2024 in Review 📅

🎵 The song for the next year is Bella Ciao de Libertad, by "La Sonora Yarana" (it's for a video game, I don't think the real band is credited, unfortunately) 🎵

While this blog is honest and meant to feel intimate, there's naturally also an element of presentation. There's more to every story and feeling that I present here, and this complicates my Year in Reviews.

For example, I found it hard to write about 2021 because I was heartbroken, betrayed, and humiliated over a breakup for a relationship I bought a ring for. I struggled to talk honestly about 2023 after a professional split left me incredibly sad and frequently angry. In both cases my year was shaped by a relationship fraying with another party, and to talk about my year honestly involved mentioning those conflicts. But I leave out a lot of detail, namely: the concrete stories that back up my feelings. You can imagine versions of those posts where I enumerate conversations, decisions, and mistakes I felt the other party made that made me feel mistreated and disrespected.

Detailing those would be a terrible idea. It's probably obvious why, but I'll spell out a rationale anyway. First, if you're lucky enough to be dealing with intelligent people, doing their best to be kind (as I was), it's worth recognizing this, even if your feelings don't want to come with you on that. It's worth remembering how people assumed the worst in you for decisions you made when they didn't have the context you had, so even if it's hard, try to extend that to the other party. And going forward, in life you'll ever only be in control of your side of things. For that, and if you want to grow, it's important to cultivate an awareness of your own role in the break (including personal shortcomings, irresponsible decisions, and mistakes) and not fixate on someone else's behavior. It takes two to tango, and you're only human too.

(note that this doesn't mean that "individual culpability comes out in the wash," or "nobody is at fault, and the blame lies squarely in the middle" or anything as childish and asinine as that. you can keep multiple ideas in your head at the same time)

So on a personal level, writing a directly spiteful piece, or a lawyer-ly account of All The Wrongs is cringe and counterproductive. It also goes against the goals of my writing: this is "More Pablo," so the focus should be on me, not another party. But also: I was feeling wronged! Mistreated! Disrespected! At the time of writing: I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel, I'm cold and I am shamed, lying naked on the floor.

(God, I hope you recognized the song lyric)

So how do I maintain the goals of keeping it about me, and not write a vindictive or spiteful piece, but still write honestly about about my feelings, which did contain a ton of contempt and spite?

The Simpsons is where many of us learned that sushi from a blowfish (フグ, "fugu") could accidentally kill someone with neurotoxin. The chef has to carve it just right, leaving the poison bits out and the good bits in. So, loving a good puzzle, I took real satisfaction in authoring posts in a way that, like skillfully carving the fugu, presents and defends my honest feelings, includes a few details on the shape of the situation, but doesn't include the poison of the most incriminating or embarrassing details. I once heard the best fugu makes your lips tingle with numbness, containing just enough neurotoxin to give you that sensation, but no real danger. In the spirit of emotional fidelity, my own self-respect, and frankly, more fun for the reader? I think that's a fair description of what I was aiming for.

So, 2024: this was a very big year for me with lots of beauty, lots of joy and laughter, lots of successes, and grief I'm comfortable writing about. But one narrative dominated, extremely painful, and I really, simply can't talk about here. I'm reminded of Chadwick Boseman suddenly dying and that's how everybody learned he'd been fighting cancer at all. In my case: it's not cancer! Not literal, physical cancer, anyway. And it's not something I'm withholding because it's shameful or embarrassing for me, personally, as a result of being a dumbass (e.g. "I got myself addicted to meth")—if it were that, I promise I'd talk about it. I'm more willing to share in person, but on the publicly-facing blog: this is a blowfish far beyond my abilities or desires as a sushi chef. I don't feel like solving the puzzle of how to write about it, besides this.

So, enjoy mining for hints and allusions in the last year or so of posts, but that's all you're getting. As for the rest, well, I have plenty to say on that too!

Sapo (~2012 - 2024)

But we're not on the happy parts of this post yet.

