In the fall of 1995 I visited Italy and before I went I spent a couple months learning a few words of Italian. It was fun to learn even a little bit of a new language and it turned out to be useful to be able to read train schedules, street signs, placards in museums, and to be able to be somewhat polite in stores and restaurants. I found that simply knowing how to count is a very useful skill in any language. When it came time to choose a domain name for my web pages, I thought it would be a good idea to choose an interesting name that didn't have anything to do with my work (designing software), so after selecting and discarding hundreds of words which either were already used as domains or vigorously vetoed by friends, I chose Zenzero, which is Italian for ginger. That the pickled ginger they serve in Sushi restaurants is one of my favorite foods, and that I spent years doing meditation was an added bonus. I figured that it would serve as an umbrella name, under which I could publish and produce anything on the Web.