Origins

Hover or click on a square below for some bits about who we are and how this event came to be.
double-happy-jade little-nn icecream-nn-small
eggplant-small robot-brain-1b kiwi-baby-small
reflection community meditation

Hover over the images!

Nancy is of Chinese descent (more precisely: made in America with Chinese components). The traditional Chinese wedding symbol 囍 shown here is the shuāngxǐ (or double happiness) character.

This one is carved in jade, appropriate since the last character of Nancy’s Chinese name 張致琳 zhāngzhìlín means ‘fine jade’ (and not naughty, as her mother had told her). It also bears a remarkable resemblance to a pair of robots!

We like trees and nature, and after our magical first visit to Sequoia Retreat Center's Redwood Amphitheater (shown here), we couldn’t imagine getting married anywhere else.

Our very first logo, carved into chocolate ice cream on a spring 2015 visit to London, during which zero proposals, meta- or otherwise, occurred.

Months later, a cleaned-up version (thanks to Richard T) was carved more permanently into the post-metaproposal engagement ring.

And yet more months later a ring-embedded version (thanks to Nam) closed the circle.

We are both interested in brains, natural and artificial, and the minds that (sometimes) go along with them.

Our shared interest in artificial intelligence led us both to the Berkeley computer science department, but our paths in space-time did not cross until our shared interest in language, cognition and development led us both to the machine intelligence group at (of all places!) Google, where Nick was an intern in the summer of 2013 (but not Nancy’s!).

Nick is from New Zealand, hence a Kiwi (orthographically distinguished from his homeland’s beloved bird, shown here in a remarkably aubergine-esque pose).

His accent (or lack thereof, despite having moved to the US only in his 20s for grad school) is a less reliable indicator of his roots than his fondness of ferns and insistence that ‘kiwi’ must not be confused with the very totally different word for its prefix-sharing fruit.

Nancy’s fondness for aubergines (and predilection for inserting the word 茄子 qiézi during sentence-forming vocabulary exercises when studying Mandarin in Beijing) earned her the nickname 茄子皇后 qiézi huánghòu (Eggplant Empress).

Eggplant is rumored to be her designated contents type for the little-known third stomach, but experts believe her enthusiasm (and capacity) for food (except celery, the enemy!) reflects a more universal capacity exception.

We like reflecting with each other, on and around the world! Wherever we go, Nancy wants to see everything, while Nick want to see something and then sit and have a local coffee. (We’ve learned to meet halfway.)

This picture was taken in the gardens of the Palais-Royale in Paris, originally (and secretly) as one of the P’s for the metaproposal. It thus also reflects Nancy’s adopted home (2010-2012) and explains her affinity for the macarons of Pierre Hermé and caramels of Jacques Genin.

We blatantly exploited the occasion of our marriage to strengthen the connections among the communities that made us who we are.

Our guiding philosophy is summed up pretty well by the book Deepening Community, which Nancy spotted while dashing to the Sunnyvale Public Library check-out with a stack of wedding planning books, and whose key tenets (share your stories; have fun together; take care of each other; do something to make the world a better place) proved much more compelling than anything in that stack.

Nick’s interest in meditation played a key role in bringing us together (though he had to reassure Nancy that he was no longer thinking of becoming a monk). Life-sized versions of the labyrinth shown here are often used for walking meditation (and less often for puzzle hunts!).

This mini-labyrinth was the original ring-bearer, in the final challenge puzzle of the metaproposal. It also looks like a brain!

reflection

A more conventional storyline

Once upon a time… two middle children of the South—one from the Vale of the Sun, the other from the Bottom of the World—read many books and played many games and learned many things. Each set off to distant kingdoms, searching across land and sea in their quests for Knowledge and Understanding. Though their paths led to the Kingdom of the Golden Bear, the fates kept them apart in space-time until both were drawn inexorably to the colorful heart of all Searches.

Boy-nerd meets girl-nerd. It was just your average ”Google intern volunteers to give a talk on the subject of Googler’s thesis, thereby unwittingly stepping on her toes” story. One meeting led to another, and we ended up giving a joint presentation—the first in Google’s Machine Intelligence group on the subject of language acquisition!

The usual stuff. In due course, we got engaged and told people to save the data. (More than the average number of puzzles and surveys were involved.) We tried to explain ourselves. (More than the average amount of crazy preparations ensued.)

Wedding(s). We got married. We did it again (sort of) the next day. We celebrated our first month of marriage with a Paris post party, and our first half-year of marriage on New Year’s Eve in New Zealand. More milestones may be marked in the months/years to come…