The Viennese Ball

Two months down and I've ticked off as many balls from my 2026 agenda. This time around, it was the Viennese, hosted by Stanford and sponsored by none other than the city of Vienna. My invitation came courtesy of Tanvi, a former intern now in her freshman year at Stanford. She and I endured many long days on the "infra therapy couch," as is affectionately termed the office couch occupied by an assortment of software and infrastructure engineers who spend their days watching their souls get sucked into their laptop screens as nothing ever quite seems to work as planned. Tanvi and I easily struck up a work friendship, not just because we were two of very few women who spend their days at Neuralink writing code. She's someone in whom I see a lot of my younger self, and whose zest for life is delightfully contagious. But, as twenty years my junior, I'd assumed the infra therapy couch was also where the friendship ended. Tanvi packed up and went off to classes across the Bay last fall, but she never became a stranger. She'll occasionally pop by on a Friday after classes to say hi, and her former team has been known to take field trips to visit her on the Stanford campus. Come the new year, a friendly text message and another office visit set the wheels in motion, and we finally started becoming real life friends. An invitation to a crepe party was returned with a ticket to the ball, and suddenly I found myself on the hunt for some black tie attire. Our trip to Italy followed immediately by my getting deployed down to Neuralink's Austin site for all but Saturdays and Sundays didn't exactly make this an easy task, not when my first gown arrived with two solid extra inches in the waistline and a pattern that made home modifications near impossible. The second gown purchased ultimately shipped too late, and I found myself frantically scouring consignment shops last weekend for the perfect fit. After spending my sleepless wee hours from Saturday into Sunday fruitlessly hacking apart and sewing together two vibrant dresses, one with an overly high waistline and the other that couldn't quite sit on my waist and contain my bust (the joys of the long torso life), I found myself packed and ready to fly to Austin without any dress in my bags. En route to the airport, I made one last frantic dash to my nearest Goodwill, nabbed a minimalist bridesmaid gown that still had its original tags, and jetted off. A trip to Michael's and Marshall's in downtown Austin followed by a couple late nights at the ranch house stitching to add a bit of flare (and padding), and I was honestly way happier than I'd imagined I'd be with my final get up. And most importantly, I had the privilege of showing up for Tanvi and beginning the adventure of creating an inter-generational friendship that I've never lived from the other side. It's so interesting getting to simultaneously enjoy someone's company as a peer and to share perspectives from decades of extra time spent trying to figure life out. And it's a pleasure to enjoy the company of someone so vivacious, curious, and appreciative of my perspective - it makes me feel like I've done something with my years, and I love imagining that someone else can make something more of theirs because of mine. So there you have it, my first Stanford Viennese Ball and the beginning of a new friendship, check and check.

My fears of looking a million years old at the undergrad party were ultimately unfounded, much to my relief. What a lovely Friday night with Neuralink's own Tanvi, now my real-world friend.