I started to learn Cantonese 粤语 recently from Duolingo. While I forgot many 宁波话Ningbo dialect since I went to college in Wuhan: I started to speak much more mandarin since then. I was wondering about the similarities between two dialects (Cantonese and Ningbo Dialect) 粤语和宁波话是否有共同之处 (google search). 我现在想到至少有两个字或词是一样的：话（讲话），中意（满意）。I think there are many more: it’s just a matter of time for me to find them.
PS: when I was in college, the Cantonese pop songs or #Cantopop were very popular in colleges and in the China. Here is a playlist on YT – 經典粵語歌曲 – 香港90年代流行經典廣東歌回顧 | 必听经典粤语歌 – Cantonese Golden Songs: 張學友，陳慧嫻，叶丽仪, 张国荣, 谭咏麟, 陈慧娴, 陈百强, 梅艳芳。In fact, one of my roommates would sing this one almost everyday – 一生何求 (the 1st song in the playlist above, here is a standalone YT video– 陳百強 Danny Chan -《一生何求》Official MV (電視劇《義不容情》主題曲). I didn’t think too much about learning Cantonese dialect then. Although in Spring 1993, a few roommates went to Guang’zhou (and Guangdong province) looking for jobs. Note at that time Guangdong province was much more economically developed than my college town Wuhan, as it was close to Hongkong, and it was the very 1st province opened to the outside world in 1980s. Quite a few of my classmates in college went there to work after graduation.
I don’t remember everything but let me try. Mainly I went to 2 places: my former workplace and my college (or more precisely an American college).
At workplace for some reasons I need to go down many ladders in a sort of water park. I wasn’t not pay attention but I realized it after the fact: our stuff (belongings) dropped first, my colleague J started walking down the ladders, and I followed. It was not overly scared. Once we got down, we picked up the stuff and took elevator to go up. I was a bit slow gathering my stuff, my colleague J was nice enough to give me the elevator badge. He went up via elevator with other people first. I used the badge and helped other people up too – I only needed the 5th floor. They went higher floors. Once I was up, I realized I didn’t have shoes. Oh well, the most important part is finding my desk. I came across colleagues and other departments on my way: including some Chinese colleagues I knew from the Shanghai office.
College: I went outside a stadium, realized I have worms in my leather shoes. I took out the worm, noticing the shoe has a hole. Suddenly I realized that I was sitting outside the football stadium and people are gathering, waiting for the game to start (yesterday was opening day for the STL cardinals). Most people are students though. And I cannot get out easily. I looked back we are at the edge of a cliff but the good thing is some nice people put up a protective ring behind us. I decided I still wanted going to my class instead of watching this game. So I went. At the stairs of the classroom building, I was thinking, if I didn’t come to the school today, I would not be able to find all my stuff (mostly apparel or clothes). It’s probably the package we dropped at the water park earlier.
It’s just a dream.
Small Moments in life
Separately my S6 woke up a bit early today and she could not one of her ok lens (Ortho-K Lens). Turns out somehow she rubbed it out or the lens came out during her sleep, and ended up on the wall next to her bed.
More about S6. So S8 is doing a sleepover for the 1st time at a friend’s house. That’s technically her 1st sleepover if we don’t count the two sleep away week-long summer camp at Rolla (Cub Creek). S6 was not very happy due to two reasons: she didn’t get to hang out with her big sis this evening; and S6 doesn’t have a sleepover with friend. But at least S6 didn’t throw a temper tantrum similar to my big brother was going to do long long time ago – different situations obviously, nonetheless I am happy. Note my big bro was going to cut my new pants because I got to participate a dinner (my parents take turns to take us to those wedding dinners, my big bro had his turn).
(Original March 18, 2025) 她的音乐是治愈的 her music is curing – Yours Truly. This is one example: her original Cantonese song Moonlight – 何璟昕 Ayen《月光 Moonlight 》官方高畫質 Official HD MV, note the link is YouTube 油管. Here is Bilibili link: standaloneor official, good sound quality; live performance video. I encourage you buy her music from either Apple Music (iTunes store) or her Taobao store. Musicians need to eat and have other daily needs: we don’t want to be free loaders. Or if I can quote one of my favorite people in the world: if you are lucky, please make sure someone else in the world is lucky too. This person is Warren Buffett. Back to topic.
Lyrics for the song Moonlight 月光 can be seen here at jspinyin.net (this one has Pin’yin annotation) or 酷歌词 kugeci.com (this one has links to a singer’s other popular songs).
