Hi there, my name is Vincent. I live in the Netherlands and was born in 1988 on December 21st (first day of winter), which means that I'm in my mid twenties.

A little bit about my personality then :)
I'm a pretty calm and quiet type of person, although in the right company I can be driven to a bit of silliness or activity (especially in the company of good real-life friends). Extending on this, I could say that I like being serious a lot as opposed to being funny and spontaneous, but I feel there should be a balance there, as well. I spend most of my time behind a computer, but I do like nature and being outside. I like people and interacting with them, but I feel like I can get a little socially awkward at times and I need a good amount of time for and by myself. I tend to be left, politically, but I get intimidated by the details of it all and have trouble forming more specific opinions. I hope to change this by getting more world-oriented, for example by watching the news more and stuff. I like qualifying things in order to see the layers of gray between the black and the white, but maybe I've been doing a bit too much of that in this paragraph. Oh, there I go again (or maybe not really).

Besides nature, I also love animals (in as much as that's not already a part of it). I'm especially a big fan of cats and I hope to never have to really live without them. Even when I'll have moved out of my parental home again and gotten my own place in Utrecht and I'll likely again be unable to keep cats myself, I'll be happy to go back to Kaatsheuvel from time to time and visit Yottem and Hana (from Japanese 鼻, not 花), as well as of course my parents and younger brother.

Oh, I like this: my flowchart! Err, ... no guarantees that it can be taken literally though... if anything, I don't usually "date" in the sense of going out to dinner and stuff like that to begin with (although I do think it's still interesting (the flowchart, I mean)). But, so, if you "fail" it, that might not mean anything (although it might, I really can't say). And I think we should split the bill.

Some of my friends are on this site: Duhaslith, LuthienTelrunya and bikedude_nh.

I'll add a bit of personal history here, as well. I've long since had some trouble being disciplined, so I didn't make it through the first year of the psychology program at Tilburg University. After that, I took up a linguistics major at Utrecht University, which I loved almost as much as I did psychology. I love languages and always want to know, understand and speak more of them. That's why I've spent a lot of time trying to learn Japanese (not very successfully thus far), and am now casually working on Danish a bit. However, after two years of this second major, I decided I would love biology even more, so that's what I'm studying now, still at Utrecht University.

I'm interested in modelling and ecology, and would like to combine the two to study and model ecosystems in the future. I could probably do that for a job as a scientist, but I might also like to program a sort of zero-player game where you just have a simulation of an ecosystem in as much detail as I can get in. I have to get better at programming first, though.

I'm not working at the moment, so I'm not really doing much besides school. Just hobbies, really. Those include, besides the language learning thing:
- Listening to music and singing along off-key (see the "my favorite" section);
- Playing games on the PC and Nintendo consoles (I love the Super Smash Bros. series);
- Surfing the net in pursuit of random information or interaction;
- Writing fictional stories (rather unskillfully).
- Trying to get through the entire collection of Khan Academy.
I do most of these things on the computer, usually. Some I do with books.

Now that I've moved to Utrecht, I like to spend time in the university library near here and sit and read (mostly) non-fictional books. I have to spend most of that time working through school books, but if I find time besides that I really want to broaden my horizons and read about all sorts of very different subjects. Articles, too. Recently I read some articles about the gay lisp stereotype, and certain linguistic characteristics of people in the autism spectrum.

Well, I don't know if I'd say I was "really good" at it, but I'm pretty good with languages. In spite of the aforementioned occasional social awkwardness, I'm pretty empathic. I'm usually rather patient and don't anger easily at all.

My red hair? My pale skin? It'd probably be something physical like that, something that stands out about me. Although in certain contexts, it might be my reservedness, which might also cause them to not notice me that quickly to begin with. The truth is I'm not too sure about this.

Books: I don't read those as much as I used to when I was young. My favorite is "Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt, which really inspired me. I cannot recommend it enough. Before that, my favorite was "Gebr." (Dutch for "Brothers") by Ted van Lieshout. I also very much liked the "His Dark Materials" series by Philip Pullman.

Movies: I like coming of age movies, of which my all-time favorite Du Er Ikke Alene (Danish for "You Are Not Alone") is a good example. It also has a gay aspect, so all the better! I like other such movies as well, such as Sommersturm (German for "Summer Storm") and Whole New Thing. Non-gay coming of age movies can be cool too, such as Machuca, of which I also enjoy the cultural aspect. I also liked Contact, Diarios de Motocicleta (Spanish for "Motorcycle Diaries"), Dances With Wolves, The Crying Game, The Last Samurai and Tillsammans (Swedish for "Together").
I like movies that don't primarily tell a story, but tell about life in a 'real' sense (i.e. not having lost a huge chunk of realism by overproduction) and with that still have a story to share. That's part of why I love Du Er Ikke Alene so much - it is the perfect example of this.
For more details, see my IMDb vote history.

