Interests

I've dabbled in a number of things in the last few years -- more than in my whole life through college (I loved being a grad student!). All these activities probably contributed to additional years of grad school, but I think it would have been a terrible mistake if I had rushed through grad school the way I did college (and high school). These days I struggle a bit to balance research and my other interests, but in order of importance to me:

• Argentine tango

  I love Argentine Tango. Just hearing the music makes me want to get up and dance. Fortunately for me, there is a thriving community here in Chicago. There is the University of Chicago Argentine Tango Club, and of late some tango friends of mine started doing Tango in various public spaces around town. It's been fun!

• painting

  While I was living in Berkeley, I spent Thursday evenings learning to paint at the Berkeley Community College for a few semesters. I'd love to continue doing this on my own now. See gallery for the few paintings I worked on.

• foreign languages

  I'm a native Cantonese speaker and got pretty good at Mandarin learning mostly from friends in high school. I took French in high school but didn't continue it in college because I already had enough credits. Then at some point, growing mostly out of linguistic interests, I thought it'd be neat to learn a language from a different language family, so I took a semester of Arabic. I intended to take it for at least two years but I guess thesis got in the way. Now I'm itching to pick up this or some other language...

• indoor rockclimbing

  I wonder if rockclimbing will eventually rid me of my acrophobia. I have gone fewer than 10 times (usually to Ironworks in Berkeley) but it was a lot of fun. I especially love the ongoing challenges and the satisfaction that comes from not giving up. I definitely want to get back to it some day.

• theater

  I took a few acting classes (both on campus and at the Berkeley Rep). I'm not sure I'll continue acting any time soon, but it was fun!

• singing

  I'm a proud former member of the Berkeley Chamber Chorus. I think I'll rejoin a chorus at the next place I move to.

Travel

We travelled around Southeast Asia a bit when I was growing up, though when we did we went with guided tour groups (the so-called "duckling tours" in Hong Kong). I have vague memories of visiting Macau (being told that Ruins of St. Pauls burned down long ago), Singapore (going on the cable cars), Malaysia (getting car-sick winding down from Genting Highlands), Beijing (being too scared of height to walk the Great Wall), Hai-nan Island (buying these pretty statues made from sea shells), and Taiwan (could have died trying to cross the street by myself with two huge pieces of luggage). My first visit to the US was when I was 11, traveling with a children's choir, though I got so homesick that I had to quit the tour halfway. I certainly didn't think back then that I would end up living here.

I didn't travel much at all in high school or college, save for a month that I spent in Denmark right before my senior year in college. I was working there and was frankly too chicken to go around much on my own. My first solo trip was a 16-day trip to Europe a few years ago, hitting London, Majorca, Tarragona, Barcelona, Milan, Venicem and Paris. I ran around a lot, that's for sure. I recently also visited Vancouver (and Whistler), Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto) and China (Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou). If and when I ever cleaned up my travel logs, I'll put them up here.