⁘ 8 weeks into NYC
meanderings of being (f)unemployed, linkedin scrolling at 3am, meeting loved ones from halfway across the world...
“Aren’t you stressed? I would be so stressed if I were your in your position,” my friend asked, followed by a series of aggressive mouse clicking in the background.
I instinctively respond in a lighthearted and rehearsed manner before shifting my attention back to the game at hand. “I’m doing just fine!” I say. This was my first summer staying abroad without any routines enforced to me—days full of potential but saturated with uncertainty.
I dove straight into New York Tech Week the moment I moved into my sublet apartment in New York, unsure of what to expect in the coming weeks with my new title of “unemployed”. That was swiftly followed by more conferences, networking events, roundtable discussions and presentations by various organisations.
In early June, I spoke to Olya about writing on Substack as a way to document and process all the noise and information we take in. It’s incredibly convenient and easy to get caught up with the endless slew of events that happen in New York everyday.
Month and a half later, Arif published his first post at a cafe while waiting for me.
So finally, this is a feeble attempt to write again in hopes of savouring, reflecting, and make sense of the chaos around me.
Rather than caged in blocks of color on my Google Calendar, here are a few moments and realisations I’d like to write about briefly for now:
Attended my first SFPC “Becoming Hypertext” workshop with Chia and Kaloyan!
Learning about the desktop as a theatre and a way of performing, the technicalities to creating unconventional experiences with websites
Attended my first Creative Mornings event ( and club anniversary!), Creative Coding meetup, XR Guild, and even Solana Solstice 2025 (a web3 conference)
Some technologists talked about Strudel code, chaos in mathematics, surreal and discursive numbers (rapier physics engine?)
Met the Gizmo team at their launch event— Trudy, Josh, Patrick, and many other creative folks
Saw Spencer’s work who an inspiration for my capstone at the New Museum Incubator to various tech x AI talks in town
Conceptualised and built “Jia” in a Vibecoding Hackathon with my dear (graduated) friends from university
The most serendipitous encounters in New York…
Enya at Pride, after a cold emailed swallowed by the chaos her travels to China
dangertesting folks from the AIR incubator, whose work I’ve followed on Twitter a few months ago. And bumping into Marc on the streets one random evening
Daryl on the crosswalks of East Village, right before we met for dinner
Interviews with multiple startups and countless (insightful and exiting) chats, a revamped (coded) portfolio, and some attempts at learning Rive and Code…
Last but not least, seeing some of my dear friends from half-way across the world in the streets of New York.
an inspiring read, thank you arin
the video of us bumping into each other still gives me goosebumps. literally a scene out of past lives