2023 Annual Letter

2023 brought many gifts. I continued settling into life in NYC and have been grateful for my community here. I had my 10-year college reunion and went to Burning Man for the first time. I had opportunities to explore new experiences and enjoy long-standing friendships. I did two 6-mile swims during the summer and managed to really jack up my face twice at the end of the year. 🤪

I didn't do too many winter swims, but this was a shorter one in Rhode Island.  From Jan to March, I took a master's course in Natural Language Processing.

Early in the year, Curtis and I got some southern food at Jacob's Pickles! I have been grateful to see Curtis on a consistent basis. ❤️

One of my New Year's resolutions was to build more community and to realize that resolution, I hosted this happy hour for former Watson fellows.

A few days after the happy hour, I got the neighborhood boys together for some St. Patrick's Day Guinness, which was another good effort at cultivating community.

A few weeks later, a coworker friend and I were doing some urban exploring when we stumbled upon these cranes. There were no signs that said we shouldn't climb up the crane, so I climbed up the side ladder on the bottom left side of the crane. And then once up the ladder, it was just stairs to the top.

It was pretty scary being at the top of the crane and the size of the arm really surprised me. 😱 My friend wasn't initially able to climb up the ladder because of a shoulder injury, but he had just made it up once I returned down the stairs. We planned to head back up the stairs for him to see the top when we spotted an NYPD police boat motoring through the harbor. We quickly made a dash back down the ladder and ran away along the pier. 

That was the second time I've had to make a quick getaway from an NYPD boat 🙃 

In April, I started a western tour with my first stop in Bozeman, MT. This is a cute live-photo of my nieces and their friend at Jump Time, the trampoline park.

I was able to land my first standing front flip while at Jump Time, which kicked off more acrobatics throughout the year.

My high school friend Adrian was doing a medical rotation in a hospital in Livingston, MT near Bozeman, so we had a weekend of skiing and visiting Yellowstone National Park.

I then attended my 10-year college reunion at Harvey Mudd College outside LA. A few months before the reunion, I had a few conversations with a newly awarded Watson fellow from Harvey Mudd to help her understand and prepare for her fellowship year. I met her in person at Mudd's new maker space where she was putting the finishing touches on a remote-controlled couch. Riding on that couch was one of my favorite memories of the reunion!

I then popped over to St George, UT to see my parents. My little brother Davis came out for the week, so we had some adventures. This photo was taken by my mom. I had been swimming in a nearby reservoir, and the three of them biked over to pay me a visit. I always enjoy dipping into new waters!

I then moved onto Reno, NV to see my college friend Garrett and the amazing organic farm he has been growing at his parent's house! Garret continues to amaze me with his ability to grow things 🌱 

My last stop was in Sacramento where I saw my college friend Chet. This is a video of him and his neighbor's 20-year-old cat. Chet taught me to do a gainer, which is a backflip while you run off the diving board. You'll see me do one later on, and Chet's instruction helped further my acrobatic endeavors!

I flew back to NYC and the following weekend I headed up to the Berkshires in central Massachusetts for my friend Misha's birthday. I got two longer swims in at Lake George to kicked off my summer swim season. I enjoyed swimming in the rain and through this culvert!

In early June, I headed down to Miami for the MLSys machine learning conference. It was my first time in Miami and at a machine learning conference. I did two swims at Miami Beach, including a longer 4-mile swim!

That following weekend, I was up in Danbury, CT at Jon's dad's house where I did another 4-mile swim. Altogether, I swam 10 miles that week, which was a new milestone for me!

This video is of me doing a gainer in Danbury, which is the running backflip I described above.

Jon took photos of me doing gainers. I was annoyed he wasn't taking videos, but the photos were pretty cool! What can I say, he has creative vision.

Over the fourth of July, I was again doing some gainers and during my last one, I kicked the diving board on my backward rotation. I couldn't walk without a limp but the next day I swam 4 miles! I use this story as part of my sales pitch to convince people to start swimming.

The highlight of my summer swims were two 6-mile swims at Coney Island that I did about two weeks apart. They took me about 4 hours apiece. The second one I did with a group from the Brighton Beach swim club, which was a treat. I always aspire to be more social with my swimming. 

