Five things you didn’t know about me
Cameron has tagged me for the “five things you don’t know about me” meme. Who am I to say no?
Writing this list was surprisingly difficult - there’s been a lot of trivial stuff about my life I’ve already blogged about over the past five years but have since gone off-line. And while 90% of my life is an open book, what is there left to share to all of the Internet, knowing that friends, co-workers and family members will be reading this as well? Needless to say, here we go:
- I come from a military family. To anyone who’s ever met me or seen a photograph of me in person, this seems like the most ridiculous concept ever, but it’s true. My paternal grandfather fought under Chiang Kai-Shek, fought the Communists but lost, retreating to Taiwan. My father served in the ROC navy before our family immigrated to the United States some time during the early 70’s.
- I wanted to be an actor in high school. I was really into it Freshman year; I was in the high school improvisation troupe, my first (and last) play was as De Pinna in our high school version of You Can’t Take It With You. Shortly after that play, my father decided I needed to take more computer courses, pulled me out of all my extra-curricular classes related to performing and made me take a junior college course in Pascal, not that I’m bitter or anything. (Some trivia: also in that play was a senior named Adam Sessler. Thirteen years later, he’s now the host of a little TV show called X-Play. And me? I’m writing this blog entry. Such is my life.)
- If you already knew this fact, consider yourself an old-school LYD reader: Blogs got big around the same time as Survivor, so I used to do blog versions of popular reality game shows, where the winners would win real money. SurvivorBlog was the first game I did, and I also did a version of The Mole called PuppetMaster, which got profiled in Entertainment Weekly. (More trivia: SixApart’s Mena Trott had applied as a contestant for PuppetMaster, but didn’t make the cut. I’m still kicking myself in the ass over that one.) I would LOVE to do another blog game some day, but knowing how blog-savvy people are nowadays this would be a logistical nightmare.
- Most American universities seem to have an abundance of a cappella groups. UC Davis didn’t have such a group. Me and three other guys DID, however, create a horrible R&B group called Unrealized Potential, where I would play the piano and harmonize. Think “Boyz II Men,” except really, really not good - I think we spent more time making sure our matching vests matched, rather than making sure we could actually hit the notes. We ended up singing “On Bended Knee” and Jodeci’s “Lately” at a dorm talent show, where we were promptly laughed off the stage. I think we did, anyway. I have a tendency to block things out from memory.
- Now that I think about it, I guess most people don’t know I used to play the piano. Like all Asian kids, piano lessons were forced upon me when I was four years old; I took classical piano lessons until Junior High school, and then “rebelled” in my piano playing by playing jazz piano and accompanying a church choir in high school. A part of me wishes I still kept up with the piano - I haven’t sat down at a piano bench in years - but I can still read sheet music, albeit awkwardly.
I’ll update this blog post soon as to who I’ll tag. God, I’m so late on this. Hopefully they get the memo.
Yes, the meme says to tag five people. I’m a rebel.
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