I have traveled all over the world, and my heroes tend to be xenophiles: Sir Richard Francis Burton, Richard Meinertzhagen, Freya Stark, Theodore Roosevelt.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Meeting and interacting with others. I reached a point where I looked back on past journeys and saw that I had spent all my time looking at architecture or trying new food - interesting things, but without any contact with the far richer human terrain: the world was a museum, not a living place. While I still love maps, I have also started paying attention to the things that can't be mapped.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

My first CouchSurfing experience was going with a friend to pick up a CouchSurfer at the airport in Manila. I went to a CS party with both of them later in the week (an interesting experience in which I learned that an apparently innocuous pizza can conceal potent substances), and later did some CS events (a visit to a Sikh temple was the most memorable).

Interests

Ever find yourself gravitationally drawn to a book in the bargain bin for no reason you can articulate? I do, and I have learned never to ignore it. One draw was _A Man's Life_ by Mark Jenkins, and it put a hook into me for climbing and mountaineering.

• books
• architecture
• dining
• partying
• drawing
• fishing
• mountaineering
• sikhism
• rock climbing
• cartography
• beaches

Music, Movies, and Books

I read broadly and it is impossible to give a representative sample. Some favorites, both recent and enduring, are The English Patient and Divisidero by Michael Ondaatje, The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Alice Munro's stories, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies by Bert Hölldobler and E.O. Wilson, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I'm reading Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea at the moment.

I quit my job one year - although, admittedly, it was not a very good job - to attend the Seattle International Film Festival, where in one day I spent 12 hours in the theater including Fritz Lang's four-and-a-half hour silent film Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. The Reflecting Skin, from that festival, is still a favorite. As with books, it is hard to give a representative sample of films I like: what's the intersection of Blade Runner and Summertime (David Lean, 1955), or Ran and Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Drowning by Numbers?

I don't often listen to music except at the gym, because when I do I actually like to sit and listen to it. I recently heard Janet Cardiff's beautiful presentation of Thomas Tallis' Spem in alium at The Cloisters, which renewed an interest in music that has been long dormant.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I haven't thought of it in years, but when I read this question I suddenly remembered standing on a black sand beach in a remote part of Indonesia, watching the sun rise over hundreds of bright-sailed fishing boats.

Countries I’ve Visited

Afghanistan, Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Gibraltar, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Virgin Islands, U.S.

Countries I’ve Lived In

Japan, United States

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