Dear Ong Yong Peng:

I studied Latin in high-school, then Sanskrit at the University of
British Columbia, Canada, with Dr Karin Preisendanz (now of
University of Hamburg, Germany) and Dr Ashok Aklujkar.

I started learning Pali mainly because I wanted to understand the
chanting we do at my temple here in Vancouver ("itipi so
bhagavaa ...," etc.). After that, I found that I would come across
passages in the sutta-s where the precise meaning wasn't clear from
English translations. So I started to make a close study of bits and
pieces in the original Pali.

Derek.