Hobbies
Below, I discuss some of my major hobbies. If you have any questions about them, please feel free to ask. I love to talk about them all.
Classical Guitar
Music has always been a major part of my life - I have grown up listening to countless genres and have been playing instruments since I was seven. Through high school, I was quite an avid saxophone player and played in jazz band (first chair), wind ensemble (third chair), symphonic band (first chair), and the marching band. While I love the saxophone and think it is a phenomenal instrument, I was unable to continue due to time constraints. Fast forward several years and I began to miss music quite a bit and wanted to pick it up again. As much as I love playing the saxophone, it was not the right instrument for what I was looking for second time around. I much prefer playing classical music and wanted to be able to play an instrument on my own and outside of an ensemble (for convenience and time considerations). Therefore, I took up classical guitar.
I've been playing guitar since late 2007 (self-taught) and began taking lessons in early 2009. String instruments are a completely different world from wind instruments and I am really enjoying the new music opportunities that the guitar allows for. I try to practice an hour a day (hard to do!) and hope to be able to play Bach's BWV - 1006 - Prelude from lute suite 4 by the time I graduate from MIT (with a PhD). That's going to be a tough goal, but high goals are the only way to go.
Juggling
Yes, I'm a juggler. No, I'm not a clown. Jason Garfield, one of the top jugglers, has a brief video in which he talks about why he juggles, and I encourage everyone to watch it (it cracks me up every time). Quick warning - his stage persona has always been that of a jerk, but it's amusing. Now that that is out of the way, here is a bit about my juggling background.
I randomly discovered I could juggle around the sixth grade. I quickly progressed from three balls to four balls and learned several tricks/patterns with both three and four balls. Unfortunately, through middle school and high school, I was not around other people who could juggle (at least not better than I could) and my progress essentially halted. After starting at UCLA and joining the Bruin Jugglers, I quickly learned to juggle more advanced four ball patterns (Check out Ivan Pecel's Advanced Instructional DVD - Vol. 1) and progressed to five balls. Currently, I am working on getting down the six ball fountain. I can juggle it, but not with much regularity.
Web Design
Web design has always been a weird hobby for me in that I both love it and hate it at the same time. I made my first website (it was hosted at Geocities, which Yahoo just announced (April 2009) will be shut down soon) was built so that I could learn HTML. It slowly evolved as my web design knowledge and skill increased. Over the years, I've become quite proficient at building websites and have had several jobs, and volunteer experiences as a result.
Whenever I make a website, I take extensive care to ensure that all of my code follows W3C standards and that my site renders correctly in major browsers. I also usually go a bit over the top and make sure that my source code is neat and tidy. Feel free to check out the source code (right click, view source) if you share my desire to code neatly.
My interest in web design definitely fluctuates over the years. After about five years of regular development, I lost all interest in it, took down my website, and left it inactive for a couple of years. In early 2009, my interest was resparked, kind of, and I have since relaunched my personal website and built this website from scratch.
Food and Drink
In short, I'm an epicurean. There are few things I like doing more than going to nice restaurants and enjoying a good meal. While I am particularly fond of seafood, I am always looking to try something new - be it a new cuisine, a creative dish, or a fusion of various influences. Matching drinks to meals is half the fun. Finding the perfect drink, be it a martini, glass of wine, or even a beer, really wraps up the meal experience.
Some of my favorite restaurants can be found in Southern California, including Bayside (and its sister restaurants at the same link), Mr. Stox and Napa Rose.
While eating gourmet food is certainly a treat, it is simply not possible to do that every day (expensive!). I'm no stranger to enjoying simpler foods and frankly, some of the best places are tiny, inexpensive hole-in-the-wall restaurants. These tiny places are hidden throughout most cities and finding them is always a lot of fun.
Any food-lover also has to like to cook - it is part of the territory. I don't consider myself to be a master chef by any stretch of the imagination, but I certainly do enjoy making a nice meal from time to time. Fish is my favorite meat to cook since it is fast, simple, delicious, and healthy. I try to do something different each time I cook and I am slowly, but surely getting better. I'll post some pictures of dishes I made when I get a chance.
Cars and Driving
Description coming soon.
Other
I do other stuff too. I'll add to this list later.
