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2023
December Hangout with Candy in ShangHai (M79 art village, MOCA, HaiDiLao). Visit dad's company
December China trip, first time in 3 years! See my Tianjin grandma again.
December Seattle Xmas trip with Priya/Erica/Steph. HaiDiLao for first time
December Visited one of the last waterbed stores in America
December Won IM frisbee with Microwaves (Round 3)
December Got best project at the IXR finals and won a Quest 3
December Built working ionic thrusters out of aluminum foil! (After lots of arcing + electroplating failure...)
December Attended a small group interview with Palmer Luckey, (controversial) founder of Oculus
December Went to Roanoke Virginia with Srin for Erin's wedding
November Casa Batllo was beautiful
November Stained glass in La Sagrada Familia blew my mind
November Museums of torture, catapults, and witchcraft in Toledo
November Secret nun cookies in Madrid
November Spain for Thanksgiving with Jake! Madrid -> Toledo -> Valencia -> Barcelona
November Caught bugs with our bug robots class
November Went to Salsa class with Alex
November Spent Diwali at Swap's house with Ben/Alex/Raunaq, lit fireworks on driveway
November Got a beta demo of the AVP
November Won double Honorable Mention for People's Choice and Jury's Best demo
October Dressed as a cat and mouse for Halloween - a giant, working computer mouse I built
October Presented Fluid Reality @ UIST 2024 in SF!
October Depths of Wikipedia live show
October Rohan's beautiful wedding. Choreography @ Sangeet and lots of food and dancing
October Lancaster Renaissance Faire w/ Abby/Ravi/Ananya - way bigger and cooler, FIRE WHIPS
October Combustion Festival at Carrie Furnace w/ Anthony
September Port gets 5th at Mid-Atlantic Regionals
September Put up bathroom stall usage surveys
August Last day in Seattle at PAX West
August Saw The Adventure Zone live
August Watched live Lucha Libre fights
August Ate at Pujol - 16th best restaurant in the world
August Rohan's bachelor party in Mexico City
August Won Seattle summer C league with chilly chili chilly
August Camped and hiked Mt. Rainier NP with Charlie/Rob/Jake
August Saw Mountain Goats live at Woodland Park Zoo
August Met Founder of Salt & Straw and was very motivated by his talk
August Visit the Seattle Renaissance Fair: Pirate Steampunk. Bird of Prey + Jousting + Horse Acrobatics
July Pittsburgh friends visit for my birthday
July Free tickets to the Seattle Art Fair
July Visited the Quietest Room on Earth at Microsoft
July Vancouver for a weekend
July Fluid Reality accepted to UIST - first UIST paper
July Steph's beautiful wedding with incredible food & dancing
July Sunbreak with LA friends
June Listened to Jaron Lanier speak and demoed at HCAIX MSR day
June Visited Olympic NP and Hoh Rainforest
June FORKS! Twilight photo ops and visited the twilight museum
June Candy visits, and we drive the Olympic Loop over a few days
June Appeared in a Tony's commercial for CMU for 300ms
June Surprised Srin in Atlanta for her karoake birthday
June Jake teaches me to sail
Summer Intern with the EPIC team at Microsoft Research
May Visited Glacier NP (and did freezing hikes)
May Spent the ENTIRE day at Meow Wolf Convergence Station Denver
May Visited World's Largest Truck Stop in Iowa
May Cross country road trip with Swap and Alex: Pgh -> Chicago -> Iowa -> Nebraska -> Denver -> Glacier -> Spokane -> Seattle
May Steph's bachelorette in Cancun - super fun
May Lilian's graduation @ UIUC
May Parents visited me in Pittsburgh for first time
May Synjets accepted to TOCHI journal - first journal paper
May Got 2nd at Mario's Southside trivia B)
April Beta tested an immersive AR art exhibit for the Shed
April Friends hosted a super fun cross Pittsburgh, all day scavenger hunt
April Went up the Airport Control Tower of Allegheny airport
April Acted in the SCS Musical - Thomas Jefferson in Cabinet Battle #1
April Watched Melissa Villasenor live at CMU
April Hosted AMC Beer Math Round 2 - got 2nd place this time
Spring Learned woodworking. Made a laptop stand, phone stand, crate, and folding stool
February Interviewed for several Cut Keep it 100 videos
January Maggie wrote/hosted a murder mystery dinner, where I got away with murder
January Rabbit hole symposium - 5 minute presentations on random topics. I presented body modifications.
