年终总结-2025-en

Another year down. I meant to write this on December 31, but I had two interviews morning and afternoon, then went to my partner’s place, had dinner with her family, met friends for New Year’s Eve—no time left. Sitting down today I’m getting it on paper.

On the Fediverse I found my early-2025 posts and rewound to January. Late 2024 I binged a lot of anime and manga—Cowboy Bebop, rewatching Evangelion, Fire Punch, rereading Chainsaw Man, rereading Look Back. Early 2025 I kept watching films and shows.

2025 was my zodiac year; my family wanted a ceremony to “appease Tai Sui” and gave me an amulet. I wore it less than two weeks before it lived in my dorm. I don’t believe in it, and I didn’t like the fortune-teller. Looking back, I don’t think “fate” delivered surprise joys or tragedies—almost everything has traceable causes if you pay attention. Keep observing; keep connecting the dots.

Tried to do things with my own hands—failed a bunch, lol.

Some dreams.
First time trying cosplay in January with my roommate—I was Shinji, he was Kaworu. Exhausting but fun day; an Asuka asked for a photo.
After we swapped contacts I learned she goes by “Teacher Ansa.”
I also went to a con on the 17th—tickets bought ages ago, felt wasteful to skip, and I wanted to see Teacher Ansa again (lol).
We kept chatting on QQ; after I went back to campus we met up again.
She’d said a friend’s reading predicted she’d “definitely get a partner in February.” I leaned into the prophecy and confessed on the last day of February—we started dating.

Like The Tatami Galaxy says: “Nothing is more trivial than ‘they lived happily ever after.’”

Life changed a lot compared with earlier years—from almost no rituals to planning for two, holidays, seeing things from more angles. Lots of homework: trust, growth, intimacy… From losing ~10 kg to gaining ~10 above my old weight—even in a relationship of two, you’re mostly facing yourself.

Growth hit from several directions this year.

English improved a bit—not enough. Japanese: studied a little at New Year’s, then stopped.

Met site admin shrik3 in Beijing—ate and talked for two or three hours. Wonderful host—thanks for the gift!

In April I still thought like this; second half I dove into agents and consensus instead.

So what should I do?

Not many shows this year; GQuuuuuuX was one we both liked. Summer I was buried in research—no cosplay. My partner changed jobs (no weekends off), so cons became rare.

Equity volatility around April gave me a small win; from then to year-end the market mostly drifted up. I’m a value-investing “door disciple”—I’ll keep holding.

Whenever I’m anxious I spam internship apps—same at year-end. Three small-company interviews in December. Last day of the year I did two back-to-back and finally saw my gaps clearly: still algorithms and “eight-part essays,” and projects need to match the role. Even if I’m nervous beforehand, facing interviewers I drop into flow—just answering, nothing else. Exhausting afterward.

Roughly hit the plan above—paper work is mostly done; only experiments polish and writing left. Lighter load, so I can prep internships in parallel.

Forgot to mention—we cosplayed together too. Once she was Rei and I was Rihito (Look Back); another time we went to the EVA pop-up at Chaoyang Joy City (I was Shinji, she was Asuka).

Do I have that kind of talent?

Where is my dream?

I still want to ask: would Aaron Swartz be happy about today’s LLMs? Knowledge is easier to reach—but as Rob Pike warned, open-source code used for training can entrench monopolies. That can’t be what Aaron wanted.

End of May / start of June my advisor had dinner with me and two seniors. One is doing a PhD at NUS—super extroverted, we talked forever: travel plans, academic gossip… Incredible energy—said at his peak he could pull an all-nighter then run 1000 m under 3:30. Sharp memory for gossip details; I mentioned movies near campus and he rattled off two cinema names. Those two things stuck—and so did how far I feel from that energy and recall. He also went through a rough patch; what he shared, I listened to, but some pain only he can touch.

Soon after I started research with him on agents and consensus—busy until recently before things clarified. I won’t recap the work in a year-end post; hoping next year brings solid research output too.

A silly moment with my partner, lol.

On “vibe coding” / AI-assisted dev: in 2024 Cursor autocomplete helped me finish Summer OSPP. After that I didn’t lean hard on AI coding—until May I still believed you should hand-write code or you miss the craft.
Doing a side project for my advisor, I tried Trae and watched it spit out tens of thousands of lines in one go. Right or wrong (there were bugs), the sheer scale seemed like a signal.

By year-end, in general software nobody claims “pure hand coding” anymore—though for Linux kernel / consensus work AI still hits a wall.
What separates programmers from “vibe coders” is still depth. Great tools multiply a real engineer; you have to be an engineer first.

Hama Sushi probably wins restaurant of the year—we went constantly. Sushi Lang once cost 300+ RMB; never again.

My childhood friend interned in Beijing in July—we had a month together before he went back to school in Australia. I probably can’t feel the loneliness he describes abroad; I couldn’t do much either, just answer when I could.

“Where talent lies”:

Still anxious—but I’m pointed the right direction, so keep going.

Read Hawstein’s essay; something started sprouting.

August I only went home a little over a week—few days in Weihai, sea air, local food.

“You’d end up like this no matter which path you picked.”

In September my niece started kindergarten. During Qingming I went home for a cousin’s wedding and learned my sister was pregnant again—later she said likely a boy; he arrived safely end of December. Congrats to her and her husband.

Sept–Oct I grinded LeetCode, then research ate the time—yesterday’s interview problem stumped me, so back to drilling.

The other side of vibe coding.

My phone was dying so I upgraded Mom to a 17 Pro Max; I’m on her old OPPO. OPPO ships with Google services out of the box—very nice.

Finished Hot 100 end of October…

December: thesis proposal defense—passed, slightly nerve-wracking. Next milestone Dec 2026 mid-term; if the paper is published by then the committee should be kind.

Misc thoughts.

Late December my senior visited Beijing—we ate, talked for hours, understood him better, glimpsed how he moves through the world.

Big change this year: much of life is with my partner—Christmas, New Year’s with friends, facials together… Let’s keep walking next year.
For 2026 I want a publication and a solid internship—clear that hurdle first, then bigger dreams.
Keep watching and listening closely; don’t miss small details; keep thinking.