Farewell to Travel
An ode to the roots I'm putting down in Austin
For the past 14 months I have been channeling my inner Hemmingway sans alcoholism, adulatory, and depression. Living the life of an expat, traveling non-stop, recovering from a major injury, and taking life as it comes at me have created a number of incredible memories but they are also a departure from the way I lived life prior to starting my job at Emerson. Although I am extremely grateful for my experiences and the ride that I’ve been on, I would be lying if I said that it was sustainable.
Today’s AAA will bring you up to speed on the last of my travel experiences and plans prior to Christmas/New years holiday term. This post will offer a sneak peak of the friends that I am making and the life that I am building here. Over the next few months I am excited to be investing in these people and in this place. As always, thanks for tuning in and let’s get to Today’s piece.
We’re going to flip the script and go in mostly chronological order since my last post. This is mostly because now that I do this bi-weekly/bi-monthly (depending on how you define it) it is hard to keep up with the Work, Life, Travel framework. Also, my travel will be much less moving forward so it’s just easier this way.
My roommate, Hunter, (pink hat) invited me join his Monday night top golf league where we do all the normal things that normal golfers do except we do it poorly and in costume to match the weekly theme. This past weeks theme was Luau and our team is “Ball Busters” because we thought it would be funny. (Date of this event was Sep 25)
Pictured left to right below: Hunter, Alex, Joe, Josh, Kyle, and not pictured is Cam.
Austin claims to be the live music capital of the world and on Tuesday Sep 26th Kathryn and I went to Antone’s night club to check out Tim Atlas. Kathryn is my concert buddy down here and we’ve got a great slate lined up between Austin City Limits (ACL) next weekend and Ava Maybee the week after.
On Thursday (Sep 28) after work I made the familiar journey back up to Chicago to attend the wedding of my friend Alex Sarros - now Alex Moran. I met Alex through the Engineering Student Council at Purdue and luckily my friend Lauren Heiss ( making her AAA debut ) was also invited because being the only jew at a full catholic wedding would have been a lot for me.
The wedding was a good excuse to see my old roommates Ben and Ethan who talked me into running the Race to Wrigley 5k. Even though I don’t like baseball it was a pretty cool event because part of the course included the warning track of the field which was neat. Peep the before and after race pics and notice that Ethan remains a hater #IFYKYK.
I had a busy week to prepare for as I landed back in Austin on Sunday October 1st. Monday night (Oct 2nd), the other EIL’s (pic of us in suits) and I got invited to a meet and great plus dinner with the Emerson leadership team and the Emerson board of directors. This was an exciting yet intimidating event because the board consists of some cool people like the current president of ADM, the former CEO of EY, and a former white house chief of staff.
The main goal of the dinner was not to make a fool of myself which basically just means don’t use any Gen-Z lingo because everyone in the room is 40+. I succeeded in using corporate lingo and also learned some neat facts like the CEO also runs marathons and the Chief Legal Officer grew up a few blocks from my Dad’s house.
After the dinner ended I went straight home because I needed to pack for my 5 am flight to Anaheim, CA to attend the Emerson Immerse Exchange. Emerson hosts an event every 1-3 years where they invite a large number of customers and partners to a convention center to talk about all the cool things going on in the Industrial Automation space. Think CES but just my company.
The event was a great opportunity to network, learn about my companies products, and interact with customers directly. Some of the highlights include meeting Kasyap (pictured above) and a number of the other developers who work on our software products, attending talks on cybersecurity and AI as it relates to the industrial and discrete markets, and also just bonding with my team.
The Anaheim convention center is walking distance from downtown Disney so on our free night my Boss, Peixe (pronounced “Peysh” ), my peer mentor Marcus, and I went to the park to eat dinner and look at all the Halloween decorations. Unfortunately we didn’t go into the park but we still had fun. Peixe and Marcus are both Brazilian which doesn’t have anything to do with the story but felt worth mentioning.
The conference ran from Tuesday to Thursday and on Friday (Oct 6) afternoon I flew back to Austin and then immediately went to my friend Alex’s place to get ready for Sushi in the Sukkah which was an event that the YJP org was throwing. Alex is also making his AAA debut this week and has been a key part of helping me to make friends because, like Noah, he always forwards me the invites and offers to let me park at his place downtown.
On Saturday the 7th I channeled my inner Texan and went over to Kyle’s house ( the one from my golf league) to watch the Red River Rivalry (UT vs OU Football Game). Kyle threw a great party and we had a great game to watch but unfortunately OU scored late to win the game which made everyone sad. As a Purdue fan, I am used to disappointment in football so I went home to do chores while everyone else went out to drown their sorrows on 6th street.
Thanks for tuning in for another AAA! Although my traveling is on hold for a while there are still some exciting events coming up for me:
Austin City Limits (weekend of the 13th)
Austin Formula 1 race (weekend of the 20th)
My Halloween costume
Some cool stuff at work that I can’t quite share yet.
I appreciate you all greatly and I will be back in your inboxes again in 2 weeks :).
sounds like an amazing and eventful couple of weeks!