Another comment on YT: “When the world is moving to fast just listen to Ayen, and everything will be alright.” –Daniel Vache (very well said – yours truly)
She actually sing in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Her Chinese name is 何璟昕 or He Jing’xin in Pin’yin. In Cantonese, 阿昕 sounds a bit like 阿音 or Ayen in English. Both her parents are teachers when she grew up. In fact I saw her mom on this YT video (lovely mom/daughter pair, to say the least).
Here is her wikipedia 何璟昕 (Chinese) Ayen Ho (English). Full Disclosure: I made some contributions to her Wiki pages recently. It’s a somewhat fun experience for someone who likes to edit, write and knows basics of html.
Some social media and music platforms for Ayen 何璟昕
This is probably one of the most popular video platforms in China. I think Douyin is similar: the main difference is Douyin only has short videos. Note you will need to log into the website in order to have full experience with website or app. She did quite a few live show in 2020 on Bilibili, here is one – Ayen何璟昕 x bilibili直播 (纯享剪辑版) [2020.04.08] You may need to register at the website in order to watch, I did, mostly via my gmail and WeChat. Their system is pretty rigorous, I would say, at this time I still cannot upload video there. I think they need to verify my ID or something.
Douyin 抖音
(Update 05-24-2025) Now I realized Douyin 抖音 is much bigger compared to Bilibli 哔哩哔哩, as I said in my other blog post. Here is her Douyin: I think ByteDance (Douyin and TikTok parent co) longer video platform inside China is 西瓜视频。
In order to have full experience with Douyin, one will need to install the mobile app. Note the app is only available inside China. So for instance, if I want the app, I need to to try a different geolocation (China instead of the USA).
One can still watch videos without creating an account. To do it, one needs to pass a captcha – basically slide a shape.
She has quite a few songs on her Weibo, but this one (not music, about how to stay away from online fraud) caught my attention today – 我这么谨慎的人，居然也差点被骗20万… (personally I felt bad for her, but it seems like just something happens quite often nowadays, and I will talk about it sometime in the near future).
She is on WeChat (Wei Xing) and Red Note (Xiao Hong Shu) too – you should be able to search her name 何璟昕 and find her there.
I noticed her subscriber steadily increased from 47.9 k (03-11-25?) to 49.5 k today 05-01-25. It appears her YT channel is gaining about 1k subscribers per month. At this rate I am fairly confident that her channel will have 50k subscribers by the end of this month (I think 50.5 k subscriber count is within reach at 05/31/25). I hope my small contributions on the Wikipedia 何璟昕 (Chinese) Ayen Ho (English) helped 🙂
Some of her original work(compose, lyrics or both)
何璟昕 Ayen【向光性 Phototropism】原創音樂 官方高畫質 Official HD MV: she actually wrote this song when she was about 17 (year 2011) – 独立音乐人何璟昕：向光飞舞的风筝. She made an album with the same tile in year 2016: the album actually has more than 3 songs as shown in this YT playlist. I will update if/when I find the complete playlist.
If you like her music, you can purchase in a few ways. Apple Music store (iTunes Store, search “Ayen何璟昕“) and Taobao 淘宝网。Below is how you would find her music on iTunes store.
Apple iTunes Store (Note: this is available on iPhone as well)
On Taobao, you would search Ayen的店：she sells both her music and her Donna brand guitar there. Last but not least, she sells 吉他谱 Guitar Music online.
Some of her recent workand other songs I like
放手以后 via YT (网易云音乐, 2024) – lyrics available at boomplay; Author/Composer: Carlos’ Instagram. Also a short chip (similar to YT Shorts) on Douyin. Note for Douyin: I don’t have account with them for now – it still allows me to watch the video, if I click “dismiss” when it prompts me to put in my mobile phone or password, and turn on the volume.
I started listened to her a lot in last week or so, partially because we had 3 days power outage, and I didn’t have much else to do. I know you can argue I can listen to someone else’s music too 🙂 If my memory is correct, this time around I came across this new song 【哪吒2】片尾曲《在故事的最終》粵語版｜港風填詞翻唱｜唱哭每個成長的孩子 Acoustic cover｜Ayen何璟昕. Since then it’s been a black hole 🙂
New song《時間不等你》Time doesn’t wait for you: I listened to her new song 时间不等你 (2024) #粤语歌 many times. I really liked the music, the lyrics and Ayen’s singing.
