I live in Vancouver, Canada. I was born and raised here,
but I've also lived in Edmonton for six years (from 1991 to
1996), and in various other places for shorter periods of time:
Taipei (1979-1980), Darmstadt, Germany (1989), Bristol (1992),
Colorado Springs (1997).
My parents are originally from Singapore and Malaysia. They both studied overseas (Dad in Australia, Mom in Singapore and the UK) before coming to Canada. I have an older brother, Curt; a younger sister, Judy; and a younger brother, Darren. If you're wondering why the spelling of my name is so idiosyncratic, it's because my parents subscribe to certain numerological beliefs -- in particular, that the spelling of your name influences your character and personality. (I don't believe this myself.)
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I've been blissfully married to Abby Fitch since October 1999.
Abby's also from Vancouver; we met in Edmonton a few years ago, while
she was visiting friends in Edmonton, but we didn't start going
out until I moved back to Vancouver in 1998. Abby teaches ESL (English as a Second Language). She's intelligent, resourceful, very funny, and amazingly friendly: she's lived in France and Costa Rica and travelled in India, Nepal, Pakistan, and China, and it seems that wherever we go, Abby runs into someone that she knows!
We have two children, Louis and Sylvia. |
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It seems to me that the difficult problems facing us aren't technical, they're social. We have amazing technical abilities: we can fly, we can land on the moon, we can destroy cities, we can retrieve information from the other side of the world in seconds. But at the same time, 1.3 billion people are living in extreme poverty, on less than $1 a day. What can we do to change this?
I've written up a Global Issues FAQ which attempts to give a coherent answer to this question.