I'm Diego. I'm 25 as of 2016. I am a polymath dilettante, if I had to define myself in some way. I like to experience new things, and most of all, converse with people very different from myself.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I am a part of the globalized generation that inherently considers the entire world our backyard. While traveling out for myself is complicated at present. I'd love to host someone and maybe get a chance to soak in some experience for when I am less tied down.

Interests

Books, binge-watching philosophically romantic, intellectually bland series and movies, food, capriciously bold yet undeniably classy outfits. That is the list of mundanities.

I like space exploration. Artificial intelligence. Cyborg implants. Colonizing the Solar System to greatly enhance mankind's astronomical-scale survival. A life goal is for my grandchildren to be born off-planet. I also like sustainable development, clean energy engineering designs and eco-friendly materials research. And topics such as the foundation of math are very close to my heart.

I am also a LGBQT ally and feel strongly about the utter irrelevance of the biological or anatomical tidbits of the people involved in a relationship, including of course marriages. You are free to visit if you disagree, but expect continuous proselytizing.

• books
• dining
• cooking
• cheese
• exercise
• movies
• tv
• traveling
• cars
• survival
• engineering
• mathematics

Music, Movies, and Books

Music, my default answer is "Only dead people." My favorites in rock are The Doors, The Velvet Undergound, Nirvana, Queen, maybe some sporadic Metallica.. No actual metal. Too angry.
Favorite movie growing up was Independence Day. Current favorite movie is between Casablanca and Gone With The Wind. Modern movies, The Prestige was excellent. Do enjoy all the superhero craze, but my favorite recent movie was probably No Country For Old Men.
Books, I love Rand. The Fountainhead is my favorite book/personal creed. Atlas Shrugged a close second. I enjoy prose, poetry and academic writing, currently going through Khalil Gibran's "The Madman" poems, Winwood Reade's "Martyrdom of Man" (social anthropology and world history) and a technical JavaScript reference book (aiming to self-learn sufficient coding to implement some parts of my research)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

When I was 17 years old and 140 kg (290lb) at 5'11", I read a study on Japanese doctors taking very obese patients and having them hospitalized for months with nothing but saline and multivitamins, resulting in massive, speedy, healthy and sustained weight loss, stomach shrinking and such. So I decided to emulate their trial. I stopped eating completely. I took my vitamins twice a day, two different supplements to make sure I was getting everything I needed, and a LOT of water, as wel as nicotine to suppress hunger,
I had a single Coke Zero for lunch every day, followed by a cigarette. Somehow, I managed to exercise high intensity interval cardio every morning the entire experiment, as well as sit-ups and push-ups, without having eaten food in weeks.
After 58 days, my dad, who did not know of my experiment, bought me and my sister 2 Subway subs, filled with cold cuts and melted cheese and sauce and veggies, with a large soda. I found these waiting for me in the kitchen when I went for some water.
The smell did me in. After 58 days without touching a bite, I devoured half that sub. A quarter of the way in the roof of my mouth was raw from sheer loss of habit and dehydration, I suppose. By half the sub I could not take more food, I was fuller than I had ever been.
In the aftermath I went from 140 kg to 80 kg in 58 days, with 20 minutes of exercise a day. And lost my gallbladder, because apparently it is used to your average fats consumption, and when you suddenly cut out all meals including fats, the fat-processing bile in the gallbladder crystallizes. Long story short, I have no gallbladder now!

Teach, Learn, Share

I am very well read, very didactic and very prone to academic or simply abstractively imaginative conversations. I have a background in many areas and an interest in almost all areas of human knowledge or expertise, I live for that stuff.
Folks around me tend to remark how I teach them something new every day, but it is more an accidental outcome of me really wanting everyone to know what gravitational waves mean.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Since I share my apartment with my family, it depends on current accomodations. However, there are two scenarios:
a. At worst, I can offer you a mattress on the floor in my room to crash for as long as you are staying.
b. At best, I may be able to provide you with a private room.
Kitchen, bathroom, hot water and laundry washers and dryers are available in the premises, as is Wi-Fi and cable TV.
Overnight guests may be treated to a meal (though showing up with something to cook is always polite!). Guests visiting for some time should either procure their own food or chip in.
Cars are available, so a ride to somewhere in the city is not out of the question.

Countries I’ve Visited

Aruba, Colombia, Panama, Peru, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Venezuela