Travel provided many interesting experiences, but perhaps the most useful lesson I learned was that I really had no proficiency for learning the thousands of characters of the written Chinese language.

After a semester or so, my infatuation with computers burnt out as quickly as it had begun.

My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English.

Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.

My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

Most of my teachers probably found I made less trouble if they let me read.

My head was always bubbling over with facts and it seems to me this had little to do with my paying close attention in school and more to do with my voracious and omnivorous reading habits.