This issue is a record of and reflection on life in April 2024.
Thanks to relatively cheap flights, I’d booked a trip to New Zealand for the May Day holiday back on New Year’s Day. I had almost no experience with international travel, and I ended up putting together my itinerary on the plane from an offline map. I never expected the trip to turn out this rich.
It’s the last night of the trip now, and I’m sitting in the airport waiting for the flight home. With nothing else to do, I’m writing down the whole journey from memory.
Day 1: Flight – Christchurch – Chinese Restaurant
Ten hours by plane to Auckland. My spoken English being what it is, I’d cleared check-in but still had no idea how to connect to my next flight. A staff member noticed and simply walked us to where we needed to go. Most of the airport’s signs had Chinese on them too, and after that we didn’t run into any more obstacles.
While waiting at the gate I noticed two small birds pecking around at my feet, and then spotted a bird flying freely inside the terminal. I suddenly understood what the inflight customs video had meant by “this fragile land is our most precious treasure.”
After arriving in Christchurch that evening we picked up a rental car. The lanes are reversed compared to China, but driving turned out to be surprisingly easy. Partly because the roads have fewer lanes and almost no need to change them — but mostly because the other drivers are extraordinarily courteous. No one cut in, flashed their lights aggressively, or overtook dangerously. If anything, everyone seemed overly happy to give way: at roundabouts, drivers would rather wait an extra thirty seconds than merge while anyone else was close; on narrow roads, both cars often pulled to the side at the same time with neither wanting to go first (laughs). Oncoming drivers almost always gave a little wave, and one did a finger-gun at me that I found genuinely charming.
Speaking of charming: I noticed little things in front of people’s houses as we drove — a Peppa Pig stuffed toy on a doorstep, a candy box next to a mailbox, some stickers on the back of road signs.
Cute and kind — that was my first impression of this place.
After checking into the motel that evening we walked around the area. It was barely past six, but dark had already fallen. No one on the streets, almost all the shops shut. Only a Chinese home-cooking restaurant nearby was still open, and it was empty.
After dinner the owners chatted with us — a couple who’d moved here from Shenzhen. They talked about housing prices, education, work, income, the local pace of life, and what to watch out for on the road. I came away knowing a lot more.
Day 2: Alpacas – Coastal Town
Day two was around Christchurch. I’d booked an alpaca farm visit the night before, and we drove out there through flat farmland, pastures, and mountain scenery heavy with autumn color. Cresting the last hill and seeing the bay below felt like discovering why this place is sometimes called “the land the world forgot.”
The farm had a Chinese employee who introduced us to each animal and their very individual personalities — she clearly knew them all by heart. Looking back, the alpaca farm ranks in my top two highlights of the whole trip. Interacting with a whole hillside full of big alpacas and little ones, the valley filled with laughter.
The afternoon we spent drifting through the seaside village of Akaroa — a boat trip, lying on the beach staring at things, ice cream, a slow walk, until the sun went down. The village was quiet, the bay glassy and still, the pace unhurried. I love that feeling of settling into the present and letting time slip through your fingers.
Day 3: West Coast – Fox Glacier Night Drive – Milky Way
After returning the keys in the morning we drove to the West Coast. From town to open plain, then up into mountain roads, through river valleys, into gorges, over rolling hills — and then suddenly an endless black sea spread out before us. Overwhelming.
Through the small town of Hokitika, the sky overcast, the sea dark. A little further on the sky opened up, the water turned blue, and the scale of it made me feel small.
We had a flight lesson booked in Wanaka the next morning, so we needed to push further along the West Coast mountain roads that night. We took a wrong turn and ended up late, but the motel host had stayed up waiting for us to check in rather than going home. Getting there around nine o’clock and finding a light still on for us felt like warmth and home.
Back in signal range I also found a message from the previous night’s host:
The motel host told us the Milky Way was often visible here — I looked up, and there it was. We’d been driving the whole time without ever looking at the sky.
No tripod, so I just hand-held a shot with iPhone’s night mode.
Staring at the universe stretched out above me, I suddenly felt how small I really am. Humans are made of the same stuff as stars, but we have consciousness. When we look up at the Milky Way, humanity becomes the universe’s way of knowing itself — “the landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness.”
Day 4: Wanaka – Flying a Plane
Morning light revealed that last night’s surroundings had been otherworldly.
We drove to Wanaka, whose lake views speak for themselves. The Airbnb host checked us in with incredible warmth and patience — even when our English stumbled, she kept saying “don’t worry” and giving us encouraging looks, showing us around her big house like a friendly neighbor rather than a landlord. When we discovered we’d lost our power adapter, we messaged through Booking.com and the host’s husband showed up at the door cradling an armful of every adapter known to mankind. Genuinely adorable.
