CURRENT MISSION

use all my senses to fathom the world's diversity

ABOUT ME

CuRiosity rules my game...If you want to make me blissful, feed me languages. I have an endless appetite for words, alphabets, phonemes, etymology,..., everything that has to do with languages and their relation to cultures.(Some more languages that tickle my interets: Urdu, Persian (hence Dari and Kurdish), Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Turkish, Greek, Sanskrit, Khmer, Thai, Lao...)The anthropology/history of cooking and of culinary cultures is another subject that delights me...Oh passing traveller, you are more than welcome to use my kitchen in order to recreate the flavours of your childhood!!B T WI find semicolons weirdly tantalizingI have a thing for even numbersI try to replace my thoughts by moving images every now and thenI cherish silence just as much as I love musicI am in awe of the powerful beauty of illuminated manuscriptsI like to make/transform things, recycle & give a new identity to what I find during my urban explorations.

PHILOSOPHY

Let me quote what Boris Vian wrote in the preface to "Foam of the Days" (L'Ecume des Jours):
" There are only 2 things: love in all its forms with pretty girls and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington, it's the same. The rest should disappear, for the rest is ugly, and the brief demonstration that follows gathers all its energy from the fact that the story is entirely true, because I imagined it from one end to the other."

And a dash of Duchamp:
"No obstinacy, ad absurdum, of hiding the coition through a glass pane with one or many objects of the shop window. The penalty consists in cutting the pane and in feeling regret as soon as possession is consummated."

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I talk to strangers, without punctuation, and always keep some subjunctive mood in my pockets.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Each couchsurfing experience has made my journey even more meaningful, providing me with an original and new perspective on the country and its culture, and more generally on the "human behaviour".
Indeed every encounter is for me a renewed opportunity to learn something about a wealth of different topics.

Couchsurfing also gives me the possibility to hop my way around some smaller roads, so as to meet a rainbow of people, each coming from a different part of the world and with another story to tell, with whom I can share lots of precious moments of joy and endlessly broaden my horizons.

Interests

dreaming ° reading ° wandering round the globe ° immersing myself into diverse cultures ° nomadism ° getting lost ° art ° street art ° experimental ciRcuS ° photography ° drawing ° music ° languages ° alphabets ° signs ° linguistics ° phonetics ° words ° semiology ° folktales ° story-telling ° anthropology ° identity (cultural, gender) ° writing ° literature ° poetry ° philosophy ° aesthetics ° Japanese thought on beauty ° history ° history of ideas ° surrealism ° collages ° dada ° exquisite corpses ° colours ° spices ° textures ° stencils ° graffitis ° typography ° design ° graphic design ° illustration ° vernacular architecture ° abstractionism ° clouds ° the wind ° laughter ° freckles ° jazz ° sounds ° ethno-musicology ° Asian cinema ° pHoto-graPhic fiLms ° alliterations ° contemporary dance ° walking ° abstract shapes ° cooking ° scents ° tea ° local markets ° bicycle rides ° fixing lost bicycles ° public libraries ° hats ° textiles ° flowers ° silence ° buttons ° lost things ° garbology ° recycling ° DIY ° knitting ° sewing ° mud-building ° cLay ° body-language ° Iyengar yOga ° ethology ° cross-dressing ° absurd beauty ° traces ° prints ° the TweNties & the ThiRties ° procedural memory ° Lindy Hop & sWing ...

• arts
• culture
• writing
• literature
• poetry
• architecture
• design
• graphic design
• street art
• photography
• illustrations
• beauty
• diy
• festivals
• dancing
• cooking
• yoga
• walking
• shopping
• flowers
• movies
• reading
• knitting
• drawing
• music
• jazz
• anthropology
• etymology
• history
• languages
• urban exploration

Music, Movies, and Books

These are just not things I can list...what I can say is that I am a passionate bookaholic... that my body and soul become very much alive at the sounds and rhythms of hOt JaZz & SWiNg jAzZ... and... that I enjoy feeding my ears with traditional (folk or classical traditions) music from Asia (for Asia is my first love), but also from the other various corners of our planet...and...that I am deeply enchanted by baroque music, especially so by the work of Purcell.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

The Pakistani and the Ismaeli hospitality.
Sufi festivals in and around Lahore.
The landscapes and people of the Hunza and Gojal regions, Pakistan.
The landcapes and people of the Tajik Wakhan valley.
Circumambulation of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet.

5 years roaming around on the sweet sweet roAd.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Cambodia, China, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malta, Monaco, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Pakistan, Portugal, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan

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