Some stuff about Dr Lum x) of course, this is not in my draft

Shawn Kaihekulani Yamauchi Lum, age 49, was born on 7 April,1963 in Tokyo, Japan. He moved to Hawaii with his two sisters and his parents at the age of 2 and a half. His elder sister is 7 years his senior, and his younger sister 4 years his junior. He is part Chinese and Japanese on his maternal side, and part Hawaiian and Irish on his paternal side. He can speak in English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Bahasa Indonesia and Pidgin, a Hawaiian dialect; although he claims he is currently only fluent in the English language.

Dr Lum did his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, Boston, and completed his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He married at a late age of 44 after dating for 10 years with his wife Evelyn Ng Mui Khim. He is currently a lecturer at the National Institute of Singapore and a resident scientists of Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary), which he first joined in 1999.

            During his childhood, his mother worked as a school cafeteria baker, his father a civil servant working in the United States Air Force. He confesses to having a closer relationship with his mother than with his father as his mother only started working 4 years after he was born and spent more time with him than his working father. He has also had a great passion for nature and ecology since young, although he did not have any formal training in biology in school and most of his passion for nature was self-initiated. During his free time, he often read many books animal books, watched animal shows or went outdoors for nature walks to the forest or the nearby beach to bird watch or collect seashells. He also had many pets at home, such as fish, crayfish (the common yabby), pigeons, lizards (specifically anolis), and dogs. He reflects that his unusually large number of pets had either reinforced his interest in nature or been a result of it.

            Despite his great interest in nature, biology had never occurred to Dr Lum as a possible career option until he was halfway through university. In fact, he admits rather sheepishly, he had wanted to be a professional basketball player in Midwest Basketball Academy during his childhood years. It was only after he met Dr Mark Skinner in his 3^rd year of his undergraduate studies that he knew that ecology and botany would be his lifelong career.