I think I should talk a bit about TV shows as well, since I watch those more than movies and certainly care more about them than food, for example. Some that have stuck in my mind are Heroes, The X-Files, House M.D., QI, The Big Bang Theory, Black Books, The IT Crowd, and Will & Grace. Lost was another favorite, though I'm not too sure about the ending. Bones is one of the few series where I actually think it dropped in quality significantly in later seasons (I'm usually just about the only one to disagree with people when that becomes the public opinion), as is Dexter. I'm keeping up with Dexter, but dropped Bones. However, I'm currently looking to pick it up again and give it another chance.
I also like anime a lot (it's what got me into Japanese originally). Some of my favorites there are: Digimon (yep, really :) it's very cute and funny, and sometimes a little sad), Fruits Basket, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hikaru no Go, Kyou kara Maou!, Loveless and Sukisho (actually, I guess it's known as Sukisyo for some reason). Specifics can be found at My Anime List.

Music: As a rule, I like folk, indie and alternative music. Pop is okay too sometimes. Recently, I've also taken a liking to enka (Japanese style of music). Favorite artists (sorted alphabetically) include: Andrew Bird, Beatles, Christine Fellows, CocoRosie, Enya, Feist, Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, Kitajima Saburou, Laura Veirs, Leonard Cohen, Loreena McKennitt, Melanie Safka, Mirah, Owen Pallett/Final Fantasy, Regina Spektor, Sebastian (the Danish artist; not the French SebastiAn), Shimakura Chiyoko, Tegan & Sara and Vashti Bunyan. Oh, also note my Last.FM profile.

Games: I feel like I should also add a piece about games I like, as it seems to fit in a section like this. I like roguelikes, for starters, although I'm fairly new to the genre. I love Dwarf Fortress. I like games from Blizzard and Lionhead studios, among others, as well as games from the Forgotten Realms, The Elder Scrolls, Warlords, King's Bounty, Heroes of Might and Magic and Might and Magic series. I was waiting for a new installment of Black & White for a while, so I was very happy to hear about Godus. Other than all these, I also like Battle for Wesnoth, Mount & Blade, Demigod, Populous: The Beginning and Majesty: A Fantasy Kingdom Sim (the second game was okay too, but not as much of a classic as the first one if you ask me (it should've had procedural generation, for one thing, and the heroes should have been much more autonomous -- as it stands, it's no longer that nice mix of simulation and strategy game, and is instead just a strategy game)). And Bejeweled and Minesweeper, too. As I mentioned earlier in this profile, I like games on the Nintendo consoles too, most notably Super Smash Bros., but also Mario Karts and Mario Party, for example. Feel free to look at my Xfire profile or my Steam profile for more information and specifics, at least about the PC games. Finally, I have a YouTube profile where I have uploaded many timelapses of (mostly) video game content.

Food: I don't seem to like food or eating as much as the average person, but there is some stuff that is always hard to resist. Besides potato chips and chocolate, think along the lines of pancakes, cheese fondue, cold dishes (i.e. Russian salad) and my mother's famous vegetable pie.

People, cats, music, knowledge, alone time and loved ones.

Myself: personality, self-improvement, whether I need to worry about me losing my optimism (both towards people and life in general) and otherwise whether I will be able to keep my good characteristics such as a certain degree of humility and a lot of compassion, what my future will be like.

The world: determinism, three-dimensionality, beauty, senses, biology/chemistry/physics, nature.

Moral stuff: politics, fairness, honesty.

Psychology/philosophy: interaction, love, physical attraction, personality.

Also, language(s).

Sitting behind my computer, doing one of my hobbies (mentioned in the "What I'm doing with my life" section). When I lived back home, I might have had a friend over (if it was in the evening, most likely Duhaslith, in which case we'd probably be playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl with my brother Max). Nowadays, there's also a chance that I'll be in the universitary library, reading.

I like most insects but the fluttering of moths used to freak me out - they just never understand you want them to get AWAY from you. I learned that there's a phobia like this called mottephobia. Makes sense, right? Anyway, I'm not as bothered by it anymore, I think more or less since I've started studying biology.

I'm a bit afraid of heights and getting water in my eyes. (Acrophobia, aquaphobia, and then there's also glossophobia. None of these are actual phobias in my case, though.)

I love to sing, but I really can't. I don't like to dance unless I'm alone and it's late at night.

Spinning dice still amuses me (and spinning coins, beer coasters and water bottles as well). Whenever someone is throwing a frisbee around nearby, I can't help but stare in fascination.

In all honesty I can get a little annoyed at answers given here by (so many!) people who in my opinion misinterpret this question. It's asked very solidly: the most private thing you're willing to admit here (EDIT: it seems they changed the question so it doesn't say "here" anymore, so I guess this section is no longer valid). So answers like "just ask" and "it's private, hello?" don't really make sense, logically speaking. No offense if you have an answer along these lines (which sounds a bit lame to say, I realize, but I honestly don't mean this in an affronting manner or something like that).

Actually I suppose I'd be willing to admit more private things here, but this is what I came up with (so far anyway) :P

I generally like receiving messages that are well thought out and refer to something personal about me. Messages that show that someone has actually looked at my profile. I'm also always interested in information about yourself. I don't mind long messages either (quite the opposite - I tend to send them myself, as well). Mind, however, that there are times that I don't look at this profile very much at all (so far, I've been back every time though, sooner or later), so it's possible a reply might be late at times.

Still, please don't worry or feel anxious about sending me a message :)