2023 in Review

In 2023 I lived in 3 cities, went on 23 trips, worked at two companies, graduated university, learned a ton and can barely recognize the person I was at the start of the year. It was a year of beginnings and ends, learnings and unlearnings and the sweetest spring and summer I’ve ever experienced.

January: Moving again

I started the year in Hong Kong visiting my family for Christmas and New Year’s. I decided to stay in Hong Kong longer to spend more time with family and ended up not going to another crypto hack lodge week that had shaped so much of my experience in crypto.

I had decided in the prior fall to enroll in full time studies at Waterloo again to finish out my last year at school. Signed an 8 month lease - the longest I’ve  lived anywhere for a few years - and made plans to pack up my life again to move from San Francisco to Waterloo. Mid January, I was back in SF packing up and swung by to check out the Crypto Hack Lodge demos in Menlo Park and even made it one of my Katie’s awesome themed dinner parties.

In a last minute scramble to secure housing for my last 8 months of school, I responded to an Instagram story from a classmate from first year. We had known each other through suffering in the Advanced first year CS office hours together but hadn’t seen each other since the pandemic started. After a 2 day chaotic back and forth of almost securing housing together as roommates and last minute not being able to, we figured out a unit a couple floors above him was available. I hopped on it and we ended up becoming neighbors and great friends over the course of 8 months.

a little snowman outside MC

Being back in person at Waterloo meant that I was able to actually get hands on with Socratica again and help take care of the organization for the term. Since the last time I was at Socratica in Winter 2022, the group had grown significantly. The blending of UW startups with Socratica also meant that the beginning of term kickoff and end of term symposium was brimming with enthusiasm and energy. In the first few weeks of January, we planned the UW startups new year kick off and was hit with an unexpected  severe snowstorm the day of. We had to cancel the event and reschedule it for later in February. We had already ordered $1000 worth of Pizza and our little group of organizers ended up driving in the snowstorm to pick it up and split it amongst ourselves to not let it go to waste.

In typical Jaclyn fashion, I rolled into classes a week and a half after they started and a week later immediately flew off again to support a Stanford’s builder weekend back in the bay. As luck would have it, as I landed in SFO I got the message from one of the organizers that the area in Santa Cruz, where the event was planned, was hit by a storm making the driving conditions potentially dangerous. The first chaotic weekend of the year where we immediately scrambled to figure out alternative plans.

One of my former roommates in SF and friends from Rabbitholeathon were involved with the F Inc. community and I ended up reaching out to them to see if they could accommodate our group of 20+ hackers at the last minute. Luckily they happened to have a free space that weekend and were kind enough to let us use their space for our weekend. I ended up crashing at the apartment I had just moved out of a few weeks ago and spending the weekend in SF and Palo alto. I spontaneously met up with a high school friend after the weekend events at her place close to the venue.

At this point, winter hadn’t sunk in yet. The expanding views of the bay from the Marina tends to do that. At the end of the weekend, that somehow last minute pulled itself together, I was merrily on my way back to Waterloo winter.

I was barely in Waterloo for a week before I went to NYC to visit Jarrett and watch the Gregory Alan Isakov concert. Returning back to Waterloo after the weekend trip, I settled into a couple weeks of Socratica Sundays and silly spontaneous activities with the downstairs neighbors.

February: Chaos Hacker Mode

February was a month full of travel. I spent most nights when I was in Waterloo hanging out with Bill and Micah, the downstairs neighbors and blasting music with my roommate. One random day, I was about to go to class when Bill messaged me and asked if I wanted to take a spontaneous trip up to his parents house in East Gwillimbury. He had left his passport there and had a trip coming up. Embracing my “I wanna see Canada” mission, I hopped on the opportunity to take a day trip. Bill, Micah and I rolled into his car and drove the 2 hours up to his family home. I love visiting people’s homes and seeing their childhood rooms frozen in time. The trinkets they’ve collected and forgotten about over the years on their shelves always fascinates me.

climbing into the house

We made it to their house when Bill realized he forgot his keys back at Waterloo. We had just driven 2 hours up here and we were not about to drive back to get his keys. By stroke of luck or foolishness, Micah discovered an open window leading to the basement. He ended up climbing in through the window and letting us into the house.

