CURRENT MISSION

To sing without silencing others, dance without leaving footprints, to live and love desperately. To see it all.

ABOUT ME

Began life as a little teapot, short and stout. Otherwise terrible at autobiography, especially once all the other categories have been accounted for. More later, watch this space!

PHILOSOPHY

I wrote in my early teens that I lived my life to discover myself. Narcissist that I was. Now I'm more geared towards discovering the outside world but wisdom, learning and discovery remain my focus. I'm drawn towards the situationist idea of a life built of fleeting, meaningful situations, and creative pursuits as focussed attempts to create and remove obstacles to such situations. My favourite part of a song is the bridge.

With all that earnestness in mind, I'm also open to irony and I try not to take it all too seriously.

Oh yeah, and ethically I tend to be utilitarian, with the caveat that I tend to think the greater good is generally best served by respecting the opinions, rights and reasoning capacities of others.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'm new here, but I hope to be a gracious and giving surfer and an open host.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Surfed with some wonderful kittens in Santa Fe, we laughed, we danced, we ate green chili.

Interests

Passionate about film, books, quality TV, and live music. I try to never miss a concert I may one day regret missing. An incomplete 3 year tenure as a law student makes me occasionally rant about human rights and rule of law issues. When travelling I love meeting people, experiencing the best food, beer, wine and whisky, and observing the little nuances in conversation which differ between cultures. A recently re-ignited travel bug and a love of American culture from its volatile beginnings to its volatile present.

• culture
• books
• singing
• concerts
• dancing
• human rights
• dining
• wine
• beer
• drinking
• tv
• traveling
• socializing
• music
• live music
• jazz
• opera
• law

Music, Movies, and Books

I'll limit myself to 10 of each.
American Beauty, The Boys, Mullholland Drive, Days of Heaven, Badlands, The Thin Red Line, The Empire Strikes Back, Man with a Movie Camera, Donnie Darko, Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise.

The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, The Whitlams, Pink Floyd, Placebo, Leonard Cohen, The Flaming Lips, Something for Kate, Bob Dylan, Mercury Rev.

Franzen's The Corrections, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (not a scary right-winger though, just think it's a great book), Twain's Huck Finn, Tsiolkas' Dead Europe, Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Conrad's The Secret Agent, Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, Pierre's Vernon God Little, Roy's The God of Small Things.

TV deserves a mention too, so it's Twin Peaks, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Carnivale, The Simpsons, The Wire, Oz, My So-Called Life, Seachange, The Twilight Zone

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I saw the Obama inauguration, wrote off a car, watched a secret Billy Corgan acoustic gig in Sydney, met David Carradine, Summer Glau, Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton and Nicholas Brendon, saw Michael Jackson in concert, played with my school jazz band at the Sydney Opera House, recorded a voice-over for a short film, got an academic article on film voice-over published, said goodbye to someone at an international airport gate, slipped over while wearing a kilt and broke a tooth, recited Burns' To A Haggis and cut the haggis with a sword in front of 400 people, made friends, lived, loved etc.

Teach, Learn, Share

I tend to think the best lessons of travel can be the things you don't even know you're teaching others, the unconscious cultural markers like where you stand to order a drink, how you approach a girl in a bar, how you signal another driver to thank them for letting you in, even how (and if) you walk the streets. That can be the knowledge best imparted by the couchsurfing experience, and I hope to teach and learn it all.

If my nerdy side is engaged, I can also talk for hours about film techniques, layering of soundtracks, irony in voice-overs and why it's not important that an adaptation be faithful.

I'll also make you a pavlova, show you how to use tim tams as straws and explain how Baz Luhrman doesn't really 'get' Australia.

Countries I’ve Visited

United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia

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