The shape of my year was almost entirely guided by Sapo's failing health, and eventual death, in November. I was his caretaker for 9 years. I came back from my Big Asia Trip #1 (next section) in April feeling empowered, with clarity on things I wanted and adventures I was ready to embark on. Having a dog always made it harder to consider big life changes, but sometimes you choose to say the words "problems are solvable!," start from where you are, and see how far you get. I was ready to bring him with me wherever I went, and while logistics are scary and complicated, they're usually overcome-able, if you're patient.

As soon as I was resolved to carve out a new life taking him with me, things changed. I noticed he was breathing heavily even at rest, and coughing. I also felt like his energy was dropping? But he was starting to get older, and maybe I was just imagining it. I scheduled a precautionary vet visit for him 2 days later. Upon seeing the symptom description on the booking form, the vet called and asked if I could see him same-day. That was the first hint something was wrong. This would be 2024's first of many Big Vet Visits.

The previous October, the vet let me listen on the stethoscope. He wanted me to hear it for myself: Sapo had a heart murmur. He told me there wasn't much we could do, it's normal with aging, but it could degrade over time. He was about 12, so I paid it little mind: a friend in high school told me they had a heart murmur, so I figured it wasn't that big a deal, and just like aching joints, a 12 year-old dog will have issues. I thought the schedule for the degradation would be measured in years. But in the April visit they told me Sapo's condition worsened considerably: he'd progressed to Stage C congestive heart failure (the final stage is D). They said most dogs at this stage, with the proper interventions, have less than year; some much less than that, some make it a little further. But we were now at the stage where sudden, imminent death was possible.

That night, of course, I cried. As when I grieved romantic separations, professional hell, or loss of family members, Sapo came by and comforted me. He was licking tears. His tail nub was wagging, as if to say "don't worry Dad; we'll get through this, whatever it is. we always have! as long as you feed me. and pet me! those are important. ideally: do it now!" and I wanted to scream "no!! It's you this time, you beautiful bastard!!," and he couldn't understand it, because he's a dog, and I suppose I'm glad he couldn't.

There's a lot more I can write about this, and I may still in other posts.

I'll say this: I firmly believe a person can only have so much awareness for why they wake up in the morning. If you asked someone "what do you live for? What makes you excited to live your day-to-day life?", they'll have a sketch, but nobody is capable of making a list that will include everything, they'll always leave things out. The joy of living is filling in that list, gaining awareness of all of life's beauties, forgetting some, and then being reminded again. One way to learn what's on that list is to have it taken away from you. Love is at the heart of a worthwhile existence, and one of the most poetic parts parts of being human is that love is also unknowable. But one way you get insights into the shape and magnitude of your various loves, how they glue the elements of your life together, is when they're denied to you.

Because of the nature of Sapo's condition, grieving started before he passed. His death wasn't a surprise, as I had to make the final call for him. But no amount of thinking, or past grief, prepares you for loss. I didn't, and couldn't, know how much he tethered me to Earth, and like other grief craters in my life (Annalisa's illness, my grandfather) I still find new facets on this crystal, when I least expect it. And with each surprise grief bomb, at first you're like: thanks, I hate it. But hating yourself for having feelings isn't going to improve anything, and besides, it's just love by another name. Especially with all these idiots telling me that LLMs are conciousness, I love any reminder of what it is to be human, even when it hurts like hell.

And it does. It hurts like hell.

Nearly every day of 2024, and to this day, I'm still saying:

Sapo. I made you a promise when I adopted you. I did the best I could. I had no idea how lucky I'd be. I hope it was a good life. I love you so much.

Asia (🇸🇬 / 🇮🇩 / 🇹🇭 / 🇻🇳 / 🇯🇵)

I got the itch to travel right after leaving Ramp. For the first time in my life, I have the financial means to take some time. I have resources, am unattached by partner or kids, why not live the dream and go abroad? In 2024: I visited five countries in Asia during February and March, did 10 days in Japan in June, and went to three countries in December.

