It seems like it, as I noticed it started to drop connections a few times last few days (need to observe more to make sure). I recall my old 1st Gen AirPods does this a lot when it was near the end of its life. AirPods usually has 2 to 3 years of useful life, per refurb.me
I ordered it via Chase Ultimate Rewards on Nov 12, 2022. I spent15,643 Points (that’s $156.43 if we assume 100 points for 1 dollar, and this is after tax).
Assume I started using it right away, which was very likely, as I recall I got a bit tired of my then AirPods Pro gen 1. So basically, I already got 2.5 years of usage out of it.
AirPods I have owned personally
1st Generation AirPods (died and recycled at Apple store West County) – I probably bought it in year 2018. I was stunned by its seamless switching between iPhone and MacBook. I bought it after seeing a friend wearing it and he said it’s good. He didn’t lie 🙂 || I bought a similar one for my wife on Feb 16, 2020, at Amazon. Why are hers still working? Note I worn this thing quite a bit when I was working for the Mastercard, because a lot of times I don’t want to be disturbed (I sit at a corner cubicle), both for legit disturbance (people walking by or talking), or I just want peace. Later on I realized this is a hack I can deploy more because if I put on AirPods (even without listening to anything), sometimes people will assume I was on a call or listening to something, so that they won’t bother me.
1st Generation AirPods Pro: purchased Nov 25, 2020, on Amazon. Died and trying to sell the case on eBay now). Update 04-13-2025: sold the case on eBay.
2nd Generation AirPods Pro (current in use): bought at Costco U City store in year 2024.
AirPods 3 (seems about to die): as I said above, I bought it from the Chase Ultimate Rewards Apple store. || Update 04-10-2025: not sure about the “about to die” part, but it sometimes would act weird, basically the sound would be like the cassette player ran out of battery when I listened to a song on iPhone (YT Music). I used AirPods 3 for pairing with Windows Laptop too – while the integration between AirPods and Windows is not as smooth as the Mac, now I realized it has one advantage too. Let me explain, AirPods will switch between Mac and iPhone automatically, so for example, I was listening to music on iPhone, and I sit before the Mac Mini (my desktop), and open a browser and it has some video or audio playing, the AirPods would automatically switch – which was not my intension. This won’t happen (the automatic switching) between iPhone and Windows.
AirPods 4 (my 15-year-old has it): bought from Amazon on Dec 5, 2024.
Last but not least: please make sure turn on “Find My” for your AirPods: if you haven’t done so yet.
PS:
The AirPods are mostly made in Vietnam now. Apple may or may not raise the price of AirPods due to the new tariff (46%).
My generation (so called Gen X in the USA, people born between from 1965 to 1980) was usually told to “work hard” when we grew up – I found this is true both in the China and in the USA. I think in addition to parents, quite a few teachers emphasized this too – for me personally my middle school teacher 周国夫老师 emphasized it quite a bit.
But over the years I realized this is not necessarily true or the best way to handle work. I recall my project lead at Unigraphics Solutions (UGS Corp.) said once on this topic:
Don’t just work hard, work smarter too. The latter is probably more important.
By that time, I was already over 30 years old.
About 20 years ago I recall my golf instructor (or should I call him coach? He is a pro btw) said: hold the club about 70% tight, don’t hold it 100% tight.
Maybe we should apply the same logic to school, study and work too? And investing in equities (stocks) and bonds as well?
My Zhenhai middle school exp: with all the craziness going on, we had some fun time such as the ad-hoc co-ed basketball – I remember it was during my math teacher and counselor Zhou Guofu 周国夫 老师 🙂
Btw, I recall my best teacher – Chen Bing (高一数学老师). I think he made me to appreciate the beauty of math 数学之美，and encouraged me to learn as much as practical, and participate the math competition. Again we don’t just work hard on it – because math competitions have problems outside of the normal textbooks. The most important here is be passionate about harder math problems – “working harder” won’t do much about it, btw.
“We don’t know if we will die from overworking but why take chance” – probably said by Ronald Reagan (per Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett). Update: it seems Edgar Bergen talked about this first – “Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?” — Edgar Bergen (source: reddit).
Last but not least, probably one of the hardest working place I worked
It seems that place is quite transactional(people mostly work for money). But I did gain some experience on production support and operation. Also communicate as precisely as possible. Once again: work smarter is more relevant there. In fact I worked pretty hard, and I was still laid off in early 2019 – and I knew the main reason of layoff – the managers didn’t like me 🙁
Btw, I don’t believe in pleasing everyone helps one’s job security, or pleasing every manager one has. At the same time, that place has a tradition of laying off about 5 to 10% people every year (usually at the beginning of a calendar year). And in early 2019 I was somewhat caught off guard, probably because I was getting somewhat complacent. But that’s okay, as I explained in the “layoffs” blog post: one door closes and another door will open. Also it gives me a new opportunity at a new place. So there is that.
