Here is a not-so-random accumulation of facts, half-truths, and stories about me.

• When I was a kid, I would rather read books than do maths homework.
• I am bald now, like the baby I was. My hair was my best physical asset.
• My parents responded to the “where did  I come from” question by telling my brothers and I that we were found in a rubbish bin.
• I was born while my mother was vacationing in Singapore. I returned to the island when I was 8 and spent 10 years there.
• I didn’t know what design was until I was 22, well into my degree in Human Factors Engineering. The major was not what I thought it would be.
• I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil.
• I saw the “Deep Dive” episode of ABC’s Nightline at a two-day business plan competition (they’re called “hackathons” now) when I was 17. As I watched a team at IDEO reimagine the shopping  cart in 5 days, I knew, immediately, that I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. I didn’t know what that was. But I knew that wasn’t happening at all in Singapore.
• In Singapore, only people who couldn’t do science do art. I did science very well, like a robot. I had no idea what a portfolio was.
• I picked a US college to spend the next 4 years of my life based on the fact that my cousin went there, and that she turned out okay.
• Among the more interesting classes I took at college: Indonesian Gamelan Music, Environment and Technology, Japanese Visual Culture, CAD for Engineers, Art as Process. They confirmed my ineptitude for performance, hard core engineering, languages and fine art. Meanwhile, I sat through dry HF lectures on nuclear power plants, plane crashes and how the GPS killed Eskimos. (By replacing the need for innate navigation skills and then failing in a snow storm. Okay, they weren’t always dry.)
• I learned about design gradually, first through research papers on creativity and then the Internet.
• What the heck is a design consultancy?
• What do designers do?
• Do I want to be one of them?
• Michael and Jonathan (the dynamic duo at Wiklund R&D). and, later, Anne Hjortshoj (at Blue State Digital) helped me answer those questions.
• Them, and tons of books and web articles.
• In my junior year of college, I knew: I really, really want to be a UX designer. I poured every Newton of energy into getting a summer internship.
• That summer, I was diagnosed with myoepithelial carcinoma.
• I took a year off to be treated. I nearly went mad from cabin fever.
• Instead of going mad, I practiced with Illustrator, set up this website, dipped into physical computing with Arduinos, continued painting, found out about responsive web design.
• I can work, now. My doctors gave me the okay. And I’m the type who can’t stop working.

Find me on HFES, AIGA, IXDA and LinkedIn. Or, learn more about me as a potential intern.

Life catches me by surprise.