Now

This is a now page, where I occasionally update where I am, what I’m doing, and/or what I’m trying to focus on.

Aug 2024

📍 Vancouver, Canada, (updated Sep 2024)

I’m finished with conference travel for now and settling into Vancouver until late Oct. I added another conference to my trip (SmallDataSF – which was amazing!), and extended my stay in Vancouver through to the end of Nov. Still working on synthesising various definitions of provenance and provenance-related tools across computer science, applied statistics and data science.

I have some gripes with my past-self for over-packing my travel schedule, but really can’t complain about my first-time experiences at JSM, posit::conf(2024) and tidy-dev-day! I connected with so many amazing people in the data science and stats community, successfully delivered two new talks and even got to squeeze in a spot of outdoor climbing while in Seattle thanks to an old friend.

June 2024

📍 Munich, Germany

After jumping through what felt like endless hoops of approval processes, funding changes and decision fatigue, I’ve finally started my many months long research trip across Europe & North America. Some upcoming highlights include:

  • 🇩🇪 Visiting SoDa group at LMU (Jun 13-26)
  • 🇦🇹 Presenting on ex-post harmonisation and the {xmap} package at UseR!, Salzburg (Jul 8-11)
  • 🇺🇸 Presenting on assessing statisical programming skills at JSM, Portland (Aug 3-9)
  • 🇺🇸 Presenting on Quarto for Knowledge Management in the Level up your Data Science Skills session at posit::conf(2024), Seattle (Aug 12-14)
  • 🇨🇦 Visiting the InfoVis group at UBC, Vancouver, (Jul-Nov)

It’s hard to express how grateful I am for this opportunity and the support I’ve gotten, especially from my supervisors, to not only expand my research network, but also to experience so many new cities and countries 🥰.

On great experiences, I may have found one of my favourite Vietnamese restaurants (ever, and that’s saying a lot coming from Melbourne) after getting caught in the rain in Amsterdam last week and striking up a conversation with the stranger I was sharing my table with at Saint Jean Deli. The sticky rice Xôi bowl at bonjour càphê is just the perfect blend of textural variety and flavour balance was just chef’s kiss. I had the fish & dill bowl, and the sticky rice felt amazingly light with just the right amount of bite, while the pickled mango gave the dish a sweet and acidic brightness that just perfectly tied together the slightly saltiness of the fish the aroma of the herbs and chilli. My only regret is that I only found this place on Monday when I was leaving the next morning, and their tasting menu is not available on Monday nights 🥲. I’m seriously considering when/how I might get myself back to Amsterdam to try it.