A Month of Bad Luck, but Please Don't Let It Ruin the Day My Gaokao Scores Come Out and the Day I Get My Admission Letter.
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Synopsis
The author shares a series of unfortunate events during their final high school exam preparation. After achieving their best exam result in the Shenzhen Second Mock Exam, bad luck struck. A printed score chart was lost, and a replacement arrived late. They bought a server from Hudiyun, which went bankrupt days later, costing 300 yuan. Their Digital Ocean student pack benefits were canceled, wasting another 100 yuan. They then purchased an Oracle Always Free plan, hoping it would last. After buying a new gaming laptop, they realized its poor battery life and planned to sell their Surface Pro 9 for an Arm-based model, but their mother discovered the tablet. With only tens of yuan left, an unexpected OpenCode GO subscription fee drained their funds, forcing them to borrow 5000 yuan from their mother. Additionally, the author suffers from severe allergies and high eye pressure at home, and their 91-year-old grandmother is hospitalized after a stroke. They hope for better luck with their final exam results and college admission.
A Month of Bad Luck, but Please Don't Let It Ruin the Day My Gaokao Scores Come Out and the Day I Get My Admission Letter.
I've found that writing blog posts has some benefits. It helps me focus on organizing the logic behind events, and the margin feature of Innei's Yohaku theme allows me to summarize each article or add more dialectical elements and directions for further thought. This greatly helps my logical thinking and turning it into new videos. Now, let's get to the main topic:
Let's start with the timeline: At the end of April, I took the Shenzhen Second Mock Exam, the last city-wide mock exam before the Gaokao. It wasn't because I did poorly; on the contrary, it was the best result I'd had in the year leading up to the Gaokao (now that the Gaokao is over, I feel I did even better than this mock). I ranked in the top five of my class, which was a good result. But from the day the scores came out, it was as if I was being punished, with one unlucky thing after another.
First, some minor things: 1. I made a score chart showing my current scores and my Gaokao goals. I asked Pinduoduo to print it for me. The first one arrived within a week, but I forgot to open the package. Within a few hours, my mom threw it away as trash. Then I asked them to send a new one, but the customer service didn't check my order history and sent a blank board. It was also shipped late, and I didn't receive it until two weeks later. I had no choice but to go to a nearby print shop and print one myself, costing 15 yuan. Including the previous two, I spent about 30 yuan in total. By the time this final one came out, there were only a few weeks left until the Gaokao... By the time I realized it, it was probably already useless.
Then, during the May Day holiday, I saw an ad for a discount on Hudiyun servers. Without thinking twice, I spent about 300 yuan to buy a server. I had used their virtual hosting since middle school because their stuff was always very cheap. But it was so cheap that I couldn't really believe it was legit, so I never bought a server, only their few-yuan-a-year plans. I had spent less than 10 yuan with them before. Since they had been around for three years and never complained about costs, I decided to trust them and bought a server. Four days later, I saw a message on their website—yep, they had run off. The guy owed 1.5 million yuan and only declared bankruptcy when he couldn't hold on anymore. The Shenzhen police got involved, the court liquidated the company, and 500 people filed a joint lawsuit... A company that had been fine for three years went under right after I bought from them...
And it didn't end there. I had been enjoying the Digital Ocean GitHub Student Developer Pack discount. On Xianyu, you could buy an account with the student pack for 100 yuan, which would give you a server for a year with a $200 credit. After Hudiyun ran off, I quickly migrated my data there. I had two accounts with three machines total, thinking it would last me half a year. A few days ago, I bought another account and migrated my blog and Misskey community there. But then, the same thing happened: Digital Ocean, which I had been using with the student pack for two years, suddenly announced they were leaving the GitHub Student Developer Pack program. All servers would expire at the end of July. Three days, and another 100 yuan down the drain...
Yesterday morning, I bought an Oracle Always Free plan on Xianyu (registering yourself requires credit card verification, which I don't have). Besides that, there really aren't any cheap servers left (Azure is also easy to get banned, and opinions on Oracle are mixed. I'll try Oracle one last time to see how it goes. Since it's free forever, if it doesn't work out, I'll fall back on Azure). I didn't dare ask them to send me the username and password to log in. I just asked them to send me the connection details for the server and wrote a script to automatically upload backups to Qiniu Cloud Object Storage every three days. Hope it doesn't crash!
After all this, I didn't have much money left because I used my money to buy a new computer: an HP OMEN MAX. But I overlooked the battery life issue with gaming laptops. My previous Surface Pro 9 had a serious battery calibration problem (I also bought it brand new for over 9,000 yuan). So I plan to sell the Pro 9 and switch to a Surface Pro X (second generation) (the ARM chip is really power-efficient; it can last 8 hours). How do I know? Because I installed Windows 11 on my Xiaomi Pad 5, and it barely heats up, lasts 8 hours, and is smoother for daily use than my Pro 9. The best part is that it only costs 600 yuan on Xianyu (but unfortunately, my mom found out about it during the week of the Gaokao. Even though I basically only used it for note-taking at the library, I feel that arguing with my mom is useless, even if I show her the evidence.)
So, with only a few dozen yuan left in my wallet, I was hoping to hold out until the Gaokao scores came out or the admission letter arrived. That way, I could get a top-up after the scores were released (please, heavens above, let my scores be high! Kamisama onegai shimasu!! Let me get into a good major!). But then, hehe, I forgot to cancel my OpenCode GO subscription renewal, and Alipay deducted 68 yuan (10 USD) from me. Hehe! I'm broke! I can't make it until the scores come out!!!!
So, I asked my mom for an advance of 5000...
The above was still just about money troubles. Now comes the big stuff:
For me, returning to Qingyuan was very uncomfortable. As long as I was at home, I had a runny nose, accompanied by high eye pressure, and I couldn't see well. This meant I had to go out every morning to take a walk or visit my grandmother. Every afternoon, I would show up at the Mixue ice cream shop for a Snow Cap Coffee, using my Surface Pro 9 to write blog posts and fix my website, until I returned home at night to suffer from a runny nose in bed (tissues everywhere, a red nose from rubbing—all the best evidence of a runny nose. Applying some ointment helps for two minutes, then it's back. Sprays and medicine don't work either.) I could only turn off the air conditioner to sleep, endure it for a while, and then gradually feel better... My mom would come in at night and turn the air conditioner back on for me, which was very thoughtful. But in the morning, the mucus would be stuck in my throat, my eye pressure would be high, causing a sore throat and blurry vision, and the runny nose would continue all morning...
For him, just two days before I returned to Qingyuan, my grandmother had a stroke and was hospitalized. I can't write in detail yet. She is 91 years old and has diabetes. I don't know how she is doing now. My parents said I don't need to go to the hospital to see her today and should stay home or go out. I hope Grandma gets better soon.
I sincerely hope that from today onwards, my luck will turn around. At the very least, I need the best luck for when my Gaokao scores come out and when I receive my admission letter.
Thank you to all the readers who have made it this far. Thank you.
Best wishes.