CURRENT MISSION

Understand as much about the universe as I can.

ABOUT ME

This is bound to sound conceited but I think being self-centered is really the primary (undeniable) nature of most "online profiles"...so bear with me :).

I like to think of myself as an interesting person - and more importantly I very much enjoy meeting other interesting people. Especially those who are willing to have some good conversation. I think you can learn a lot about someone, especially if they are from a different culture, just by talking with them. Not to mention the friendships people make by doing so.

Back in 2008 I studied abroad and, as cliche as it sounds, it was a really great experience and changed my life. It also made me fall in love with traveling. I decided that traveling is likely going to be a substantial part of my life in the future and that I really genuinely enjoyed meeting so many fun, smart, cool people from around the world. I still have a lot left to learn about the world, that's for sure, and who knows, maybe some couch surfers can help me with that :).

I loved studying abroad so much that I am planning to do it again - so I will be studying abroad to Beijing China in the fall semester of 2009. China is such an incredibly interesting place, the economy, the politics, and especially the culture of the people located there is all really interesting fascinating and I am excited to learn a lot more about it while I am there.

I'm also extremely interested in entrepreneurship and I feel like it's the only real career path that can get me to the goals I wish to accomplish in life. No, that doesn't mean I'm lazy or just indecisive about my future :-P. I've had at least some level of interest in entrepreneurship for as long as I can remember but it has been focusing more and more over the past several years and just recently I've started attempting to implement some ideas. I feel like my first "job" will be attempting to create a start up company, and would absolutely love it if that is the case regardless of the risk involved.

PHILOSOPHY

Wow, this is a tough one to decide what to write. I'm a fan of philosophy so I will just pick one of the subjects that I think are most interesting and overwhelming.

I believe in the simultaneous duality of relativity and universality. Maybe it sounds confusing but all I mean to say is, I feel like we live in a very relative world, at least at first glance. This means that we can be happy in any situation, no matter what happens, but on the negative side in this same note we can be sad in any situation. Although I personally like to try and focus on the former - both must be true in a relative world. However, think about this for a while and you will soon conclude that if we can be happy or sad in any situation depending on our previous experience with happiness/sadness, then we can assume that no matter what we do we remain approximately the same amount happy/sad about things in overall. Combine that with the realization that most everything done by humans is likely done for what we call happiness on one way or another, and you will start to understand that this theory means there is no point in doing anything - because it won't make us happier or sadder and this is the main point of human existence in a purely relative world.

But luckily there is an escape from this depressing thought. I believe that there are universally true things in our universe (that would destroy the idea of relativity). True, beautiful things that are perfect in every way and explain everything (maybe only one, maybe many, I don't know. Probably only one).

Anyways, until we find these things, we will live hopelessly in relativity. And until people start to consider the mere possibility of their existence (which most people don't imho), we will probably be trapped in this relative world. It's almost impossible to find something you're not looking for, so let's not pass up our one chance on earth to look for this awesome perfect realization that exists in the universe.

A lot of people feel this is talking about nirvana, and I think it is probably very similar to what people mean when they say the word "nirvana", but I would like to mention that I am not particularly religious.

我为什么加入 Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Mostly just surfing as of now - but when I have a place to host I plan to try that out.

I absolutely love the idea of couchsurfing. In our world today, there is a dishearteningly steady decrease of trust that humans have for each other, even though we are the same species and have not only moral but even genetic roots that urge us to help each other instead of hurt each other. I love that there is a project that recognizes this and works off the good will and trust of other people, and I especially like what is says about the human race that this has become such a popular and safe way to travel. To me this is evidence that there are a lot of great people out there and that we can all work together and trust each other a lot more than most people think we can.

I have used CouchSurfing to travel across the U.S. last Summer. A friend and I traveled across the U.S. and stayed at many peoples houses, we couch surfed almost the entire time. We must have been surfing through at least 10 states, and it was a really amazing experience. I've met so many not only nice, but incredible, smart, and interesting people through this website. I really hope to continue that trend as I travel through China.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

As mentioned, I surfed a lot of couches with my friend Alex (profile: http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/apantek) on our way road tripping from Chicago, IL to California.

They have pretty much all been awesome experiences and I feel we've both learned a lot from them and definitely enjoyed the experience. I wish I knew as many cool people in my hometown as I now do through couchsurfing....almost depressing :-P.

兴趣

Computers, the internet (are these two the same?), Entrepreneurship, Harmonica, Web Design, Google apps (they are a lot of fun), Japan, Judo, Frisbee, (soon to be:) Couchsurfing, Good conversation, Genetics, Astronomy, Interesting science of any kind, Juggling, Unicycling (a little), Capitalizing the first letter of ever interest in a list of interests.

• culture
• design
• dining
• running
• politics
• traveling
• juggling
• surfing
• rock climbing
• astronomy
• business
• entrepreneurship
• genealogy
• science

我做过的一件不可思议的事情

I've had some really great and really interesting times in my trip to Asia. At one point me and another friend that I had just recently met climbed Mt. Gas-san in Japan (Dewa san-zan) alone, at night, and completely out of season (it was far too cold, the small bus to the path was absolutely empty, the bus driver told us in Japanese several times that we would die if we tried to climb and tried frantically to stop us). The driver wouldn't even take us up all the way in fear that he would be responsible for our death (I feel like the Japanese have a pretty strong tendency to over dramatize :-P) so we had to sneak past him when he was trying to convince us to pay inordinate amounts of money at a hotel on the mountain. We couldn't find the trail so we ended up just climbing straight up.

Eventually we found this abandoned cabin and luckily the door was open (this was at 3am or so) so we just decided to sleep there luckily they had some food and a microwave which we had run out of at that point (we left money, of course). Woke up the next morning around 5 to try and catch the sunrise and we were literally inside of a cloud, couldn't see anything. Finally climbed past the cloud and got to the top in the freezing, snowy weather - but damn it was an amazing feeling to accomplish something that seemed somewhat impossible so many steps of the way out of sheer will. That is the first "amazing" thing I feel I've done that comes to mind.

教，学，和分享

Haha this is awesome I didn't know about this part of the site but I love it.

I am a big fan of Philosophy and consider myself pretty knowledgeable about those types of conversations.

I have experience in wed design and web programming.

I am a business major and am very interested in entrepreneurship so would be happy to talk about the people I've met and the experiences they've told me (kind of a lot since recently I've been searching out these types of people).

I have watched probably at least 100 Ted talks (www.Ted.com) and would be happy to talk about all the interesting stuff you learn by watching those. I really suggest you watch TED talks they are amazing!

我游览过的国家

Australia, China, Japan, South Korea

我居住过的国家

United States

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