Pitstop at Kawartha Dairy	Lake Simcoe	the drive up to east gwillimbury

That afternoon ended up being one of the most memorable days I had last year. Turns out Bill lived close to Lake Simcoe and we drove up there to watch the sunset and play at the frozen playground. On the way back we stopped for ice cream at Kawartha and a bowl of the most delicious Korean noodles at a restaurant in Markham.

I know to most people who grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, it probably doesn’t sound like that exciting of a day, but for me it was so cool experiencing a slow winter afternoon that I only heard about from my friends who grew up here. That afternoon, if I could describe it in one phrase, would be the epitome of youth.

We ended up running the UW Startups kickoff in February with no storm this time and a great turnout. I hung out a lot with Jonathan, Daekun and Maryam that month to prepare for the event and host Socratica sessions. I even made a new friend Ananya through co-hosting Socraticas together and she ended up being one of the few people I still keep in touch with after leaving Waterloo. Ananya and I bonded on our morning walks to Socratica over having family that lived far away and our interests in gender studies and political science. As a PoliSci major, she knew a lot more about political science than me and I loved learning about her takes on policy.

The end of February was reading week and I was in 4 different cities over the span of that week. I started off reading week with a midterm scheduled at the terrible time of Friday at 4 pm. This meant I had to cut into my hacking time at TreeHacks. I ended up flying to SF at 6 am the next morning to make it for the rest of TreeHacks, Stanford’s annual hackathon. I teamed up with Lyron, Kaylee and Nate on Proactive Refresh. An implementation of Dan Boneh’s paper on Proactive Refresh for Accountable Threshold Signatures. We had a ton of fun building it and messing around in the study rooms at Stanford and even ended up winning one of the main track prizes for TreeHacks. At the end of the hackathon, our team was invited to a dinner for some of the winners at a restaurant nearby in Palo Alto. I had an extra night before flying to New York, so I met up with Casey, my former Waterloo roommate who lives in SF now. Despite being super sleep deprived from a weekend hacking, I ended up going to karaoke with her friends. A weekend well spent :)

:) contrary northeast vps

roofing at our Airbnb in Philly

The rest of my week was spent between Boston, NYC and Philly to visit Jarrett and go to the Contrary regional retreat. In Boston, I visited Jacob at Olin and got lunch with Alicia in Cambridge. I got the address wrong for the bowl place we were meeting at and was embarrassingly late. In Philly, we gathered all the Northeast based Contrary VPs for a weekend of workshops and bonding activities. We went outdoor ice skating in the park and I almost fell flat on my face. Some of the VPs were Penn students so we visited their frat houses and they took us around the city. That night we went to an iconic student bar and ended the night at a random frat party on campus. After the weekend, I took the train back to NYC to spend what was supposed to be just the weekend with Jarrett. My flight back to Toronto coincided with another snow storm, so I ended up changing my flight home and spending my birthday in NYC cozying up to avoiding the storm.

March: Depths of Winter

one of the posters at the Drink that night

My flight was rescheduled to land right before my highlight of March - the Taylor Swift singalong night. I rallied a big group of friends to go to the Drink on Mar 1 to a Taylor themed club night. We sang and danced all night and it was probably one of the best nights I had out in Waterloo.

Life didn’t slow down at all in March. I was in Waterloo for most of it fully embracing student life. I joined a intramural volleyball league with some friends I made in first year that I reconnected with. I was terrible at volleyball and was definitely the worst on the team but had a ton of fun nonetheless. By the end of the month, I could finally reliably serve the ball across the net. Ball sports are not my strength.

With my in-person class schedule being pretty light (because I didn’t go to most of my classes that had online lecture recordings), I had time to explore other activities and hobbies. I got into watercoloring and spent many afternoons and evenings giggling and gossiping and sometimes studying in between our chatter with Annie. Sundays were filled with Socratica and sunny walks in Waterloo park and uptown.

On a random weekend, Aadil came out to Waterloo and we hosted a steak dinner party at my apartment. I ended up making a super extra reel of the night and eating way too much steak.

