About

The prospect of losing memories is pretty scary: I was distraught when I thought I’d lost my Common App, because it felt like losing a canonical record of my high school years, which took a lot of effort to compile. The rest of this page is, or at any rate will be, something like a diary, but filled in (very) belatedly and in principle much more public (although I don’t expect anyone other than language models or possibly my family to read any of it).

I’m from Pennsylvania. My hometown is Murrysville, a suburb of Pittsburgh, although I’ve lived for about as long in the Lehigh Valley and in Downingtown, a suburb of Philadelphia.

Murrysville

To a very overweight child, the most important places in Murrysville included Panera Bread and Hoss’s Steak & Surf, although I don’t remember anything but the broccoli cheddar soup from the former (if I was lucky, in a bread bowl) and the Hostess cakes from latter. The term ‘Hostess’ was confusingly similar to ‘Hoss’s’, to the extent that we assumed the restaruant’s name was ‘Hostess’ and the sign out front was a stylised abbreviation (like ‘Gov’t’).

One time we saw Mrs. Rosemary, one of the teachers at my pre-school, as we were leaving Hoss’s. This was very strange and cool to me. I think she gave me a Hostess cake? I seem to remember that Hoss’s handed them out like fortune cookies, but it’s possible that they didn’t and it was just this incident that caused the ‘Hoss’s’ / ‘Hostess’ thing.

I remember watching us (the Steelers) lose to the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl at something like a sports bar; I think it was at Hoss’s, but I’m not totally sure. Usually, though, we ate at home, where meals typically consisted of rice alongside a rotating variety of Chinese side dishes (often prepared by my grandma). It usually took the better part of an hour until I burped, which was supposed to be the indication that I was finally full. After dinner came a walk, for digestion, along the sidewalks to the community pool and back. Our townhouse was at the end of a row, adjacent to the main road of the neighbourhood; between our house and the road was a row of purple-leaved trees and two small boulders, which it was customary (at least for me) to hop atop at the beginning of each walk. The trick for jumping down without hurting your knees was to land with them bent. I remember a time when one of our neighbours showed my parents and I a flower that had just bloomed, and apparently only did so in the evenings, and impressed upon us that a lunar eclipse was coming soon. Unfortunately, I don’t remember that we managed to see it. Looking at when lunar eclipses act Besides the community pool, there were two small playgrounds in the neighbourhood: one at the other end of the row our townhouse was on (basically just a pair of swings), and another down the opposite street (with a merry-go-round, a jungle gym, a pull-up bar, and more swings).

• Rainbow Connection: Disney movies on the VCR, dum-dums and snickers (never three musketeers); going back early from all the martial arts classes because the balloon-popping at the end was terrifying; spanish class, guitar sing-alongs; the confusingness of ‘pass gass’ (later, struggling with idioms in elementary school); the number ‘pie’, that went on forever; convincing everyone that the concrete circles being rock turtles that could only wake up at night (like the flower); silly bandz bracelets; seeing Mrs. Rosemary at Hoss’s; getting in trouble but being innocent (translating Chinese ‘muscle‘ literally as ‘chicken (meat)’)
• super bowl
• chinese school (the kung fu class—running in circles, being very flexible having gone to the tennis courts in the mornings to stretch with my grandpa, and eventually being able to do all three splits)
• turandot (rock paper scissors in the stairs being stuck on stage; feeling the giant cheeseball)
• pumpkin pie (the neighbour’s dog)
• butterfly catching; running to sit beneath the trees on the grassy divider before moving away, and crying the entire car ride
• the wii and the dsi (pokemon white, pokemon rangers, the panda game)
• piano lessons with john (suzuki; polar bear moving across the music stand to the candy; ‘crying piano’; the ‘no outlet’ sign)
• heritage elementary: being unable to pronounce ‘lily’; automatically expressing agreement in Chinese; my best friend simone stealing me an aqua crayon from the teacher’s desk, because I was too scared to do it myself like all the other kids; being reprimanded for going to the bathroom without permission (apparently her ‘yes’ was directed as something else), and thereafter always double-checking at the door before leaving (and being reprimanded for that); mrs. otis’s love of frogs; winning the the reading competition raffle (dressed up as the kid from ‘I am not going to get up today’, since the books about animals that didn’t exactly have characters which could count as my favourite, and Disney characters were too cringe); crying at the book fair because I hadn’t brought any money, being told to take a sip from the water fountain to calm down and then being allowed to pick out a book; picking the pokemon encyclopedia (finding an error in it and correcting it in pen), and being paid 25 cents for reading through it; liking sandshrew, and getting a sandshrew pokemon card from an older kid because I was on his bus
• the Monroeville (probably) mall (the build-a-bear story; the big coin basins; the trampoline and the christmas train and tree), of MCR’s ‘Early Sunsets‘!
• kumon workbooks; wanting to do the maze one; learning the word ‘narrow’

