Issuing supreme power to you...one moment.

My self-summary Propose an edit

I am incredibly modest. So modest in fact, that I won’t mention my illuminating intelligence or my disarmingly sharp wit. I won’t tell the story of how I once saved six puppies, nine kittens, and a dolphin from a terrorist with a rabid pet bear while stopping the clear-cutting of vast acres of Amazon rain forest. I’m not going to say I’m a hero. Nope. Not even going to go there. I’m modest.

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All kidding aside, I'm a student and as comfortable being silly as I am being serious. I'm a heart-on-my-sleeve kind of guy. I say what I feel. I also like to sing very loudly in the car and sometimes dance in my seat, even though I have not a great voice and a questionable sense of rhythm. I have no shame. I guess you could call me fun-loving, but who isn't? Who walks around telling people he hates fun? A true original, perhaps, but not me. Like everyone else, I can't help but love the fun.

What I'm doing with my life Propose an edit

I'm in grad school studying cell and molecular biology, working on my master's degree. My thesis project involves pond scum. Before I joined my lab, I never knew pond scum was so interesting. But now, I'm fascinated by it. Now, I can see the path that lies before our society. The future is scum.

I'm really good at Propose an edit

I can play a mean game of Scrabble. Seriously. I'll drop that eight-letter behemoth across two triple word score spaces and you will tremble, breathless and dizzy in the face of my anagrammatic ability. On the other hand, if you actually manage to best me, I'll worship you forever, or at least for a couple minutes afterwards.

I am also an asset on any trivia team due to my uncanny ability to store completely random and useless stuff in my memory. I never know exactly what is back there until prompted by odd questions like "what was the title of the sequel to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time?" I don't know why anyone would ever need to know such things, except to earn a free pitcher of beer at trivia night. (But hey - you can't go wrong with free beer!)

The first thing(s) people usually notice about me Propose an edit

Well, being Asian is still a little unusual in parts of this town. Other than that, possibly my smile, the shaggy hair, or the fact that I share a name with a certain scruffy-looking nerf herder.

My favorite books, movies, music, and food Propose an edit

Books: The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood), Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides), The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay (Michael Chabon), and just about anything David Sedaris are some of my favorites. The ideas that come out of The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) come up pretty often in my conversations.

Movies: City of Lost Children, American Beauty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Goodfellas, Amelie, American Splendor, The Godfather, Farewell My Concubine, the first few Kevin Smith movies and the cartoon short, Rejected (NSFW).

Also, I'm a big hockey fan.

Music: Stars, The New Pornographers, Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Feist, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Postal Service, The Arcade Fire, Radiohead, The Dresden Dolls, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple (I have a soft spot for girls with pianos), and more stuff.

I've also been listening to a lot of indiepop lately. It's a genre I'm still learning. I'm enjoying stuff like Jens Lekman, The Field Mice, Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, Tullycraft, Heavenly, and The Smittens. I absolutely adore just about everything Rose Melberg has ever done (Tiger Trap, The Softies, Go Sailor).

Food: I really like it and I'm not picky at all.

The six things I could never do without Propose an edit

coffee, my iPod, my friends, my parents, good conversations, laughter

I spend a lot of time thinking about Propose an edit

Lately, I've been learning to be more optimistic, that the difference between optimism and pessimism really is just perspective, and neither of the two is more valid than the other in a general sense. This all might seem obvious to some people, but it's an epiphany to me.

And on a related note, I'm starting to think that getting older won't be so bad. I really can't wait to be of the age at which I can start calling everyone "kid" or "kiddo." I think that would be fun. Maybe I'll throw around a little "champ," too, but just for the really special people.

I also spend a lot of time thinking about how I'm going to finish my thesis, what I'll do after completing my master's, genes and memes, ethics (I tend to be more Kantean), and how I can be more green in my life. I've been thinking lately that the scientific community needs better ambassadors and translators to our society at large, especially with regards to biology and evolution.

On a typical Friday night I am Propose an edit

Ridding the streets of crime with my own brand of vigilante justice, solving global warming, ending world hunger, helping Lindsay Lohan through rehab. Or maybe hanging out with my friends at our favorite watering holes.

The most private thing I'm willing to admit here Propose an edit

Once, for my birthday, I requested that none of my friends actually buy me anything. Being mostly poor college students at the time, few of them could afford anything anyway. Instead, I asked them to draw me some plans, on loose leaf or napkins or whatever, of a chi-to-soul converter. By “soul,” I did not mean the thing that supposedly lives on after our bodies perish. I meant the thing that makes us funky, as in what made James Brown shimmy across the stage like a fabulous lunatic. Although I guess he fits both definitions now. Bless his soul.

At any rate, as a boy from Midwestern suburbia, I have very little soul, but with my heritage, I ought to have plenty of chi. And what would I do with all that chi? Find inner peace or enlightenment or something? Screw that. I needed my chi converted to soul, so I recruited my friends into the effort.

I received many creative designs of the Rube Goldberg type, involving tubes, levers, robots, colanders, monkeys, and the Cold Fusion programming language. My friends are an ingenious bunch and I could begin to see myself all pimped out, just itching to scream, "Ow! Hit me!" Unfortunately, the plans were lost in a move. I will never be able to implement my goal of becoming the next James Brown.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, hey man, you can find your soul. All you need is a dance floor, a good bass line, and the uninhibited freedom to express yourself. Besides, you still have your chi. You can have inner peace or enlightenment or something. But inner peace doesn't make a man comfortable in sequins. Enlightenment won't turn my legs into crazy implements of funk. And that's all I really want. Sequins.

You should message me if Propose an edit

You like conversations interspersed with random silliness and sarcasm and you're into the cute, skinny, nerdy type.

I would especially like to hear from someone who is also comfortable with both silly and serious, someone with a good mix of both intellectual and light, fun interests.

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