I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to a pair of Texans, thus qualifying me as a Texan as well (much the same as a national born outside of a his/her own country would still be considered a citizen of that nation). My parents lovingly recount how I came into the world kicking and screaming, and they often tell me I've not changed much since. At the ripe age of six months, I pulled my mother aside and told her we needed to get the hell out of Louisiana if I was to have any chance of surviving past the age of six without becoming a backward redneck, so she and my father packed their bags, snatched up me and my brother (the lucky bastard was actually born in Texas, just before the exodus to Louisiana brought about by my father's loyalty to the steady income offered by the Dutch oil mongrels known at the time as Shell), and hightailed it back to Texas. Houston to be exact. They settled down in the suburban town of Humble, the little oil town where Exxon, the oil juggernaut, was born out of the Humble Oil Company. Mind you, that H is silent, denoting the founder's name, as there is nothing humble about that company or any of its bloodthirsty offspring that became the base of Houston's economy and has dictated the economic ups and downs of my family for the past 25 years. Not that I have anything to complain about. There was always food on our table, a good school just up the road, a good church a little further on up, and enough television to fill a kid's head with the most useless junk you could imagine. And that's where Part I of my life began.

My maternal grandfather, one of the most intelligent and inspiring men I know, was a preacher (he's still alive, but now he prefers song leading), direct descendent of the Cherokee Indians and a god-fearing man by any definition of the word. My paternal grandfather, a man I never knew, was the town drunk of Minerva, Texas, a small town of several hundred that survived meagerly on the paltry wages of the Alcoa plant that ran the town. Both of my parents - my father rather surprisingly - managed to get a college education and break into the lower echelons of middle class America. Despite this rise in economic standing, and not owing to any ties with the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, my parents thought it wise to bring four more Huberts into this world, all of which have lived to tell the tale. Some are even prospering at this point, though others continue to live in the abject poverty that is graduate student life. We all shared in the same conservative Christian upbringing, one administered and nurtured by two loving parents, who managed not to give up on us or each other anywhere along the way, perhaps a miracle by today's standards in this fine country of ours.

As blessed as my upbringing was, and as much as I had grown to love Humble, Houston, and the Lone Star State (God forgive our sinful pride), something told me there was more out there in the world to discover. I longed - no, actually itched might be the more appropriate word - to get out of Houston, to get out of Texas, to go somewhere far away for my "college experience", that great journey to manhood that had become an integral part of the American experience. I mean, what fun would keg parties be in Houston if I was rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped and woke up to find my parents there crying instead of my frat brothers laughing at me stupidly. Despite these considerations, it came down to a decision based on economics and in the end Rice University, right smack dab in the middle of Houston, won out with their gracious offers of financial aid.

It didn't take long for me to get away from Houston though. My freshman year I applied for a scholarship to spend a year in Japan, and at age 19 took off on a plane for my first sojourn outside the US. After a year in Fukuoka, I came back to Houston with a fresh perspective on the world, the US, life, and love. I was full of life and energy, and ready to study about new cultures, new peoples, new languages, and new ways of thinking. Then I soberly remembered my major - engineering. I was quickly called back down to planet Earth and drudgingly worked my way through problem set after problem set after stupid, boring problem set until summer rolled around and I took off for Taiwan. This time I was taking on Chinese. Not the people, but the language. Well, and no language can properly be battled without doing a little of the ol' hand-to-hand with the culture. And I did it wholeheartedly. The summer soon ended, however, and it was back to the world of problem sets and theorems, a world about as exciting as being locked in a room for two semesters straight with only a boombox and a selection of your little sister's Whitney Houston CDs. But again, I persevered, conquering two semesters of engineering without batting an eye (literally, as junior year of engineering affords one very little sleep), and came out of it with a full scholarship for a year of study in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, despite being one of the coolest cities I'd ever been to, really drained me physically and emotionally. I made the mistake of making my primary purpose there learning Cantonese, a decision I still to this day can't fully justify and one the local Cantonese obviously found rather laughable themselves. It was a sobering realization that despite the fact that so many people the world over complain about Americans' ignorance of foreign cultures and languages, that these are the same people that scoff at the random American brave - or perhaps stupid - enough to come take on their language and culture. "Silly American", they seemed to say, "you can come to Hong Kong to work and get rich, but why the hell would you ever want to learn Cantonese?!!" My spirit crushed and my semi-fluent Cantonese serving absolutely no use whatsoever, I ventured back to Taiwan for the summer and switched back to Mandarin, hoping that this language and the people who spoke it would at least tease me and let me believe that there was at least some use in us stupid, ignorant Americans learning a foreign language.

My last year at Rice went by quickly, and as graduation neared it was increasingly apparent to me that engineering jobs just weren't going to do it for me. Instead, my options consisted of a scholarship to study filmmaking in South Korea, or an English teaching job in the JET program in Japan. Unfortunately, my first choice fell through, and I found myself in the Japanese countryside picking my nose as a Japanese "English teacher" discussed the nuances of English grammar, in Japanese, to a very uninterested class of Japanese middle-schoolers. Outside of my completely pointless job I found life in the Japanese countryside absolutely wonderful, and this helped balance my sanity with a job that could easily drive the most stable of us gaijin insane. I was fortunate to find out about the EWC and its fabulous scholarship early on in my stay in Japan, and applied before I'd even begun considering staying on another year in my post there. I got the scholarship, and the rest, my friends, is history.

Written 1/26/05