chhotii | Interview answers

What would you most want to be remembered for?
Making some nifty scientific discovery. Haven't made any of those yet, thus the "would".

Which book have you re-read the most times, and why?
The books that I find myself re-reading more than twice are the ones in which I can really get inside the head of the main character, so much that it feels like I'm reading the story of a past life that I don't remember. If the protagonist is me, then the novel is as poignant as my own dreams. For reasons I can't explain, a couple of books that fit this description: Watership Down by Richard Adams, I read over and over as a child. I have to admit, though, I'm rather more timid than Hazel is. (And who's the rabbit???) As an adult, I've most often re-read either The Women's Room by Marilyn French or Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood. Hmm, interesting, I guess at puberty it started to bother me that I'm female, given that Hazel is male; and the books I re-read as an adult are about women struggling with being female.

Who has had the most influence on your life?
I seem to have swallowed my father's values, hook, line and sinker. My father: socially conscious, politically active; math geek, early computer user, late-blooming grimly determined polyglot, degrees from four universities and still going; always seeking to expand his intellectual horizons; fanatic tennis player; miserly and quiet. Yup, we're related.

But I don't know how much of this is nature and how much nurture. For a negative influence on how my life turned out, so far, I have to give a nod to my nine-grade biology teacher, who somehow destroyed my confidence at a crucial age. I've been doing a lot of wandering to get back on track since then.

Where have you been that you would most like to return to?
Montana would be fun. But India is better for viewing the world from a different angle.

When have you felt most at peace with the world and yourself?
On the back of a small, slow horse, on a red-dirt trail in the foothills of the Rockies, very early on a very foggy morning.

Name one place that you have never been to, which you think you would really enjoy living in.
The moon. Although, I realize, to move there, I'd have to fund the construction of a moon colony, a rather expensive idea, since NASA doesn't seem to be making any progress along those lines.

Am I being flip? Maybe a little. The phase "that you have never been to" rules out all the alternatives to Boston that spring to my mind (such as San Fransisco, DC, NYC, or London). There are other places that probably wouldn't suck, as far as I know (Seattle? France? Spain?) but I don't know enough about them to feel like I really have an opinion on them.

Really, I could really enjoy, or not enjoy, any place with Internet connectivity and some sunshine, depending on what job I had and who I found there to hang out with.

If you could have any object rendered in exquisitely detailed origami, which object would you choose?
A cute little turtle. Especially the two-headed one.

What is one of your favorite memories of Providence?
That's tough; I had many special memories which are no longer so special now that I'm divorcing the person they were special with. Sigh.

OK, here's one: making up silly mnemonics to memorize the names of the rock formations in Geo 22, which gave my fellow students the giggles. (Can't remember the good ones, though.)

Among the foods that you will eat, which do you most hate to cook?
I was having trouble putting "hate" and "cook" into the same sentence, but Friday night's dinner provided the answer: spinach lasagna roll-ups. Cleaning and picking over the spinach, cooking the lasagna noodles one at a time, trying to keep them from breaking, trying to keep the spinach from oozing out when rolling... what a pain in the butt! It was really, really tasty though.

What is something that you always wanted to learn how to do but haven't gotten around to yet?
Sewing. You can't buy cute non-padded bras in 36AA; but there are patterns on-line, with instructions for altering to whatever wacko size. Seems to require much more advanced sewing skills than I possess, though. So far, I've made things like a placemat.

Interview answers

no subject