Not So Serious

Places I've been, things I've done, what I like and don't like, and other oddities....

Favorite TV show: None. I haven't had a TV for 20 years. But the Nielsen company once selected me to use for monitoring TV viewing for a week.

Favorite drinks: Mountain stream water without parasites, fino
Favorite foods: Almost anything with lots of hot peppers; beans and rice in any form

Favorite book: Too hard to choose (but mostly I read nonfiction and historical fiction) 

Favorite mountains: See "Favorite Book" above
Favorite sky: Clear winter night, preferably with an aurora, preferably just outside my tent 

Favorite activities:
    doing science
    mountain hiking
    cross-country skiing
    opera (listening)
    early music (playing and listening; Baroque, too)
    travel, especially in Asia
    time with friends from everywhere

Favorite singing group: The Tallis Scholars (renaissance vocal music)
Favorite composer: Guillaume Dufay (around 1450; wrote the smoothest music ever)

Favorite local music group: Orquesta de Jazz y Salsa Alto Maiz
Musical instruments: mostly recorders (alto, soprano, sopranino, unless we are really desperate for a tenor), assorted flute-like instruments. 

Playing the Irish whistle on top of Dawa Sangmo's roof
in Ringmo, Dolpa, Nepal, at about 10,000 feet (3000 m). 

I'm always looking for people to play early music with 

Scariest thing I've done in the last five years: Presentation to the Board of Regents on research at UNI. I felt as if I was 13 and trying to pass for a grownup.

Foreign languages I am forgetting: 
    Spanish (can lose arguments in lots of subjects if really necessary) 
    Tibetan (but don't remember so much) 
    German (just a little) 
    scattered words of Chinese, etc. 
    limited food vocabulary in Hindi, Thai, Swahili, Nepali 

Why I travel so much (pick as many as you want--they're all true): 
    read too many National Geographics as a child
    three of four grandparents born in another country 
    like challenging food 
    good at sign language, charades 
    prefer novelty to comfort 
    think every culture has something to offer us 
    like to use those bits of foreign language 
    live in a topographically challenged place 

Favorite recent travel memory: Village boys dancing in the starlight while I played tunes for them on a recorder. The unelectrified village was half a day's hike into the hills south of Kathmandu. 

Dislikes: 
    modern pianos and their music (fortepianos and their ancestors are OK) 
    tasteless beer 
    bland food 
    faculty meetings that go nowhere slowly 
    wasting time
    sitting still
    automatic transmissions

What I did with the last can of lite beer left at my house: Poured the beer down the drain and used the can for shim stock. (I hate to waste things.) 

Worst foreign food (a four-way tie): 
    lima beans in fermented fish sauce (Burma) 
    goat's nose stew (Nepal) 
    salt tea churned with rancid yak butter (Tibet) 
    buckwheat cakes burned on the outside and raw inside (Nepal)

Faraway places I've worked or lived: London (as a teenager), Venezuela,     Spain, Colombia, Panama, Korea 

Favorite countries: 
    northern Europe: Norway 
    southern Europe: Spain 
    East Africa: Kenya 
    South Asia: Nepal 
    Southeast Asia: Burma (Myanmar) 
    East Asia: China 
    Centra Asia: Tibet 
    Latin America: too hard to choose

Computers:
Earliest computer: IBM 709 (with tubes!)
Earliest PC: Home-built model
Number of operating systems used: Can't count that high
Number of really good operating systems used: None 

Only record held (other than LP's): African high altitude frisbee throw (with Tim Mahoney and perhaps many others), on the summit of Kilimanjaro. 

Silly things I'm glad I did: 
    Dangled from a cliff in New Hampshire for a night in late October (got off route) 
    Hiked in to above Mt. Everest Base Camp 
    Hiked around Mt. Annapurna the first post-monsoon season it was open 
    Worked on Mt. St. Helens when it was "hot" 
    Camped alone in Yellowstone below -20 F (-30 C) 
    Climbed mountains in New England, Pacific Northwest, Canada 
    Skied across Yellowstone one winter (with a friend) 
    Sailed for a few days on a frigate (3 masts, sails, etc.) as a "trainee."     Nearly died of sleep deprivation. Would like to do it again. 
    Went 10-12 thousand km by train through China (alone) just before I came to UNI 


Why I'm Not a Real American (according to the Spanish): 
I'll eat just about any kind of fish (fried plankton, baby eels, etc.); and I don't expect to be comfortable all the time.
Why I'm Not a Real America (Asian version): 
See "Favorite TV Show" above; also, happy to eat (with hot sauce, of course) both squid and seaweed slabs. Miso only tastes like old socks when I have it here.