Reflections 2019

Here we go again.

My my, how can I re­sist you?

It’s an­other year, and that means an­other end-of-year wrap-up.

Table of Contents

this year in num­bers

215 Github con­tri­bu­tions (oof)

36 more col­lege cred­its

10 weeks crunch­ing num­bers and mak­ing graphs this sum­mer at Capital One.

4 mu­si­cals at­tended (watched?) (Miss Saigon, The Band’s Visit, Dear Evan Hansen, and West Side Story!)

3(?) coun­tries vis­ited (Canada, China, Australia, and a lay­over in New Zealand).

Over 3.4 thou­sand Facebook re­ac­tions on my post in Subtle Asian Dating analyzing the lan­guage use of SAD posts.

And 1 shout-out from Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) for my book cover sen­tence gen­er­a­tor.

Highlights

If last year was a year of dras­tic change, this year was one of set­tling into the flow of things.

In January, I saw Miss Saigon at the Kennedy Center (starring Emily Bautista as Kim). This was the first of three mu­si­cals I had the op­por­tu­nity to see at the Kennedy Center this year. Our seats were amaz­ing, and the Kennedy Center is re­ally beau­ti­ful at night (and all the rest of the time too). I also did a lot of math.

February was a lot more math home­work (it kind of took over my life), but with one event­ful uh… event. As I men­tioned above, I wrote up a fun joke pa­per an­a­lyz­ing lan­guage use of the sub­tle asian dat­ing Facebook group, and it was met with lots of pos­i­tive feed­back (and I’m now eval­u­at­ing whether I have too much time on my hands).

We had our spring break in March, and that ap­par­ently still means col­lege vis­its even a year into col­lege. First I went to UVA for HooHacks and to catch up with some friends from high school (the whole thing was kind of a TJ reunion). Then I met up with my U-M squad to drive up to Toronto, where we had Japan­ese-Mex­i­can fu­sion tacos, ex­or­bi­tant amounts of bub­ble tea, en­joyed Cana­dian Netflix, and ate dumplings with my friend at U of Toronto.

In April, Blueprint pub­lished its 8th is­sue fea­tur­ing my good friend Xindi’s art on the cover! Also played in the spring band con­cert, at­tended my first Michigan MT per­for­mance (Sweeney Todd), and fin­ished up fresh­man year of col­lege with Coco bub­ble tea and in­stant hot­pot.

May was a month at my new home in Michigan. It was also my new home be­cause I got nat­u­ral­ized! Other note­wor­thy events in­cluded my car get­ting towed (it’s a long story) and at­tend­ing the Dog Bowl in Frankenmuth, MI!

June marked the be­gin­ning of my sec­ond sum­mer at Capital One. I worked on a hackathon pro­ject which de­tected when you scrolled past a cat pic­ture and sug­gested a do­na­tion to your lo­cal pet char­ity based on how many cat pic­tures you’ve seen. Also hiked the Billy Goat trail and met up with some friends from high school.

In July, I cel­e­brated my first fourth of July as an American, and watched the DC fire­works from my apart­ment in Pentagon City. The day af­ter, I went to the archives to see Constitution and Declaration of Independence in per­son for the first time. Also went to the Lawn at the National Building Museum, celebrated the 50th an­niver­sary of the moon land­ing, and got a DC li­brary card. Last but not least, I saw The Band’s Visit at the Kennedy Center, and that might have been the high­light of this year. We had amaz­ing tick­ets in the cen­ter of the or­ches­tra sec­tion, and the en­tire mu­si­cal was just so beau­ti­fully well crafted. Highly rec­om­mend.

August was equally busy. It started with a visit to the White House (cool, but hon­estly un­der­whelm­ing) and farewells to my team and friends at Capital One. Then Dear Evan Hansen at the Kennedy Center (set de­sign was amaz­ing), see­ing the sun­rise in DC, and cel­e­brat­ing David’s 20th birth­day be­fore de­part­ing on my trav­els.

August Travels: First on the itin­er­ary was Santa Monica where I spent my 12 hour lay­over at LAX. After see­ing The Farewell, eat­ing Street Noods, and watch­ing a west coast sun­set, I took off for Chengdu. In China, I vis­ited fam­ily, friends, and ate lots of food (the ex­is­tence of AYCE per­sonal hot­pot makes me be­lieve in a higher power). I only spent a cou­ple of days in Chengdu before head­ing off to Melbourne, Australia where I met up with my friend Jacob. We spent over a week in Australia, where we ex­pe­ri­enced Melbourne’s White Night, the Twelve Apostles, friendly birds, and de­li­cious food. We also snuck into an Aus­tralian Costco, hiked the Blue Mountains (where we met an in­ter­na­tional stu­dent from Thailand / Virginia!), ex­plored Sydney, ate emu / kan­ga­roo pizza, and watched West Side Story at the Sydney Opera House! Pad that out with platypi, Nepalese dumplings, and some more hik­ing, and we’re at September.

September was the start of sopho­more year and my first year liv­ing in our house off cam­pus. Also the first MDST meet­ing in my new role as VP of Projects (in other news, lots and lots of meet­ings and plan­ning for the MIDAS Data Challenge).

In October, we kicked off the MIDAS Data Challenge and had hot­pot at Xindi’s.

In November, we wrapped up the Data Challenge, I turned 20 (!!), and I played Dem Debate Bingo. I also tried quince for the first time.

December was wrap­ping up the fall se­mes­ter and wrap­ping up this se­mes­ter’s MDST pro­ject. Then I traveled around California with my fam­ily, saw lights in Georgetown with friends, and went to go see the Space Shuttle Discovery at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Reflections

Now that we’re head­ing into 2020, I guess it might be a good idea to look at not just the past year, but the past decade. A lot has hap­pened in these 10 years.

In 2010, my fam­ily had just bought our first house. We bought an­other car. We received our green cards. After so many years of un­cer­tainty, wor­ry­ing about visas, liv­ing in apart­ments, it felt like things were fi­nally set­tling down. Lit­tle did I know, the next decade — the next half of my life — would see me mov­ing far­ther, liv­ing in more apart­ments, and grow­ing much much more than I could have ever imag­ined (seriously, who could’ve guessed I’d be over six feet tall).

I lived in our house for all of 3 years be­fore mov­ing to an apart­ment to­tally for­eign city a few hun­dred miles away. Since 2010, I’ve lived in more than six dif­fer­ent zip codes, I’ve got­ten dri­vers li­censes in two states, and I have like 5 dif­fer­ent li­brary cards. I moved from a mid­dle school where my bi­ol­ogy teacher was hes­i­tant to teach evo­lu­tion to one of the best high schools in the na­tion. I’ve learned so much about life, about my­self, about love, and about lin­ear al­ge­bra (in no par­tic­u­lar or­der). And I know I have so much more to learn and ex­pe­ri­ence in the next decade, and hope­fully many more af­ter that.

Maybe one im­por­tant les­son I’ve learned, as I step back and look at these past 10 years from a thou­sand-mile-high van­tage point, is that you should never set­tle. My dad took a huge risk when he de­cided to en­ter res­i­dency. My mom took a huge risk when she de­cided to move the two of us to Virginia. We had a house, two cars, and neigh­bors with a dog. We had a free pass to stay in the coun­try. Ac­cord­ing to every­thing I’ve read, that sounds a lot like the American Dream™. But some­times we yearn for some­thing more, and that re­quires tak­ing risks and jump­ing in with­out know­ing ex­actly where we’ll land. It re­quires courage, courage I’m glad my par­ents had, and courage I hope to in­herit as I take my first steps into adult­hood and the pur­suit of my own goals and am­bi­tions in 2020.