20 Things About Me...

OK, so I am a year late to this post ... I was cleaning out my email and I found a draft of the 20 things about me that I was responding to on Facebook. It never got published, so for all 2 of you who read this blog and might care, here goes:

1) I am a pretty hardcore ENTJ.

2) Despite a Kantian philosophy education at “that school in Cambridge” I am changing from a rationalist to an empiricist. It bothers me and keeps me up at night.

3) I was pretty active in the New York underground poker scene about 5 years ago. I actually was allowed to play rake-free at the infamous, but now defunct Playstation (While on poker, I believe that the true World Series of Poker should be determined by a game of pot-limit SHOE rotation. The luck-skill ratio in no limit hold’em is just too slanted toward the luck side of the equation. For more on this see, Mason Malmuth’s work.)

4) I am a natural lefty, but I have Chinese parents – so I am a righty. That’s just how Asians roll.

5) I first hit on my wife at a dance she was putting on for Chinatown teens in Phillips Brooks House while she was a camp counselor. I am shameless.

6) She is pretty much the only person that can get me *really mad* -- but that’s because I love her. Consequently, we are huge fans of marriage therapy, and we’d recommend it to anyone. While I don’t know if it “saved” us, it surely has made our lives much better.

7) At this point in my career, I would totally be cool with being Mr. Mom. I love my kids so much that it sometimes paralyzes me. I am saddened by the truism that my boss, Steven, shared with me: “You will never love your parents as much as they love you.” I do believe that that it is a very poignant axiom. It has shaped my views on life and fatherhood immensely.

8) Despite now being a hardcore Democrat, I blindly worked for Martin Hoke’s campaign (a former Republican congressman) in high school. Why? Because everyone else did. It gets me mad that I didn’t have more of a spine to figure out what I believed in high school for issues ranging from politics to religion. I look back sometimes and see myself as such a lemming.

9) I wish I found Unitarian Universalism earlier in my life. It has filled a spiritual void for me in a way that I am better able to understand other religions, and has made my life richer. It is *so* not for everyone, but it totally works for me and makes me a more curious person … and it is nice to find other people who drive Subarus.

10) I wish I found snowboarding earlier in my life. I love being on the snow, but I have feet like a duck (wide/flat) and ski boots are a killer.

11) The two closest moments I have ever come to Heaven is waking up with my whole family in the same bed, and snowboarding on a clear day with nothing but you, a sheet of clean powpow, and an iPod full of tunes.

12) Despite Cleveland being an ex-steel football town that has LeBron James (for now), baseball is my first love as a fan. I was catatonic for a week after the ‘97 series and I still cry at the end of Major League (Harry Doyle: “The Indians win it … oh my god, the Indians win it.”) I don’t even play the damn sport … in fact, I suck at it. Weird.

13) I am conflicted because I love to box, but I am a huge supporter of Peace Games.

14) Despite flying over a million miles (literally), I still stare out of the window like a 7 year old schoolboy every approach into New York with wide-eyed wonderment. No really, how do they do it?

15) I credit my grandfather with my love of music. I will never forget when I was 8, he told me: “If you listen to 1 hour of music every day, you will be a happier person.” I’ve tried to follow that advice ever since.

16) I think the 7^th and 7^th chord are the most powerful sounds in music. They are both universal and diverse – from Count Basie, to Otis Redding, to Led Zeppelin, to the White Stripes. You can’t help but close your eyes and feel the music pull on your heart.

17) I may change this, but I think that Things Fall Apart may be the most perfect hip-hop album ever made.

18) The hardest class I have ever taken: Math 160’s at the U of C where 30 started the class and 6 finished it. I spent 4 hours on the final exam, only wrote 3 pages of proofs in my blue book and scored 28/100 … it was a B+. When I asked Professor Corti if I should go to Honors Analysis … he took a long drag of his clove cigarette, blew it in my face, and said, “Yes … but you will suffer greatly.” The second hardest – Mrs. Juergen’s 11^th grade English honors class. She gave me a D on a paper I wrote about Billy Budd and since then I dare not pick up Melville.

19) I fancy myself a pretty decent cook. My favorite thing is to rummage through random ingredients left in ones fridge/freezer/pantry and thinking what meals I can make out of it. Without this, I am convinced Katherine would have starved in med school.

20) My favorite restaurant in the city is Annisa. I would eat Anita Lo’s dumplings all day if I could afford it financially or physically.