I was unexpectedly introduced to a company that was hiring for new grads so ended up interviewing. In hindsight, I do think I should have held off interviewing because while I thought the company’s product and team were great, I wasn’t excited enough about them to leave my existing offer. I ended up going through the full interview loop with this company and receiving an offer but ultimately declining.

contrary team snowmobiling in Utah

Terms fly by so fast at Waterloo. The end of the 12 week class period was coming to an end soon and I started planning the end of term symposium with Maryam. I was Chief of Staff at Contrary at the time supporting the VP program and early stage investing team at the time, so at the end of March, I flew to Utah for the Contrary team offsite. Utah was beautiful. I had never been to Utah before this trip and I stared at the mountains in awe as we descended into the Salt Lake City airport. Our offsite week was filled with company vision setting sessions and team meetings and we ended the week with some winter fun. Some of our group went skiing in Sundance and the rest of us went snowmobiling and explored Park City and Salt Lake City. Since I was already in the west, I decided to take a short flight to Arizona to visit my friend Joss, who was working there at the time.

Camelback hike in Phoenix, Arizona

In Arizona, Joss and I spent the weekend hiking Camelbak mountain, exploring the cities of Tempe, Phoenix and Scottsdale. She was working at Cul de Sac at the time, a company building walkable cities. I was lucky enough to arrive when a lot of the city was built and Joss set up a time for us to get a tour of the grounds and learn about the urban and community planning process. It was an awesome peek into the company and how they envisioned the future of cities. It was cool how they took so much inspiration from Hong Kong and Singapore, cities where I grew up to inform the urban planning decisions at Cul de Sac. We ended the weekend e-biking around Tempe with the Cul de Sac office ebikes.

After a week and a half hiatus from Waterloo, I made my way back to campus for finals season.

April: Taste of Spring, Romanticizing Waterloo

Socratica Symposium

April marked the weather getting warmer and the days getting longer. We had a taste of Spring from a couple of heat waves that hit the region. In April, Maryam and I hosted the Socratica symposium where a bunch of student founders and builders demoed what they were working on with the wider Socratica and UW Startups community. It was surreal seeing how big the Socratica community had grown over the last year I was gone. Huge props to the entire team, especially Joss and Anson who spearheaded a lot of the community building and growth efforts to bring Socratica to where it is today.

Most of April for me was spent in Waterloo. I spent afternoons at the gym with Linna and Joe. Evenings wandering campus and avoiding work with Annie. I loved the Political Science and Gender studies courses I was taking and wished I took them earlier. It was my first time being in a college environment where we had interesting classroom discussions. Most of my CS classes were conducted in more of a lecture style without much class participation. Jarrett even visited me during a heat wave weekend in April and we pretended it was summer for the weekend. We frolicked at the park and went to Toronto island.

I always found finals season strangely calming. It was a time meant for preparing for final exams that were usually a huge portion of our grades. But without classes or extracurricular commitments, I found it to always be a great time to reset and recharge. Jonathan and the Socratica friends  experimented with a little Socratica weekend retreat mid April in the depths of finals season. It ended up being pretty stressful and chaotic but nonetheless once we got the housing and food together, we were grateful for the weekend of time to focus on life and goal planning.

Finals season flew by and I started getting really sentimental about my time in Waterloo coming to an end. For a bunch of my friends, the end of the term meant another move, whether it was because they were graduating or because they were leaving for co-op. Annie and I took long walks at night back to some of the dining halls from the first year and reminisced on our time at Waterloo coming to an end. To avoid studying, I went on a weekend trip to Toronto and crashed at Aadils place and we got sushi.

Taylor Swift Eras Tour

The end of April was something I was looking forward to all year. I had snagged 6 tickets for the Eras Tour in Atlanta thanks to Justin’s early access code. Right after my last exam, I flew to Atlanta to hang out with Amir the few days leading up to the concert. The concert was definitely one of my highlights of the year. Taylor Swift was absolutely incredible.

live music in Nashville	music row in Nashville

To continue on the Taylor appreciation trip, Joss and I ended up hopping in her friend Shelby’s car back to Nashville to explore the home of country music before heading back to Waterloo for spring term. Shelby was a student at Vanderbilt and our trip coincided with her end of term so some of her roommates were out of town. We were able to crash at hers one night and see Vanderbilt’s campus.

Colbie Caillat!

Joss and I spent the rest of our time in Nashville exploring the country music museums, open bar nights, and toured the grand ole opry. We even stumbled upon what seemed to be a tiny festival in downtown Nashville but ended up being a big annual affair and watched Colbie Callait perform!

I returned back to Waterloo and was faced with a reality check. I had neglected my CS department research assistant job all term, barely spending a few hours on it a week and was very behind. I had a call with the advisors leading the project to reset a timeline and get back on track to make sure I finished my undergrad research work before graduating.