When I was in college in Wuhan (1989 to 1993), some of the most popular songs were in Cantonese, and were sung by Hong Kong based singers. This was because at the time, the mainland just opened up, and culture wise it was way behind both Hong Kong and Taiwan, thus the Mandarin pop were mostly from Taiwan, and the Cantonese pop were mostly from Hong Kong. They in turn “borrowed” some popular song or music from Japan, which is even more advanced.
Fast forward 30 years, it seems to me the Cantonese pop declined a bit because the old generation singers in HK, who are mostly in their 60s, have mostly retired. One thing I noticed recently, there are some new singers and song writers that are based both in mainland or in HK, and they are continuing this important tradition of writing Cantonese songs.
I listed some of them below. Will update as I came across them more. Note the link in Douyin.com is not easily accessible outside of China. I will try to find some other sources in that case.
*Mr. Chen doesn’t have a social media account or something like that, at least I found it yet. He maybe the most prolific 粤语填词人。I consider him to be the best among the young folks too.
He is the author of 《時間不等你》. This seems to be one of Ayen Ho a.k.a. 何璟昕‘s grownup song, if I may.
I also think 放手以后 Letting Go is a bit similar. I talked about 放手以后 right below this. More on Mr Chen: quote Carlos (who is 陈钰海’s teacher) ‘s instagram
…… 第二站到了荔枝乡茂名，数年前在网上开始教学生填词，三年间陈钰海名字已经在国内填词界名无人不识，有80多首原创作品上市(果然青出于蓝)，…… (roughly translated into English: my student Chen Yu hai has made tremendous progress being a Cantonese lyrics writer in last 3 years)
One thing a bit unfortunate is Mr. Chen doesn’t have a YT Channel. Note for me personally it’s much easier to get to YT as I am in the USA, and it’s harder to get to Douyin etc. Also, I noticed quite a few people mostly posted on Douyin. I can understand to some extent, thinking it’s likely their main audience is based in mainland China.
Also noticed the composer for the song 時間不等你》is 石羽函 (baidu; apple music), and Mr. Shi is quite talented musician, singer and song writer.
@lokslyricson YouTube and Bilibili (note he has much more stuff on Bilibili)
He (or she) wrote the 【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 || Noticed the word “故鄉阡陌” and it reminds me of my childhood hometown and the village, the village school, and the 阡陌 I walked from my home to the village school, and so on. The word 阡陌 /qiānmò/ is no longer commonly used in modern Chinese (mandarin) anymore.
You may notice that I already wrote a blog post about her. One thing keep in mind is she is multi-talented, and she can do song writing (both compose and lyrics), as well as sing and producing videos. She manages all her social media and music platform on her own: as explained 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！
Last but not least, I noticed she does write for intro of a song on YT (e.g., again using 時間不等你【粵語新歌】as an example and graphic design too. Here is what (I assume) 陳鈺海 and Ayen 何璟昕 wrote (YT video here). Beautiful, isn’t it? I googled “芻狗” because I don’t know the word 🙂
She wrote quite a few songs, most of them are from young girls’ perspective: I would say girls between 16 and middle 20s of age. Her song is uplifting for the most part, but added a bit sad elements (looking back), and sometimes I felt they are curing, probably both due to her folksy music 民谣 and her unique voice, as well as Cantonese dialect. I am going to give some examples below:
As explained in the video above, this has a lot of culture stuff behind it. Keep in mind the lyricist: 林夕 is one of the best Cantonese lyricists in HK and in the world. Also Eason 陳奕迅 – Shall we talk 女生版 Acoustic cover (YT video).
And 最後的茱麗葉-容祖兒 愛後餘生-謝霆鋒 小日子-容祖兒 ShallWeTalk-陳奕迅 英皇金曲 medley cover by 許靖韻 Angela Hui feat 洪卓立 Ken Hung (about 10 mins mark): I personally like this video quite a bit as the lady (girl) next to許靖韻 Angela Hui tried to comfort her when Angela was getting emotional towards the end of this song. And the gentleman next to Angela 洪卓立 Ken Hung finished the song for Angela too. Such a caring and sweet team.
