中年生活观察-澄了么？

Yesterday, while searching the office storage room for discontinued products to test for a customer inquiry, I stumbled upon an old travel clock. It’s a slim model powered by a single CR2032 battery — the same type we use in many of our products. Luckily, I found a working one and, with the help of my trusted multimeter, replaced the dead battery. When I turned it on, the default date and time read January 1st, 2001, 00:00:00 . Without a manual handy, I experimented with the buttons on the back and eventually figured out that pressing and holding the Time Set button allowed me to manually adjust the time. As I pressed the buttons to set the correct date, a strange mix of excitement and shock washed over me. I was thrilled to see that, after 25 years, this tiny device still worked perfectly. At the same time, I was struck by the passage of time — I had to press the UP button 24 times to move the year from 2001 to 2025. The experience also brought back a childhood memory. I used to set...

In the early 1990s, music was a treasure. My father, in his late twenties, would save every spare penny to buy cassette albums of Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok, and Jacky Cheung. Most were cheap copies, but a few originals—rare and precious—were locked away. My brother and I were never allowed to touch them. Originals were expensive, and living in our remote village made them almost impossible to find. Even if you could pay, authenticity was never guaranteed. Music demanded effort; it had value because it was scarce. I remember my father’s ritual: washing his hands, drying them carefully, and gently inserting a tape into the radio recorder. I could not always tell if the songs were truly great, but the attention and care surrounding them made them feel special. Music was rare, deliberate, intimate. As I grew older, I wanted music that could also teach me. I asked my father for an MP3 player—a small, no-name device with 128 MB of memory, enough for forty songs. I downloaded BBC and VOA program...