Bio

I’m a data scientist.

I’m a writer. I’ve written a novel, The Girl Mechanic of Wanzhou, and a series of elementary school math workbooks, and a technical manual on the internet’s most powerful protocol: HTTP: The Definitive Guide.

Early years

I was born in Hong Kong to parents of mixed Chinese, European, and Indian descent. Mixed on both sides, mixed all around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Little Later

I grew up in New Westminster, BC, a suburb of Vancouver. Parallels to Lisa Simpson abound: I’m frozen in grade four, play the saxophone, and am nowhere near as cool as my brother or sister.

I studied math and physics at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. What’s better than a university surrounded on three sides by water and separated from town by a forest? The leaf picture on the sides was taken at Stanley Park.

Math and physics are a wonderful preparation for creative writing. I love math for its conceptual density: I think in math, you are introduced to more ideas per unit time than any other subject. And in physics there is the continual surprise of how the universe really behaves, every time we try to predict it.

I really sympathize with people who struggle over what college major to choose. I struggled, but I have no regrets about math and physics because I truly loved almost all of my math and physics classes. Loved them.

Later Still

I went to graduate school in Berkeley, California. I started in the PhD program and specialized in differential geometry. I earned a Master of Arts degree and also a Candidate to Philosophy degree. The latter means I completed the PhD oral examination, specializing in symplectic geometry – a branch of differential geometry.

Now, I work at Cloudgenix, Inc. in Santa Clara and am finishing my second novel.

Ninapenda kusema kiswahili, lakini nimesahau maneno mingi.