Barbara Bai's Photo

Unverified Profile

  • Payment not verified
  • Phone not verified
  • Government ID not verified

Maybe Accepting Guests

  • Last login over 8 years ago

Join Couchsurfing to see Barbara’s full profile.

Overview

  • 0 references
  • Fluent in English; learning Spanish
  • 34, Female
  • Member since 2013
  • Teacher
  • Bachelor of Arts in Math and Physics
  • From East Brunswick, NJ, USA
  • Profile 50% complete

About Me

Interests

I like messing around on social media, like tumblr, and my main hobbies are comics, anime & manga, and other fiction (novels, short stories). I got my bachelor's degree in math and physics (in 2012), so sometimes I try to keep up with research developments in those fields.

  • beer
  • comics
  • anime
  • communications
  • mathematics
  • physics

Music, Movies, and Books

I like slow rock or pop rock, and I grew up listening to a lot of classical.

I like young adult books, sad novels, slice-of-life stories, some fantasy and science fiction, and webcomics and manga and some indie comics.

I think I have always liked young adult fiction, but recently I am at a point in my life where I find a lot of comfort in things I liked as a child. The oldest and most leafed through books on my shelf are My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George and Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle (from the Wrinkle in Time series). Another series I don't actually own but read repeatedly through high school... illegally on the internet... was Hourou Musuko by Takako Shimura.

Hourou Musuko is now being localized by Fantagraphics in North America as Wandering Son! It's a story that treats very gently the pain of growing up and flickering between being boy and girl.

My sister and I watched Princess Tutu in high school and I have watched it four other times since.

One quietly moving and probably deeply devastating read I have on my mind recently is Saturn Apartments by Hisae Iwaoka. It takes place on a man-made ring structure above Earth when Earth is no longer considered habitable, seen from the point of view of a young boy who drops out of school to work as a window-washer - just like his dad was before he died. The windows are amazing to work on. They make up the surface of the torus-shaped ring and standing out there, suited up, is basically standing as a astronaut in space. Your gaze can reach into a starfield or out to the rest of the ring or inside, underneath your feet, to your clients who are watching from inside their homes, depending on you to keep the glass clear for sunlight and also just depending on you to do a good job.

As a comic, Saturn Apartments shows all these views. Plus the views of the lower class district where the window washers live, full of lights and life and tall buildings and street stalls and which always looks like night because no one in the lower district can actually afford to have their windows washed. This all from eyes of a small boy trying to figure out his trade and grow into his father's role. I'm still thinking about this story. That probably means it's eating its way into my heart. My heart is now the home of many a story where nothing happens and it's devastating.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Little minicomics and choice of baked goods or beer.

Join Couchsurfing to see Barbara’s full profile.