January Rode the Duquesne incline for the first time
January LeiOut with Columbia friends
2022
December Hawaii trip with family (Everyone got sick by the 3rd day :( )
December Tahoe trip with Mrinal, Abby, Jake, and Blaine.
December Flew to Tampa to stay on a resort and attend Jake's cousin's wedding
November ICMI in Bangalore, first time in India! Street markets, brain museum (touched real organs), incredible food
October UIST in Bend, Oregon. Great keynote by Ted Chiang, and a beautiful hike at Smith Rock.
October Went to my first ever wedding - Jake & Paige
October Acadia fall break trip with Daphne, Mateo, Swapnil, and Rohan
October First ever RI PhD retreat at Seven Springs
October Ravi hosts Dall-E game night where we guess the Dall-E prompt
October Published an article in XRDS (Designing for Haptics)
September Hosted a ramen tasting / ranking party with 11 random brands, then statistically ranked them
September Went to THE Angry Orchard (with Funk)
August Bridesmaid dress shopping with Steph in Seattle
August Spelunked at Craters of the Moon NP
August Toured the world's first nuclear power plant, EBR-I
August Drove through Yellowstone in the dark - saw some geysers
August Visited Grand Teton NP
August Saw Mt. Rushmore
August Visited Badlands NP and Wall Drug
August Stopped in Vivian, South Dakota
August Went in the world's largest Corn Palace
August Toured the Mall of America and House of Balls in Minneapolis
August Drove cross country Pittsburgh → Seattle. Illinois -> Wisconsin -> South Dakota -> Wyoming -> Idaho ->Washington
August Visit Grounds for Sculpture and cool Ringing Rocks park
July Pittsburgh friends visit for my birthday
July Wildwood with NYC friends
July Pull Gestures accepted to ICMI
July NBC vid on Today Show
July NBC vid on Nightly News w/ Lester Holt. He says "wow"!
July NBC came to film our lab because of MouthHaptics
July Made a “Birds Aren’t Real” poster on a Risograph machine
Summer Lived in NYC, working at Meta Reality Labs
April First ever in person conference, CHI 2022 in New Orleans
April Get interviewed by many news sources about MouthHaptics
April I got honorable mention for NSF GRFP
March Saw Sammy Rae live at Mr. Smalls Funhouse
March MouthHaptics wins Best Paper at CHI!
March Visited the Mapparium in Boston
March Spring break Boston trip with Mateo and Jake
March Biked circles in the Point State Park fountain, and climbed in center
February Hosted a “drinking & AMC” competition, where you get points for beer or math
January Got used billboard sign right off the posts, made art (pants, vest, etc.)
2021
December Won IM Frisbee with Microwaves (RI grad students)
November Hiked Pittsburgh’s northside stairs, 16 miles and 237 flights
November Two CHI Paper acceptances! (MouthHaptics & ControllerPose)
November Tried out for USA Worlds Beach Ultimate Team! Was a great experience but really hard
November Skived on work w/ Chris & Craig to raft
October Human Spider for Halloween
Fall Learned glass blowing
September Helped run Pinnacle, Olympics of Hackathons
September FarOut Touch wins best paper at SUI :)
Spring Played college survivor, made the merge!! but then got 8th place after being voted most likely to win
Spring First paper acceptance! FarOut Touch @ SUI
February Stayed with Srin in Atlanta for two weeks
January Wasp stung my EYE
2020
October Became a Schwartz Entrepreneurial Fellow
October Match with Chris Harrison of Future Interfaces Group - his welcome gift is a lockpicking set
August Started my PhD in Robotics @ CMU
August Visited Srin in Atlanta for the first time
August Played Idlewild, 5th best disc golf course in the country
August Tried original KFC (not at a KFC)
August First time seeing Grand Canyon
August Drove cross country, from LA to Pittsburgh, taking Southern route
March Walked top to bottom of Manhattan, 16 miles
February Attended Almighty Opp, weird puppet show in LA
February Road trip stop at White Sands National Park, went sledding
February Road trip to NM for crazy MeowWolf experience
Spring Worked backstage on Avenger’s campus for months
Spring Worked as Disney imagineer on the Spiderman webshooters ride
2019
December Featured singing into Karoake mic on James Corden. Also won a T-shirt for my enthusiasm during the show
November Bugible Thanksgiving! 18 course meal with every dish made with bugs
September Was on Let’s Make a Deal! They asked me a "quick cash question" (show me something in your bag with fruit) but I failed...
