I've found some benefits to writing blog posts on my own site. It helps me focus and organize the logic behind events more clearly. The 'Yohaku' feature of the theme developed by Innei, Yohaku, helps me summarize each article or add more dialectical elements and directions for further thought. This is a great help for my logic and for turning these thoughts into new videos. Let's get down to business:

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 college entrance exam. 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 exam (now that the exam is over, I feel I did even better than this mock). I made it into the top five of my class, which is a good result. But from the day the results came out, it was as if I was cursed; bad things happened one after another.

First, some minor incidents: 1. I made a chart of my grades, including my current scores and my goals for the college entrance exam. I asked a seller on 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 thinking it was trash. I asked the seller to send another one, but the customer service didn't check my order history and sent a blank board. They also shipped it late, so 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. Adding 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 exam... By the time I realized it, it was probably useless.

Then, during the May Day holiday, I saw an ad for a discount from Hudicloud. Without thinking twice, I spent about 300 yuan on a server. I had used their virtual hosting back in middle school because their stuff was always very cheap. But it was almost too cheap, and I didn't quite trust its reliability, so I never bought a server, only their few-yuan-a-year services. I had spent less than 10 yuan there 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 notice on their website – yep, they had run off. The owner owed 1.5 million yuan and only declared bankruptcy when he couldn't hold on any longer. The Shenzhen police got involved, the court started liquidation, 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 stop there. I had been enjoying the Digital Ocean GitHub Student Developer Pack discount. On Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace), you could buy an account with the student pack for 100 yuan, which gave you a year of server credit worth 200 USD. After Hudicloud ran off, I quickly migrated my data there. I had two accounts with three machines, 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 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 (you need a credit card to register yourself, which I don't have). Honestly, there are no cheap servers left (Azure is easy to get banned, and opinions on Oracle are mixed. I'm trying Oracle as a last resort to see how it goes. It's free forever anyway. If it doesn't work, Azure will be my fallback). 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. I hope it doesn't die!

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 old Surface Pro 9 had a serious battery calibration problem (I also bought that brand new for over 9,000 yuan). So I plan to sell the Pro 9 and switch to a Pro X 2nd Gen (the ARM chip is really power-efficient, lasting 8 hours). How do I know? Because I installed Windows 11 on my Xiaomi Pad 5. It barely gets warm, lasts 8 hours, and is smoother for daily use than my Pro 9. The best part? It only costs about 600 yuan on Xianyu (but unfortunately, my mom found out about it during the college entrance exam week. Even though I mostly used it for note-taking at the library, I knew arguing with my mom was useless, even if I showed her evidence.)

So, I was left with just a few dozen yuan in my wallet. I was hoping to stretch it until the exam results or the admission letter came out, so I could get a top-up after that (please, oh please, gods of luck, let my score be high! Kamisama onegai shimasu!! Let me get into a good major!). But then, hehe, I forgot to turn off the auto-renewal for my OpenCode GO subscription, and Alipay deducted 68 yuan (10 USD). Hehe! No money left! Can't make it to the results!

So, I asked my mom for an advance of 5000 yuan...

The above was just about money troubles. Now for the big stuff:

For me, I really struggled to adjust when I went back to Qingyuan. As soon as I was home, I'd get a runny nose, accompanied by high eye pressure, making it hard to see. I had to go out for a walk or visit my grandma every morning. Every afternoon, I'd be at Mixue Ice Cream & Tea at the same time for a Snow Cap Coffee, using my Surface Pro 9 to write blog posts and fix my website. Then, at night, I'd be in bed suffering from the runny nose (tissues everywhere, a red, rubbed nose – all proof of the rhinitis. A bit of Frosty Breeze would help for two minutes, then it'd start again. Sprays and medicine didn't work either). I could only turn off the air conditioner, endure it for a while, and slowly feel better... My mom would come in at night and turn the air conditioner back on for me. Very thoughtful. But when I woke up, there'd be mucus in my throat, high eye pressure, giving me a sore throat and blurry vision, and the rhinitis would continue all morning...

For him, just two days before I returned to Qingyuan, my grandma had a stroke and was hospitalized. I can't write about it in detail yet. She's 91 years old and has diabetes. I don't know how she's 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 my luck turns around from today. At the very least, I need the best luck for the college entrance exam results and the admission letter.

Thank you to all the readers who made it this far. I appreciate it.

Best wishes.