I love partnered dance: West Coast Swing, Kizomba, Bachata, Blues, where the magic is off stage, unseen, in the difference that you can make to someone through musicality, movement, touch. What else do I like. Mountains. What-if conversations. Swimming in open water. Pigeons. I play chess sometimes. But usually I'll pretend that I don't know how to.

I took that five-factor personality test about half a dozen times, until I finally managed to stop fibbing on it. It said I am exceptionally conscientious, imaginative, unflappable... and two other things which probably won't sound good here.

Much of the stuff on this page was written while I was travelling overland from east asia to west and full of that sense of what lives and grows in you only through being in touch with other mysterious worlds. Possibly I wasn't really full of that, but this is how I remember it.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Because the people I meet are my world out here.

Interests

Cat!!!!

• animals
• tango
• swing dancing
• baking
• motorcycles
• psychology
• linguistics
• kizomba
• ocean swimming
• machine learning
• blues dancing
• public speaking
• wandern
• driving on the footpath
• putting things into categories
• shovelling snow

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies with people in them. Who talk to each other. Instead of delivering lines. Though in fact I barely watch movies at all. Some favourites: Mulholland Drive; Lost in Translation; Her; Before Sunrise (I-III); Maleficent; I, Tonya

Music: Bachata, 1980s pop, choral, dirty blues, melody drenched with enough guitar feedback to sound like a plane taking off.

Books: I like Stoppard, Coetzee, Dostoevsky, Ferrante, Sebald, D. F. Wallace, and... er... others. Currently reading: Black Lamb, Grey Falcon. Invisible Cities is a long time travel favourite and Wittgenstein's Mistress must have the most haunting last four lines of any book that I've read

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I'm not easily amazed, especially not by myself.

But so far I've managed to get this far without losing my passport, wallet, or phone, which to me is a miracle.

On the other hand I've lost my daily journal four times in five months (update Dec 2016: five times in seven months)

Teach, Learn, Share

I don't understand this question. Here's a poem i like.

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

- Rilke

What I Can Share with Hosts

Freshly baked pies and shitty ukulele music

Countries I’ve Visited

Afghanistan, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Panama, Poland, Russian Federation, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Germany, New Zealand