作詞：陳鈺海 作曲：石羽函 編曲：梁雨森 (the link goes to Douyin, note you can still visit Douyin even without an account, you just need to complete the Captcha and also dismiss the dialog about phone number). Below is quoted from his Douyin profile. 棉花佬就是梁雨森🎸在此！职业吉他手，作曲/编曲 “棉花乐队”成立二年啦～ 以棉花乐队的形式致敬BEYOND乐队～ 不教学，不卖谱～
YT: 【粵語】想見你想見你想見你｜火土填詞 x AYAN何璟昕｜想見你劇集主題曲 (Update 04-02-2025) I liked this song very much. There are a few variations (Mandarin, Cantonese as well as different lyrics). I came across it at QQ Music first and noticed Ayen sang a few variations there. Then I did search on google and WeChat and noticed other versions, as well as the TV series that featured this song.
I don’t know about you, but to me this song reminds me 粤语更接近文言文.
Live Performance
何璟昕碩士作曲專場音樂會 (2021). Note she created all the below songs (compose and lyrics) over the years. She graduated in Dec 2021.
Also note, she pretty much managed all her creative activities by herself, this is from composing, lyrics, graphic design, photography, videography, editing, sound, and managing her social media and music platforms. She explained it here – 一個人就是一個團隊？/揭秘：我平時是如何一個人製作視頻的！
Slightly older videos (I believe that’s when Ayen created and uploaded videos to the Internet). Between 2014 and 2017, she debuted or sang quite a few Cantonese, Mandarin and English songs, mainly using her own acoustic guitar or ukulele as accompanying instruments and posted some of the videos on Sohu.com, and more specialized website such as yueqixuexi.com too. Some of the songs are also available on QQ Music (QQ 音乐）too.
(She took the video in Summer 2014, uploaded it to YT on Jan 30, 2020) 梁靜茹 – 暖暖 cover（吉他 + ukulele ）| Ayen 何璟昕 || On YT, if you want to look at her old videos, you can go to her channel, click on videos, and then click “Oldest”. This approach works across the YT too.
(Update 04-3-2025) I just created a YT playlist Ayen何璟昕-early: I believe those are songs/MVs she made between 2014 and 2019.
From the Sohu.com videos, the playlist above, to her more recent videos/songs such as 时间不等你, we can see her growth in many aspects. But I think she kept her 温柔女生 style, for the most part, through the years. That’s probably one reason I liked her singing.
She talked about her video creation and how she pursued her music career from a hobby in middle school. She actually made two videos because she wanted to keep her video under certain length. Below are two videos.
Some fun videos: having a sense of humor (despite all kinds of obstacles in life) is important. I created a playlist in which she has some fun elements in the music videos.
翻唱 (cover, or acoustic cover) and Playlists
Since this is getting a bit long, I moved the content here to another post here – Playlist.
One thing I may add is: in many ways 翻唱, or cover, or acoustic cover, is creative and sometimes hard work. For example, in this video, 謝安琪【喜帖街】Kay Tse 鋼琴+吉他彈唱 這是一首關於懷舊的粵語歌 | cover by Ayen 何璟昕, she rented the 1980s style house (惠州棠梨和光民宿), as well as some other interesting and fun settings. Here is another one 【Mr. 森林】Acoustic guitar cover | Ayen 何璟昕: if you watch towards the end, you will notice the work put behind it.
Last but not least, music industry is intensely competitive (I talked a bit here). I didn’t expand or elaborate, but in short, the top dogs such as Taylor Swift of the USA and the G.E.M Gloria Deng Zhiqi of HK/China makes most of the dough in the industry, via steaming, live performance, merchandise and products endorsement (ads). That’s all good, but we should not forget about musicians who are less famous. That’s why personally I support all my kids music teachers (as much as practical) and in this case, we should support Ayen 何璟昕 too.
If you are interested learning guitar (take guitar lesson from her), or collaborate on music creation (music composition, lyrics etc.), you may reach out to her “如果你想讓我為你製作音樂（編曲/作詞/作曲都可以），或者想找我學習吉他音樂課程”
Or it was always that way? It’s just I (dumb me) vastly underestimated some people’s stupidity. Or let’s blame the smartphones and the tech bros who helped this journey of “making us dumber” 🙂
Smartphone and Social Media
This is not a joke actually, because sometimes I joked too much and my kids usually think my “dad jokes” are not funny. Probably my wife doesn’t think highly some of my jokes either. There are research (google search) that says “social media” make people think less critically – if they were thinking critically before social media, I guess. Let me quite some results from Google search below.
