CURRENT MISSION

procrastinate

ABOUT ME

I moved in London in September 2008, to do a PhD in Neuroscience (wich means to study how the brain -that grey ugly stuff inside your head- works). My brain, in particular, is working hard but I'm also trying to enjoy my time here. In fact, despite my scientific job I also love art, music and cinema and here there is always something going on. In my free time (if there is any left) I use to draw and write comics (check my website: matteofarinella.wordpress.com, any occasion is good for some self-promotion)

PHILOSOPHY

procrastinators are the leaders of tomorrow

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

...I finally have a couch!

For a few months I've been forced to offer only "coffees and drinks" (which BTW I'm still happy to share) because I was not able to host but now I have moved to a spacious room equipped with a nice couch.

So here I am. Willing to start hosting, hoping to find friends that I could visit one day (whenever I'll have time to surf)

NOTE: I'm back to beverages now as some flatmates have been complaining about couch-surfers and I have to host friends quite often anyway.

Interests

Science, books, movies, music, comics, photography, history, philosophy, painting, drawing, writing,
drinking tea at home
walk restlessly around the city
talk excitedly with strangers (forgetting to ask their names)

...sit on the top of Primrose Hill to feel somehow superior among the 7 millions Londoners

• arts
• writing
• books
• photography
• drinking
• flowers
• comics
• movies
• painting
• drawing
• music
• history
• neuroscience
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

Flotation Toy Warning, Arcade Fire, The National, A Silver Mt.Zion, Sunset Rubdown, Okkervil River, Beirut, Micah P Hinson, Devendra Bhanart, Cocorosie, Antony and the johnson, Max Richter, Nico Muhly, Wim Mertens, Stars of the lid... and many others

any film David Lynch and Greenaway, but also Synecdoche New York, Adaptation, Magnolia, Delicatessen, Walz with Bashir, Waking Life and all this sort of things.

Oh, the books are too many! I really love all the post-modern american writers: Pynchon, Wallace, DeLillo, Franzen, Eggers, Safran Foer ...going back to Joyce, Faulkner and Gaddis. But if I have to chose one book right now is definetly Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins: genius!

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Mess with the genes of a bacterium and a jellyfish in order to get a useless phosphorescent bacterial colony...

...then look at it with a microscope in a dark, smelly laboratory and feeling like an almighty God!

Yeah!

Teach, Learn, Share

Perhaps I can teach you something about the human brain and it's amazing diseases (Prosopagnosia, Sinestesia, Phantom Limbs, Cotard Syndrome). And at university I've done also a little bit of botanics and microbiology so if you like I can explain you that daisies are actually many tiny flowers all lumped together or that your body is a sort of bacterial farm... but I'm afraid I don't have any more practical/useful skills to offer :-(

I like to learn almost everything... and it's not easy. Any help is very welcome!

Countries I’ve Visited

Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Macedonia, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania

Countries I’ve Lived In

Italy, United Kingdom