I'm an Aussie student here in Tübingen for a stint of research. My German is terrible but I'm working on it! Hoping to be able to hold a conversation by the time I leave.

I'm a curious person not satisfied with skin-deep explanations for how things work. Sciency things, social things, all sorts of things.
I enjoy debating with people, not to win, but to learn new things and figure out what's true about the world. A good argument as to why I'm wrong about something is possibly the fastest way into my pants.

I run a lot and cycle a bit. A cycling date, there's an idea. I play guitar. I like variety. I've done a little bit of many things, but a lot of few.

I'm doing my PhD in physics, I spend every day in a lab or in front of a computer, or both, and I love what I do. I work with awesome and extremely clever people and we all get to play with new expensive gadgets and take part in building complex, interesting things.

I enter into some running races sometime, one day I hope to beat Puffing Billy to Emerald :P. (It's a steam train you can race against).

Like I said I'm in Tübingen for some research, but wanting to make sure I have some fun too (hey who am I kidding, the research is fun too!). Have been snowboarding once, and there's another trip next week, and have some tickets to some upcoming metal gigs in the area, but certainly looking for other ideas for what I should do on the weekends.

Thinking, explaining, debating, problem solving of all sorts. Making computers do what I want. Making atoms do what I want (laws of physics permitting). I can make a beautifully typeset LaTeX document (Garamond, fuck yeah). Spelling and punctuating correctly. Playing guitar (No I will not play Wonderwall. Yes of course I could, I just don't want to. No I won't prove it. No I don't care that you think it would help me attract women.).

Being independent. Learning new things. Not letting other people tell me what to do. Unless they're totally right, in which case taking it on board and acknowledging that their way is better. Not letting biases make me believe false things by accident.

I kick ass at Articulate, the board game. Not so good at Pictionary though.

It used to be my stupidly long hair, but I guess I actually look pretty normal now, so you tell me.

Here is a list of books, movies and TV shows all jumbled together.

The Reality Dysfunction (just finished reading, really good), 1984, Brave New World, Stargate, Firefly, Dollhouse, Ender's Game, The Skinner (really good book, not that well known for some reason). I think Battlestar Galactica is boring. The acting is good though. Alias, Black Books, Black Adder, Red Dwarf, Breaking Bad, Archer, Fringe (guilty pleasure), Song of Ice and Fire books (not very far into them yet), and the TV show a Game of Thrones, the Moral Landscape, actually anything by Sam Harris, that dude makes some great points. the Hitchhiker's guide series (thought the recent movie was pretty good too!), the Matrix, Animal Farm, Diaspora. I found Foundation by Asimov to be a bit slow and stopped reading it. Evolution (Stephen Baxter -- really good book, kind of depressing), the Pillars of the Earth and the sequel World Without End, the End of Mr. Y, Wicker, Primer.

Ok I'll stop now!

As for music, I'm into metal, and at the moment am listening to bands like Ensiferum, Be'lakor, Insomnium, Psycroptic, In Flames. Epica are growing on me. I'm much more into styles that can be heavy whilst still having plenty of melody and harmony than the metal styles that focus more on the rhythm. But I only really got into that recently and could totally change my mind as I hear new things. Sometimes I want something more rhythm-y like Devildriver or Meshuggah. For when I don't want my eardrums crushed I listen to people like the Butterfly Effect, Porcupine Tree, Karnivool. I used to be really into Muse, but stopped paying attention to them a while ago.

I don't mind listening to almost anything, and am happy to have anyone's music on at any time, even if its not at all what I'd listen to. People who are overly fussy about this sort of thing absolutely shit me.

I like cooking (creating something tasty with another person is always fun), and think the Italians and Greeks got a lot right, olives, garlic, mushrooms, tomato, basil, and every kind of cheese make fantastic ingredients. I don't like spicy food: I can't hack having my tongue chemically burned by the food I'm eating and I'm not afraid to admit it.

I am completely cool with vegetarians and vegans and probably agree with you on most things philosophically if you're either. Try me if you doubt it.

-Exercise. I start to go crazy if I can't do any for a while.

-Music. Similarly crazy if separated from it for too long. Also crazy if I can't find anything new that I like and am listening to thesame stuff for too long.

-Friends that I can have deep, extremely speculative conversations with about the future of the human race and whether or not you 'die' if you use one of those teleporter machines that are a staple in sci fi, in which your body gets scanned molecule for molecule, destroyed, and reassembled out of different molecules elsewhere.

-Science! I couldn't imagine living in a world where we hadn't figured out that science is the best way to figure stuff out. It would be a very strange world -- people would have to invent all sorts of magical superstitious explanations for things.

-The internet, without it I wouldn't have easy access to gaining the sorts of knowledge and skills it offers. And funny pictures of cats.

I'm not really a very obsessive person, I'm not sure there are many things I absolutely couldn't live without.... like, I love my guitar, but if I had to do without it, I could probably enjoy another instrument just as much. No music at all would suck though.

Atoms: always doing something that I don't quite understand. They're complicated little buggers.

Wondering how the human race is going to turn out. What sort of system of government future civilisations will use, and what sort of system might lead our current one to world peace, that sort of thing.

Why philosophers have such a hard time with morality, when it seems like a solved problem

There isn't a typical Friday night yet, as I've been in this country three weeks! One Friday night I had a long train ride to Switzerland to stay with a friend for some snowboarding that weekend, another was beers at the WG i'm staying in, and the most recent was birthday drinks for someone in my lab. No idea what future Fridays with entail, as I don't have any of my own friends here yet and it depends how many I make and/or steal from others :p.

I'm not a very private person, I'll admit basically anything that's mine to tell.

If you're awesome, if you want to teach me some German (mein Deutsch ist sehr schlecht, aber ich kann ein bisschen verstehen, wenn man sehr langsam spricht, und ich kann mich ein paar einfache Sätze sagen) or if you want to show me around the place.

If you want someone to invite along to something, or want another drinking buddy. If you're a group of people and want to adopt a newbie to your country into your social group.