Diary

Today is the last day of March. Last night, I accidentally stayed up coding until almost 2 a.m. again—another late night. Regret… The weather is unusually cold, making it feel like we’re still in the depths of winter. This morning, I checked the progress of my CSC application and saw that it was still stuck at “received by the handling unit.” Feeling a bit anxious, I called the exchange office of the Yunnan Provincial Department of Education. I tried twice in the morning but couldn’t get through, so I called again in the afternoon. They reassured me not to worry and said the teacher would handle it. That eased my mind a little. ...

2025-03-29 Yesterday, I went to Qingzhen to take a public institution exam—I had applied for the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences. Xiaohuanhuan came along to accompany me, and spending these last two days with her has been so much fun. On the 29th, we had some spicy braised food, which was really spicy, and the ingredients didn’t seem all that fresh either. The next day, both of us had stomach issues. I should probably buy less of this kind of food in the future—making it myself might be better. ...

09:30 Insomnia Last Night Naturally, waking up this morning felt exhausting, and I had zero desire to get out of bed. Yet, my biological clock rudely dragged me awake early anyway. The main reason for the insomnia is my irregular sleep schedule. Deviating from my usual bedtime often leads to sleeplessness. Both the night before last and last night were like this. So far, I’ve found two effective solutions: Indulge my desires to exhaustion: By physically tiring myself out, I can trigger hormone release that helps me fall asleep faster. Don’t even try to sleep: Instead, learn something new—especially by listening to lectures, like math or English. The more attentively I listen, the quicker I drift off. The catch? As a lazy person, forcing myself to study is tough. It takes practice. 11:34 Cooking Lunch and Taking a Shower Stir-fried some cabbage, fried two eggs, and tossed in yesterday’s leftover fried potatoes and sausages. Mixed it all with rice in the pan, along with the boiled veggies from yesterday—delicious! ...

09:04 Woke Up My habits have been quite poor lately—I often find myself mindlessly picking up my phone to scroll through videos on Bilibili or Douyin. This behavior wastes a lot of time and significantly harms both my eye health and my normal routine. I need to be more mindful. I believe this is achievable because I didn’t used to have this habit, and I’ve also realized that most of the time I spend watching these videos, I’m not even happy. ...

09:31 Started Studying Just finished debugging the code. There are always so many things to do in my own room—thinking about folding laundry, taking out the trash, what to eat for lunch… Before I knew it, a lot of time was wasted on these little tasks. 21:41 Finished a Vocational Aptitude Test Scored in the top 35%. It was okay—still plenty of room for improvement. This afternoon, I completed a set of “Comprehensive Application Ability” exercises, then cooked some rice and went grocery shopping in my pajama pants. Bought a lot of stuff: strawberries, choy sum, cabbage, tofu, and pork belly. Originally planned to make it last two days, but I got greedy and wanted to eat everything. Ended up not being able to finish it all by myself, so I called my brother over to share the meal. ...

The weather is so nice today! Yet I didn’t step outside all day. I was sluggish in the morning, fiddling with this and that, and before I knew it, the morning was gone. The printer keeps acting up a little—I’ll send it back and try a replacement. Today, I worked through a set of practice tests. The Administrative Aptitude Test was manageable, but I still need more practice with summarization and synthesis for the Comprehensive Application Ability section. I should also familiarize myself with the basic formats of various writing styles. Tomorrow, I’ll tackle a few more test papers specifically to sharpen those skills. ...

I slept very well last night and didn’t wake up until 8 o’clock this morning. I dragged myself out of bed slowly. The day before yesterday, I received an email stating that I would receive an annual funding of 25,000 CAD, with a minimum of 100,000 CAD over four years. At the time, the email mentioned logging into the system to accept the offer, so I spent the entire morning today checking but couldn’t find any new information to accept. I gave up. ...