Fall Worked at Conservation X Labs
Fall Worked at San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research on an autonomous animal (polar bear) monitoring system
September Learned to walk on stilts (BM)
September Tickled by a professional dominatrix (BM)
September Climbed on Thunderdome while on shrooms (BM)
September Attended Burning Man: Metamorphasis
August Got stuck on ocean with Thai man trying to scam us
July Prostrated for 1.5 hours up a temple on Mt. Putuo
July Spent an entire week with ZERO communciation
July Learned KungFu with Shaolin Monks, both 8 trigrams and 12 forms
July Shaved head bald
July Lived at the South Shaolin Monastery in Fujian for a month
June Visited abandoned Buddhist Hell theme park, Har Paw villa
June Elephant Sanctuary in Chiang Mai
June Bought an ostrich egg (common in Vietnam). Really hard to crack and tasted weirdly gelatinous
June Travelled Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore with Candy and Sam
Spring Learned to Fence (PE)
February Watched Physicist Brian Greene record Light Falls, live
January Learned a lot at the Disgusting Food Museum
January Toured the Hiroshi Ishiguro Labs, where I voiced a humanoid robot and held a robot baby
2018
September Attended Grace Hopper as Microsoft Scholar
August Worked overnight at Disney’s California Adventure for two weeks
July Met Grant Imahara at Stuntronics demo
Summer - Fall Worked at Disney Research
June Microsoft Sponsor Prize at Capitol360
May Clefhangers sang at graduation, Roar Lions Roar
May Facebook F8 hackathon as F8 fellow
April Met Dominique Ansel and got a private tech tour!
April Second tattoo: SOTG (frisbee) on wrist. Designed myself.
March Had dinner next to the Prince of Lichtenstein
March Presented XPerience on international Catholic TV
March Explained VR to the Cardinal of Science (who didn’t speak English)
March Finalist at VHacks, Hackathon at the Vatican!
February Watched Martha Stewart live... she SUCKS
January Watched Trevor Noah live
2017
December Attended Alfred Aho's last ever class (now a Turing Award winner)
October SWE Conference
October Ada Lovelace Fellow at the OSHWA Conference in Denver
September Nude modelled for figure drawing club
September Modelled in CultureShock
September Top 10 finalist at HackMIT for SmartBike, an embedded systems bike kit with various sensors + taillights
August Visited the Philippines' Department of Education to negotiate contract
August Ran an innovation summit in Catarman, Philippines
August Witnessed cockfighting (roosters with knives strapped to their feet) + gambling
August Spent a month with nonprofit CodePhil in Lavazares, Philippines
July Got an NFC microchip embedded in my hand
July Went to DEFCon
June Watched the US Sumo Open with some of the world’s best sumos
June Competed in A16Z Battle of the Hacks
Summer Worked at NASA JPL for the Mars Sample Return mission
April Was FB friends with and chatted Martin Shkreli
February Ran CodeDay NY near the FlatIron
February Met Charles Duke, astronaut from Apollo 16
February Attended West Point Military Ball
February Ran DevFest with Tristan Harris as keynote
January 2nd place at PennApps
2016
November Hung out with Awkwafina again, this time at CSC Lunar Gala
November Convinced guard to lead me to roof of tallest Dallas building
November Ran Dallas CodeDay
October Ran the Columbia Makerspace MakerFaire booth at World MakerFaire
September Intel Sponsor prize at HackMIT
July Saw Muay Thai worlds
July Visited Chan in Vietnam, tried turtle for the first time
Summer Played on HK National Women’s Ultimate Team
Summer Studied abroad at HKUST
April Attended NASA Space Apps NYC
April Finally got the tattoo I’ve wanted for 5 years. Fire on collarbone
February LIGO Discovery! Immediate assembly @ Columbia, Neil DeGrasse Tyson was there
February Hung out with Awkwafina at a concert at Barnard, sang on stage with her
2015
Fall Finalist in Red Bull's "Can You Make It" Challenge with Candy and Mark
September Modelled in AAA CultureShock
September Started undergrad at Columbia University (SEAS)
January Learned to walk on ball, spin plates, juggle