** Pitch a woo if you like, but if i like you, I'll expect to be able to meet you. **

I love people who make me laugh, or think, or jealous with a good turn of phrase. I may or may not be reasonably intelligent, but I fake it well through regular readings of The New Yorker, books, and whatnot. I'm fairly agile with words, though I think faster than I can speak.

Here's my origin myth: In reaction to a monocultural childhood, I started learning languages and have since lived and worked all over the world, including Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Thailand. I consider myself decently well-traveled, but there's still much more to see -- ideally with somebody! Despite all the adventuring, the Bay Area is the place I've most enjoyed, and I plan to stay (for now). I admit to loving languages too, and speak a few well, while with others I make do with a few beguiling fragments.

I love cooking, but love eating more. I'm coming to terms with my own foodieness, and it's pretty hard for me to avoid talking about good restaurants or other food] experiences here or abroad. (Don't get me started about Paris.) Simply put, I'll eat anything well-prepared from anywhere, without hesitation, whether it's a Michelin-starred restaurant or a taco truck. I also have definite opinions about it afterward, so if you find that uncomfortable or elitist, well.... I even have embarrassing fantasies about being some kind of food pedant. In fact, these days my trips abroad tend to use food experiences as an organizing principle. And I love seared foie gras, so when I go to Hell I know horned, angry geese will peck at me for eternity. (This also probably means I'm not a good match for a vegan.)

I'm culturally Jewish but non-neurotic. I hate spectator sports too, so we're free on weekends. I do bike around, however, and can now actually say that I ski (I grew up in a semi-tropical land, so this was not a given).

I'm liberal, but tend to believe in what works. I'm generally tactful, but another side of me loves telling the bald truth to see what happens. My snarky humor reflects my irrepressible idealism, dammit!

I'm not good at orthodoxies, but I love aphorisms. I'm not good at being a consumer. I think fast, talk slower, bike for exercise, write (and spell) well, do voices, stop to touch the flowers, ignore sports, don't mind the heat, never vote Republican, try to be kind, make time for those I care about, try cooking anything, eat out both high and low, love film, love chocolate more. I'm sensitive, verbal, self-aware, and very affectionate, though I'm usually so demure on a first date that nobody believes this.

And here's a salad of other things I like: Thai food (used to live in Bangkok); challenging conversation; great film; Brazilian music; overwriting; and seemingly using baroque punctuation, and barely parallel sentence structures.

I tell the same story hundreds of different ways. (It's called marketing.) I'm also in radio.

I would really like to be a lazy entrepreneur who does something incredibly brilliant every once in a while and thereafter collects checks in a foreign land. And sometimes I think of doing something in a non-profit again.

Writing, cooking things with recipes, occasionally cooking things without, rolling my own sushi, picking up languages (I speak Spanish, Portuguese fluently, and speak smatterings of French, Russian, and Thai), speaking in accurate accents as well as wildly ridiculous ones (my Commonwealth ones are terrible -- I don't even bother), figuring out the big picture while ignoring contradictory details, offering advice on things about which I am perhaps only moderately informed, knowing lots of useless things about the world, forgetting important things, being sympathetic to my friends, anything theoretical and academic (why didn't I do a PhD? oh, I remember...), finding the best Thai restaurant, making beautiful doodles (once did illustrations, now lack good subjects), learning how places work during my travels, reciprocating massages...

Eyes? Perhaps. You'll have to tell me.

Or my beautiful, mellifluous voice.

BOOKS/OTHER THINGS TO READ: I enjoy well-written non-fiction, and very well-written fiction. I've enjoyed Tristes Tropiques, Money, The New Yorker (not a book, obviously), Breakfast of Champions, Guns, Germs & Steel, Nabokov books originally written in English (aside from Speak, Memory). I just finished (and enjoyed) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I'm embarking on Shantaram, and How the Mind Works.

Just to give you a sense of the random stuff I read, I've been perusing (OK, skimming) books on the Great Wall of China, Vietnam, salt, and of course, pirates.

MOVIES: Ran, City of God, Mishima, Memento, Trainspotting, Goodfellas, Lawrence of Arabia, Seven Samurai, 8 1/2, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, Fitzcarraldo, The Manchurian Candidate (the original -- a very bravely unresolved movie), Run Lola Run, Vertigo, Raising Arizona. There Will Be Blood should have won the Oscar for Best Picture, and you can't fault the title for lack of accuracy. Of course, you can't actually know what I liked about each of these movies. Good luck on forming a psychological model on such information! Incidentally, I watch quite a number of movies... I've decided I hate Bunuel, that boring old man.

MUSIC: I'm muscially stunted, but I like many things from Brazil, mostly: Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque. And yes, I will happily listen to (your) non-Brazilian music.

FOODS: Xenophilic; see above.

TV: The Daily Show used to be my only addiction, but I'm temporarily obsessed by The Wire. (Because they don't make Rome anymore.) Thank god it will all be over soon... if I can just find the first DVD of Season 4.

This is such a great question, because there are exactly 6 things in the universe that I can't do without. They are: chocolate (ideally, Lindt Excellence 70% Dark Chocolate); something interesting to read; movies; The Daily Show; gai lan; and unnecessary semicolon abuse.

Editors

• MITGeekGoddess

How differently we humans perceive the same world

What's Obama going to do? Will we ever find out what really happened?

The use and abuse of language, especially my own

What to eat next

Who will eat with me

Out with friends if I can...

* I'm the Rabbit Whisperer. * I make small edits to Wikipedia. * I get discouraged by bad spellers if they're native English speakers. (Hint: "Alot" is not a word.) * All other countries have inferior potassium * I don't seem to want kids. Not ruling it out, but it's not part of my narrative right now. * I eat Hershey's chocolate on occasion. <-- this is the most embarrassing of all

You're intellectually curious and deep. (Deep is nicely vague, huh?)

You're funny, silly, or ironic. (So you can be plenty undeep at times too.) Boy, if you're really funny, that's half the battle already.

You have some kind of international exposure, maybe acquired or inherited. Another language is always nice.

You enjoy all types of food, and maybe cooking. Sitting in church is not for you.

You're confident and self-aware. You function OK, but empathize with this misfits.

You're passionate about something, and sometimes just plain passionate.

The rest is chemistry. That's what dates are for, after all.

Ah, wouldn't it be nice if we could have met on a tropical vacation or at Berkeley Bowl, sorting through fruit? Well, I tell all my female friends that the Internet is the most socially acceptable way to approach men -- and you can always invent a story later. So if you're curious, feel free to send a quick note.