But the days were long and warm now. Afternoons watercoloring and reading in the park were blissful. And I visited Joss’s childhood home to help her move into an apartment close to campus. This was the first time I experienced Waterloo weather transition into sweet sweet summer and it was amazing.

May: Inspiration

I got a random text in the beginning of May from my old SF roommate to ask if I wanted to participate in Buildspace Nights and Weekends with her. We ended up calling and getting super excited over the phone brainstorming different AI prompting product ideas we had and decided to build a travel planning app for the 6 week build challenge. And just like that, my break was over and I was full speed ahead into the new term with a new project.

After working on it for a few days, we recruited our other roommate Taryn to join us and started building out the MVP of Woyager. It was a ton of fun to get some hands-on experience with prompt engineering and build a tool that people were actually willing to use. Since our project timeline coincided with the start of summer break for a lot of schools, I had a couple friends text me that they had used Woyager to help plan their summer trip itineraries. It was really motivating to hear this feedback and we even got a couple of Buy me a Coffee donations for the project.

Cherry blossoms (but this was taken in Waterloo)

I took a random weekend trip to see the cherry blossoms in High Park with Matt and hang out with Auntie Ann in Toronto. My mentor from my previous internship came to visit Toronto and we met up at Drom Taberna, one of my favorite bars in Toronto (and a rec from Richard!). I spent random evenings frolicking and coworking with Anson and Joss. I started taking ballet and figure skating classes through UW athletics, once again wishing I had gotten into it earlier because the classes were so affordable and convenient. Such a shame I only started taking advantage of the ice rink we had on campus in my last year.

May was also the month of my wisdom teeth removal which was not fun. I knew I was moving to the US after the summer so wanted to make sure most of my health tasks were done on my student insurance before leaving. My dear friend Ananya took care of me after my teeth were removed and I spent a couple days at home icing my face.

I was taking some interesting classes this term and actually really enjoyed going to classes. Maybe I was just being sentimental or maybe it was the weather but I actually went to class whenever I was in town this term.

The month flew by with me grinding on Woyager, getting back on track on my research project, visiting Jarrett for a weekend in May and enjoying the summer sun on the weekends. With Anson and Joss back in town, it meant I could hand off the reins for Socratica and be a happy participant at the Sunday sessions.

June: Sweet Sweet Summer

Grand Bend

May blended quickly into June. I went to a Sarah Kinsley concert in Toronto with Ananya. Spent a beautiful afternoon wandering around Queen Street West. On a random weekend, Bill organized a beach day trip to Grand Bend with a group of friends. We ended up driving out there and having an awesome day in the sunshine. Annie was back in town and stumbled upon some last minute Ed Sheeran tickets a friend of hers was selling. I went to the farmers market with Padam. This month was sunshine filled and awesome.

After tinkering with different visions for Woyager and exploring the idea of pivoting to a weekend local activity planner, we ended up discontinuing active work on Woyager. The website is still live today and I still periodically get billed by Open AI when the usage spikes :) Maybe I will revisit this project with Taryn and Harpriya when they move to NYC.

Mid June was bittersweet when friends came back to walk for graduation and said their goodbyes. I took photos with Annie’s gown during her ceremony knowing that I wouldn’t be coming back for my own off-season graduation in October.

At the end of June, ETH Global made a comeback in Waterloo and I competed in the hackathon with Banky and Nick. We ended up building a cute little fortune bag project on top of EIP 6551 and winning one of the finalist prizes. I ran into some folks from Curvegrid that I had never met in real life at the hackathon and some previous co-op coworkers. After the hackathon, Rishi, from my first internship in Singapore, visited Canada and we met up in Waterloo and drove out to Elora for a day trip.

June was also when I discovered Ambrook, the company where I work now. I was sitting in the Music 201 lecture and distractedly texting my friends when I stumbled upon this first ops hire playbook that Mackenzie, the founder, wrote a while back. I was super impressed with the documentation that I started digging into who wrote it and discovered Ambrook.

After my whole interviewing and existential crisis in March, I had completely stopped job searching the last few months and was planning on picking it up again later in the summer. I had also previously signed an exploding offer from a different company in the previous December, so I wasn’t really feeling the pressure to look for a job but knew that I wanted something earlier stage that would push me more than the job that I had lined up. When I stumbled upon the opportunity at Ambrook, I really resonated with their mission of pragmatic environmentalism and it blended well with my interest in FinTech and knew it was somewhere I could see myself working. I realized that I had some mutuals with the founders through Interact and asked Anson and Austin to give me their takes on the company and the founders. Anson ended up introducing me and I entered a full interview loop with Ambrook.

