In the past few years, I've visited 10 countries and 21 cities in North and South America, Asia and Europe. I've studied Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish, on top of French, German and Serbo-Croatian studies and dabbling in the past. I've paraglided, or attempted to, in half-a-dozen countries, and sought out the best coffee and croissants everywhere I went. 

I come from a family of writers, for whom putting words to paper is practically a compulsion, as is reading the words of others. I've studied or read or published or all three in the fields English literature, computers, environmental sciences, robotics, energy generation and distribution, and a handful of others.