Interview Time

Posted by shonk at 02:04 AM in Blogging | TrackBack

Unlike most, I don't have an "About" page on my blog. Instead, I'm getting interviewed by Petya. She had some tough questions, but I'm not sure what they reveal about me.

THE RULES

1. Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.

2. I will respond; i'll ask you five questions.

3. You'll update your website with my five questions, and your five answers.

4. You'll include this explanation.

5. You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

1. How would you spend your dream summer vacation?

That's a tough one, because I like both seeing lots of different places on a vacation and getting to know one place really well. They're very different experiences, but both exciting. However, since I'm convinced you can never really get to know a place unless you live there, I think I'd want to visit a broad variety of locales. Eat in cafes, people-watch, go to unpopular bars, listen to local bands, go to lots of museums. Ideally, several places in Eastern and Western Europe, South America, Asia and even Africa, though it's not known as a tourist destination aside from safaris. And I'd want to go with someone I loved so that we could share the experiences, both the roaches under the beds and great architecture, both the train delays and the Joycian epiphanies on the streets.

2. What foreign language would you like to learn?

For practical and literary reasons, Russian or Chinese. For sentimental reasons, Bulgarian. Don't make me choose.

3. If you could replace George W. Bush with any woman in history, who would that woman be?

Sappho. Both because I admire her work and because I think having a poet-president would be cool.

4. What gives you pleasure and makes you feel guilty at the same time?

Books. Reading them, buying them, stockpiling them. I love books because you can hold them, you can take them anywhere, they smell good, they're permanent, and they're both fun and educational (even fiction, which I think is often more "true" - whatever that means - than non-fiction). I feel guilty about reading, though, because I often do it to the exclusion of everything else, including socializing, studying, working and sleeping. I feel guilty buying them because I could get them for free at the library and save lots of money, but if I did that I wouldn't have them all readily accessible whenever I want to look up a passage or re-read a chapter at 4:00 in the morning. I feel guilty about stockpiling them primarily in my back when I move, since, at last count, I've got about 7 boxes of 'em (plus 5 bookcases).

5. What is the best advice your mom ever gave you?

"Don't let dishes pile up in your sink." Seriously, though, I think the best advice my mom ever gave me was "Women think differently than you do." Which wasn't intended to be a put-down on either women or myself, but just to let me know that women have a different perspectives, different values, different incentives. Which wasn't to imply that women are homogeneous in their thinking, just that they tend to think differently in similar ways. Honestly, I wish I'd remembered that advice more often than I did. And, of course, it really applies almost as well to all of humanity. Everybody thinks differently than everybody else, and a failure to recognize that is the cause of most disputes, I think.

Okay, now if anybody wants to be interviewed by me, just leave me a comment (no more than 5).

Other news:

Over there to the right, just below the book I'm currently reading, I've added a link to the list of books I've read since last September. Hope you find it handy (I'm not going to link to where you can get each one, but if you can't find one, let me know and I can probably point you in the right direction).

Oh, and speaking of reading, there's a 30 story building just outside my window with a big scrolling marquee flashing messages all night. Here's five minutes worth (seven scrolling letters at a time):

PECO ENERGY A COMPANY YOU CAN COUNT ON...

VOLUNTEER THIS SUMMER AND HELP SOMEONE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS INFO 215 49-MANNA

3:36

NETWORK OF INDIAN PROFESSIONALS AVG 29-31 VISIT WWW.NETIPCONFERENCE.ORG

3:36

PHILLY! SLOW DOWN...DRIVE SAFELY

3:37

PECO IS THE PROUD SPONSOR OF...WWW.POSITIVELYPHILADELPHIA.COM

3:37

WWW.POSITIVELYPHILADELPHIA.COM...A PARTNERSHIP FOR REGIONAL GROWTH

3:38

PECO PROVIDES SUMMER SAFETY TIPS FOR KIDS...VISIT US AT WWW.PECOSAFETY.COM

3:38

THE PHILA ORCHESTRA CELEBRATES OPENING NIGHT ON SEPT 17...

3:39

EXELON... ONE COMPANY ONE VISION...

3:39

STAY SAFE PHILLY!!!

I think you can see why I usually keep my blinds closed.