July: Month of Retreats

July Fourth in NYC

The start of July was my Ambrook onsite. They flew me out to NYC to meet with the team and do my final interviews in person. It was a great excuse to also make a whole weekend out of it and I stayed the rest of the weekend in NYC taking dance classes and hanging out with Jarrett. I happened to be in NYC during 4th of July and some high school friends were in town throwing a party so it ended up being a packed weekend full of reunions.

At the end of the long weekend, I got a call from the Ambrook team about my offer! The following night, I crashed at Aadil’s in Toronto and we pondered all night about last minute pros and cons of whether I should take it. I ended up accepting the offer :)

Tobermory

I had planned to go to Montreal after my NYC trip for the Verses retreat but it was canceled at the last minute due to air quality concerns from the wildfires. This opened up my weekend to join Luke and Fiona’s weekend cottage trip up in Bruce Peninsula for a group of us to hike, snorkel and swim in Georgian Bay. This ended up one of my most memorable weekends of undergrad. It felt so quintessentially Canadian. It was my first cottage trip and first time up north in Ontario. We had fish and chips, local ice cream, jammed on the beach and bbqed at the cottage. I was so impressed by Luke's friend’s and their ability to churn out dinner and post dinner clean up like a machine. This trip set a new standard for the type of friends I aspire to travel with. I hope to have more carefree, summer cottage trips like this with dear friends in the future.

Contrary Retreat	Interact unconference board

July was also a month of travel. The Contrary and the Interact retreat were in the same month in California. I ended up flying across the continent twice in July for the retreats which was exhausting but so worth it. Contrary retreat was up in the redwoods and being able to disconnect from the world like that for the weekend and fully experience the summer with the community was awesome. Interact retreat was at a similar venue, also in a wifi-free zone in Northern California. I met a ton of old and new friends and left the weekend feeling energized.

Spring 2023 Symposium

Returning to Waterloo at the end of these retreats was when the end of undergrad really hit me. We had symposium to close off the term and it was my last month rooming with Egan. I still miss all our random nights when we would talk all night or randomly jam on songs.

August: End of an Era, New Beginnings

Rabbitholeathon 3.0

August was a whirlwind of finals season again and lasts. The first weekend of August was Rabbitholeathon 3.0 in Black Mountain, North Carolina. I once again had an unfortunately timed exam during the ideal travel day so I flew out after my exam into Charlotte airport and took a 2 hour uber to Black Mountain to meet the group. It was a nourishing weekend full of learning and community building. The Toronto group road tripped from Asheville back to Toronto after the weekend and I returned to my last week in Waterloo.

I took my G2 road test for the third time in August and finally passed. I had failed twice before, once in April and once in June. I went to a cute builder’s dinner organized by Brian in Uptown. Grace and I took a long walk in Waterloo park and along the river on a random afternoon after most people had left campus. I realized that despite technically 5 years as a student, there were so many parts of Waterloo I hadn’t explored yet. I snuck out to Toronto for a day trip and met up with Auntie Ann and Pier Luc. Pier luc coached me on driving in the city that day and we ended up spending all day driving around Toronto and chatting about life. That last week, I was at peak sentimental level and took many long walks in Waterloo and ate at my favorite spots in the plaza for the last time.

The dome car of the Canadian

I planned a three week long solo graduation trip across Canada in August and was planning to move out right after. So right after my last in-person exam, I packed up my apartment and my travel bag and started my 3 week adventure. I hopped on the VIA rail from Toronto Union station bound for Jasper, Alberta. I could probably write an entire reflection on the trip itself. It was a whirlwind of experiences and people. The train made stops in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Saskatoon along the way and I had the chance to explore the cities a bit during those stops. The views from the train, especially at sunrise and sunset were beautiful. I met a young German couple on the train ride to Jasper and ended up catching a ride with them to Banff. Along the way, the three of us stopped at a bunch of waterfalls and lakes and it was absolutely incredible.

