25 Highlights of 2025
Avenues, Buildings, Churches, Delicacies, Experiences
I’ve recently been going through photos from 2025 and wanted to share with you “25 highlights of ’25”!
I was fortunate to be able to visit Bangladesh 🇧🇩, Singapore 🇸🇬, Mexico 🇲🇽, France 🇫🇷, the UK 🇬🇧, Bulgaria 🇧🇬, Georgia 🇬🇪, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Algeria 🇩🇿, in addition to my home of the U.S. 🇺🇸, so this will be a very international spread.
I thought it would be fun to do a “5 by 5”: 5 letters of the alphabet, 5 snapshots each:
A: Avenues and streets
B: Buildings
C: Churches and religious sites
D: Delicacies
E: Experiences and events
Let’s go!
A: Avenues and streets
1. Bustling streets of Bangladesh 🇧🇩
In Bangladesh’s major cities, like Dhaka and Chittagong, the streets can be incredibly hectic!
2. Not-so-bustling streets of Bangladesh 🇧🇩
Bangladesh also has quieter streets, like in this village in Sreemangal.
3. Roman ruins in the middle of the street 🇧🇬
Bulgaria’s second city of Plovdiv has a rich history, including Roman ruins all over the place. As they’ve been excavated, they’ve been integrated into the urban fabric.
The main pedestrian street through the city just casually has a Roman amphitheater sitting in the middle of an intersection!
4. French colonial Algiers 🇩🇿
By the looks of this photo, you might think you’re in Paris. Instead, this is Algiers; Algeria’s capital has a ton of French colonial architecture in the city center, and it’s quite well preserved—perhaps even better preserved than some spots in France.
5. Sunday stroll on Paseo de la Reforma 🇲🇽
On Sunday mornings, Mexico City’s most famous avenue transforms into a bike- and pedestrian-only thoroughfare, making a busy street a bit more calm and giving you a chance to enjoy it in a more relaxed environment.
B: Buildings
6. Oxford’s ‘Harry Potter’ Great Hall 🇬🇧
I had breakfast in the Great Hall of Christ Church College at Oxford University, which was apparently the inspiration for the Harry Potter dining hall (replicated in a studio)! It was surreal.
Contemporary architecture seems like a huge step backward from this.
7. Houses on stilts 🇧🇩
It’s always cool to see cases where building styles respond to their local environmental conditions. This village in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh features houses on stilts, as it’s near a river.
8. Dar Mustapha Pacha 🇩🇿
Algeria was sort of like “Morocco without tourists.”
9. Indoor jungle at Singapore airport 🇸🇬
The Jewel at Singapore Changi Airport offers an extraordinary example of bringing the outdoors indoors, with vegetation and a waterfall.
I wrote a post about this and other efforts to create urban jungles:
10. Ivan Vazov National Theatre 🇧🇬
It’s nice when historic buildings are lit up at night!
C: Churches and religious sites
11. Ely Cathedral 🇬🇧
Ely Cathedral was one of the most spectacular cathedrals I’ve ever seen. One thing I particularly loved was that it’s filled with light, whereas many other cathedrals can be a bit dark on the inside.
12. FaChuKung Temple 🇹🇼
This Taoist temple in Taipei was super cool because it’s placed on top of a street! Great use of space in a dense urban context.
Another thing that I thought was cool about a lot of these such temples was that they have multiple floors where each one has a different focus, so you get a sequence of different experiences. Most other religious buildings I’ve been to have only had one or two primary floors.
13. Svetitskhoveli Cathedral 🇬🇪
Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia, is around 1,000 years old—and you can really feel it!
Read more about lessons from my Georgia trip:
14. Hindu Street 🇧🇩
Bangladesh is ~90% Muslim, but it has an 8% Hindu minority. In Dhaka, “Hindu Street” serves as a visible hub of Hinduism. While visiting, our group encountered some sort of festival, which had the street packed with people sitting.
15. St Bartholomew’s 🇺🇸
St Bartholomew’s Church in Midtown Manhattan has a beautiful small side chapel! I love the hanging lamps. The church has a mix of Byzantine Revival and Romanesque Revival architecture, both of which are uncommon in the U.S.
D: Delicacies
16. Chocolate dumplings 🇬🇪
Georgia’s khinkali dumplings are awesome in general. But I found one particular restaurant that had some dessert varieties, which I’m told is unusual. Have you ever had a chocolate dumpling?!
17. Pizza with a dumpling crust 🇧🇩
Now imagine if you took dumplings and put them inside of a pizza.
In Dhaka (Bangladesh), our group went to a Pizza Hut that had pizza with momos (Nepali/Tibetan dumplings) incorporated into the crust. It was definitely one of the most unique pizzas I’ve ever had.
Cultural fusion is awesome!
18. Huitlacoche 🇲🇽
One Mexican delicacy that’s really hard to find outside of the country is huitlacoche. Imagine mushrooms but 100x better. (Here’s my favorite street stand in Mexico City.)
19. Scallion pancakes 🇹🇼
Taipei has lots of awesome scallion pancakes. This street stand was the kind of place where there’s a line for a reason. But it moves quickly, as they run an impressive operation.
20. ‘Black vanilla’ ice cream 🇩🇿
In Algiers, I tried “black vanilla” ice cream. It tasted like vanilla with black sesame. It was a bit odd but I liked it.
E: Experiences and events
21. Polyglot Conference 🇹🇼
One of my passions is language learning. This year I heard about the annual Polyglot Conference—a get-together for multilinguals—and knew I had to go.
Held in Taipei, the program included numerous lightning talks on language topics as well as opportunities for socializing with the attendees from around the world. It’s quite mentally stimulating to have conversations with people that weave between various languages that you rarely get to use together. I hope to go again!
22. Fish market in Chittagong 🇧🇩
The fish market in Chittagong, Bangadesh’s second city, was an incredible hub of buzzing activity—probably one of the coolest markets I’ve been to!
23. Riverside County, CA 🇺🇸
Despite appearances, I’m actually usually just at home in the U.S. working. So I should probably show something work-related, right?
I had the chance to do a project site visit in California, where I got to see firsthand the hard work that staff at the Riverside County Children & Families Commission do to help families navigate a range of social programs. Being in person makes a real difference!
I wrote about 5 key takeaways from the site visit in this post.
24. Birthday cake on a plane 🇹🇷🇺🇸
If you’re flying Turkish Airlines within three days of your birthday, you’re entitled to a free in-flight birthday cake. All you need is to be signed up for their frequent-flyer program; you don’t need to have any status tier.
I was flying Turkish Airlines on my birthday this year, so I requested a cake. Sure enough, toward the end of the flight, they brought me my birthday cake, complete with a to-go box so that I could take it home!
You do need to sign up for it, though. I was actually flying Turkish Airlines around my birthday in 2024 as well, but I forgot to submit the cake form.
25. New year in the Sahara Desert 🇩🇿
I rang in the new year of 2026 not with big-city fireworks but rather in a small town in the desert of Algeria, in a celebration featuring local drummers. Our group was joined by another crew of Italian tourists who brought a festive spirit. It was definitely one of the more unique new years I’ve experienced.
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Where will 2026 go? We’ll see!
Tomorrow I’m excited to kick off a series of posts on election reform. I’ll cover:
A small incremental change that could greatly improve two-round elections
The serious mathematical problems with ranked-choice voting
Better alternative voting systems
I hope you like it!