austin 2025

Listened to the least music in my life this year

Top Albums I Enjoyed This Year

Looking back, realized I continued listening to about 25% of past “top albums”. Is this normal?

1. Blood Orange - Essex Honey

2. Oklou - choke enough

3. Nourished by Time - The Passionate Ones

4. Jim Legxacy - black british music

5. MIKE - Showbiz!

6. Smerz - Big city life

7. Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka

8. Ichiko Aoba - Luminescent Creatures

9. Earl Sweatshirt - Live Laugh Love

10. Panda Bear - Sinister Grift

11. Navy Blue - The Sword & the Soaring

12. Playboi Carti - MUSIC

13. caroline - caroline 2

14. Pink Pantheress - Fancy That / Fancy Some More?

Albums I Think I Enjoy That I Discovered Going Through Several Lists

1. Sharp Pins - Balloon Balloon Ballon

2. Titanic - HAGEN

3. OHYUNG - You Are Always On My Mind

4. Barker - Stochastic Drift

5. DjRUM - Under Tangled Silence

Songs I Liked A Lot in 2025

Top 10 Restaurants I Ate At (mostly new but some really good meals)

1. Lao Fu Zhou - went on a food tour with Flavors of Fujian (insta) and this place was so interesting (dishes I have never seen before) and fun. Also fun that this address was a bakery that had a rogue driver crash into the front

2. Bridges - I think I recommended this to everyone for the first 6 months of the year. The Perfection of restaurants.

3. Sugita, Tokyo - I still understand nothing about sushi. But this is likely the most “exclusive” flex I’ll be able to have in my ordinary existance over rich foodie bros. I wish they kept my interview in this video because of how stupid I sounded

4. Bunta , Kyoto- probably my favorite meal in Japan

5. Torisho Sai, Kyoto

6. Casa Urola, San Sebastian - Spanish food is the best European food, mostly because they were willing to experiment

7. Foodie BBQ & Bar - went here 3 days in a row.

8. Chongqing Lao Zao - yeah I finally went and it was insane. Vegetarian tomato however was atrocious, felt like canned tomato soup in a hospital

9. Clemente Bar - got customized coasters for our anniversary, thanks Alex :D

10. Other NY spots I would happily recommend/go to again

    1. Bong

    2. G’s Coffee Shop

    3. Kashkar cafe

    4. Dirt Candy

    5. Smithereens

    6. Maxi’s Noodle

    7. Mama Yoshi Mini Mart

Top Movies I Watched This Year In Chronological Order (here’s my Letterboxd)

1. Nickel Boys (2024)

2. Shanghai Blues (1984)

3. Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

4. Aftersun (2022)

5. Slacker (1990)

6. Trainspotting (1996)

7. The Killer (1989)

8. Hard Boiled (1992)

9. Mind Game (2004)

10. One Battle After Another (2025)

11. Sentimental Value (2025)

12. Marty Supreme (2025)

Top Books I Read That I Would Recommend (my Goodreads)

1. Perfection - Vincenzo Latronico ¹

2. The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky

3. Levels of the Game - John McPhee

4. Jazz - Toni Morrison

5. Flesh - David Szalay

6. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 - Lawrence Wright

7. There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America - Brian Goldstone

8. The Years - Annie Ernaux

9. Small Rain - Garth Greenwell

10. Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS - Joby Garrick

11. Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures - Mary Ruefle

12. Bright Dead Things - Ada Limon

13. Crossroads - Jonathan Franzen

14. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power - Daniel Yergin

15. Empire of the Elite - Michael Grynbaum

16. The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide - Gary J. Bass

Worst Things / Other Good Things of 2025

1. Saw some truly awful movies

   1. Highest 2 Lowest - this was the most disappointed I’ve ever been in a movie in my life

   2. Materialists - just so awful, feels like a step backwards for society, asians, art humanity, etc.

   3. War of the Worlds - was hoping to add this to the “bad but funny” canon but it actually was nausea-inducing

2. Streaming Services - There is nothing more frustrating than having to navigate between 400 streaming services to find one movie or one soccer game. I’m especially looking at you, Gotham Sports. This is especially in conjunction with my budget TVs that have minimal processing power, and crash after 3 buttons are pressed in a 1 second timeframe. Even worse is how all the streaming services log you out after 3 days, so you have to spend 10 minutes fiddling with a QR code to hopefully log in, before then getting kicked out due to having multiple people logged into a streaming service that you are maybe password sharing but also possibly paying $100s per year to enjoy. Ultimately I think this is why people settle and watch some 6/10 Netflix documentary about a cult.

