01 — Passions
The small things
that make life
remarkable
The smell of coffee, the view from a mountain peak, the taste of something delicious — the little things I live for. Small encounters that bring incremental joy, making a significant difference by the end of the day.
Six passions. Each shaped by curiosity, discipline, and a desire to experience the world fully.
01 — Coffee
Coffee
A coffee shop is a multi-purpose place — a casual spot to study, read, catch up with friends, and let my guard down.
The scent of freshly ground beans, the hiss of an espresso machine, the low hum of ambient conversation — these signals tell me I'm exactly where I need to be. Coffee shops are spaces of permission: permission to slow down, think, create, or simply exist without agenda.
Over time I've developed my own rituals around coffee. The order of operations matters — the first sip, the type of cup, whether it's a window seat or a corner table. These routines aren't precious; they're anchors that make a new city feel like home within minutes.
02 — Eating
Eating
Imagining how delicious something looks and tastes before finally eating it is incredibly satisfying.
Food is memory compressed into flavor. A bowl of beef noodle soup transports me to a night market in Taiwan; a perfectly charred pizza margherita places me in a narrow Neapolitan street. I eat to travel through time and place as much as to nourish myself.
When I have the time, I enjoy cooking something new, trying new dishes, or creating my own recipes — experimenting until the flavors align with the image in my head. There's a particular satisfaction in feeding people you care about something you made by hand.
03 — Hiking
Hiking
Navigating rough uphill terrain can be grueling — but the view from the top makes every step worthwhile.
Hiking is the one activity that strips everything back to its essential form: one foot in front of the other, breath, landscape, and presence. There's no fast-forward. The mountain doesn't care about your calendar, your inbox, or your mood — it just asks you to keep moving.
The Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu was the peak (literally and figuratively) of this passion — five days that tested me physically and revealed something about the relationship between effort and reward that I've carried with me since.
04 — Learning
Learning
Spending hours on a single problem, exploring solutions through trial and error — and finally solving it.
Learning, for me, isn't about acquiring credentials. It's the process of being confused, sitting with that confusion, and then feeling the clarity arrive. That moment when something clicks — when a mental model snaps into place — is one of the most satisfying experiences a human being can have.
I'm drawn to disciplines at the intersection of things: technology and design, data and storytelling, systems thinking and human behavior. The best learning happens at the edges where two fields rub against each other and produce something unexpected.
05 — Reading
Reading
An armchair in a quiet corner, natural light, and a book that pulls me so deeply in I lose track of time entirely.
Reading is the most efficient form of time travel available to us. In an hour I can inhabit a Roman emperor's decisions, understand the structure of complex systems, or slip into a fictional world that illuminates something true about this one. It's the closest thing to empathy at scale.
I tend toward books that sit at the intersection of ideas and narrative — history that reads like a thriller, science that feels philosophical, biography that doubles as a meditation on how to live. I'm less interested in books that confirm what I already think and more interested in books that unsettle me productively.
06 — Design
Design
To be truly beautiful, something must be aesthetically pleasing and also novel and insightful — I strive for both.
Design is the discipline that argues every detail is a decision. The weight of a font, the amount of white space, the sequence of information — these are not decorative choices, they are functional ones. Good design removes friction between a person and what they're trying to do or feel.
I find this philosophy applies beyond the screen: in how a meal is plated, how a conversation is structured, how a hiking trail is marked. Design, at its root, is intentionality made visible — and that's a principle worth carrying everywhere.
"The little things? The little moments? They aren't little." — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Each of these passions is a different lens on the same underlying value: paying attention. Paying attention to flavor, to landscape, to ideas, to beauty — and to the small moments that accumulate into a life worth living.
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