Another example: 遙遠的她. And just quote one sentence below:
I don’t see an “粤语填词” in Wikipedia. In fact I don’t know how to translate it into English either. Thinking about how I do that, as well as potentially creating such as an entry on Wikipedia. (Update) I saw 歌迷问：为什么说用粤语填词，比普通话填词难太多? at Zhihu.com. Also I did see 填词 at Wikipedia.
PS:
Not directly related to this, the other day I talked to my 15-year-old about the English song I listened when I was in college in Wuhan, and how much I paid for Whitney Houston tape then about CNY 15 Yuan. And I told her it’s similar to the cost of nice meal nowadays. Then I was a jobless college kid, 15 Yuan was something. I recall my dad used to give me about 100 Yuan a month in the school year 1992 to 1993, for a month worth of food etc.
I also recall, when I was listening to all those beautiful Cantonese songs, for that matter the mandarin pop songs written by Jonathan Lee (李钟盛), suddenly I realized that in a way, if we use the software engineers as analogy, the singer is a front end engineer, and the composer, lyrics writer and so on are back end engineer. We know in software world it’s hard to find true full stack engineers, but in the music world, Ayen is one because she pretty much does everything herself.
PS 2 (05-24-2025) I came across this wikipedia page on Cantopop, and I contributed a little as I saw fit. I am not fully convinced that “进入21世纪，粤语歌曲影响力渐减…” though.
Reading Time: < 1minuteBelow was written in 2008: in the middle of the financial crisis.
Making mistakes in life is innevitable, but to give up is un-forgivable.
Why I am still hopeful?
1) I learned a great deal (risk, value, good business vs. bad business) in past few months: from the market unravelling, to CFA books, to words of wisdom from the great investors (Buffett, Lynch etc.)
2) Knowledge alone can not make money. Discipline is more important, because we as human being have emotions (fear and greed) which can hurt our investing if we don’t know how to control those.
Fallback scenario
I will continue to program for food, gas, my family needs…as long as I am healthy. This is not too bad actually consider I am paid better than many programmers in China (at current time, may change in future if dollar worth less in the future).
This is the 5th year since I invested in the US stock market (started Fall 2003).
Of course, I can buy the index fund. Or better yet, I will buy Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), and leave the investing job to the Mr. Buffett.
(Update 04-03-2025) Note today is the 1st trading day since the current US administration announced the big tariffs across the board. Expect a volatile trading day and a lot of paper loss across the board (for me and for many others). But if we control our risk, we should still come out okay.
We can use both apps and websites for below. For QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, we can also use WeChat Mini-program (less functionality, but smaller footprint and works).
Also: 我在国外这样使用网易云音乐 | Using Neteast Cloud Music Abroad | HONGFEI Z. Btw, using this new Chrome Extension NetEaseMusicWorld++, the old one “NetEaseMusicWorld+” is no longer available on Chrome Web Store. Personally, I felt this is better/lighter weight than using the VPN which has more implications. Note you will still register on the platform in order to listen to the music there: personally, I used my WeChat to register/login.
QQ 音乐 QQ Music
Both inside and outside China: QQ Music QQ 音乐. I used WeChat to log into QQ Music. Note they are both a part of TenCent or 腾讯。They have paid plans, and I may explore those plans in the future.
I also installed both QQ 音乐 and 网易云音乐 mini program 小程序 on my WeChat. I’ve used quite a bit of QQ 音乐 and liked it.
(Update 05-26-2025) One more example of QQ Music: 何璟昕（Ayen）. I just realized they have a few paid plan.
(Update 07-03-2025) I logged into QQ Music via WeChat and here is my profile. I also created a playlist Ayen何璟昕-原创原唱-2024/25 on QQ Music QQ 音乐. I think QQ Music is useful as it shows the lyrics, and it’s handy for my Cantonese as I am not familiar with the language. I am still in the learning mode. Other benefits of QQ Music is its integration with WeChat as mini-program (小程序）as well as plugin and play in my old car (Toyota Sienna 2012) as an iPod (via USB).
Btw, I recall I used “login via WeChat” for the China based video sharing platform Bilibili too. The main platform in China that does not support “login via WeChat” is Douyin. Btw, I realized Douyin is available in Hong Kong nowadays.
There are also other ways such as Qing’ting FM 蜻蜓FM app: but recently I decide to use more YT Music (no Ads because I am a YT Premium Subscriber) and also QQ Music mini program (no Ads either).
Another reason is I think YT Music doesn’t block anything and has servers based in the US. So they are probably the fastest if I do streaming. I can download songs inside YT Music too.
