It’s spring now. I know this because the cherry blossoms are out, and because a couple Sundays ago I saw a guy in a bunny suit try to eat a whole 10-pound chocolate bunny from Costco:
The chocolate bunny was as tall as an adult torso, and the guy got 70% of the way there before barfing twice behind a tree and calling for backup. It would take another ~10 people in the audience, one by one, to finish the rest.
I only found out about this because I was on my way to Sunny & Annie’s Deli to get a giant sandwich (pho #11 with beef bulgogi on a hero). Such is the beauty of NYC and the American desire to turn anything into a competition, even if it’s just a competition with yourself. Would you see the same in the Jardin du Luxembourg?
Here’s what NYC looked like over a month ago:
Most of my six years in NYC were spent with warm winter months. A few inches of snow here and there, temperature barely in the negatives (celsius). Still cold by San Jose standards, but nothing to complain about in front of lifelong New Yorkers or midwesterners if I don’t want to look like a weenie.
This year hit different with actual blizzards that shut down the office — the first time since the early days of the pandemic. It forced me to work from home, which I rarely do (it’s harder to listen to gossip when you’re working remotely). But even when workplaces and grocery stores are all shut down, you’ll still see people playing around outside.
I watched some students roll a giant snowball around Washington Square Park. And I came away relatively unscathed from snowball fights, although that probably means I could have pushed harder into the fray.
The best time to enjoy the NYC blizzard is immediately after the wind dies down, or towards the end of the no-driving warning period. In Manhattan the walkways turn to grey slush by the next day, so if you want to stomp in that pristine snow you must act quick.
how else was winter like this year?
Snowstorms aside, this year’s winter felt different for many other reasons.
- First, the new senseless war in Iran.
- Second, more friends and their loved ones getting sick. The serious kind.
- Third, an exciting Winter Olympics. I especially loved watching Alysa Liu — a local Bay Area hero — and speedskating champs Jordan Stolz & Jorrit Bergsma. Bergsma getting a gold model at 40 years old means there’s still time for me, no? 😉 .
- Fourth, AI models have been improving at a dizzying rate since December. It gets up to 70-80% of my research workflows already when it comes to data cleanup, formatting, and does a more-than-decent first pass at analysis & interpretation. I may not agree with everything it outputs, and there’s a lot of back and forth conversations we have before it’s something I can share with the rest of the team, but it’s genuinely impressive.
My workday looks much different from where it was just several months ago. Now I am always saying hello to this orange fellow in the terminal:
I go back and forth between hope and despair when it comes to the power of these AI tools. The story of the Australian guy who sequenced his dog’s genome for targeted cancer cures gets me thinking that I need to be more imaginative with the possibilities of this new material. So I’ll hold off on the doom and gloom for today.
a new meaning to wednesdays
Quiet layoffs are ongoing at my workplace, but the giant layoff rounds usually happen on Wednesdays. For the past three Wednesdays this April I thought it would be my turn, but it hasn’t come by yet. Leave it to Reuters to break the news first, now the official layoff day is Wednesday, May 20th. A few weeks away.
If I don’t keep my job I will feel quite sad (I actually like my research gig believe it or not), but I know I’ll find something else interesting to do.
Roxie tells me that if she gets laid off she’ll immediately go to a Denny’s to mark the occasion — doesn’t matter if the email is at 3 AM in the morning her time. Denny’s isn’t as common in New York, but that’s no problem because I can go to Veselka the Ukrainian diner across the block. They just opened their 24/7 service back up for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Comfort borscht would be good.
what to look forward to this spring?
Two cool friends (both named Peter — the name must come with a great spirit) each introduced me to lovely communities:
- Olive Tree Writing Club: the first writing club I joined since the satire newspaper in college. Have been going there for the past two Sundays and keep coming back, meeting other bookworms and writers (hi James!). We say hi and introduce ourselves, shut up & write for 90 minutes, then talk about what we wrote.
- The NYC design & human-computer interaction community: there’s a whole group of people who love to build experimental tech and get a kick out of having other people experience it for themselves (new types of cameras & projection systems & storytelling formats, peeing Labubus, and more). Here the street cred comes from demo-ing what you’ve made, no matter the fidelity. I’ve been an enthusiastic audience member, but now the time calls to be an active participant. I’m sure they’d still let me hang out even if I didn’t make anything, but that wouldn’t be as fun!
I’m hoping that hanging out in these spaces in the springtime & beyond will bring new possibilities (projects, friendships, a grounding rhythm when everything else is rapidly changing).
I also need to remind myself: how many more blizzards and cherry blossom blooms will I get to witness in my lifetime? I’m worried about a lot this year, but I’m an absolute goofball if I let that distract from the beauty around me.