"I hated it," Chen says with a smile.

But now, the Sunnyvale resident is soaking up as much culture as he can stand and loving it.

Chen is one of four winners in a cultural makeover contest sponsored by San Francisco Performances. Over the past several weeks, he has attended a series of musical and dance performances after receiving cultural coaching beforehand. And with only one scheduled performance left, Chen already knows that his interest is piqued for more.

"You really have to be brave and explore," he says. "The last [performance] is jazz, and I'm really looking forward to that. And I think I may try to see some modern dance later."

Chen says he was searching randomly on the Internet a few months ago when he came across a quiz testing cultural literacy. The quiz asked participants whether they knew the definition of such terms as pizzicato, which is the term for plucking a stringed instrument. "I wondered how I would do," he says. "I got five right out of 10."

After the quiz, Chen was prompted to write a short essay on why he thought he needed a cultural makeover, and his entry was one of four from all over the Bay Area selected as a winner.

"I don't remember exactly what I wrote, but the gist of the essay was that I was educated in science and technical areas," he says. Chen originally came to the United States from Singapore to attend college at the University of Wisconsin­Madison, and later earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. He came to the Bay Area in 2000 when he got a job with Sun Microsystems. Now he lives and works in Sunnyvale.

Chen says he goes to the symphony on occasion and enjoys area museums, but that he wasn't too aware of more modern movements in art. "I really enjoyed the classical violinist; she did two pieces from Mozart and two from Bach," Chen says. "That was really fabulous."

But the "makeover" program, which commemorates the 25th season of San Francisco Performances, aims to teach Bay Area residents about the broad palette of performing arts available in the area.

The most recent "makeover" performance was the music of Philip Glass, an American composer who was born in Baltimore in 1937. Like the other events Chen has attended, he and the three other participants met with coaches—in this case, San Francisco composer Charles Amirkhanian and San Francisco Performances president Ruth Felt—at a restaurant prior to the performance. There, they learned about Glass's works.

"He is a minimalist, so they taught us to pay attention to the small differences," Chen says. "I think that it really helped a lot."

The program also allows the four participants to meet the performers afterwards, which was one of Chen's favorite parts. "It's fascinating to get inside their heads."

In his free time, Chen is training to be a distance runner, but he also takes Chinese calligraphy classes and loves going to food and wine tasting events. "If nothing else, the dinners have been great," he says with a grin.

But for Chen, the program seems to have done its job. While he enjoyed cultural events before his makeover, he's already discussed getting together with his fellow students after the last performance in January to branch out even more.