That afternoon we got to fly a plane:
Days 5–6: Queenstown
Breakfast at the lakeside in Wanaka, a walk to see the famous lone tree:
Ice cream cone in hand, wandering along the shore, a casual photo of the lake:
We drove to Queenstown in the afternoon. Nothing else had been booked, so we had a free day — which we spent sitting by the lake watching people, watching ducks, simply existing.
Such idleness. Such slowness. Watching scenery I’d never seen before, a quiet curiosity gathering in me. I wanted to stay longer, to really know this place, to find something in it that was uniquely its own.
Even though I’d be leaving tomorrow, I barely felt like I was leaving at all. Time and space felt as though they belonged to us — not us to them.
Day 7: Deer Park – Luge – Paragliding
Last full day in Queenstown. Morning at Deer Park — the animals were very cooperative and I got some great shots:
Afternoon on the mountain for the luge — unexpectedly great fun. On the way up I met a Chinese guy who came bouncing over, ecstatic, telling me how good it was. He’d done it a few years back and had been thinking about it ever since, so he flew all the way back just to do it again.
Then we tried paragliding — running down the hilltop, jumping, taking off, and then that feeling of gliding free above everything. That was the number one highlight of the whole trip.
Day 8: Oamaru – Penguins – Backpackers Hostel
Drove from Queenstown along the east coast to Oamaru, saw fur seals and little blue penguins. (No photos of the penguins — photography isn’t allowed.)
That night at a backpacker hostel with a warm, cozy feel. The kitchen wall was covered with notes from travelers who’d passed through.
Day 9: Homeward
Back in Christchurch — where it all began. On the first night of this trip, eight days ago, I had felt profoundly alone in this city. Night had fallen, the streets were empty, shops were shut, the only signs of life a few faint streetlights. A foreign country, darkness, the unknown ahead, the familiar stripped away, an estrangement from this world — all of it made me lonely.
But after eight days of traveling, tonight the darkness doesn’t bring that loneliness. Because now I know the sun will rise again tomorrow and light up this land; because now I know that friendly, kind people live here, and that if something goes wrong, you don’t face it alone.
The fundamental mode of existence is relation, and the best relations are those in which individuals connect without needing anything from each other. We don’t exist as isolated entities — we are beings of relationship — and the people here proved it, through their warmth and kindness.
Can travel make our lives better? Can our lives, like the sunrise, move upward and stay warm? I can’t say for certain. But I want to run toward that certainty.
To close, here’s a passage from Bilibili’s New Year toast that I loved — it feels right as an ending for this trip journal:
“I want to raise a glass to persistence in ordinary moments, to failures worth being proud of, to everything that deserves respect. To existence.”
“I want to raise a glass to the earth — to the mountains and seas I haven’t yet seen, to the cultures that stir my heart, to this brilliant planet that billions of people have built with love. To the world.”
“I want to raise a glass to tomorrow. I won’t ask whether you’ll bring joy or sorrow, or what you’ve come to do. I’ll simply take whatever gift you hold out with no fear, and treasure every experience. Without asking about partings, without asking about endings. To tomorrow.”
“I want to raise a glass to myself, and to each of you who loves yourself. I hope that whatever comes our way in the new year, we each quietly tell ourselves: I will follow my heart, I will love all things, I will chase my dreams, I will become who I want to be. To ourselves.”
🌺 Snippets from Life
A few moments from this period.
🚀 Work: Promoted to T11
The March review went smoothly. I’d been preparing materials through the holiday, and the project results over the past year or so were genuinely strong — even with a low promotion rate this cycle, I was fairly confident going in.
I was stuck at T5 for a year after the campus hire, and T10 took two years because of a new policy. Aside from those, everything else moved through the fast track. So: two years post-graduation to T9, two and a half to T10, four and a half to T11 — comparatively fast, overall. The ceiling at TME frontend right now is one T12. Next small goal: T12 within three years.
Onward. Keep going.
🎬 Books, Films, and More
What I’ve been reading, watching, and playing this period:
- Finished: Drama | The Ferryman: Legends of Nanyang | ★★★★★
- Finished: Anime | Mashle: Magic and Muscles | ★★★☆☆
- Finished: Anime | Mashle: Magic and Muscles | ★★★☆☆
- Finished: Film | Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire | ★★★☆☆
- Finished: Film | Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom | ★★★☆☆
- Finished: Film | Forever Love | ★★☆☆☆
- Rewatched: Drama | Joy of Life | ★★★★★