Some background: my Guatemalan grandparents lived in the house with me growing up. With the help of a workplace benefit, my mom got subsidized "home leave," so my family was able to visit Guatemala every 2 years growing up (I've been... ~15 times? I've lost count), starting from a very young age. I spent a summer living with family friends in Guatemala when I was 13. I got a scholarship, and subsequently spent a summer living in Japan with a family when I was 15, via Youth for Understanding. I did a CISV Seminar Camp in Portugal when I was 17, CISV also took me to Norway when I was 19, and I went to an international school and did the IB growing up.

All this to say, until I was about 20, my life was very international. But then I stopped—I didn't study abroad in college like many friends did, and my international travel mostly dried up. I didn't realize how important an international understanding was until I came back to it these last few years. When we broke up, Karen and I had a friend group almost exclusively of White, monolingual American tech workers. A hard part of the breakup was losing the friend group, and while removing myself from that social circle was necessary as an act of self-respect, they were still my friends, who I loved and counted on. Over time I rebuilt a new circle, one that fit me a lot better, and only later did I notice: they're all immigrants. Saurya, who's family immigrated when he was ~9. His wife Dora, from Singapore. Adi, who's Indonesian Chinese. Anya, who came here from Russia when she was 7. Virtually my entire friend group: knows how big the world is and has a solid understanding of how America fits into it. They've known what third-world poverty looks like from a young age, and how most of the world actually lives. They've felt multiple languages swimming in their brains for their entire existence, like me.

("International awareness" runs in the family. My brother Robert married a woman who immigrated from Japan when she was ~11. Annalisa just married a German immigrant. The data suggests two things: a) the Meier kids can't marry domestic, they need to import, and b) my future wife is probably Italian. Why? It's the WW2 Axis power we're missing)

There's nothing wrong with being White and/or monolingual, of course, as many of my closest friends and family are. But I can't deny: my new friend group, there are so many conversations I get to have that I couldn't before, and many things I don't have to explain to someone who didn't want or care to know. All relationships require work, but some are square wheels on dirt, and some glide like a bobsled on ice.

In November 2023, I was grieving my grandfather. I was grieving the company I was proud of being a foundational member of. I was grieving the comforts of long-term romantic relationships, and for most of 2024 I was grieving the approaching death of my dog. And I was (am still?) grieving a 20's and early 30's that was spent with my hands off the wheel, depressed, playing safe, ignoring parts of me that other people weren't drawn to, instead of embracing and loving myself for them. Desperate, and feeling powerless to change literally anything from a life where I was carrying a lot of pain, I said "fuck it, we're going to see a lot of Asian countries." I went to Singapore, Indonesia (Bali, Jakarta), Thailand (Bangkok, Koh Tao, Chiang Mai), Vietnam (Saigon, Da Nang, Ha Noi), and Japan (Tokyo, Gifu).

When I got back, I decided I had to leave the States. I always admired my mom traveling to a country where she didn't speak the language, marrying a native, building a life abroad, all that when she was 24. I remember hitting her milestone ages in my 20's and being like "God, am I some kind of slacker?" What I was missing then was a full appreciation that my mom's immigration was forced via political violence, and if she'd had the choice, she probably would have stayed in Guatemala, with her life having her marrying "Guillermo" instead of "Dwight." Regardless, I hear a call. I'm hungry to try something big and new.

Now: my angst is probably internal. I've spent plenty of time in therapy and I know going somewhere else won't fix my problems. But the world is big and beautiful and interesting, and even if my problems are internal, I can at least wrestle with my demons somewhere more entertaining. Think of a boring TV show. Now set it in space and add dinosaurs. It's probably still a boring TV show, but it's at least marginally more entertaining, especially if you've been watching the first version for 28 years. Barring some major surprise, I'd like to leave the States in 2025.

I wanted this to happen earlier, but Sapo's health complicated that. But now as much as ever, I feel that I want to keep traveling. I haven't seen India, and apparently it's a pretty big and interesting place. There's so much of Latin America I haven't seen yet, and I learn so much about what happens to my brain and heart when I speak and hear Spanish.

