And I can’t play Scrabble because I can’t spell, I never choose “Entertainment” in Trivial Pursuit, and I need a bigger house because all our tables are covered with books and magazines.

New adventures are good and I've slogged to the outposts of far SW China (Lijiang), circled Java staying in traditional Indonesian hotels, sat 10 days in silence on a mountain in central Japan, soared over the Rocky Mountains, and scuba-dived in the Caribbean. Among my travel fascinations are big cities including Tokyo, New York, Paris, Chicago, Shanghai, Mumbai(Bombay) and Hong Kong.

Unusual food I've eaten on my travels includes:
Crocodile and Kangaroo in Australia
Snake in Taiwan
Wild dog in far SW China
Frogs in West Java
Fried ants & scorpions in Singapore
Horse (cooked) in France
Horse (raw) "ba-sa-shi." in Kumamoto, Japan,
not to mention more usual Asian dishes like sea cucumber, sea urchin roe, varieties of seaweed,
and goodness knows what in the restaurants of Guangzhou.

Among my top 10 favourite movies are:
Cinema Paradiso
Life of Brian
Taxidriver
2001:A Space Odyssey
Saving Private Ryan
Das Boot (Studio Cut, not the Director's Cut)
Hana-bi
Triumph of the Spirit
13 Rue Madeline
Witness for the Prosecution.

Among those that didn't appeal to me are:
12 Monkeys, X-Files, Casino, and Air Force One,
and Pretty Woman gives me the creeps.

Learning languages, and visiting those countries, also intrigues me, especially for the cultural insights gained through the linguistics. In speaking and writing I can get by in Japanese, Indonesian and French, but my listening skills are a struggle. I’m always curious about how people see the world, and what I can learn, and that’s perhaps why I enjoy epinions.com.