I'm a native Manhattanite and musician who spent two years of my childhood in rural Malaysia (Ikan Kekek is the name of a Malaysian fish and a children's song I learned to sing there) and traveled a great deal in Southeast and other parts of Asia with my parents and on my own. Also, during my time in graduate school, I spent four straight summers as a student, tourist, and musical competitor in Italy, France, and Hungary. Though I've traveled a good deal in Asia and Europe, I have yet to visit Latin America, Africa, Australia, or Oceania - so much to see, but not enough time each year. In the longer term, I would like to visit Samarkand, Bukhara, Isfahan, and various other places with beautiful mosques I learned about while I was a student in a public Malay-language primary school in Malaysia, and also South Africa, the birthplace of my maternal grandmother, but at least, in the summer of 2010, I fulfilled a longstanding wish to visit London, and also took a great side trip to Northern Ireland. In late March and April of 2012, I visited Tokyo for the second time in my life, and during July of 2012, I visited Hawaii for the first time and also traveled down the wild central coast of California, through Big Sur. I visited Germany and the Netherlands in 2013, Germany again in 2014, and Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria in 2024.
I am an admin and bureaucrat on this site and also participate as a user at Wikimedia Commons and sporadically at Wikipedia.