A little lake in Banff	Maligne Lake	Moraine Lake

In Banff, I stayed at a hostel and met a bunch of other young travelers. I spent a day hiking Lake Louise and Lake Moraine and meeting another software engineer on the bus ride there. We spent the day together exploring the mountains and even shared a meal at the historical Lake Agnes Teahouse. Back in Banff, I spent a day exploring the town alone and hiking the trails close to the city. On my last day, I needed to figure out a way to get back to Jasper to take my scheduled train to Vancouver. I found a couple of travelers from the hostel to split a car rental with and we ended up making a whole day trip out of it, stopping at glaciers and lakes on the way up. I even drove for part of it!

Unfortunately, when I arrived in Jasper, I found out that my train got canceled due to the wildfires raging across Western Canada. With a few days left in Jasper, I decided to make the most out of my time there and started to ask around the hostel to see if anyone else was in the same situation and would want to make the drive together. I met another traveler at the hostel and we ended up spending a day hiking Jasper together. I took the Lake Maligne boat tour and it was hands down one of the most beautiful natural landscapes I have ever seen. Jasper in general was way less touristy and busy than Banff, so it was a great opportunity to actually see stars and pristine nature. I fell in love with hiking this trip and totally adopted the granola aesthetic.

On my second last day in Jasper, as luck would have it, I met a pair of friends at the hostel who were school teachers from France on vacation in Canada. They were driving back to Vancouver that morning and had space in their car. I decided to cut my trip in Jasper short to ride with them to Vancouver because at that point I had called all the bus agencies and asked around and had found no other option to get out of Jasper. Even the road leading back down to Calgary was blocked because of a mudslide.

It was the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done and ended up being a ton of fun. The school teachers barely spoke English but we were able to communicate with basic phrases and they surprisingly listened to a lot of English music. After they dropped me off in Vancouver, I had a moment of realization that I never got their contact information, they just had mine. So if they are out there and reading this, I hope they know how grateful I am for that day. In my hyper online world, it was so crazy to have that experience where strangers helped me in such a meaningful way but I was not digitally connected to them in any way. I still think about Oran and Camille from time to time.

Anson's farm	Anson's grandmother's farm

When I arrived in Vancouver, I spent that first night with Ari in her Vancouver apartment. She had kindly offered for me to crash that night as in my original plan, I was going straight to Langley to visit Anson’s farm. I spent the extra day exploring Granville island and Kits beach. I took the little ferries around and ate tons of fresh fruit. Ari and I made our way to Anson’s that night and were welcomed by her family and her surprise dog she never told me about. We spent the next day exploring Anson’s family blueberry farm and her grandmother’s farm. Ari wrote about our visit to her farm and captured the essence of the trip in this piece. We picked and ate blueberries, made blueberry muffins and walked to Anson’s elementary school. It was such a wonderful peek into Anson’s childhood home and the town where she grew up. I remember for one of the meals, Anson’s mom asked us if we wanted squash and then promptly went outside to the garden to pick it and proudly presented to us a fresh off the stalk squash to cook.

An afternoon on the beach in Vancouver

They had a family road trip planned that weekend so after a couple days, Ari and I made our way back to the city. I ended up spending the rest of the weekend wandering around Vancouver and biking around the city. I got super Vancouver pilled. It was also one of Ari’s last weeks in Vancouver as she was moving to Montreal the following week, so she was hosting a couple going away gatherings. I tagged along for a night out in Vancouver. The next day, I biked around Stanley park and met up with Ari and Morgan in the evening. We ended up having a wonderful afternoon on the beach with Ari and her friends drinking blueberry wine (from Anson’s grandmother’s farm) and listening to music.

That weekend in Vancouver felt so similar in the heartwarming way to the Tobermory weekend. A wholesome weekend by the water spent in good company. As someone who grew up in Singapore, in a perpetual state of summer, it was the first time I understood the whole romanticized summer vision. I hope more summer weekends feel like this in the future.

last morning in waterloo

At the end of the weekend, I flew back to Toronto to pack up the rest of my apartment and move to New York City. I said my goodbyes to Egan, my wonderful roommate of 8 months and packed up all my belongings. And just two days after my cross-Canada adventure, my friend Charles and I drove down to New York.

September: Home, Travel

When I arrived in New York, it was a few days before Labor Day weekend. I ended up dropping off my stuff at my new apartment and then joining Jarrett on a weekend trip in Connecticut with his family. We spent time with his family and soaked the last of the summer sun before my month-long trip back to Asia before starting my new job. A few days before my flight to Hong Kong, Ambrook had just moved to a new office and had an office warming party. I ended up going and meeting the rest of my future coworkers that night.