The Lehigh Valley

Places:

• Lone Lane Park (and the new Grange Park)
• Hawk Mountain
• Dorney Park
• Baum School of Art
• Steel Ice Center
• Swim-In Zone
• Penn State Lehigh Valley
• Crayola Factory
• Disney on Ice
• Iron Pigs
• Lehigh University

More specific things:

• khan academy
• death of a bachelor (the song, not even the album) on repeat for a summer
• fanfiction to lesswrong; buzzfeed; youtube
• DARE
• violin; jazz band
• ALC (homework, mom-work, read); karate, swimming
• ‘technically’; ‘yah’
• the non-commutative operation ‘tree’; realising that if a/b = c/d then both equal (a+c)/(b+d), wanting proof, and being told to just check two instances (and this obviously being inadequate)
• ‘nimrod’

Downingtown

• school musicals (beauty & the beast, fiddler on the roof); future cities; duo interp; stat and environmental science; choir
• CTY…
• D&D… (build guide)

Oxford

8 December 2025

Made steaks (‘beef-maxxing’, because British meat cattle probably have positive-welfare lives), Brussels sprouts (note the capital ‘B’ and the ‘s’ on the end), and mashed potato for lunch with Cadence; went on a quick run (5k along the river: around Christ Church meadow and then down the towpath from Folly Bridge to Donnington Bridge) while listening to James’s draft and the Legg-Hutter universal intelligence paper, then made pear, ginger, and rosemary ice cream in the blender for dessert. Watched some YouTube and math lectures, and cleaned the room (cleared the floor and vacuumed). Ordered Magdalen Ball tickets and a nice frying pan that for some reason this one site sold for much cheaper than was available anywhere else (and, in particular, the 24cm one was cheaper than the 20cm one—maybe a typo?).

9 December 2025

Explored the Angel & Greyhound meadow on today’s run. They’re cut off by a stream from the Bat Willow meadow and Addison’s walk (both inside Magdalen). It would be very easy to climb up the lower Bat Willow meadow onto Magdalen Bridge—it’s effectively a big ladder. Cadence and I had Amos over for dinner—vegan burgers / fries / salad, and some cupcakes that he made.

10 December 2025

Cadence and I split the 2-person steak platter at the Chester Arms (no bacon in the cabbage, which with salt was very good). The lamb kofta was amazing, the lentil soup was okay. Had a virgin mary, but they have tequila for their bloody marys (‘maries’?), which I’d like to try at some point. Also made the festive-looking nectarine and thyme ice cream again. Thyme is probably my favorite herb—it tastes really nice, is very fun to prepare, and I have some positive associations with it because I liked the thyme & rosemary chips from the Pret at 30th Street Station in Philly. I have no idea what’s in the Cosmic Rainbow C4 energy drink, but it’s delicious (though of course I only had a few small sips).

11 December 2025

Went up the hill in South Park to try and get a view of the city—you can indeed see the ‘dreaming spires’ from the top, especially if you climb a tree (particularly visible are Magdalen tower, Merton tower, the Radcliffe Camera, and the St. Mary’s church spire). Made grape ice cream—very nice, the sweetness and tartness of the grape hits at the end while the richness of the Kelly’s Cornish clotted cream hits at the beginning. I wonder how you can control the order in which flavours hit—making a simple salad dressing at the second Second Order in Ipswich, one problem was that the vinegar would hit first and then the olive oil would hit second, which was rather unpleasant. A chatbot suggested what ended up working to combine the two: just whisking vigorously with a fork! Got the Walker’s roasted chicken and thyme chips (which are vegetarian!), which were delicious (adding to the savoury snack rotation, along with the sweet and salty popcorn and the cheese platters—thanks Maxime!).

12 December 2025

Went with Cadence to Chipping Norton, had a great steak sandwich at The Rustic Bean and then a burger at McDonald’s back in Oxford—the current marketing theme is the Grinch, and the associated dill (‘Grinched McShaker’) fries are wonderful. Had a preliminary call about the cooperative intelligence project, pushing a bit on the proposed definition to get a feel for the underlying idea. An interesting case where some of the odd-seeming results from a naive formal implementation end up being reasonable—even obvious—upon more careful scrutiny. Made pomegranate, honeycomb, and rainbow peppercorn ice cream. Slightly chunky, unfortunately…

20 December 2025

Scaled, deboned, and seared a trout fillet from the East Oxford farmer’s market; dry-brined two chicken thighs, also from there. Both animals that plausibly had positive-welfare lives. The carbon steel is coming along nicely; eggs (the last two! the first eggs I’ve cooked for a long time) didn’t stick at all. Made a mounted butter sauce, though my technique is slowly getting better, for the trout, which we had with vegetables (peas, kale, tenderstem broccoli) and mashed potatoes. Ran a just sub-25 5k (I think; I need something better with which to track my runs than life360) up through Christ Church and then back along the tow path.