CURRENT MISSION

Be random, be wacky, be silly, be ardent, and life is too short to be taken seriously.

ABOUT ME

(yet another profile! :)

If you find it difficult calling my name based on the spelling, it's pronounced as 'Michelle' :)))

I live in San Francisco and work in the IT industry as a software developer, spend my non-working hours going to cinema, playing board games, meeting friends, and traveling. I love music, books, theatre, good conversations, arts, food, sports, adventure, fun...

I've hosted travelers before, but have not been a guest myself.

Check my profile on various sites:
- my mobile snapshots
- last.fm
- YouTube
- aNobii
- GoodReads
- Flickr (outdated)

PHILOSOPHY

We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

So far I've hosted a few travelers and only had positive experiences. I love the idea of casual encounters, accidental arrivals, and random talks. I like traveling, meeting travelers, and sharing/exchanging thoughts, through which, I become more receptive and my world grows bigger, while this world becomes smaller.

Interests

I like words, proverbs, reflections, sketching, etching, daydreams, train travels, long walks, summer thunderstorms, crisp air, all forms of water, strange clouds, flaming sunset, warmth of the winter light, bougainvillea-covered walls, trees, pastures, smell of eucalyptus leaves, bass tone, oud, viola da la gamba, accordion, baritone voice, whisper, silence, nocturnal blue, brewing green tea, sudoku, batik, puppet theatre, watching beautiful people, rivers meander through the city, bell towers, kites flying on the rooftop, stray dogs, friday afternoons, touch, smooth surface, farmers market, thrift shops, dripping sweat after a long hike, tumbleweed, maps, lucid dreams, natural awakening, airborne, perpetual childish, sky before the rain, sound of campfire, relics, ruins, empty buildings, deserted factories, stepwells, staircases..

• dogs
• arts
• books
• sketching
• dancing
• dining
• flying
• thrifting
• movies
• board games
• traveling
• sudoku
• music
• hiking
• canoeing
• sports
• cartography
• software
• rivers

Music, Movies, and Books

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Film
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- all-time favorite: Bresson, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Rohmer
- European: Michael Haneke, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Dardenne brothers, Yorgos Lanthimos, Béla Tarr, Aki Kaurismäki, Julio Medem, Pedro Almodóvar, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Michel Gondry, Agnes Varda, Antonioni, Godard, Krzysztof Kieslowski...
- Japanese: Mikio Naruse, Masaki Kobayashi, Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masahiro Shinoda, Kurosawa...
- Chinese: Jia Zhang-Ke, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Wong Kar-Wai...
- animators: Svankmajer, Miyazaki, Yuriy Norshteyn, Quay brothers...
- other: Abbas Kiarostami, Scandinavian films, Tarantino, Jarmusch...

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Music
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My last.fm chart can give you an idea, yet it doesn't show much of my new findings.
- all-time favorite: Tom Waits, Carbon Based Lifeform, Anouar Brahem, Jordi Savall, Sonic Youth, The Cure
- psytrance & electronic: Solar Fields, NU, Max Cooper, Petar Dundov, Nicolas Jaar, Dominik Eulberg, Acid Pauli, XX, Chromatics, Glass Candy, Soft Metals...
- rock: Joy Division, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Velvet Underground, Cui Jian...
- contemporary: Ry Cooder, Rodrigo Leão, Paco Ibañez, L'ham de Foc, L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, Michael Galasso, Klakki, Nikola Kodjabashia, Fred Frith, Kronos Quartet, Urna Chahar-Tugchi, John Zorn...
- African: Boubacar Traoré, Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté...
- Middle Eastern/Indian: Hamza El Din, Ghazal, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Ravi Shankar...
- jazz/blues: Django Reinhardt, Lionel Belasco, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday
- sound of: bass, oud, viola da la gamba, Malian kora, accordion, piano, low voice, husky voice

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Writers
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Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, John Berger, Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, Robert Walser, Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes, Fyodor Shcherbatskoy...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

- waking up by the sound of temple bells and chantings in Bhaktapur (Nepal) in the starlit early mornings;
- canoeing down the Athabasca river in Canadian Rockies through the rains and rainbows and seeing no human trace for days;
- three days hiking on the Inca Trail & through various Andean ruins, & on the last day sitting by the high gate watching Machu Picchu slowly appear through the morning fog;
- crashed an Indian wedding on Christmas night as we walked from Bundi Palace back to the hotel after having our Christmas dinner on the terrace of the Palace, the guys were dragged to the heavily packed dance crowd as we took photos;
...

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Laos, Luxembourg, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Norway, Peru, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, United States

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