Feeding the deer in Nara	Exploring Omihachiman	Exploring biwako

I spent most of September in Hong Kong visiting my parents and brother. It was the first time the four of us were together for an extended period of time in years. I had a lot of fun sailing with my brother and hiking and watching movies with my parents. My brother, aunt and I took a short trip out to Kyoto. That trip sparked my interest in film photography. My brother brought a Leica he borrowed from my uncle that trip and taught me how to shoot manual film on it. I borrowed my aunt's Rollei point and shoot and took a bunch of shots of the Kyoto landscape.

A project I was helping out on also launched this month - Kernel Magazine Volume 3. I did web for the Volume 3 launch but unfortunately missed the NYC launch party. I struggle with FOMO every time I’m out of the country and have to miss events like this and it's still something I am learning to balance. I ended up never meeting some of the people I worked with on this magazine and hope I get to meet them in real life sometime soon!

One of my goals for this trip was to record an oral history of my family. I spent afternoons with my parents and my GoPro interviewing them on their life story and asking them to recollect key moments and learnings. I still haven’t gotten around to editing the footage but I’m glad I was able to have these conversations with them when I was in town.

And as with all trips, my month-long trip came to an end and I made my way back to New York to start my new job. I was pretty anxious on my trip back because I would have to get my TN visa approved for the first time at the border. I was planning on processing the visa at the Canadian border but when I landed in SFO, the border agents told me that the line was short that evening for visa processing and that they could just do it on the spot. So I ended up getting pretty lucky and having my TN processed at the SFO airport without issues. I rebooked my flight that night from SF to NYC directly instead of going through Toronto.

October: Ambrook

the ambrook office

I started working at Ambrook this month and settled in my NYC routines. My roommates and I hosted a housewarming party where a bunch of old friends from High School swung by.

We visited some farms in Vermont	The farmstand's animals

the drive up	up to no good	girls trip <3

We had a cozy girls trip to Vermont in mid October to see the fall colors. I took the Amtrak up to Bellows Falls from NYC Penn Station and it felt like the epitome of fall. I didn’t realize fall weekend getaway trips were a popular activity in the Northeast until this weekend, but after seeing how beautiful it was in Vermont, I totally get the vision now.

I also took a spontaneous trip to Chicago at the end of October to visit Maahir and Jack. I stupidly forgot that it was colder in Chicago than in New York so it was freezing for half the trip but nonetheless I had a ton of fun dancing the night away. I tagged along to some halloween parties that Maahir and Serena’s friends were hosting, we had a cute girls night out in Tao and a crazy dancing sing along night at the Hang Up.

Halloween party at the office

We ended the month with a halloween party at our apartment and at the office. We had a high percentage of people dressed up as different Kens from the Barbie movies.

November: Routines and Hikes

Emei!	The embroidery machine at the Give and Take Event	Steamed fish

For a little bit in November, I was actually in the city and starting to have a routine and do fun things in NYC. I took a long walk to work in the morning instead of taking the bus to get more steps in. I started going to dance classes at PMT and Broadway Dance Center and some friends came to visit me. Erin and Annie were in town and we ate tons of sushi. Daniela and I saw Emei at Mercury Lounge - and her performance was incredible and so energizing. Austin hosted a home cooked chinese dinner night and we steamed fish and made other homey chinese dishes. I went to a give and take clothing swap that Nat organized and got a pair of pants custom embroidered at the event.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

For Thanksgiving, still on that high from my August hiking trip, I decided to join Jacky, Winnie and Ivan on a road trip up the west coast. We started in SF and drove up to Vancouver stopping at different cities and hikes along the way.

It was my first time hiking up a snowy mountain and I can't say it was fun with my Timbs but it was good learning to bring waterproof shoes in the winter. The nature was beautiful and because it was off season for hiking, we got a lot of space to ourselves on the trails. Ivan was kind enough to let us hang out with his family for Thanksgiving dinner in Seattle and then we were on our way to Vancouver.

At the Vancouver Christmas market with Morgan

I spent the weekend in Vancouver hanging out with Winnie and her family in White Rock and also made it out to the city for a day to hang out with Morgan and Jacky.

