Alex spends much time trying to have an interesting life but the level of success achieved in this task is debatable.   Sure, he has excuses since being in graduate school forces one to live a relatively sedentary life style for want of economic fortitude and temporal freedom, but his passion of traveling is somewhat aided by the tiny discounts afforded to him due to that very status: student.

Photo of Alex circa 1990There are photos of him and his travels which can be found on his picasa (google) account.  More of them can be found on facebook, if you're into that sort of thing.  Alex has visited and had a wonderful time in the following countries outside the US (that he remembers):
Italy, Vatican City, Austria, Switzerland, Yugoslavia (Slovenia), Canada, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Australia.
He hopes this list continues to grow.  He believes that New Zealand, China, and Mexico are coming up soon.

Alex loves music but has musical tastes that are not always compatable with those around him.  He has a digitized collection of music that contains over 9000 songs in various genres and a collection of about 400 CDs.  He began listening to what is often referred to as "world music" around his 11th birthday because his uncle gave him an Enya CD.  He believes this fostered both an affinity for unconventional melodies and a mild indifference to the lyrical content of music.  These days, he is content listening to anything that surprises him, particularly if it has an unconventional melody and is played in anything but 4/4 time.  According to Last.fm, when the links are actually working, you can see his
Top weekly artists
Most recently heard songs  

His favorite pastime is reading books and he does it fairly frequently.   He will read all kinds of junk if he finds the time, though his favorite genre is character driven sci-fi (like 'Red Mars').  This interest was planted by his first reading of the Ender's game series and then later nurtured by his encounters with Philip Dick and Kim Stanley Robinson.  Most recently, he has loved the Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.  Below is a list of books that he owns (the majority of which he has actually read).


Alex really loves to have conversations about things, all kinds of things.  But he particularly enjoys conversations about politics, religion, and sexuality.  Alex doesn't get invited back often.

Movies play a big role in Alex's life as he claims to have seen well over 1400 of them.  When he first moved to the US, the aunt and uncle he lived with owned a video store.  He learned English by watching VHS versions of films such as Batman, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabit, Willow, and Howard the Duck.  Alex could totally relate to these films.

Alex has wasted a bit too much of his life "surfing" the web.  Google Reader has made this task much quciker and smoother.  On occasion he likes to share what he's found.  Google Reader has made this much quicker and smoother too:


He's pretty decent at strumming chords on a guitar and, if given enough time to practice, can play you simple versions of most "Beatles" hits.  But he really wants to learn to play the accordion because he thinks it's an excellent but under-appreciated instrument, and he's too old to master his favorite instrument, the violin.  If that fails, his ultimate dream is to be a simultaneous Jewish harp, tambourine, didjeridoo player in a post-post-modern new-old-Jazz ensemble.

Alex in Venice
Psst... I have a blog.
 
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