| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | When I was a child we spent many summers in a village near a small lake. There was a creek, perhaps two to three feet wide and five to ten inches deep, falling into the lake. The creek was our favorite place to play. We were building dams. There were three to five boys and each of us had a designated part of the creek to build a dam. We used sand, wood sticks and moss. We also built sand castles between the dams. No matter how high we built the dams they were eventually breached, and we watched our castles being washed away by the raging water. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | My closest person in family is my sister. She is younger than me and we did not compete with each other. We have very different personalities, but we always felt that we are similar, for example, we always laugh at the same jokes. Our parents treated us equally and taught us to love and help each other. We both like walking, so we were often walking for hours talking about everything. I used to feel little bit like a father to her, I told her many stories and explained her everything. Now she has grown up and developed her own opinions, so now I listen more than I talk. I feel very lucky to have her; this is a friend that will stay with me for the rest of my life. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I very much admire kindness and the desire to help others. When I was younger I was admiring intellect, but now I see it just as a tool that can be used for good or evil like any other ability. It is similar to qualities such as beauty or strength, which are attractive to others, but they are not helping anybody but the owner of these qualities. Only a person who cares about other people and who likes to share what he has with them improves the world. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | I visited my friends in a small Canadian town. We talked all evening and finally went to sleep. In an hour or so were awakened by someone making noises in the bathroom. My friends called the police who knocked at the door. There was a man behind the door who told them to leave him alone to finish his business. When the police finally entered the bathroom the found a very drunk, disoriented and irritated man, who thought this was the house of his friend. That was the end of the story about which we laughed for a week. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I would like to travel to Peru to see the ruins of Incas in Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Their civilization developed in isolation from the rest of the world in its own unique way and now it has completely disappeared. I think I can learn something new from them. Peru also has many parks, from snow-covered mountains to tropical forests; I would love to hike in these parks to see their beauty. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would like my children to love and help each other like we did with my sister, to be open-minded in the constantly changing world. Finally I would like to them to share my love for books and desire for new knowledge. |
