A Quote by Leroy Chiao
After earning my university degrees and working for a few years, I wrote to NASA to request an application package. Seven months later, after I applied, I received a call inviting me to Houston to interview. That itself was thrilling; it meant that I was one of the 100 or so who would be interviewed, chosen from several thousand applicants.
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It was in the back of my mind, even while I was going to school, but it wasn't until I was at university studying engineering that I thought, well what do I really want to do? And I kind of came back to that and I said, well the degrees I'm trying to get are going to qualify me to apply. And so, that's what I did after I finished my, or after I was getting my doctorates. That's when I first applied to NASA.
You follow the law. Every few months, you need to fly back to Europe and stamp your visa. After a few visas, I applied for a green card and got it in 2001. After the green card, I applied for citizenship. And it was a long process.
My degrees are in physics and space physics, and I did well enough in university that I actually started working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as a robotics flight controller right after college.
A few months after NASA was formed, I was asked if I knew anyone who would like to set up a program in space astronomy.
After a few years, we realized that you did have to put some work into it. That's why the bimbo comments make me angry. After seven years, people have to realize we have a certain amount of talent.
Fortunately, I got called down to NASA for an interview. And one thing led to the next, and one day I got that call. I've been here about seven years now and am really enjoying it.
I didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.
Grace Kelly was written after these musicians were trying to mold me into what I should be. I was really angry and so I wrote the song and mailed them the lyrics. They didn't call me back, but two years later it's come full circle.
For my 23rd birthday, I received a nylon string guitar. I told myself that if I could play Eric Clapton's 'Tears In Heaven,' then I could play the guitar. I practised every chance I got, driving my housemates insane, until several weeks later I had a shaky version of the song down. I wrote my first song on the guitar a few weeks after that.
After high school, I went to Stanford University and majored in English. Of course, that gave me a chance to do lots more reading and writing. I also received degrees in London and Dublin - where I moved to be near a charming Irishman who became my husband!
A couple months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn't matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones.
For me, acting is not a hobby. It is a career that I have chosen and was not willing to let go of so easily after seven years of hard work.
Just by coincidence, Senator Teddy Kennedy and I, in the last couple of days, after several months of negotiations, have reached an agreement for an immigration proposal that we will be putting out next week, ... our proposal is along the lines of make them pay a fine of a couple thousand dollars, make them work for three years, and after three years they can get in the back of the line for a green card and then eventually become citizens.
A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that market.
I received $100 per week when I started working at the Globe after graduation.
I met a girl, and two months after we met I wrote 'Nevermind.' And 'Never Go Back' is actually a song I wrote two or three days after the breakup, after a year and a half. Straight continuation of the story.
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