What can I say about the trips? Traveling alone feels like a deferred 20's. I can't really condense so many places and all that time into short narratives. I'll make a few micro points, maybe I blog longer, later:

According to Instagram, I had a perfect, magical time. And I did, too. It could also be pretty lonely, and having laundry and your wardrobe and a kitchen and a gym are very nice too.

Fave food: Indonesia. I had the advantage of Adi's guidance, as he's both an Indonesian and a foodie. But holy Lord those spices. Every island's got their own twist on things, and they woke up my taste buds to realities I didn't know existed. And I thought I was already an adventurous eater! Regarding food, the whole region is magical and it feels criminal to pin a medal on a single place: Thai food, Viet food, Peranakan food, Singapore's hawker centers, Japanese food—but Indo food still has me clawing at my computer mouse to book a trip back.

Most convenient: Japan. Things usually just work, it's easy to get assistance in English, the cars don't honk, the cities don't smog, the weather is more temperate, they've got that trademark politeness, and there's a bajillion internet resources to plan a great trip.

Fell in love with: Vietnam. This took me by surprise. It's hard to put into words. But the cities and people are Goldilocks-level perfect on most spectrums.

Writing and blogging, again

I never "set out" a strategy for this blog ahead-of-time: it's always been reactive, just what I felt like sharing. Sometimes in retrospect, I see phases: first half of 2023 was Industry Talk, to build The Brand. In 2022, I was "blogging my personal growth to a future partner after a bad breakup," a bit like the at-the-camera monologues in High Fidelity or 500 Days of Summer or Annie Hall. While I've been able to produce worthwhile Year In Review posts, when I first start writing them, a part of me wants to yell "idk, just read the last year of posts! it's all there!!" This doesn't quite work in 2024, where I wrote... art crits?

I feel like my art crits are my least popular "phase." There are comments on this blog, and while nobody uses comment sections anymore, they've generated fewer than normal. One (1) person in my life has commented on the art crits as a category, in a chat, telling me he especially likes them (thanks HW!).

The lack of response is a bit of a bummer, because I really like them! I think each has observations about the world that are pretty interesting on their own. The "islands" usually give some insight in how I model people, their motivations, and the world at large. Some contain ways of looking at art that are practical and useful for how you can make all art in your life more fun (see how my BioShock 2 post gives a framework for considering sequels, or how The Vegetarian begat a framework for "artistic handoffs"). The expandable sections often contain juicy personal anecdotes, or raw reactions that are a lot less polished.

I could be making up this lack of interest, and people really love them? My favorite and least favorite thing about blogging is that you have so little idea who's reading your work, and you don't get insight into engagement. I've gone on first dates with people who'd named our kids because they read my blog before we met up; twice at company holiday parties I've been exuberantly thanked by co-workers I've rarely met for something they loved that I wrote years before (this is the best interaction). So maybe these are popular, or someone got what they needed from it.

The good news is, it doesn't matter at all: I'll keep writing what I damn please 😛

Here are the art crits, and a short sell. Also, you can watch my craft get better, as I learn how I want to talk about these:

• The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy (novel). This (and The Sympathizer, later) is where I coined the phrase "Asian torture porn," which describes a lot of Saurya's favorites. I talk about the value (or not) of edgy art, "nerd junk food" where there's a character type nerds love to relate to, and who is allowed to have wild craft (like Shakespeare making up words) and who doesn't.

• BioShock, with Ken Levine getting auteur credit (video game). Learn more about "stacking the deck" with worldbuilding, and be reminded how some stories can really only be told in their medium, even if, by some measures, it fails at that medium. A bit about auteurs.

• BioShock 2 (video game). Hear me describe a framework for considering "sequels by auteurs," and apply it to this one.

• The Sympathizer (novel), by Viet Thanh Nguyen (novel). If there was an Editor's Choice star to say "okay but this one, I really really liked," I'd put it here. I talk about horny art, politics as performance for someone's personal anguish, and personal agency.

• Disco Elysium (video game). My love of Don Quijote, and what it means to (unknowingly) adapt it while still being its own piece. Casting choices, and using art to provide indirection to safely talk about race and politics for people who can't handle it. Storytelling from "forgotten nations." How a big studio could never produce this.

