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I was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, though I was moved to New Jersey soon afterwards. I attended the
local public school for just over a year, then an all girls Catholic school (Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred
Heart), then a co-ed private school (Princeton Day School), and finally a
boarding school where I was one of several dozen non-boarding day students (the Lawrenceville School). I was a
first-former (8th grader) at the Lawrenceville School the first year they went
co-ed (after 176 years of being an all male school).
After all that came MIT, where I
double majored in computer science
and mathematics. Then I went to
graduate school in computer
science at UC Berkeley, where I got
my MS and PhD degrees.
Now I'm an associate professor in the
CS department at
Pomona College.
I have a brother Mainn, who lives in Massachusetts. His
wife teaches at Brookline High
School, and as of December 2006 they have a very cute daughter.
My mother, Dr. Hsuchen, teaches physics at
WWPHS - North Campus.
My father, another Dr. Chen, is a chemist at ACE Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals.
Other relatives with a web presence:
Although I've tried various other non-academic hobbies (piano, flute
(photo, age ~10) , fencing, chess, assorted arts
and crafts) and still enjoy indulging in some of them occasionally,
the only one that has stayed with me is dancing. I started dancing at
age 5 when my parents enrolled me in a ballet class. I stopped
seriously studying ballet at age 10, but had fun exploring various
other styles of dance including tap (photo, age ~8), modern, square, circle,
kathak, and ballroom (social
and competitive).
I took up Middle Eastern dancing in 1996, studying for 5 years with
Suhaila Salimpour (before I left the
Bay Area). I've danced with various troupes (including the
Suhaila Dance Company)
in venues including Rakkasah (photo, with Moonfire in 2000), the Northern
California Renaissance Faire, and the San Francisco Gay Pride
celebration. I've also danced as a soloist once or twice at a few
places (photo, 2003).
I am very good at "suspension of disbelief", and generally prefer not
to watch movies with (much) violence, blood, or suspense. This means I
typically watch only a few very carefully selected movies each year,
and instead mostly read movie plots on sites such as Greatest Films (classics) and The Movie Spoiler (recent
releases).
Reading, on the other hand, I love. Here are some links to
collections on the web:
"Don't let the work ethic take away your life ethic"
--
anonymous
