I am a computer nerd / book author / video artist from the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA. I escaped the stress of Silicon Valley to have much less money but a much better quality of life, eventually settling in the tiny mountain town of Pai, Mae Hong Son province, Thailand, where I have lived for most of the last 15 years. Pai is a beautiful place https://allaboutpai.com/intro/ Hope you can visit some day!

In 2008 I helped Casey Fenton and the nomadic Couchsurfing dev team get set up with internet in our small town of Pai.

I am a fan of natural hot springs and beautiful mountain landscapes. We have both in Pai.

For my hobby, I make interactive video art where you can dance around and see yourself as if you are in an impressionist painting, or made of fruits, or distorted in time. I like to bring this video art to the Burning Man festival and I have also set it up in Pai and China. You can check it out here: https://lurkertech.com/mez/

For my digital nomad "day job" I make language learning apps for iOS/Android, including Thai and Mandarin dictionaries and phrasebooks. I am the programmer (not linguistic) side of the partnership, but I know quite a lot of Thai and just the basics of Mandarin. https://word-in-the-hand.com/ https://slice-of-thai.com/

You may have heard that Thailand, Laos, and Burma have unbelievable, horrible air pollution---worse than China---every hot season around February - April now. Lots of people buy expensive air purifiers/filters, but in Pai where I live, most people cannot afford those. So I created a free, open-source DIY design and tested it out and translated the instructions to Thai so that lots of people in Northern Thailand can breathe clean air: https://slice-of-thai.com/air/ It's not pretty, but I hope it will save a lot of lives.

I noticed that a lot of Thai-Western couples seem to run into the same cross-cultural misunderstandings over and over again---most of them totally avoidable---so a Thai friend and I wrote a bilingual cultural guidebook to the aspects of Thai culture and Western culture that cause the most problems in relationships: https://thailandfever.com/ Everything is in English and Thai, so the reader can simply point across the page when he/she wants help explaining a difficult issue. I am happily single myself, but I hope this book will help people make a good decision about whether they want to embark on the challenge of a cross-cultural relationship, and be happier if so!

I am a native English speaker and fluent in Thai. I learned French decades back (most of it has been replaced by Thai in my brain :) ) and know basic Mandarin. I have just started to learn some basic Spanish (so far went through 28 Pimsleur lessons and studying via YouTube/websites). Happy to teach you some some Thai if you want a very strange skill :)

I am quiet and I am a non-drinker and non-smoker (of anything). I'm friendly if other people 420 etc., but for me, regular life is already stimulating enough :)

Perché sono iscritto su Couchsurfing

Couchsurfing is an escape from the banana pancake trail! It helps expose us to very different cultures and gives both the guests and hosts a richer experience of different cultures around the world. Being non-commercial helps a lot too.

I have hosted on Couchsurfing before in Thailand (on ex'es account; see personal refs) and enjoyed seeing a totally different perspective.

Interessi

• culture
• music
• electronic music
• hiking
• camping
• mountains
• food
• chinese
• trekking
• language
• programming
• language learning
• thailand
• burning man
• video art
• hot springs
• digital nomad
• apps
• chinese language
• salta
• cross-cultural communication
• interactive art
• mandarin
• jujuy
• thai language
• atacama
• salt flats
• san juan
• eclipse
• talampaya
• ischigualasto
• sajama

Una cosa incredibile che ho fatto

For my hobby, I make interactive video art where you can dance around and see yourself as if you are in an impressionist painting, or made of fruits, or distorted in time. I like to bring this video art to the Burning Man festival and I have also set it up in Pai and China. You can check it out here: https://lurkertech.com/mez/

Insegna, impara, condividi

Want to learn some Thai or very basic Mandarin? Interested in computer programming?

Cosa posso offrire ai padroni di casa

Hope I can share with you stories about the various extreme cultures I have lived in (Silicon Valley computer programmer artificial world, Pai rural countryside world of Thailand, Burning Man festival world).

Paesi che ho visitato

Anguilla, Argentina, Australia, Cambodia, Chile, Fiji, France, Italy, Laos, Malaysia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Thailand, Viet Nam

Paesi in cui ho vissuto

Thailand, United States, Viet Nam