Category: Life Tips

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advice and tips China Life Tips

China travel tips, 2026 edition

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(Working in progress as of 04-05-2026, soft launch for now as I expect summer travel to take off towards the end of May. Thought may be helpful for friends who have not visited China for a while)

I am learning from the one and only Apple in terms of their iOS new versioning convention – iOS26. Their new versioning scheme is not entirely ground breaking, btw. If you pay attention to the new cars in the USA (likely in China nowadays too), the new car model or next year model is usually available the year before. For example, right now 2026 Toyota RAV4 is already available. I was a car junkie back in the days – I could tell almost every car’s make and model on the highway when they drove by because I am a slower driver 🙂 But this is mostly useless knowledge too 🙂

Yesterday I came across 2 blog posts almost 20 years ago – More Shanghai travel tips and Travel tips for Shanghai. A lot has changed since then, this is obvious because not only because of the 20 years but also because of the smartphone revolution happened in last 15 years or so.

App, 微信支付 WeChat Pay

Let me give an example, I recall in March 2023, after a break of more than 3 years (2020, 2021 and 2022), I flew back to PVG and saw my parents again in Ningbo. At the KFC store, they already stopped taking orders from the counter, everything is done via app or via 微信小程序。I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know way before that, at a bank branch in Shanghai, I am supposed to take a number from the computer (printer), which is equivalent to the ticket dispenser here in the US. But I didn’t know and waited in line directly until I realized that I didn’t have a number. Anyway, at KFC, the cashier or 伙计 tried to teach me to download the KFC China app on my iPhone, and because my app store country is set to the USA, it could not find the app 🙁 She has to manually put in order for me, and I was able to pay via WeChat pay though.

Hotels

I wrote quite a bit of kids friendly hotels that I stayed in China: mainly Shanghai and Ningbo Beilun.

Eat

This is mostly for my own benefits 🙂

Shanghai: 台乡缘（2024）

文兴酒家久光百货店（2025）

桂满陇虹桥枢纽浙菜 (2025)

Ningbo:小鱼厂私厨 鄞州 (2025)

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advice and tips car kids Life Life Tips

Teach my older kid to drive

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I wrote this one too fast – Some kids not that interested in learning to drive nowadays 🙂 This seems to be confirmed by this Yahoo article – Gen Z is slamming the brakes on getting a driver’s license.

话音未落，I started to teach my old kid to drive. We are already on the road, btw 🙂

We practiced on the parking lot 1st, but she got a bit bored of the parking lot, so last 2 days (I started writing this post in late Dec, FYI) I have taken her to quiet neighborhood, and she was practicing on the road. Note she is new on the road. And understandably sometimes she would get nervous if another car come by both in the front (opposing traffic), or behind. Today she almost panicked at a four way stop sign 🙂 But we survived.

12-31-2025 Today we got honked by people the 1st time, at the Hilltop neighborhood.

1-1-2025 We finally hit the real road, I mean the road with traffic lights (not just Stop sign). We drove at the Lackland near Westport, also from the Walgreens St. Ann (St. Charles rock road and Ashby) to home. Many years ago (confirmed by my wife) I taught her driving, at the industrial compound at Westport.

02-07-2026 We continued practicing on the real road, mostly on weekends.

02-10-2026 S8 drove from the St. Louis Premium Outlet Mall to home, via local obviously. She was fairly proud that she made smooth left turn from Chesterfield parkway to Olive. And re: Olive Road, she said she may miss it when she goes off to college. Other interesting facts she told me is an old story between her mom and her as her mom drove the similar route quite a few years ago – they were going to the mall as well.

Amother longer road (route) we drove recently: Olive west (from Warson), Clarkson, Manchester, and West Country Mall. She got honked when near the west county mall. There were quite a few cars because it was weekend.

Side note – Road Rage

Road rage (lu nu) is prevalent in the USA. Here in STL it’s not extremely bad, but from time to time you will see those impatient drivers or impatient people in general. Recently as I started teaching my older kid to drive, and also as I reflect on my own driving and so on, I felt I have a bit burden or worry when she eventually goes out and drives on her own.

In China people honk, here in STL people may not honk as much, but the road rage is definitely there. And in extreme or rare cases, it could turn out to be deadly (because of firearms aka the guns).

