Fast Forward, Year 2023

Right now I’m on a red-eye flight from Hong Kong to Zurich, a 14-hour flight. My sleeping neighbor made the already cramped space even worse with his long legs straight stuck into the space where I’m supposed to put my legs. The plans was to get some wine with the meal on the plane, getting tipsy and sleep through the whole flight. But the sudden cold I caught the night before completely ruined this plan. My nose running non-stop, I know there’s absolutely zero chance I can get some sleep before landing in Switzerland. Facing the remaining 8 hours of flight, I suddenly realized that now is an excellent time to organize the photos from 2023. 2023 is a year of quite some ups and downs for me. The last year’s rollercoaster reflects in the photos I took. Sorting photos by time, I found that there was a gap of nearly two months in which I basically didn’t take any photos. So this time, I’m not going to force myself to pick a few photos for each month, I’d rather just pick interesting ones about which I get something to say.

My 2023 begins in a state of calm, I thought. In January, it snowed heavily in Lausanne. From a distance from my office, I can see Evian, Lake Leman, and the cars in the school parking lot covered by snow, shadowed by thick marshmallow clouds. But even with the good view, I got little time to calm down and look far away. Most of the time, I was stuck in front of my computer and kept scratching my head. While scratching, I also occasionally noticed my hair abandon me and fall on the table in twos and threes. But it was probably hard for me to foresee back then. One year later, I would be worried about completely different things.

Until around mid-June, I was kept constantly busy with various things. There are always deadlines one after another that I have to meet. But I’m actually glad to see from the photos, that I did break free from work a few times – a weekend in Paris, a conference in Saarbrücken, Germany, brief visits to Luxembourg and Strasbourg. I also went to the UK several times, experiencing the extremely lacking urban life in the small Swiss town of Lausanne.

However, by the end of June, the once unreal worries turned into a brutal reality. The boat of my life capsized in no time. I had to leave my study and my life in Lausanne, and I had two and a half months to leave a room I thought I would live in for five years. I sublet the house, cleared out the clutter, and cleaned the room. But just all of these has really worn me out, left me mentally and physically exhausted. I hadn’t had any sleep for the last two nights before I boarded the train leaving Lausanne. I was so exhausted that I sometimes just lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling with empty eyes, silently praying that everything would be over when I stood up, and I can go back to my bed and have a nice sleep. If someone were standing next to me at that time, they would definitely lament that my eyes were so empty. Now that I think about it, I really need to thank the friends who let me store the box at their places.

I probably shouldn’t have bought that incredibly heavy floor lamp, as well.

Anyway, the following is a small selected compilation of the photos I had from my travels and life back home last year.

Waterfront

I reckon I tell my friends from time to time that I wish to live somewhere with water closeby. Either it’s near the sea with a pepple beach or a river flowing through wide and slow. But I’m pretty flexible. This (simple) wish seemingly was expressed in my photos.

Museums

Dusk

Pieces About My First 20 Years of Life

After leaving Switzerland, I stayed in Shenzhen for quite a while. It was a lovely time. I have had some opportunities to record the first 20 years of my life with my camera. But it seems that the time that has passed is the past. No matter how hard I try to duplicate my memories. It’s just always difficult to get it right.