• The Substance (movie). A lot of smaller points, but: wow, this movie was a hot mess. The worst thing a piece of art could be is boring, and it's not that. But whatever the second-worst thing art can be, it's that. I talk about its thematic incoherence, it's clumsy attempts to be stylish, I refer to a bunch of other work that I think does it better while also being shorter.

• The Vegetarian (novel), by Han Kang. The meta-narrative around prestige awards like Nobel prizes, can you write in a way that allows international audiences without writing for international audiences? Works in translation (and this spawned the handoffs post). Agency and care for others.

• Celeste (video game). Boundaries, gender and identity, the power of connection, the value of integration, and how self-love and respect can look very different than many people expect.

Re: my writing, I'll also put another plug to Pablo Timer, if you haven't read it yet. It's a deeper essay that most people will skim in 10 minutes, or actually read in 20-30. If you want a week of content, try clicking through all the links and watch the associated media. Virtually nobody does this for anything I write, but if your brain is able and excited to, a) I made it for you!, and b) let's hang out.

Languages

After my first Asia trip, I started learning 日本語 (Japanese) and Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) on Duolingo. In Hanoi, I was approached by schoolchildren who asked basic questions to practice their English, and later by one very gregarious kid who had a private caretaker (I suspect he was neurodivergent). He was very forthcoming, saw the Duolingo icon on my phone, then grabbed it out of my hand to show me how it all worked ("oh, you don't have an avatar! Let's set one up. Wow! You're in the lowest league! I'm in Ruby League."). Not for nothing, this kid had amazing English.

Turns out Duolingo's a lot of fun! I've since done a lot of reading on language learning and Duolingo is very polarizing—it's both the most popular "language learning" platform in the world (gogo Guatemalan founder!), and also largely fails at making most of its users useful in a language. My current take is "it's the best video game you can install on your phone," and the 7-10 minutes you spend on it are a better use of time than a bit more TikTok or IG.

But criticisms of it are warranted, and while I had fun with it, I also felt like my progress was more about "winning Duolingo" than the kind of language acquisition I really wanted. I let my streak die with Burning Man, and when I got back I decided to try something new. I paused on Vietnamese, since even though I love it, I thought focus was a necessary precondition to reach the levels I was after. My rationale for Japanese was "I already have a head start" with my teenage homestay experience (this proved to be less than I expected 😅) and being freshly motivated after my trip in June.

I may make content about this since I've discovered a ton of fun and wonderful things, but here are some bullet points:

• Learning a language is hard. I used to get salty when someone in a long-term relationship (not even mine!) didn't learn a language for a partner. And I still think that's somewhat warranted—after all, you spend a lifetime together, and the benefits to understanding that person are enormous. But my Spanish ability came automatically growing up the way I did (I've never been monolingual), this is the first time I make a committed effort to learn a new language as an adult, and it's a hell of a mountain to climb.

• But, it's usually not this hard. I learned about the FSI Rankings, where the US Foreign Service observed how long it took an English speaker to learn a new language, and with that information, they break languages out into hardness categories. They found that it takes an average of ~24 weeks to learn Spanish or other "closely related" languages. The next category is smaller—Swahili, Indonesian, and Haitian Creole take more time than the previous category (about 36 weeks), but less time than almost every Asian language. The category after that is the largest, they take ~44 weeks, just short of a year, about twice as long as Spanish and Italian. This includes languages like Thai, Hindi, Vietnamese, and Bengali. But: there are 5 "super-hard" languages that take 88 weeks, literally twice as long as those. Japanese is there, with Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean. So when I get down sometimes, I remind myself the language I chose takes twice as long as the next-hardest category, which itself takes about twice as long as if I was learning, idk, French.

• Language-learning communities are passionate and tribal, like programming language communities. People get attached to their methodologies, and often mean to each other for no reason. People seem to love thinking about and talking about language-learning more than actually learning languages, which reflects a lot of programming culture too. I think there's something human at play, where it's easier to opine online about something than practice it (and risk failing, or confronting that it's hard, actually).

