My parents were graduate students in the DC area when they had me. Thus, by the 14th amendment, I am a citizen of the United States.

My grandparents moved back to Indonesia, and soon my family followed suit. After all, this is our motherland.

I received a letter stating I had been accepted to go to UT as a Mechanical Engineering major. Prior to applying I had never heard of the school, and I picked the major from a list because it sounded like the coolest engineering major. Needless to say, I was not the best decision maker at the time.

When I first arrived, I only knew one person in the whole state, and that was my roommate Armand.

Two years later I still didn't know what I was doing with Mechanical Engineering. All I knew was the only classes I enjoyed were the C++ and MATLAB programming classes, so I decided to switch my major. Best decision I ever made.

After Bloomberg opened my eyes to the world of algorithmic trading, I spent several months working with a successful day trader to implement his strategy into an algorithmic trading program in MQL4 to use with the FXCM MetaTrader 4 forex trading platform. Despite promising results, the project was suspended due to a lack of funds for investment.