Happy New Year!

 

Sunset over fishing boats, Zaimokuza, Kamakura, Dec. 29, 2024

First, goodbye to 2024. What an amazing year globally in quantum! More to say about that in a future posting (or editorial for TQE). It was also a great year for AQUA. Highlights were going seven-for-seven for QCE2024 papers (well, 5 directly from AQUA and 2 led by collaborators) and Q-Fly. I also managed to visit the (European) Alps twice and southern Thailand once, for conferences.

I also did a thing or two for my soul; the most important was a nine-day road trip with my wife through western Honshu. Longest two-person vacation since our first kid was born more than a quarter-century ago.

However, I don't think I saw any live music, opera, theater or performing arts last year, except for an hour of Irish music in a pub in Dublin. That needs to be corrected in 2025!

I think I read thirty books this year, which is my goal each year, a very achievable number. (How many books you read doesn't really matter; there's no way to read any detectable fraction of the good books published in a year. Just read and enjoy.) In 2023, Kettle Bottom and Demon Copperhead (both coincidentally set in Appalachia) hit me hard.  But I don't think any of this year's readings will leave a mark on my soul.

Im movies, "Past Lives", "Perfect Days" and "Dune Part 2" are very different films, and each will stay with me for a long time. The first two were officially released in 2023, but I think I saw them both in 2024. "Past Lives" is about the ache for the paths not taken, while still acknowledging that the path taken is who we are. I sobbed all the way through it. "Perfect Days" likewise is about the choices we make and the life we make for ourselves. "Dune" is, well, Dune.

And of course we can't ignore the cataclysmic event of November 5. It's incumbent on us all to do what we can to help keep the world together.

On to 2025. Hoping I can find (well, make myself find) better work/life balance, while achieving the things I want. Let's roll!