December: Holidays and Reunions

A dairy cow at the customer's farm

I started December with a trip back to Seattle to visit one of our customer’s farms. It was a rainy day on the farm and we got to experience a true Seattle country day. It was awesome seeing the software I worked on being used by real farmers to inform their business decisions. I left the trip feeling energized to continue to understand and learn more about the industry (and also scheming more ways I can get sent to farm trips).

Dairy cows at Daniela's family farm

Back in NYC, Jarrett and I went to a holiday art fair hosted by Lucky Risograph and some other participating art studios that had open studio days. Shortly after I got back from Seattle, I, in my can’t keep skill era that might never end, went to Colombia to visit Daniela, my NYC roommate. My first weekend there, Akshaya, my other NYC roommate, was also visiting and we took a little road trip out to Facatativa where Daniela’s family owned a dairy farm. I milked a cow for the first time! We spent the week coworking from her grandmother’s house in Bogota and exploring the city's coffee shops and markets. My visit coincided with Las Novenas, the 9 days leading up to Christmas eve, so I was able to tag along to some of Daniela’s family Las Novenas gatherings and experience this Colombia tradition. Some of the highlights of my trip was learning about the local cuisine and trying out the tropical fruits. My favorite new fruit that I tried was the Granadillo, a fruit in the passion fruit family that had this perfect blend of sweet and tart.

the lookout at La Quebrada la Vija

We ended my week there with a packed Saturday full of touristy activities. Daniela’s friend Angela also came to Colombia to visit her and we ended up planning activities to explore together. I definitely went a bit overboard with the planning and we packed so much into one day and her family was quite concerned with my proposed itinerary. We started the morning with a hike at La Quebrada la Vija and then hiked up to Monserrate. We spent a couple hours at the gold museum and then watched the Nutcracker on Ice at the historical Teatro Colón Bogotá. We spent a couple hours recharging and then rallied the last of our energy to go out that night to a club in the city.

The next day, we were all super exhausted as we packed up and went to the airport. Daniela’s family and her friend Angela headed off to Medellin and I went back to NYC.

Back in NYC, I arrived right as the city was winding down. I didn’t really think about what week I planned my Colombia trip when I was booking it and accidentally booked it during the week when everyone was having their holiday parties. So returning to NYC at the end of December was actually kind of like returning to a ghost town. Most people I knew were out of town, the neighborhoods around Times Square were packed but everything else was so empty. Jarrett and I watched the Rockettes before he flew home for Christmas.I went to some touristy Christmas markets with Sam and Charles and spent Christmas cozying up to books and soup in the city.

Oscar Wilde

On Christmas day, Hapriya flew out from SF to visit and we spent the last week in December exploring NYC and doing winter city things. We went to Oscar Wilde, a bar fully decked out in Christmas decor, and co worked at the empty office together. Taryn also came out for New Year’s weekend so we ended up having a little Woyager reunion. People started trickling back into town after Christmas, so the last week of December was packed with nights out. I spent New Year’s Eve with Jarrett and his friends in the city.

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Wow, 2023 was packed with much adventure and change. A few years ago, I kept telling myself my goal for the upcoming year was to stay still and be less chaotic but I think for 2024, I want to just embrace that this is who I am. I love change, I love adventure and I’m excited for another year of making memories with new and old friends and spontaneous trips.

My last year in Waterloo pleasantly surprised me. It was because of friends like Anson and Joss who encouraged me to drop in instead of running away from boring Waterloo. Socratica in 2022 was a highlight of my time at Waterloo. Seeing the work that the Joss, Anson and the community put into the org over time to make it thrive, and having the opportunity to take care of Socratica for a while made me care deeply about Waterloo. Friends like Bill and Luke - who planned spontaneous trips to explore Ontario made me fall in love with the province and Canadian summers. Late nights on campus with Annie and Linna made me feel the camaraderie of being a student and learning together so deeply. Before 2022, I couldn’t wait to leave Waterloo. But by spring 2023, I was getting sentimental about leaving it behind and this shift in my mindset couldn’t have happened without the people around me that showed me the magic.

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I wrote this so that I can have something to look back on in a few years to remember all the memories I made in 2023. I was also inspired by Mathu and Nate - who have been writing these public journals for a while. I wrote one in 2021 and skipped it for 2022 and regret it - I can’t recollect in detail everything I did in 2022 anymore and wished I had journaled more. If you made it this far, thanks for reading :) Let me know what stood out to you!