[Bio]Moving to the United States from Taiwan is hardly the ideal way to get a leg up on the English language. It was a struggle at first as Jon had to learn the basics in order to survive every day life and more importantly, the ins-and-outs of the playground. "Can you tie my shoes?" was an essential and oft-repeated phrase. Apparently a lack of verbal ability also translates to poor motor skills. Give me a break, I was six.
Luckily, with the help of an excellent first-grade English tutor, Jon's English grew leaps and bounds to the point where he was reading so much that he got in trouble for it -- at school.
Can you imagine? A child being chastised for reading at school? "No Child Left Behind" used to be "Let No Child Get Ahead." And you wonder why the education system here is out of wack. While other children acquired social acumen, exchanged lunch items, and met lifelong friends, Jon remained buried in his books. Fast forward fifteen years and millions of shoelaces tied later; Jon had grammar and English on lock. Sort of.
The greatest misconception about writers is that they can actually spell, organize sentence structure, and tell you where to put a semi-colon. I am no expert in any of these things, yet I profess to be a writer. What gives? Delusion, clearly.
After high school spent at a private school in San Diego, Jon journeyed to the University of Michigan (sight unseen) in order to expand his horizons. And expand them he did. Majoring in pre-business, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and finally, philosophy. He really majored in slacking off and organizing cultural events but those activities didn't garner school credit.
Those activities did spark an interest in film, graphic design, and event planning so off to New York he headed to pursue those interests. Eighteen months and one 9/11 later, he left New York and headed out to China and England to learn the old family business: manufacturing woodwind instruments. Or more specifically, flutes. Did we mention that much of Jon's youth was spent playing a delicate, often overlooked and misunderstood, two-pound instrument? Usually as the only male in the woodwinds section? Must have skipped over that little detail.
One thing led to another and after an exit from the woodwinds business came a string of jobs in administration, pharmaceuticals, and most excitingly, video games. Except the life of a gamer is no time machine back to the carefree past. Playing video games for a living is actually work! And not overly rewarding work either. Although he did get the chance to immortalize himself.
Every struggling Cinderella deserves a fairy god-mother and Jon's came in the form of Lilly, literary agent extraordinaire. She struck a deal with a division of Penguin Books -- Rough Guides, who publish an esteemed set of travel and cultural guides -- for Jon to author "The Rough Guide to Blogging."
The book starting playing to audiences worldwide in the Fall of 2006 and has been picking up steam ever since. An amateur blog advocate since the turn of the century, Jon was now a professional writer and blog evangelist. He likes to wear his brown t-shirt emblazoned with the Blogger logo out on big nights in the city in order to spread the word -- and to look extra dorky.
He is currently hard at work promoting his first book, working on his second one, and adjusting to life in the City of Angels after a year in the Bay.
[Top Five]Books - Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand), Immortality (Milan Kundera), Contact (Carl Sagan), Why Big Animals Are Rare (Paul Colinvaux).
Movies - Reality Bites, Swingers, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Lost in Translation.
Music Artists - Alanis Morrissette, Gangstarr, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, Jewel.
"A while back... [we] agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like. Books, records, films -- these things matter! Call me shallow, it's the fucking truth." -High Fidelity-
