More Award Fun

Today I am picking up two more awards from Alana Munro’s recent awardfest: the Liebster Blog Award, and Very inspiring Blogger Award.

The Very inspiring Blogger Award rules are as follows:

• Display the award on your blog (done)
• Link back to the person who nominated you (done)
• State 7 things about yourself (see below)
• Nominate 15 bloggers (later)

The Liebster Blog Award rules are as follows:

• Nominate eleven bloggers for the Liebster Blog Award (later)
• Notify the bloggers (later)
• Ask eleven questions the bloggers must answer upon receiving the nomination (later)
• Answer the eleven questions you were asked when you were nominated (see below)
• Link back to the person who nominated you (done)
• List 11 random facts about yourself (see below)

Here are my eleven random facts about myself:

1. In 1989, I got down on one knee in the middle of Red Square and proposed to a girl. There had been an episode of Blind Date where the couple had been to Moscow; the woman asked the man to get down on one knee in the middle of Red Square and propose to her, so he did – and she said no. I thought this was terribly cruel.
2. My favourite actor is Helena Bonham Carter. I love her eccentricity and passion, and she’s beautiful.
3. For five years, at the start of the millennium, I was active in the open source community – I love writing computer software. I suffered burnout in 2005, which was a bad year for me.
4. I love Italy – the food, the wine, the music, the language,…
5. I’m afraid of spiders. I also have a mild phobia of mushrooms and toadstools. I love bats and snakes.
6. I love stilettos – I’m also very fussy about the design. Of course, I don’t actually wear them…
7. I wrote my first novel while doing my PhD. Both the book and the thesis took about three years to write.
8. My wife and I celebrate our seven-year wedding anniversary this month.
9. I do some of my best creative writing (plot development, etc.) while swimming.
10. In 1999, I spent two months working in Japan; while there, I read the whole of Colin Dexter’s Morse series, and the whole of Ian Rankin’s Rebus series (published at that point).
11. I want to write a really good science fiction novel one day.

Here are my answers to Alana’s questions:

1. Favourite movie of all time?
   There are so many films that I love, but these spring to mind as contenders for ‘favourite’: The Hunger, Silence of the Lambs, The Man who Cried, Daughters of Darkness.
2. What makes you angry?
   Injustice.
3. What makes you cry?
   Sad endings, some music; listening to Je crois entendre encore in The Man who Cried really hits me, as does the fate of Paul Muad’Dib in Dune Messiah.
4. What makes you laugh?
   Irony.
5. Do you have any pets?
   No, but my parents have always had a cat, and I like having a cat around.
6. If you could do any job in the world, you’d be a…?
   I enjoy research and teaching.
7. What’s wrong with politics in 2013?
   Politics has become all about image. There’s very little freedom for genuine change.
8. What book can you read over and over again?
   Again many, but: Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Hannibal, the Dune series
9. How do you feel about religion?
   I believe that preachers, holy books and so on stand in the way of true enlightenment.
10. What bugs you about modern life?
    Everything is so fast these days, and so busy. There’s so much pressure and too little time for reflection.
11. What quality do you look for in a friend?
    Honesty. Kindness.

I will do the nominations in a separate post. I want to do something special.