2024 Annual Letter

I started the year by celebrating my friend Curtis's debut at the Metropolitan Opera! He performed in a production of Carmen. I saw the opera a second time with his family and friends! So proud of him! <3

I started getting into yo-yo-ing at the beginning and middle of the year; I brought it everywhere. 

I continued to enjoy my coworker community. We had a few dinners together this year. It's wonderful to enjoy who you work with!

On February 2nd, I dyed my hair a second time beginning a 6 month cadence. I went red after doing purple last August. I really enjoyed the color!

My friend Jon hosted several poker nights throughout the year. It is a tradition I really appreciate especially because I grew up playing poker with my family.

I bought a split keyboard early in the year and for a time was wearing sunglasses in the afternoon because the office lights were hurting my head a bit.

My friend Kaylin visited me in March. We got dressed up with my friends Alberto and Parker went to a club called House of Yes.

One of my new years resolutions was to foster more community, and the Watson community shown below at the annual "Ides of Watson" event is one of those communities. I hosted a few happy hours with these folks later in the year.

In late March, I presented a poster at an internal Capital One conference on a few research papers about large language models.

One of my favorite days this year was my friend Max's bachelor party. Jon organized a day for us to explore, play, and party around NYC. It was a great day!

I got into the habit of doing handstands and cartwheels. Unfortunately, I ended up tweaking my right wrist while doing some particularly twisty handstands, and I've been laying off the handstands ever since.

In mid-May, I went to my boarding school's fifteen-year class union. I caught up with my friend Felipe and met his son, Martin. 

One of my favorite moments was when Martin and I drew this little mural entitled "Rocketship up to the Sun-Moon Friendship Rainbow". 🌈

Towards the end of May, I started journey outside the city beginning with a machine learning conference in Santa Clara, CA. I always try to swim in the places I visit, and I took a few swims in the baylands.

For a hundred years, companies have made salt in the San Francisco bay by steadily increasing the salinity of the salt ponds. The orange color comes from shrimp that live naturally in the ponds. I swam in one of the ponds just south of this picture. It was a normal color 😝

I then made a quick trip to Seattle to visit my friend Adrian, his wife, and their new son!

I continued onto Bozeman, MT to see my family. This is one of my favorite pictures of the year with me and my mom's dog Olivia - matching hair!

As sometimes happens in Montana, we got a snowstorm in May! I made sure my nieces and I took advantage by building a snowman!

I took pictures of the snowman over the following days as he slowly melted... This was the last photo I took.

Upon returning to NYC, I almost immediately headed to Lake Erie for my friends Max and Clarie's wedding! This photo shows the groom's side hanging out in the sun. I had two nice swims in Lake Eire and a nice run with the bride's friends. They had a magical summer wedding!

In June, we continued the tradition of a Met's baseball game!

One summer evening, the NY Philharmonic was supposed to have an outdoor concert in Prospect Park. The concert was canceled due to some torrential rain. I decided to take a run in the park as I enjoy inclement weather and stumbled upon a fireworks show in a rainstorm!

During Manhattan Pride, my friend Brendan invited me to his drag show!

Curtis took this movie of me swinging my ball and rope around in the street. This was another one of my favorite days of 2024! :) 

I got into the bad habit of going onto my rooftop to watch summer storms. I captured a video of this big lightning strike! I henceforth stopped going on my roof during storms... mostly...

My friend Polina and I got into a rhythm of going to adult gymnastics during the summer. This video shows me practicing my standing backflips.

I made a new friend, Carl, who lives just a block away from me. I enjoyed many weekend walks with him and his husky, Thunder. Carl is a great chef and would often treat me with his recipes on Sunday evenings. 

On August 2nd, on schedule, I dyed my hair green!

I frequently went on runs with the Queer Feet run club! My friends Jesse and Carly have done an amazing job building this community, and I'm grateful to be a part of it.

I didn't have too many swim adventures this year, but the biggest one was swimming 5.5 miles from the bottom of Central Park to the George Washington Bridge. This stretch of the Hudson is so pretty! 

This swim was a far cry from the 28.5 miles around Manhattan, but it's still a pretty big section of the island!

My dad came and visited me in August for the US Open. It was both our first time, and I don't think it will be our last! This photo shows us with the Open's signature cocktail, the honey duece. 

I got pretty into the crane game this year. On this evening, instead of pouring money into the machines by my lonesome, I went with my friend Malavika and her sister Supreya. We had a fun Chinatown evening!

In late September, my older brother Daryn had a bassoon workshop in Mexico City, and I joined him. The photo below is of my friend Jake, who lives in Mexico City, and Daryn.

I got to see Jake's friend Carlos and some other friends I had met over new years last year. I would like to return regularly to cultivate a connection with those friends. I have a bike trip down there planned for 2025!

The most memorable experience of that trip was when Jake and I spent that afternoon walking through the Central de Abastos. It is the largest food market in the world, covering 800 acres. We had a long, lovely afternoon chatting and walking through the market.

From Mexico City, I headed to St George, UT to hike the Grand Canyon with my dad. Hiking the Grand Canyon was definitely a highlight for my 2024! It was about 25 miles across the canyon.

They serve lemonade at the Bright Angel Campground at the bottom of the canyon, and I wanted to get a picture of us that matched the US Open picture 🥹🥹

Strava provided a really awesome video of the hike in 3D!

I started getting into speed skating as well this summer. The Empire Speed team has weekly practices on Sunday mornings that I would join. This is a photo of the team's final practice.

I bought a foldable kayak towards the end of the fall! This photo was from a trip where I paddled up the east side of Roosevelt Island and up the Harlem River.

I made a pit stop at Mill Fort Rock, a little island just south of Randals Island. I felt pretty fancy setting foot on a part of New York City that few New Yorkers had ever ventured to! I also bought a dry suit on black Friday and am excited to do some winter kayaking!

While my college friend Julius and his wife Paige were visiting the city, we had dinner with some friends and happened to share the restaurant with Sarah Sherman, my favorite active SNL cast member! She is behind us in the orange shirt and trucker hat. 

After hurting my ankle running in the summer, I turned my attention to biking. I have a goal of biking to Boston, and started doing some 60 to 75-mile bike rides north of the city. The Empire State Trail is an amazing rails-to-trails system that goes from NYC to Canada and from Albany to Buffalo. This photo is of the George Washington Bridge.

As part of these endeavors, I biked 85 miles up to Jon's dad's house in Connecticut for Thanksgiving and biked back to NYC a few days later.

I concluded the year with another conference-friend-family trip. I went to another machine learning conference in Vancouver.  I got to see Tesla's optimus robot. It... wasn't doing much.

I then visited my friend Wesley, who just moved to Tacoma. He visited NYC earlier in the year, and we had some good runs together.

I then went onto Bozeman to celebrate Christmas with some of my family. 

I then finished the year doing some mountain biking in St George, UT with my dad.