Nowadays I rarely honked at people, and I rarely honked back. I did some of that when I was younger and also when I am lacking sleep.

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advice and tips Life Tips

Apple Watch Sleep tracking

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Started this a bit over a month ago. Better late than never. I had Apple Watch since Jan 2017, and Apple Watch released sleep tracker in 2020.

Some observations

If the watch was taken off during the night, say 2 to 3 hours, the sleep tracking got reset – which means you will likely get a bad sleep number (low score).

Also, I am not sure how accurate the Apple watch does in terms of sleep tracking – I assume it measures the heart beat (from the pulse in the elbow). I had similar questions re: the Apple watch swimming tracking too. It seems to me they are rounding up the number there.

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advice and tips Life Life Tips Software development

My 2025 year end review

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New habits re: health and fitness

Swim:

Run: I didn’t run a lot. I did run a few races (for run): the Ladue Dogwood run, the ‘Due Run for Education (LEF) and Frostbite Run at Forest Park organized by the St. Louis track club (short distance).

No more alcohol 🍷

I started using Apple Watch to track sleep.

Other new adventure I decided to take on

Learn music, guitar and piano

Stocks

Need some more patience there. A good example may be $MDB at 04/04/2025: it was under $155 then. Today it closed at about $399.65.

Family and China Trip

Started teaching my older kid to drive

Realized that “Good habit is important – easier to correct in the beginning than to correct later on – similar for the music learning too”. Today 01-01-2026 she even drove from the Walgreens in St. Ann (St. Charles rock road and Ashby road) to our home – via Ashby road. I was the passenger. (Update 01-02-2026) Today’s practice route here.

Btw, I paused the Uber driving for now. It was fun ride to say the least.

YouTuber or creator instead of blogger?

Thinking I may archive this blog site and focus more on the video content creation instead. Haven’t made final decision yet but leaning towards this – it was a good 20-year journey but couple things made me to re-think about my blogging journey – very few people are reading my blogs these days, that’s probably true for other newspaper, magazine website too – people are mostly switching to video or short videos over the years due to many reasons. Video is more engaging, or much easier to absorb. Also, video especially short video is quite addictive. Other reasons are the cost of hosting this website, as well as the recent AI bots scanning my website continuously (they appear are from CHN).

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advice and tips Life Tips

Protected: Insomnia

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advice and tips DIY Life Tips

When should we stop doing yard work?

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I think it should be now.

Joking 🙂 I was thinking doing it until 60. But the other day, my piano teacher, who is probably 20 years older than me, told me he is still doing yard work. I am 54 btw. My younger daughter’s violin teacher who is 13 years senior than me, does yard work too. So music makes one younger – that’s one motivation factor that I am leaning music now 🙂

This morning (Saturday 2025-11-15) I cleaned up about half of the leaves 🍁 in the backyard. My joke of the day is: 前人种树，后人捡树枝和树叶🍂。

Btw, I do mow my own lawn since August 2019. I guess I will do the yard work until I feel not physically able to do as I age, or I really hate it. Hopefully I can do it for a while, at least. Right now, it’s still not too bad.

Cost associated with trees

Btw, over the years I realized there are potentially two risks involved with trees near the house.

One is the tree could fall, and it could hit the house or people. In fact, this happened to me (my house) twice. Once, a few years ago, in a summer, neighbor’s tree fell on our fence, in the process it broke the electricity wires, and knock off the power. Another time, a branch fell on our roof – for that one, I was sort of expecting it, but I was not proactive enough, to remove the dangling tree branch on the big, sweet gum tree in the backyard. One day, my neighbor emailed me and said you have a tree branch sticking into your roof. I immediately realized what happened. Btw, it’s the same neighbor – the first and the second incidents.

I consider the safety of human beings the top priority. That brings another point or cost associated with tree maintenance – removal of the dead tree. That’s not cheap either, especially when the tree is big. I had experience on this too: a few years ago, I had to call tree company to remove a dead oak tree, that tree is probably almost 60 years old, and was infected with some sort of galls – caused by gall wasps or more specifically Andricus kollari. The bill was about $2,200 (in summer 2022, to put things in perspective).