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Search Labs | AI Overview Is social media making us stupid and less empathetic? – Peerbagh Yes, social media can make people less able to think critically and analytically, and it can also contribute to mental health issues.
Note with all the American exceptionalism (which in my mind, it’s a myth or overrated to say the least). I don’t think America is exceptional in terms of social media usage though – at the same time, the tech bros are raking in money from social media and overuse of big tech left and right:
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Zuckerberg’s FB/Instagram/Whatsapp;
Elon Musk’s X/Twitter (at least he hoped he could make more money from X, he did make tons of money from Tesla, with quite a bit government subsidies);
Jeff Bezos’ Amazon – earth’s biggest store, shop until you drop;
tech bros’ Google;
tech bros’ Apple;
and so on
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I do similar things on the Chinese social media platform WeChat and Red Note too 🙁 In other words, I believe overall we are all dumber because our eyes are glued to the phone or screen all the time (again if applicable, nothing personal).
Missouri aka the show money state
The outcome of recent lawsuit that awards Missouri $24 billion seems confirmed my worry. I was too simple, too naive. MO AG Andrew Bailey doesn’t seem to be a nice person, btw. As practical matters, this will just make the lives of Chinese people in Missouri a little bit harder. Because as a Chinese person who lived in the show money state since 1997, I know most people here cannot even tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese people and so on. I can’t either: when I met a Chinese couple back in January 2015 for my old daughter kindergarten registration, at first I thought they are Korean 🙂
I am expecting more “go back to your country” shenanigans 🙁
Tariff is another good example. It’s 100% shoot yourself on the foot – those who start the trade war. Here is a good example.
If a country wants to reduce trade deficit: the rational way is to reduce imports, or reduce consumption. Right: don’t buy the junks from Shein and Temu.
If a country wants to boost manufacturing sector, the country can do things such as educate young people on engineering and manufacturing, advocate and support manufacturing business (instead of doing the bitcoin and cryptos shit; or put 100% tariff on EVs from the country you don’t like), and soon. In either case though, tariffs for imports or subsidies for domestic manufacturing are interventions, in other words the Government is meddling in the market. What happens to the republicans free market narrative?
Because I have two new years. I can make another new year resolution 🙂
I was thinking about what part time gig I wanted to do, as I am thinking about stopping Uber Driving. I felt the pay is too low, and there may be some unknown risk, and definitely some extra work say if I drive for Uber Health or Uber Care. While I do charity work or give money to charity org sometimes, I don’t want to mix it with my Uber driving. My own happiness and wellbeing are still top priority in all cases.
One of the most memorable moments in 2024, for me at least, we already checked out the hotel in HK and got on the taxi to the airport, then our 14-year-old said, “I left my hoodie in the closet”. We already checked out thus cannot go back to the room directly. Had to use a concierge service. It seems took forever when we waited there. The real time is probably 20 to 30 minutes. We tipped the house clean staff who retrieve the hoodie 100 HKD. Same for the taxi driver. Adding them up it’s probably $20: I think we paid that hoodie a bit over $20 at the Plato’s Closet. But it’s not about money. I remember this because my wife was furious (more than anxious) when she and our 10-year-old waited in the taxi. The younger taxi driver drove fast to the airport (we did make sure we have enough time even with this mishap).
Presidential Volunteer Service Award(PVSA)
One of the proud moments as a dad: our 14 year old Serenity received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award on December 31, 2024. Pictured below: she is receiving the certificate, the congrats letter from President Biden, and the Gold award pin from Rick Skinner, who represents the United Way of Greater St. Louis, the verifying org for this award. We (my wife and I) are thankful for all her teachers, from toddler program and pre-schools (pre-K), from Kindergarten to high school at the Ladue School District, her coaches and teachers who helped her in her extra curriculum activities: for teaching her the right things. I know sometimes I didn’t teach her or show her the right thing . Her friends over the years too. Thank you all! And we hope she keeps up the attitude and efforts
My Panic Moment
I had my share of moment at work. One evening, I was acting as the technical lead representing the development team during our production deployment (rollout). I noticed an issue after the system engineer made the server configuration changes and restart. I quickly realized why: instead of adding a few parameters in the middle of the server start configuration, the system engineer did a replacement – in other words, he removed all the parameters from the location where we intend to replace until the end. And he repeated for multiple nodes/servers without confirming any node/server change with me 🙁
This could potentially cause longer outage as we planned, and could drag out our change windows from 2 hours to 4 hours or more. Luckily, the junior system engineer called his colleague who is much more experienced, and he came out and fixed the issue in under 20 to 30 minutes and saved the evening 🙂
The lesson for me here is making sure always backup the server configurations – earlier I did make some backups (not all) after my project manager suggested. Always be open minded and listen to colleagues even when I think it’s probably not necessary at the time – because we never know it could be handy down the road!