Anyway, as much as I have concrete goals here: the Japanese have their own ranking system, and I'd love to hit Japanese "N4" by June. I'd love to polish off my Spanish enough to hit (using CEFR language levels) B2 or C1 this year. Maybe I pick up Vietnamese again to hit A1 or A2. My boy Adi is conversant in 6 languages, and my goal is to hit that by the time I'm 45 or 48.

Rapid-fire

Let's breeze through a bunch of topics

Dating

I had one of my better relationships this year. At about ~4 months in, it became clear it wasn't going to work out. It's tragic, I'm still pretty sad about it, and the breakup contributed to my horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad Fall (Sapo dying, oral surgery, and the election were part of this too).

Otherwise, not much dating this year. It's hard when you're moving around so much, caring for a dying dog, and so deep in grief. In the spirit of "it'll happen when you least expect it," I'll continue to not expect it in 2025 and just live my life.

Work, kinda

I didn't have a job for all of 2024, and I'm so, so lucky that I could do that. Money and lifestyle is a very sensitive topic, so I'm not sure I'll blog deeply about it. But:

I used to say "man, if I wasn't working, I'd do [X], and [Y], and [Z]!!," and if you're working you might say those things too. In reality? You might not do X, Y, or Z. Or, it'll take a bit of time to adjust. This year was magical and freeing and there's no limit to the good things I can say about the "not having a job" part, but also: fewer things changed than I expected.

Note that I'm not talking about needs (e.g. childcare, healthcare, food, bills, debts); obviously a move from "depleting savings," or "entering debt," or "barely sustaining" to something like "comfortable and secure," or "accumulating savings," is huge. If you have fantasies of what your life would look like closing that gap, yes, absolutely, I believe that's way better. But as a skilled software developer, with great credentials in the boom decade, without kids or much debt other than my student loans, I was nearly always financially secure for my needs, and in the tiny gaps where I had trouble, I had confidence that I could right myself pretty quickly (and I did). I still had uncertainty about questions like "could I retire?" or "could I ever buy a house?" and "what would raising a kid look like?", but I knew I could probably get a decent job, which meant I could probably always eat, pay rent, and stay out of debt.

So the main thing that changed when I didn't work this year were time and attention. Here's what I mean by "fewer things change than you would think": initially, I had no idea what to do, or how to best spend my time. A major motivation of Pablo Timer was to give myself permission to relax, which is why I set it so damn deep into the future. I was incredibly wound up, having been wound up for the past 28 years. I kept thinking about the Big Thing I Should Do, or Who I Should Be Impressing (I hadn't really answered "me" for most of my life), and every answer was something I needed to see realized on a timeframe of weeks or months. I wasn't stretching myself, I had no practice listening to myself, or building myself in ways specific to what this amount of time would afford.

Thinking you'd know immediately what to do when given a gift like "significant time without working" is a bit like the misguided thinking behind "One Laptop Per Child," where there was this ethos of "let's put computers in front of kids with no training or guidance—for them or the adults in their lives—let's just see what happens by giving laptops to kids!" as if people can learn to use a tool by osmosis. No, it really doesn't work that way. One Laptop Per Child failed. If I lock you in a room with an accordion for a month, you may figure some things out, but you won't be anywhere near as capable than if you had even the tiniest amount of dedicated, structured instruction. The fact that people who don't receive primary education stay illiterate even as they spend their adult lives surrounded by text, with plenty of upside to learning, speaks to the fact that exposure is often not enough. I was given a gift with this time, but like being in that room with an accordion, I initially didn't know what to do with it. And this caused some panic.

Now I think I'm falling into my rhythms. But it took longer than I thought.

One surprising thing about this year, "professionally": this is the least I've coded in 16 years. This has interesting identity implications, but this post is long enough and I'm getting tired of writing it, so maybe I'll write on this later. But: I'm not gonna sweat it too hard. I'll let the energies carry me wherever they take me.