And in August, I went to Burning Man for the first time! Kat, Jon's wife, has been a part of the Preservation Society camp for around 7 years, and I went with her and Jon. It was a trip! See this post for more details on that adventure.

Once the rain started, I couldn't resist some mud sliding.

I encountered a photographer while giving some prayers to the man during one of my runs in the rain.

I have wanted to dye my hair purple for a while, and Burning Man proved a great opportunity. The front and back bits of my hair stuck out of my hat during burning man, and the sun turned them baby blue. It was a great look. 💜🩵 

For my 33rd bday, I had a big party! This was one of the larger birthday parties I've had and the first where I had different friend groups come together. I enjoyed putting together a fun outfit!

In late October, my parents and I visited my brother Davis and his girlfriend Sophie on a bike trip! Davis and Sophie just moved to Madison, WI, so we figured we'd check it out!

Madison has some great trails!

For Halloween, I used my purple suit that I bought for my friend's engagement party to put together this Joker costume! I won first place at the company Halloween party and got my VP (pictured) to speak at my internal research group!

I found a gymnastics gym near my apartment. I figured this would be a beginning of an era, but the adult hours are often so late (only 9 pm, but that's late for me!) that I've only went once. However, I see their summer hours start at like 7 pm, so I'm hopeful that I will get more into it!

In early November, Kat, Jon, Iris and I made a trip out to Big Sur where Kat and Jon share a house with some other folks from the burning man camp. It's always fun to make memories with this community!

While in Big Sur, the boys went on a long hike to chill in some (somewhat smallish) hot springs!

And after that long hike, silly Dustin didn't take a shower or really change his clothes and had poison oak on his hands while washing his face that night. Fortunately, I went to the ER and I got some steroids to reduce the reaction. Getting poison oak all over my face is one of the more humorous things that has happened to me lately... 🙃

In December, I took a trip down to DC for a company get-together. In the fall, I started getting more into textile research, and I made a trip to the Museum of Textiles (see this post), where this beautiful kimono is located.

During that trip, I got to reconnect with some coworkers on my previous team which was a treat! You can see my hair eventually faded to teal.

To wrap up the year, I headed to Bozeman for Christmas with the fam. My twin nieces and I had a fun little photo shoot 😊

 

Going to JumpTime trampoline park has become a tradition with my nieces and word seems to have spread because we had 6 kids this time! 

I facilitated an hour-long game of dodgeball against 8 other 6 to 14 year-olds. And then, Tristan, the child in orange, whipped out a double front flip into the airbag foam pit. Seeing this, I had to try it. My first attempt was a success and after hurriedly telling my niece Madison to “watch me!”, I did it again. This time when my foot hit the bag, my knee hit my chin and my front tooth went straight through my lower lip. 

It was bloody, but I wasn’t leaving until I got a group photo. You can see me clutching my lip with a paper towel to hold back the bleeding... 

And this was the damage. I got 2 stitches in my chin and two in my inner lip. It healed well! Though, I still have scar tissue to nibble on 6 months later.

 

I haven’t found any great outdoor swim spots in Bozeman, but I figured I could at least do some cold water exposure!

I ended the year by visiting my college friend Jake in Mexico City. It has been a few years since I last saw Jake in Guatemala, and it was great to catch up and also strange. Jake and I exchange 10-min voice messages almost daily via WhatsApp, so even though I hadn’t seen him in 2.5 years, I knew exactly what was going on in his life.

The trip to Mexico City was also my first international trip focused on textiles. I visited several textile museums and artisanal markets. Ideally, I will write up a blog post on that trip, but we’ll see. The photo above shows a large alebrije.

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This poncho was the coolest textile I purchased on the trip. I had high hopes for it being my first resale project where I would buy 10 of them and sell them to friends. Sadly, the seams completely came apart during my New Year's evening, so it was only good for this one saucy photo.

That wraps up my 2023 annual letter! Thank you for reading! Community and gymnastics were big themes for 2023, and as part of my community, I am always interested to hear what you have been up to!