HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING I spread the good news to all my friends and people who I think would be good members of the community and hope they do the same! Attend CS gatherings and parties when I can. For now, my experiences have been few, but once I'm finished with university, I'll be giving a lot more of myself to building the community. COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE Crashed at Matt Brauer's in San Francisco--awesome guy and great ambassador. I've hosted a few people, including some who have become good friends. Oh, and let's not forget the Free Hugs campaign last winter!

I usually read non-fiction; what most would consider dry and boring, but a few persistent friends have helped me rediscover fiction and now I've got lot's of catching up to do. I've started off with Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Mordecai Richler, Paulo Coelho, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Solzhenitsyn and Hesse. Get your hands on Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett it has got to be the funiest, wittiest book you'll ever read. I won't bother with music because there's nothing I don't listen to except for female vocalists with voices that are a bit too high pitched (aka canto-pop), kitsch new-age crap, most pop, most gangsta rap...if it ain't conscious I'm unconscious. I like everything from gregorian chant to Ravi Shankar, from 40s big-band to dance-hall through post-punk indie rock. Currently exploring and enjoying afrobeat and ethio-jazz. Current fetish labels: Traum Schallplatten, Border Community, Sub Rosa, Kompakt. Docs, Kung-Fu, non-english, dark humour, Woody Allen, Schwarzenegger!, fantasy and sci-fi...I'm pretty much all over the place.