3. New subway barriers - Mixed bag - I’m mad because I’m not tall enough to step over the new barriers and thus am spending ~$50 more a month to take the subway. Deep down however I feel some karmic righteousness that I’m improving the transit system with every $2.90.

4. AI Hate - joining “are you Gen Z or Millenial” as one of the WOAT conversation topics

5. Screenzen - got my screentime down to ~2 hours a day by blocking X and Instagra, and recently started blocking Slack which has significantly increased my quality of life. Unfortunately, the mind still desires an endless scroll, so my Substack usage has gone way up.

6. Substack - As I started using the homepage feed more, I realize this is just Twitter without videos and more words. This can be good (don’t need as much context for references) but often negative (AI goobledegook and self-help essays for dopamine addicts). Mixed feelings but I probably should stop using this on the subway and just stare in the distance more.

7. Physical Ailments - My back/neck/shoulder started hurting in various ways in the past 1.5 years. I attribute this entirely to my job at LinkedIn - despite not exerting much effort, the complete lack of purpose in life probably made my spine really stiff or something. My solutions included:

   1. Korean Physical Therapy spot - had some great PTs, some awful, and tried acupuncture for the first time (not helpful). Ultimately gave up, as I kept receiving mysterious letters/checks in the mail that showed that the insurance comapny was fully aware they were running some insurance fraud, and didn’t want tokeep dealing with that.

   2. Expensive PT - why is any good physical therapist charging $300+ for 1 hour and not taking insuarnce? What is the point of health insurance?

   3. Yoga - was on a roll of taking ~1 class a week at Vital, but I’ve been jaded with the inconsistency of teachers and the fact that I can’t kneel for too long without it hurting a lot.

   4. Daily Stretching - yeah it was good but extremely hard to be intrinsically motivated beyond the fear of being completely immobile by age 35

   5. Breathing - my ultimate theory is that somewhere in the last 3 years I have forgotten how to breath correctly. This has led to a general lack of flexibility and stiffness in my torso. Let me know if you understand how I feel and know how to fix this!

8. FIFA (aka FC 26) - I bought this game because I thought I could control myself and game responsibly as a 28-year old adult. I was completely wrong. Game creators have mastered addiction and our human brain serves no match for gambling. I did have 1 or 2 hours of fun in the ~50 hours that I spent on this at the cost of my soul for Nov-Dec 2025.
   

Things to Look Into for 2026

1. Why my PC keeps blue screening every day

2. Toe Spacers - do they work? Could this change my life?

3. James Joyce

4. Putting in some effort at the gym - downloaded an app called Boostcamp and started one of the many anime-themed workout programs here. So far my theory is correct that downloading a tracking app makes it more fun.

5. Trains - I subbed to the r/nycrail subreddit and it’s making me appreciate transit a lot more.

6. Wine - this is the year! Just need to figure out a good way to connect memory and taste

7. Graffiti - feel like this is a nice combination of trains + wine

8. Drinking more tea

   

   Top of mind right now, looking to upskill on this

9. Tax avoidance

10. Growing our wedding quartet business

11. Getting rich somehow but more importantly not losing all my money on stocks/crypto

12. Shooting (soccer) - Took a class because I’m really bad at soccer and realized I’ve been missing out on the most fun part of the game. Could see me evolving into a Jhon Duran (not to be confused with Phillies closer Jhoan Duran) type player in my Sunday league…bad attitude but good at shooting, chasing the bag in Saudi Arabia

13. Hiking / Camping - I feel like the crunchy hiking/camping content is either too crazy (Outdoor Boys), lowkey ASMR, or feels fake with insane drone footage. Maybe I should experience life normally without watching influencers first.

1. Top flex of the year is finding this book in a trash pile outside Minh’s neighbor’s home and reading it 3 months before everyone else