My Chopin Moment
Picture this: a teenager, a Chopin Nocturne CD, and an audacity only a high schooler can muster. That was me. My piano teacher had suggested an "easier" piece for the annual SYMF competition—a safe, predictable choice that wouldn’t require hours of practice or strain my fingers. But then I heard Chopin’s Nocturne No. 8, and it was love at first listen. It was lush, romantic, and complicated as hell. Naturally, I had to play that one.
Endless Summers
Growing up in the suburbs of Southern California in the late '80s and early '90s, summers felt like endless pockets of freedom. The world was soft, malleable. The streets, paved with sun-drenched asphalt, belonged to us.
From Tainan to Seattle
My grandfather grew up in Tainan, Taiwan, in the 1940s. His family lived in a small house on a pig farm, far from the busy city. There were ten children in his family—eight brothers and two sisters—and they ate their meals in two shifts.