Festivals, Art

I hit the festival circuit again: went to Burning Man, went to Priceless, had a rad birthday party which was like a mini-festival, went to Wonderfruit in Thailand, went to that secret event I had an installation at last year. In 2023 I was able to bring a crew to most of these; in 2024 my crew was too busy with other, less important things (getting married, or having a baby). I don't know that I'll prioritize them as much next year.

Photo dump

Wow, you made it. Here are a bunch of photos from the year I couldn't sprinkle elsewhere. Thanks for reading, and being in this world ✌️

Assorted photos! 🖼️

I'll roughly follow chronological order. I have a bajillion more photos than these, so if you want to see or know more about anything, ping me. It's just a hassle to format + add so much alt text. First, enjoy this shot of my niece Emma learning she's now about as tall as my grandmother:

Now, first Asia trip. The first month of the trip was traveling with friends; through Saurya's wife Dora, we know many Singaporeans who were going back home to celebrate Chinese New Year, so I tagged along on the ride.

After that, I went with Saurya, Dora, and her brother Sean to Nusa Penida, an island near Bali.

And we spent some time in Bali too, where Adi joined us.

Adi and I then went to Jakarta while he was visiting family. He fed me. The. Best. Food.

Afterwards, I started my solo trip, which began in Thailand. I visited a ton of temples:

And got my diving certification in Koh Tao.

Went to the Chiang Mai night market.

After Thailand comes Vietnam. I started in the South, Saigon. Saw an excellent dance performance at the old theatre, and discovered Bún bò Huế, my new favorite noodle dish.

Finally, I went to Japan. I had a week left and was deciding between Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, or Japan; and just picked Japan because it occurred to me I could, and hadn't been there in 22 years. I'm happy I did!

Post-Asia, there was Sapo care to do, and Saurya's bachelor party + wedding.

Interlude: Adi also hosted a number of dinners that are in my "best times of my life" list. Yes, he's that great a cook, but it was less about the amazing food or any particular hangout, more getting to spend life laughing with people you love, as a regular thing you do.

The wedding itself was a highlight. I don't have great photos of it because I was frequently on duty (I did some management of the sound, I had a speech to give, accordion to play. Additionally, at weddings, they have official photographers who always urge you not to take too many photos, because then their photos have everyone with their phones up). But I wrote a little bit about the magic of the wedding on Instagram Stories, so I've shared them here.

After Saurya's wedding, I went to Japan again in June. The original plan, after my first trip, was to spend another month or two in Japan and Vietnam, practicing both languages and scoping out places to live, with the hope to move after Burning Man. But Sapo's diagnosis meant I wasn't moving. I canceled most of the trip, except for 10 days with one of my very besties Anya, who was a few months pregnant and wanted to go on a "babymoon," her last big hurrah before her first child. This is us at a Jazz club, where the owner is an accordion player!

Later, she helped me cook 11lbs of beef for a Burning Man Camp Dinner. Life is better when you get help. Anya's an amazing cook and a veteran of cooking meals for her camp. We made a bibimbap, and through the power of slow cooking, you can make the cheapest cuts of beef incredibly tender.

Some Burning Man!

While we're here, have some Sapo photos.

I hosted a rockin' birthday party again this year. I've written about previous ones (2022, 2023), I'm loving my Fun Birthdays era. There's two Very Absent Narratives in this blog post that I can't write about; the big one I alluded to in the beginning, and one from this party. Someone gave me a gift that touched me so deeply I could barely breathe, and honestly I still get locked in my feelings when I see photos of it.

After my birthday, was Annalisa getting married 😊. This was a civil ceremony, she's having a proper wedding later.

I ended the year with another trip to Asia, after Sapo died. I got invited to Wonderfruit, and met a crew of amazing, amazing people.

After that, I went to Japan, specifically 九州 (Kyushu, the southern island). I wanted to practice my kanji, see something I hadn't before. I started in 福岡 (Fukuoka) and ended in 別府 (Beppu), the hot spring capital of Japan.

I ended that trip (and the year) in Hanoi again, getting there Christmas Eve.

Adi happened to be swinging by Hanoi, so we met up for a few days. Friendship ended with Bún bò Huế, Bún Chả is my best friend now.