Hi. I am the webmistress of this domain.
I was born in 1979, grew up in Denmark and moved to Scotland in my mid-20s. I'm married to Kevin (my hero) who's a software developer, and we live in Glasgow with our two cats. I'm a system tester in the ICT Systems Development department of a well-known (*cough*) government institution. It can be very challenging and interesting at times, but also - as everything in IT - occasionally quite frustrating.
I believe that you should only keep the things you need, so I tidy up a lot. I value having space to breathe. I endeavour to lead a healthy, holistic lifestyle with respect for the environment - reduce, reuse, repair and recycle (we recycle glass, paper, cardboard, TetraPaks, alu foil/tins and plastic bottles/trays/bags), always bearing in mind that "The more you know, the less you need." This philosophy includes buying Fair Trade and organic wherever possible. I am also passionately against animal testing and a member of the Scottish SPCA, Cats Protection and the RSPB (plus all my garbage - erm, valuable used artefacts, are donated to the PDSA shop and generate a life-changing £45 a year).
As you can tell, I'm basically a tree-hugging, animal-loving hippie... or a CRUSADER FOR EARTH, as I prefer.
Music was once the single most important part of my life. I've written songs since I was about 7 years old and play guitar (since 1994) and piano (since 2002) - not that I've ever been particularly good at it. Some of my stuff can be found on the page My Music.
I support the Royal Scottish National Orchestra through my membership of the RSNO Circle. I am also a member of the Friends of Scottish Opera. My favourite composer is Tchaikovsky.
Rock and pop music I like includes Suede, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Cure, David Bowie, the Beatles, Queen, U2, Pearl Jam, Tori Amos, Primal Scream, the Police, Cranberries, Blur, Metallica, Linkin Park, and some very old or even dead guys like Eddie Cochran, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and B. B. King - basically the inventors of modern music as we know it. I also like more recent bands like the Killers, Snow Patrol and One Night Only.
I also have a little collection of relaxation/meditation music and spiritual stuff like Deva Premal which I quite enjoy.
"I used to read, but then the internet was invented." When I was a child, my favourite books were Nine Lives (by Jane Burton and Michael Allaby), Cats In the Belfry (hilarious wee book by Doreen Tovey) and the Narnia series. In my teen years I read Jean Paul Sartre and Hermann Hesse - Demian remains a favourite. Then I dug into old poetry like Keats, Tennyson, Wordsworth and all those other ones. A few all-time favourite poems are Believe Me, If Those Endearing Young Charms, When We Two Parted and The Tyger. I also have a weakness for French poets, particularly Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Apart from poetry I mainly read non-fiction such as biology, computery things and whatever else takes my fancy.
I enjoy writing poetry, prose and essays, which includes a natural inclination towards languages and proper grammar.
I don't watch TV at all; I watch movies and TV shows on DVD (or recorded on the Sky box). My favourite film is Fight Club, with the rock'n'roll comedy Airheads as a possible second. At the other end of the spectrum I like emotionally powerful and philosophical movies such as The Fountain. I also like sci-fi, adventure, action and fantasy movies - I love exploring alternate worlds through film. Actors I have enjoyed watching include Daniel Radcliffe, David Duchovny, Jodie Foster, James McAvoy, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, David Thewlis and Brendan Fraser. Favourite TV shows are Boston Legal, Frasier, the West Wing and Firefly. I also enjoy a good stand-up show; my favourite comedians are Ed Byrne, Dylan Moran, Dara Ó Briain, Bill Bailey and Eddie Izzard.
I'm very interested in nutrition. I love wholefoods, fruit and other things that make my conscience feel as good as my body! Generally, most dishes containing lots of veg will do me nicely. And for me there's no such thing as "too much garlic". Seriously.
There are few things I love more than a meal at a really good restaurant. I like the Bistro at Hotel du Vin and The Green Room, but Brian Maule at Chardon d'Or knocks the socks off any other restaurant I've been to, including its über-posh and prohibitively priced relation Le Gavroche in London. At home there is nothing better than Kev's spaghetti bolognese (with massive amounts of garlic, of course) or my own quinoa with mushrooms.
I rarely drink alcohol or fizzy drinks. Most of the time I stick to still or sparkling water, tea, fruit juices and smoothies. My one major vice is coffee. The baristas at my local Starbucks know me far too well.
