On Toastmasters's 12/7/2007 meeting, I gave my ice breaker speech. My topic was "five things you don't know about me".
The idea came from the blog tagging game that if you are tagged by another blogger, you need to write a blog to talk about five things people don't know about you, and pass the tag to five more people.
So, here it goes.
First, a quick intro. I was born in Taipei, Taiwan and raised there until 8th grade. Then, our family moved to Manila, Philippines. I studied at International School Manila until I graduated from high school. Since it would be difficult for me to get into a good college in Taiwan with the American education I received, I applied for colleges in the United States. At the age of 18, I moved to West Lafayette, Indiana by myself to study at Purdue University. After graduation, I thought it would be easier to find a job in California, so I moved to Los Angeles to study at USC for my grad school majoring in Computer Engineering. After graduation, I found a job to work for Sun Microsystems in Menlo Park, CA. I have worked at Sun for about 10 years.
Second, those of you who attended Scott McNeally's speech on curriki probably saw me taking pictures with a Nikon dSLR. I have been taking pictures since seventh grade when I bought my first Nikon SLR (FG-20) and Tamron 28-80 mm zoom lens in Japan. I even have an official fake press ID I received as part of a photography course.
Third, I like the number 8, as does many Chinese. The Chinese or Cantonese pronounciation of 8 is "fa" which sounds like "getting rich" in Chinese. I paid $25 processing fee to have DMV employee searching their warehouse for a license plate that included 8888 on it while I was attending Purdue University in Indiana. Also, the last four digit of my home phone number is 8888.
Fourth, I love cars. I have been to many new car launch or test drive events and car shows. Each time I attend the test drive event, I get some gifts like caps with logos. I have more than 6 of those now. I even paid to have a picture taken inside a Ferrari while visiting Las Vegas. I also bought a Ferrari jacket from Las Vegas's Ferrari store.
Fifth and last, I hate police officers, especially highway patrols. I recently received a traffic ticket for not stopping completely at a stop sign. The last time I received a ticket was in 1998. At that time, I was trying to play poor and talk out of the ticket, but ended up costing me over $1000 dolloar. It costed me $300 for the ticket, then $700 for emergency room visit, psychiatric evaluation and ambulance ride, because the police officer took my words literally that I could not "survive" after paying such high mulct (fine). Even though I like cars, ambulance isn't the kind I like.