Last updated October 10, 2026
We have been to Guilin and Yangshuo many times over the years, so for the October holiday, my wife and I decided on a different road trip route across Guangxi: Wuzhou, Liuzhou, Hechi, Nanning, Chongzuo, and a quiet overnight stop in Yulin on the way back.
Wuzhou, Liuzhou, and Nanning were mostly an unhurried crawl of eating and drinking—which in practice meant an endless succession of rice noodles and cups of milk tea. In Hechi and Chongzuo, the trip shifted outward to the landscape: winding through massive karst caves and watching the rush of the Detian Waterfall along the border.
After the intense pace of September, spending a week on open highways and mountain roads was genuinely fun, and a welcome pause from routine.
Work started easing up during the final week of September. The midnight hours at my desk did not turn into the permanent shape of things, which came as a relief.
On the side, the Jimmy app has been quiet lately without much new progress. Alan, on the other hand, is shifting gears: rather than just cleaning up runtime internals and refactoring state in the background, I have started pushing it toward being genuinely usable in everyday work.
The music corner on the Pierre Jeanneret-style cabinet is largely settled now, housing the Audio-Technica AT-LP70X turntable and the Marshall Woburn III. I also added a standalone CD player to the setup.
What started in September as an empty shelf is now 11 vinyl records and 7 CDs.
On vinyl:
On CD:
Dropping a needle or sliding a disc into the tray has made listening to music feel tactile and deliberate again.
The corkscrew willow branches I kept in water last month ended up getting moldy, so I threw them out.
Instead of water cuttings, I bought proper potted plants, and they have been growing noticeably well: a Philodendron selloum (春雨) from Walmart, a flowering begonia (海棠), and an Abarema clypearia (密叶猴耳环) with its fine, feathery leaves. A few days ago, I also picked up a sweet osmanthus (Osmanthus fragrans / 四季桂) from Sam’s Club.
All of them are thriving, and the living room finally has something green that actually feels alive.
The Aceoffix D10 commute has been on pause for a stretch because of the weather. I am planning to get back on the bike and resume daily rides to work later in October once the weather settles.
I still have not figured out what I want this autumn to look like. Trying to direct and sustain my attention has felt harder than usual lately, almost resistant to planning.
Maybe that is just what happens after an intense sprint. For now, I will take it one step at a time: nudging Alan into something I can actually rely on, watering the plants, and working through the stack of records.