I started playing bridge as a kid and never stopped. In 2017, I won the championship (U25 Girls Teams) and silver medal (U25 Girls Pairs) in the 5th World Youth Open Championships in Lyon, France. Bridge teaches me lots of life-long philosophies — that information is never complete, that your partner matters as much as you do, and that good thinking under uncertainty is its own kind of art. The strategic depth and social dynamics of bridge have always fascinated me and trained me to think in terms of probabilities, inference, and collaboration — skills that have been surprisingly transferable to my work in AI research.
Later, I found Hold'em poker, which I play casually with friends. Poker is a different beast from bridge — it's more about reading people and less about perfect information and partnership. I enjoy the psychological aspect of poker, the bluffing, and the thrill of making a good read.
Food is how I explore places and people. I'm drawn to dishes that carry history — the kind of recipe that hasn't changed in decades because it doesn't need to. Traveling has made me a more curious eater: I'll follow a smell down a side street, order something I can't pronounce, and always ask for the local recommendation over the tourist one.
I cook the way I approach most creative problems — with loose structure and a lot of improvisation. I'm especially interested in how flavor builds through technique rather than recipe-following: understanding why something works so I can adapt it. Lately I've been experimenting with fermentation and slow-cooked dishes where patience does most of the work.
Having visited many art museums, I started painting as a way to engage more deeply with the works I loved. I don't have formal training, so I approach painting with a sense of play and experimentation. It's less about creating something beautiful and more about the process of seeing and making. Painting has taught me to appreciate imperfection and to find beauty in the unexpected.
I find pottery incredibly meditative. The tactile nature of working with clay is a nice contrast to the abstract world of code and data. There's something magical about transforming a lump of clay into a functional object with your hands. Pottery has taught me patience and the value of embracing mistakes — a collapsed piece can lead to new creative directions.