New Citizen's Questionnaire

[Ián Tamorán S.H.]

Aha! A Questionnaire! Let's see how Talossan I am...

Q1. Do you have a favourite sports team? Who and why?
Sports? I've never been interested in sports... Sumo is perhaps my favourite – but that's not a team sport.

Q2. What are your favourite hobbies during your free time?
Reading, listening to music, writing music, writing books.  Highest on the list, though, is listening to music.

Q3. Pixar or Marvel?
<puzzled look> ?? what??

Q4. If you had the opportunity to live in the capital city of any sovereign nation, other than Talossa, which would it be and why?   
Oh, that's easy – Paris. It is beautiful, it I full of great art, it is elegant, I loved the food there... and it's where I first visited on my honeymoon.

Q5. How do you cut your sandwiches? Diagonally, not at all, or another shape? Maybe you take off the crust?
Probably diagonally – though on picnics they're square-ish. I don't really care how they're cut – just let me eat them!

Q6. Do you have a favourite podcast to recommend?
No one favourite, though I do listen to some of the BBC podcasts from time to time.

Q7. Apple or Android? 
Silly question <grin>: Apple, of course! Is anything else possible?

Q8. What is Talossa's most attractive feature?  What brought you here?
Its people and its eccentricity.

Q9. Which one of the Rocky movies is the best?
<another puzzled look> What? What are you talking bout? (Actually, I know what you're talking about, but – really – that's an obscene question!)

Q10. Skydiving, or deep-sea exploratory submarine?
I would love to go deep-sea.  The water on this planet teems with extraordinary life, and elegant complexity and huge emptiness and dense crowds of living creatures: it is beautiful.
Now if you had asked about outer space – ah, that would have certainly been at the top of my list.

Q11.  What is your favourite movie and why?
Not sure. Princess Bride? Coming to America? Shakespeare in Love? West Side Story?

Q12.  Do you have a favourite Avenger?
<yet another puzzled look> what?

Q13. What would be three books, articles, or other such materials that you might recommend to all of Talossa for reading?   
Three very different books: "Once On A Time", A.A.Milne; "The Faber Book of Modern Verse" (1952 edition); "Life A User's Manual" / "La vie mode d'emploi" Georges Perec.
Why? The Milne is a lovely fairy story, both adult and child, full of humour. The modern verse is precious to me, as sentimentally part of my teenage years, and beyond – my real introduction to poetry. The Perec is just like a delicate jigsaw puzzle (analogous to his own description of it), which links together different strands of narrative into one beautifully entwined whole.

Q14.  Who/what is your favourite music artist/band/genre?
Ooh – this could be a long answer! My favourite music is that of Bach – his organ works in particular – though Mozart is nearly as good. The artist(s)? I'm not sure that I have one favourite: it is the music itself that speaks. Genre? Boring, I know – but without doubt classical. And that covers everything from the 12th century to the 21st, and (in my opinion) includes jazz and Stravinsky and Ives and Vivaldi and Debussy and... <insert long list here>

Q15. Are you a reader, a writer, a speaker, or a listener?
I read a lot. I write quite a bit. I speak in public quite often – and I get a huge amount from listening.  So, all four.

Q16. What are your distinct and separate feelings on the colours of green, red, and pink?
We can see more shades of green than any other colour (I am told). When I look out of the windows where I live there is green everywhere. Red reminds me of infrared, and heat, and red shift, and danger and fire. Strong, violent. But pink? I am fed up with pink being a "girl's colour". I'm a bloke, but I have pink shirts; my wife is definitely a girl, and wears blue. My daughter is driven bonkers by the fact that boy's teeshirts have brutal logos on them, and are of "macho" colours – brown, khaki, brilliant orange with power words and heroes emblazoned on them, but girls clothes are pink and soft and have fluffy edges and pink and have no pockets and pink and don't like mud and pink... Which is a pity, because there are some very lovely pink flowers.
And girls do like mud.

Q17.  Do you have a favourite flavour of ice cream? If not, what is a favourite dessert? 
Um chocolate-ginger... or maybe rum and raisin or perhaps raspberry ripple... my wife is a wonderful cook!

Q18.  How do you feel about jam versus jelly? 
Translation, please. Jam is the sticky stuff, usually a preserved fruit with sugar, which comes in a jar. Jelly is that wobbly stuff that's transparent / translucent, sometimes is served (wobbling) on a plate, and of all sorts of (wobbling) bright colours loved by kids (including me). One of my friends says that it's impossible to find completely vegetarian jelly, but (hush) don't tell your animal-loving friends.

Q19. Do you play any video games in your free time? Which?
Not really. Sudoku occasionally.

Q20.  If you could eat an apple right now, or a pear, which would you rather?
Depends on the time of year. Right now (middle of June, northern hemisphere), an apple; but later in the year, when the pear tree in our garden is in fruit, a pear.