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advice and tips Life Tips

Restart green tea and cut coffee consumption

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After quitting alcohol, I am substituting some of my daily coffee ☕️ with green tea 🍵. I tried to cut off coffee completely in the past too. But it seems coffee is a more addictive substance, at least to me, because I would get headache in the afternoon if I didn’t drink the morning coffee. So right now I am only moderating coffee consumption.

Also probably more importantly I believe longer term green tea will be better for my health.

As I read the benefits of green tea from food and wine magazine via Apple News: “

Turns Out, One Simple Drink Could Be the Key to Better Sleep, Sharper Focus, and a Happier Mind

According to new research, this centuries-old beverage supports long-term brain health by dialing down inflammation and balancing hormones, leading to better sleep, steadier moods, and sharper focus.”

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advice and tips Life Life Tips

Step out of comfort zone

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Sara Blakely intentionally embarrass self: this reminds me of I may want to do this to my kids occasionally. Both my kids are quite shy now.

an image of Sara Blakely LinkedIn Post

Public Appearance on Internet, and social media in general

Something related to this, partially due to pandemic, we are seeing the booming of live broadcasting on social media, such as TikTok, Douyin or Youtube.

Something interesting, or obervations from Jamie Zhong, she said on DY, people usually come to listen to her songs, while at WeChat, some people come to listen to her talk. I guess it goes both ways, for people who are freelancers, or no longer go to office, there are very little real human to human interactions nowadays, and broadcasting gives a meaningful way for people to interact, or talk.

Also 在M记等一个不会来的人 and I am quoting the album description below (it’s written by Ayen何璟昕, btw）。


深夜的M记霓虹灯管下，漂浮着无数个都市失踪者的剪影。我们恍然惊觉，在这个24小时营业的现代驿站里，等待早已成为一场集体无意识的自我放逐。

那些被手机蓝光反复切割的夜晚，充电线维持着岌岌可危的情感电量，续杯咖啡在玻璃窗上拓印出无数个昨日倒影。歌词中”失踪的人”是极具现代性的精神切片——当约克郡的雾气被替换成快餐店冷气，当承诺像汽水泡沫般迅速消散，在第七次擦拭手机屏幕时突然顿悟：原来被等待的幽灵正是自己出走的那部分灵魂。这份荒诞的清醒，让”辞职信在口袋里融化”的意象成为当代人精神困局的绝佳隐喻。

不断坍缩的”No one’s coming”像反复撕开的伤口。”咬住吸管练习不颤抖的呼吸”的细节，暴露出当代情感关系中荒诞的仪式感——我们甚至在练习如何得体地吞咽孤独。当晨光擦亮沾着番茄酱的餐盘，结账的不仅是某个具体的失落夜晚，更是整个速食时代的情感困境：在即时满足的消费主义幻境里，我们终究无法购买到隽永的慰藉。

这首歌以M记的塑料座椅为解剖台，剖开了现代人最隐秘的生存状态：在永远明亮的快餐店里，我们都是被自己遗弃在自动点餐机前的失踪人口，对抗着整个世界的恍惚。

Last but not least, step out my own comfort zone

I did Toast Master in 1998. I led Math Fact Scholars between 2019 and 2023 (including a break during pandemic), Spode Passport Night (twice), taught at Webster University for a year, St. Louis high schools catalyst program (once). Presented at work including when work as graduate research assistant (since 1998 ).

Fraternity (1998 to 1999): main goal was to learn English

Most recently I drove for Uber (288 trips total in about a year).

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advice and tips Life Tips

I learned to say NO to things or friends or families for that matter

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I talked about Don’t work too hard, work smart and Don’t work too hard (again) this April and May respectively.

And recently I gave more thoughts on activities that is not work related. And my conclusion is I need to take care of myself 1st. And it’s okay to have 2nd thoughts or change mind. For example, I think it was probably 9 days ago, I realized I have 3 things to do in about one hour or so. So, what did I do: I changed my mind and only did the 2nd thing, the most important thing, which is to drop off S8 our old daughter to the pep band (for the HS football game). I skipped the 10th grades (sophomores) parents’ happy hour, and the Ladue Education Foundation celebration of 20 years, both activities I signed up earlier, but I am not VIP at both activities, and I don’t need to be there. I dropped off S8, I took a peek at the LEF thing and went home. Later on, that evening, I came to school and pick up her – because the following morning she needs to go to a Cross-Country Race/Meet.

