CURRENT MISSION

"a world in which it is easier to love." - Paulo Freire

ABOUT ME

I'm 27. I've been living as a vagabond for a while now. Currently living in Davis for the next few months until I leave for...who knows. I'm a chef. I have an underground/pop-up restaurant called "The Splendid Rooster" (named after a scene in Werner Herzog's White Diamond). I rock climb, a lot. Currently seeking adventure. “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood.”

PHILOSOPHY

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
--
Albert Einstein, in a letter to Morris Raphael Cohen, professor emeritus of philosophy at the College of the City of New York, defending the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a teaching position (19 March 1940)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Come sleep on my couch!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Lots.

Interests

food, politics, food politics, paint, climbing, oceans, storytelling, the smell of old books and the smell of parking lots and the smell of the air after a lightning storm, social movements, capital, Marx, Fanon, Galeano, Zizek, poetry, Kenneth Patchen, Li-Young Lee, Gary Snyder, things that grow, couches, bicycles, street photography, portraits, Michael Jackson, Wabi Sabi, Figs, Morels, Pork Belly, hiphop

• animals
• fish
• books
• poetry
• photography
• dining
• cooking
• boating
• politics
• news
• painting
• fishing
• rock climbing
• teaching
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Beyond Developmentality by Debal Deb
Selected Poems by Kenneth Patchen
Rose by Li-Young Lee
The Coming Insurrection by the Invisible Committee
The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina, Eduardo Galeano
Dune by Frank Herbert
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Edith Piaf, Dead Prez, Bon Iver, Mara Rhuby, Azealia Banks, Nick Drake, Mos Def, Nina Simone, Robbie Basho, Black Thought, MF Doom, Radiohead, Rodriguez
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Werner Herzog, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Wes Anderson, Cowboy Bebop

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I used to be an intern at the Marine Mammal Center. On one occasion I was sent on a boat to the Farallon Islands to do a release of sea lions that had recovered in our animal hospital. On the way out the air was suffocatingly thick. It was one of those mornings on the bay. Sometimes you could see a tufted puffin floating in and out of fog. On the way back the sun had done away with most of the moisture and we watched two adult blue whales and three humpbacks doing surface lunges, feeding on a tremendous amount of small fish and microbiota that had reached the surface due to the upwelling that occurred near a large drop in the sea floor. Oh, also, there were two reporters from SF weekly on the boat. One of them ended up becoming a good friend of mine...here's the article: http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-10-07/news/too-cute-to-shoot/

Teach, Learn, Share

I can cook well and climb well. I can teach you bicycle maintenance. I can speak three languages.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Israel, United States