My taste in art is pretty mainstream. I love colourful glasswork, like the vessels and sculptures made by Dale Chihuly and David Goldhagen. I like the Japanese digital painter Kagaya (magical, fluorescent worlds like this makes me think he influenced the night scenes in the movie Avatar) and classical paintings such as Henri Rousseau's Tiger In A Tropical Storm and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.
A lot of what I enjoy doing is already mentioned above - music, writing, eating stuff! Here's some other things I do.
This website started out as about 3 pictures and 5 poems on a free homepage hosted by Angelfire. After a few years the site was growing far too large and had far too much traffic for something free (also, the banner ads were driving me insane), so in March 2004 I bought webhosting and a domain of my own. My stuff lived at christinereid.com until I got married in 2009 and it moved to the current address. It's all written in XHTML and CSS (with a bit of JavaScript for the menu) using only Notepad.
I enjoy taking pictures. I'm not really a skilled photographer, but I was recently gifted a nice digital SLR camera so I will try to produce something worth looking at.
I no longer work Mondays. This time I have devoted to writing/playing music, practising yoga and meditation, and to studying various subjects such as physiology, literature, languages and history.
I am attempting to be more social, which includes more active involvement in various local clubs and groups, such as the opera and symphony societies, the local Mensa group and volunteering for charity events. We'll see how that goes...
I have always challenged convention. It is my finest contribution to humanity.
I cherish things which many other people disregard or even fear: Time, silence, solitude. I am not afraid that I will find silence in my head when the outside noises fade. I have never been bored; it is a feeling I do not know. Restless sometimes, yes, but not bored.
Where I grew up individuality was regarded as a sick deviation. My utter disinterest in the rules of the teen pecking order had me labelled the outsider. I accepted it, even embraced it - it was the price I paid for my intellectual freedom.
Nurture a deep hatred for high street shopping with all its mass-produced cheap tat accompanied by the same soulless, vapid "Best of Shopping" CD.
Sometimes I think I was somehow transported from a time where getting drunk was considered shameful and people had the common decency to be embarrassed by it. I despise drunkenness. If people really hate themselves or their lives that much they should come up with a more constructive form of escapism.
I mostly live inside my own mind. I don't enjoy talking to people. Living in your head can be dangerous because you're vulnerable to a mine field of your own delusions; your own warped perception of reality goes unchallenged. But it's the most comfortable place to live if you're self-conscious or socially inept, or if you find platitudes and small-talk to be loathsome and irrelevant.
I thrive on uncertainty. Most things in my life are planned and predictable and I often feel stuck. I don't want to live my life on auto-pilot. Our freedom is the most precious luxury we have.
Here's a cliché you've heard before, but I think it's a solid life philosophy: Say to yourself, "If I was given a finite time to live - say, six months, what would I wish I'd done differently? What would I change?" Then go make those changes. (Disclaimer: You should bear in mind that if you're not actually dying, a certain amount of common sense should be applied to matters of health and finance for a long-term prospect. But you get the idea.)
- To protect life and refrain from killing
- To respect other people's property and refrain from stealing
- To speak the truth and refrain from lying
- To encourage health and refrain from intoxicants (including alcohol, cigarettes and drugs)
- To respect others and refrain from sexual activity that causes harm
I love Kev, the cats, our home, music, my piano, trees, animals, summer, good food, eloquence, and humour which isn't stupid and aimed at the lowest common denominator.
Although I try, I don't really like people very much. Most of them are noisy, rude or irritating in some other way (or they don't recycle! Grr!). I tend to like animals and even plants more than people. It's nothing personal and I might like you when I get to know you, but I choose to dislike strangers from the onset to avoid disappointment. Consider, though, that I hate noise and a lot of the sounds that offend my ears the most are man-made (and there are many indeed):
loud mastication, slurping and other audible signs of poor table manners; noisy fidgeting, such as rattling change in your pocket or tapping/clicking a pen; screeching trains (Glasgow Central train station) - I appear to be hypersensitive to high frequencies; kids in the supermarket, and the little screamers who live across the road and often play outside; earphone leakage; loud TVs; people dragging their feet when they walk; dripping taps (environmental waste); repetitive, meaningless phrases such as "Do you know what I mean?"; the bass from downstairs neighbour's surround system; and other neighbour revving his engine for half an hour trying to coax life out of his ancient, dying Mercedes...
A desolate mountain top would not be the worst place for me to live. Can I get one that has wi-fi?