And my goal is to have 40,000 shares eventually (before I fully retire).
I realized I have 400 shares recently as I noticed my IRA account recently received $194 quarterly dividend （48.5 cents per share). 我有四百股 $KO: 因为我注意到前两天发了$194 的红利. 伯克希尔有四亿股：巴菲特代表股东拿了$194 m 的红利。
So, if I need to retire on the dividends from Coca-Cola stocks. I need to have more shares: ideally 40,000 shares. That way, I would have $19,400 in dividends each quarter: or about $6,467 a month
(Update 12-21-2024) Added 20 more shares yesterday 12-20-2024
(Update 01-06-2025) I have 630 shares of $KO now.
(Update 01-16-2025) 660 shares as of today.
(Update 02-10-2025) 680 shares as of today. Separately today I just learned Coca Cola owns Fair life milk: and my kids only drink this milk. I believe $KO will announce earning tomorrow morning.
I watched a bit of “Growing Pains” on Apple TV last night: the 2nd show that has the Bruce Springsteen show tickets. I purchase the series from Apple, probably in year 2016, when Alan Thicke, who acted as the dad in the screen, Dr. Jason Seave, died.
I recall I watched most of the series in early 1990s at my childhood home, mostly during my summer and winter breaks in college years, which seems match the timing 成长的烦恼 showing time in China – “曾在台湾中华电视公司及中国大陆的上海教育电视台从1990年一直播到1994年中播出。”
I recall I didn’t go back much to my childhood home since summer 1993, the year I graduated from college. My parents also moved away a bit from our childhood home.
I have a few thoughts:
in late 1980s and early 1990s, my adolescent and college years, I recall we were very curious about the outside world. I recall seeing movies such as True Lies, Twister (1996 film), Schindler’s List, and many westerns on Shanghai TV channel 2 (the international channel). The society and the country in general were much more open then too, here is some background (in Chinese) how they started to import those TV series – 文汇世纪 | 《成长的烦恼》《神探亨特》…当年上海电视台如何引进第一批美剧？||【话说上海】那些年我们一起追过的剧集 | 海外影视 This is probably my 1st exposure to the American high school (Michael and Carrol). More recently I learned a bit more about American high schools via Gilmore Girls (Netflix).
Below moment is likely not isolated to summer. Sometime between March and July this year (year 2024). One day I took MacBook on sofa, and sit about 6 ft from my 14 year old. We were at the two ends of the sofa (couch). Her response: dad, you are not going to sitting here for good, right? She was on her computer and wanted privacy. My sweet 9 year old said: dad, I want to sit with you 🙂
This morning (early June): while I was driving to my 14 year old to Clayton HS, and I got distracted, passed Ladue road while driving on Warson south bound. Basically I went to the Ladue Middle School – made turn at Price & past JBS, and my 14 year old said: it’s 1st time I saw JBS 🙂
Since this summer, I started to play some board game with my 10 year old (was 9 year old before this past July), almost everyday. This continued even when she was in the Children’s Hospital for a few days in September. We played “spot it” during those days. Our most recent favorite game is Montessori Trinomial Cube (we played a ton lately, I am pretty sure she outgrew it. There goes my original plan to sell it on eBay 🙂 “Trash Panda” is probably the most complicated game for me. And I am glad some days we got to play table tennis in the basement.
PS: for anyone reading, please don’t share this with your teen kids – I am worry about the I may have the Bruce Springsteen show/tickets moments as shown in one of the Growing Pains series 🙂
Btw, I signed up this year’s Olivette Turkey Trot. I probably ran my 1st Olivette Turkey Trot 5K in year 2018. I signed up in year 2017 but I chickened out at the last minute. I was on and off for a few years, I recall one year, probably year 2021, I signed up but we decided to go to Kansas City for a quick trip/family vacation at the last minute. This year I hope to make it and complete the race.
Last but not least, refer to Running, jogging and walking my blog post in which I talked all my running races so far.
on December 31, 2024. Pictured below: she is receiving the certificate, the congrats letter from President Biden, and the Gold award pin from Rick Skinner, who represents the 
. Her friends over the years too. Thank you all! And we hope she keeps up the attitude and efforts 