It’s okay to say NO. I used to think “saying NO” will hurt people’s feelings, but at the same time I just realized “saying too many Yeses” will hurt my feeling. I learned the lesson the hard way recently too – and after I realized it, I started saying NO to a friend who thinks I have nothing to do during the day for my WFH job.

(Update 10-26-2025) Came across this from XHS this morning, here is the YT link 當你停止對所有人隨叫隨到，你的人生將徹底改變｜卡爾·榮格的覺醒之道 #心理界線 #能量守護 #榮格哲學 #自我覺醒 #心靈成長 #沉默的力量 #心理能量 #情緒自由 as I assume they will be similar. Wish I have watched this earlier. But better late than never 🙂

(Update 01-01-2026) Yesterday evening Mr. R called and asked for a favor when I was at Pan Asia grocery store. I said I was not at home. She said she needs a ride at about 6:30 to 7 to go to the bar. I said okay. At about 6:15 pm I was home, Mr. R called again, and she said if she could drop off something before going to the bar (her daughter’s ask). The place is 13037 Old Farm Dr., I was not nervous about it as I drove for Uber this past year, and this is at a middle class neighborhood. But after dropping off the thing (she said clothes) I had some uneasiness – as I don’t know what it exactly is. Maybe her daughter was doing some delivery job? I hope it’s the case. I think from now on I really need to politely decline those kind of asks because it made me not comfortable.

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advice and tips Fun Life Life Tips

Exercises, music, work and sleep

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I talked about my recent exercise trend here. But I think I need to focus on my sleep a bit more, as in recent years, due to various reasons, I didn’t get the necessary sleep and that is taking a toll on my health.

As I reflect back, in addition to aging, work at MC is one culprit of my deteriorating sleeping quality. I talked about my on call experience of that employer (in Chinese) here.

Fortunately both my last job and my current job are less demanding, and less stressful. But I am getting older too 🙁

Recently I started to listen to music during sleep. That alone may not be the best solution for “not being able to fall into asleep”. But I am fine tune it, as well as adjusting so that I don’t listen to my iPod Nano (I talked about it here and here), or a new MP3 player I bought the whole time.

Also, back to exercise, I think in addition to swim or walking, I am going to focus a bit more on meditation, such as breath on Apple Watch or Yoga via YT (see my YT Yoga playlist).

PS:

I got to see my uncle (my mom’s little big brother, who is 89 years old) this summer. He commented on the sleep problem we have. He said, not exact words, but why we are worrying about things in the night? His point was we probably had too much stress from our day job (which is probably true). Back to the time when he was young, he probably doesn’t have the material things we have now, but he is much happier. Probably one reason he lives to 89 🙂

(Update 10-17-2025) I just came across this at FB “What is Success? Success is being able to go to bed each night with your Mind at Peace.”

PS 2:

To my fellow HS students’ parents especially parents of student athletes: now we have this AI thing – let AI do the work and let our kids and all of us have some more sleep 😴 (not my words, coach and my uncle’s words – they are wiser than me. Okay I added this AI thing for dramatic effect [捂脸]). Btw, tonight is the blue and white night at #LHWHS and if you have time (no impacting on your or your kids sleep schedule): the girls powder puff flag football game is fun to watch. #homecoming #powderPuff

PS 3:

年近退休睡觉不爽， 有招了

I did one thing similar: something I mostly figured out my own, with some inputs from friend(s). I listened to Cantonese music (slow music, more like lullabies). Do you want to guess which musicians (singers) I listened to most often? Btw, I mostly use my 13-year-old iPod Nano (as shown here). Because it doesn’t have the fancy stuff on my iPhone and won’t pull me into the blackhole of “doom scrolling”.

I think in theory at least, a podcast or a book would do the similar trick. I mostly just listened to one song non-stop (loop) – a side benefit is it saves the battery of iPod Nano.

(Update 12-9-2025) Your Body Ages Rapidly In Your 40s And 60s. Doctors Say These Habits Will Help Slow It Down (Women’s Health via Yahoo.com)