One more thing I noticed: Chongqing seems to have Li Ruotao, A Yogurt Cow, and Chayan Yuese milk tea shops everywhere. I tried all three. My favorite was Li Ruotao’s original leaf white sticky rice drink—the texture was especially distinctive.
For four adults and one child, including flights, hotel, attraction tickets, and taxis, the total for 4 days and 3 nights was about 8,000 RMB.
Investing
Work has been busy for the past two years, so I have taken a very hands-off approach to investing. I have not traded frequently. Most of my gains came from Tencent through the Hong Kong Stock Connect program, while my consumer index fund and pharmaceutical index fund have mainly just recovered back to break-even.
Switching to an EV
I also changed cars in 2025 and went fully electric.
At first I had been a supporter of range-extended EVs. On paper, they seem to solve range anxiety. But after reading more, I realized that once battery levels drop below 20%, pure electric mode is essentially no longer the real story, and on highways you often prioritize fuel mode anyway. In practice, fuel consumption does not end up that different from a gasoline car.
For someone like me—about 50 kilometers of commuting on elevated roads on normal workdays, plus 220+ kilometers of highway driving when going home during holidays—that setup was not especially appealing. It also means giving up interior space for an engine. At that point, the question becomes simple: are you willing to carry around an engine you may only need a few times a year, or would you rather use that space for something else?
In the end, I chose a pure EV.
The timing worked out well because the third-generation NIO ES8 had just launched, with both charging and battery swapping. At first I was a little uneasy about its 5.28-meter length—it sounded huge. But after two months and 2,500 kilometers of actual use, I found that for commuting, home, and shopping malls, the size has not been a problem.
And the new-energy-car experience really is different. Once you have a big battery and that kind of space, the car starts to change how you use it. It is great for a midday nap, for camping, for making coffee outdoors and watching shows, and even waiting for someone no longer feels irritating. It genuinely becomes a mobile little home and a mobile café.
Camera
I had been using a Sony A6000 for more than ten years. Lately it would occasionally fail to recognize the memory card, so during the mid-year 618 shopping period, with a 2,000 RMB subsidy, I upgraded to a full-frame Sony A7C2 and paired it with a Tamron 28–200mm lens.
I deliberately skipped the standard lens. This zoom range lets me shoot portraits up close and landscapes at a distance, which makes it a true one-camera-for-everything setup.
I have traveled with multiple lenses before and know exactly how annoying lens swapping can be, so this time I chose convenience without hesitation. Getting the shot matters more than chasing the perfect shot.
For accessories, I picked up a SmallRig leather camera case secondhand for under 100 RMB. It looks great and feels like a very cost-effective add-on. I also use a wrap cloth to protect the camera inside my backpack, which means I do not need a dedicated camera bag. It makes going out a lot lighter and more flexible.
Apple Watch
These days I mainly use an Apple Watch to track exercise. The treadmill at my gym supports direct NFC connection with Apple Watch for data syncing, and having the numbers there somehow makes it easier to stay motivated.
Unexpectedly, though, the biggest consumer disappointment of 2025 was also the Apple Watch.
My first one was a birthday gift from my wife. It worked fine for two years, then died after a swim because water got in. Apple Watch is marketed as water-resistant, but if the waterproof adhesive can age and fail like that, it is hard to be too impressed.
The second one was an Apple Watch Ultra I bought on Xianyu for 2,500 RMB. During the transaction, the accessories did not match the listing, the screen was a bit unresponsive, and the seller kept pushing me to confirm receipt. That already felt off. Less than half a month later, it got stuck on the white Apple logo for no obvious reason. After checking with both official service and repair shops, I was told it had been opened and tampered with in Huaqiangbei. Once it failed, it was basically beyond repair. The money was gone.
That was my first bad experience buying on Xianyu, and it was enough to make me much more cautious about buying electronics there.
In the end, during the Double 12 sales, I bought a brand-new Apple Watch SE3 in starlight, 44mm, with a Milanese band, for about 2,500 RMB. I am very happy with how it looks, and I definitely treat it with more care now.
NAS
I had wanted a NAS for more than ten years, and this year I finally bought one.
The moment it was set up, I felt a kind of stability around my files that I had been missing for a long time. Selected backups for photos of my child, landscapes, and food; document backup and access; a private music library; a private video library—everything suddenly had a place.
Other useful buys
A few smaller purchases also turned out to be genuinely useful:
- A dual-port Type-C and USB flash drive. Moving files between Windows and Mac is much easier when I do not need to dig out a dongle every time.
- An 800mL insulated tumbler. It lives either in the office or in the car. In summer it keeps water cold for a long time, and in winter it keeps drinks hot.
- A Boox NoteX5S, a 10-inch e-ink writing tablet. When I need to sketch something out or annotate a PDF by hand, this is what I use. The white version looks especially nice.
- A CUKTECH No. 10 Super Power Ultra GaN four-port charger. It has a display and is one of those little gadgets that is simply fun to own.
A few favorite photos from the year
