2023 Recap

I’ve honed my car-washing skills and experienced the hardships of physical labor. At that time, I wanted to explore various job types because I was tired of office work. I worked at a Honda dealership for 2 months, washing cars from 9 am to 6 pm every Friday and Saturday. The job involved using a high-pressure water gun, scrubbing the car with a large brush and cleaning agent, wiping the body with a rubber squeegee, drying the car with a cloth, spraying glass cleaner on all windows including the roof, wiping the glass until there was no fingerprint, vacuuming the interior, and wiping the dashboard. There was also a job to move tires after work, but I handed it over to someone else because I didn’t have enough strength. The exhausting work made me eat six slices of Papa John’s pizza in one go. I thought such intensity would make me stronger, but it ended up depleting my body, and it took several months to recover. The most painful and rarely understood memory made the evening I went back to school, looked up at the stars, wrote in the pavilion: “In all the feels, it’s hitting my softest gut/I sit there and thought life is an agony/when I heard the far cry from the great stones/I keep the past sensations reflected. The past solitude cannot keep me chill but nourished/Standing in the chaos that your statue faded in/Suspecting the truth is telling the lie to me.”

I also have been working in the service industry making bubble tea in a flexible part-time manner. The bubble tea shop opened in May 2023, and the staff were mostly my classmates, so you can see how popular the bubble tea is among Asian international students. At first, it was busy, but later it slowed down, and by December, we only had around 10 orders per day. It wasn’t very tiring physically, but it took a toll mentally. You had to keep smiling at customers and be patient when they were indecisive, even not being upset if they ordered the other drink excluded from tens of drinks you had recommended the through whole menu. I learned about the business model in small Canadian shops, and it was not as clean as I expected, especially after reading online about people working in beverage shops like Luckin Coffee and Starbucks in China, where they constantly demanded handwashing, and many things were disposable. I realized this bubble tea shop was far from that level of cleanliness. I also witnessed continuous struggles among the four bosses in two battle teams over management rights, but I didn’t pay much attention, considering it as a minor dispute. I planned to continue working there until I found a job.

I discovered the deliciousness of Western cuisine. Although in Canada, the Margherita pizza at an Italian restaurant left a lasting impression. I thought I couldn’t finish it, but it ended up with I understanding how Italians can enjoy a whole pizza on their own. In December, I ate at the school cafeteria for a few days and fell in love with salads, experiencing the taste layers like perfume in salads’ top, middle, and base. After leaving school, I replicated salads at home every day.

I started seriously practicing boxing and aimed to fight someday. I had learned some basic skills in Sanda before, and I practiced at the fighting gym during lunch every day before going abroad. After joining this boxing club, I realized my previous training was just child’s play. Through real combat with boxers in this club, I found my reaction was insufficient, my previously confident posture was lacking, not to mention my known weaknesses in physical fitness. When I first joined, it was shortly after quitting the car wash job, and my body was in bad shape. Going for one session felt like falling to hell, and I needed to mentally prepare myself a lot every time before I went to train. After slowly adjusting and restoring my body, I started seriously practicing various movements, both mentally and physically intensifying the training. My current stats are around 30kg for bench press, 40kg for squats, and I can do an assisted pull-up, although I don’t know the weight of the assist band. Previously, even with assisted pull-ups, I felt an impenetrable weakness. This boxing club was established 7 years ago, initially by boxing enthusiasts training spontaneously underground. Later, they thought thwy could form a club, and that’s how it happened. The atmosphere in the club is excellent, everyone is very accommodating to me. Because I was in poor condition at the beginning, my English was not good, and I was not willing to talk due to the bad condition, but no one looked at me differently. They kindly helped me, something I am grateful for. There’s a boxing fight for newers in April 2024, and I plan to participate.

In the process of learning English, I found that I used to think I didn’t want to spend time specifically learning it, hoping to improve it “incidentally” through socializing or working. It was simply a typical mindset of wanting something for nothing. Once I wanted to achieve something, I realized that putting in effort was the most practical way.

I started listening to Hip Hop recently, around December. I used to scoff at elements like misogyny, drugs, and money worship in it, but I suddenly felt its charm, that uncontrollable, rebellious underground feeling. Plus, almost every song has an interesting rhythm. I like beats with multiple layers and not so much those with catchy flows. In terms of lyrics, I’m more attracted to songs that author’s having a big ego and are troubled by it, maybe resonating with me a bit. I was listening to Dave’s songs a few days ago, and I really liked it. In fact, I was attracted by the song “Sprinter” and then listened to his earlier albums. When I thought about it, I found I also like the violent elements in Hip Hop, just like my interest in boxing/fighting and movies with flying tomato sauce.

This year, I did watch some good films and TV shows. “ Harley Quinn”, “ Brush Up Life (ブラッシュアップライフ)” “ Deadloch,” “ Persian Lessons (Persischstunden)” (didn’t watch in 2023, but I kept recalling some scenes throughout 2023, perhaps because of the excellent photography and the acting skills of the two male leads), “ The Last of Us”.

I read less because I was influenced by fragmentary things and the fast-paced feeds. Although I read less, there were still some impressive authors. I read “ Letters Between Chizuko Ueno and Ryomi Suzuki” and “ Patriarchy and Capitalism” by Chizuko Ueno, which solved some of my confusion. The widely acclaimed “Successes and Failures of Politics in Chinese History” felt average to me.

I haven’t been playing the guitar for a while because I don’t have that feeling.

I’ve gone through a lot of emotional flows, some of which are documented, and some are not. I discovered that emotions do flow; retrospectively looking at them with reason, the reality often differs significantly from what was experienced at that moment.