Nowadays playlist is obviously also important. I found QQ Music has some cool playlist. Because I am just a new user and used it only on WeChat mini-program, I will share as time goes.
(Update 05-09-2025) I found out the WeChat itself also has music, and it’s embedded with the video (Shi’ping) functionality. So one has to have a Shi’ping hao because he/she can publish music. I found the “scroll lyrics” feature is neat: this may be powered by QQ music. See below.
Chinese messaging app WeChat has a new feature that allows people to add songs to the videos they are sharing with friends. The feature is drawing these background tracks from QQ Music, one of the streaming services operated by WeChat’s parent company Tencent’s music division.
Good old MP3 player
They were popular before the takeover of smartphones.
Personally, I am still using my iPod Nano 7th gen, which is more than 10+ years old (I bought it in late 2012).
I am going to reload some new songs when applicable and the nice thing about this one is it’s just a MP3 player and a radio (FM) tuner. So, less distraction for me – especially during night.
Kids (esp. 15 year old) are at an age that want material things, and I can relate to because many years ago I have been through that age many years ago – I wanted to pick out my own apparel including shoes to impress girls 🙂
But at my current age, I really think opposite: I want to use money to buy time, instead of buy stuff.
Playdate and sleepover
When kids are young, parents sometimes setup playdates for kids.
When kids grow, they want to have their own say and “sleepover” for b-day celebration seems fairly popular among teen girls.
But I realized a few things recently: my 15-year-old would not invite her friends over because out home is much more modest compared to some of her friends. I think to some extent my soon to be 11-year-old felt this way too. So, after about 40 years, my kids end up in similar boat as me – during my middle school and high school years I never invited my friends over too. Different circumstances, obviously, but economy was a factor.
It’s not the end of the world though. On the side of “buying stuff”, if I could go back to it. I felt I am more lenient, or I gave my kids more flexibility compared to what my parents could do back in the day. I told my 15-year-old a story, it was probably when I was a 3rd or 4th grader in the elementary school, and I needed those white tennis shoes for perform (those shoes are somewhat like the low ankle Converse here nowadays, and they are white). I didn’t have those: it would probably cost my parents to sacrifice something else to get the shoes. So my mom borrowed new shoes from a classmate (a girl), and after we used the shoes, my mom washed them and put on some white powder on them, so that they looked like new (or as much as practical). (Update 12-30-2026) Today I told this story to my old daughter when I was teaching her to drive.
The other day, I just noticed a girl, friend of my 15-year-old, had the same $100 a pair adidas 🙂
Priority
So, the other day, my 15-year-old mentioned she doesn’t have graphing calculator. I mentioned that I offered it to her multiple times. She said she put a hold at the library (I assume the high school library). So, there goes the priority: she put apparel and shoes before the calculator.
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”
(Update 03-17-2025) The power is back as of 5:54 pm today 3/17/25 Monday – thanks to the folks at JF Electrics (contractor of Ameren) and Ameren the electric utility company.
我忘了上大学时，还有后来在上海工作学习时有没有停电经历了。应该也是有的，但是不记得详细情况了。倒是记得在工厂的时候有一个学校没有的福利：那就是可以天天洗热水澡（hot water shower). 有两个原因：工人们，尤其是铸造车间，锻压车间的工人一天工作下来不仅是汗流浃背，而且脸上身上会有不少工业粉尘，包括铁灰，煤灰；有工业余热。我们的办公室正好在锻压车间淋浴室的上面。近水楼台先得月。这个·福利后来来到美丽国以后继续享受。美国绝大多数家里有热水。
后来，后来就谁随便看看下面吧。美国大规模的停电我记忆中也是有的（近年里有名的是2021年德州大停电）。下面是我在圣村大概二十年来的个人停电经历。我家附近的电网非常脆弱，一个原因是五六十年代开发建设的小区，电线是走地上的。而且他们那时还种了不少树：good ideas but 我昨天才真正意识/体会到树大招风的意思。小区里至少有两棵树倒下。实际很可能不止：因为昨天电力公司的人在小区了找停电的原因：听说有树砸了变压器（小的变压器是装在电线杆上的：2021年那次就是变压器被砸，见下面）。
现在电力公司基本上是以蜗牛的速度抢修，我们就耐心等待吧。以后长期住的话，可能还是要添置备用发电机。
Old Postsor Tweets
I recall probably in summer 2021 (July) we had multi-day outage too, after a powerful storm. I could not find the tweet (btw, they have horrendous search capability now) or blog post. If my memory is correct, we lost power on Friday night, and got the power back on Monday evening: so almost 72 hours of outage (probably close to 69).
