Back in May, Chris Brogan challenged his readers to write a mini-autobiography of themselves. I thought it was an interesting idea and I fully intended to do it, but like so many other cool ideas, it got put on the back burner.

Then I got tagged many, many times for that “Eight Random Things” meme, and it reminded me that we do actually care to know about each other, and lord knows with all my moving around and mixed background, people get confused about who I am and where I’m coming from. So without further ado, here’s a Cliff’s-Notes-style rundown of me, followed by a better-late-than-never rendition of the Eight Random Things meme.

I was born in the winter of 1973 in San Antonio, Texas, to German parents, each of whom was a bit on the unconventional side. I attended a French Catholic school from the time I was five years old; I agreed to leave after the sixth grade when the nuns and my family couldn’t come to an agreement on what were “acceptable” questions for a young Catholic girl to be asking (to say that I was curious is an extreme understatement). I attended non-religious schools after that and it was much smoother sailing.

When I was three years old I started messing around on an old foot-pump organ that belonged to my great-uncle. Until I was about six I had to get an adult to work the foot pumps for me, but once I was tall enough there was no stopping me. My uncle gave me the organ, and I was hardly ever off the thing. Eventually it was decided I should have proper lessons and an instrument on which I could progress. My parents bought a piano and I started having lessons at a local academy. I had a great teacher— in fact, she was so good at teaching me that within six months I was playing at a more advanced level than she was. I chewed up and spit out a couple of teachers that way; eventually a wonderful woman named Myrna von Nimitz (may she rest in peace) reined me in and sent my enthusiasm and natural ability down a much more focused and productive route. She discovered a skill in me that I was aware of but never knew had a name— perfect pitch. By the time I was ten I was playing with professional orchestras and theatre companies, but really my main strength was critical listening and composition. I developed those skills with Myrna, and stayed with her until I went off to university, spending several hours everyday on music.

My first attempt at college was an unmitigated disaster. I firmly believe that the age of eighteen is much too early for most people to be deciding what they want to do with their lives, and yet we act like they’ll burn in hell if they don’t go to college right this second. Most of them can’t even decide what to do this weekend, and I was firmly in that camp. I knew I wanted to do something that involved music, but I other than that I had no idea. I kind of thought I should see a bit more of the world before trying to decide where my place in it was. How can you know what you want to do if you haven’t even seen a fraction of what’s available?

Nonetheless, I was only eighteen and family and societal pressure got the best of me. Three sad semesters I stuck it out, not really trying, barely ever going to class, and not really getting anything out of it. Eventually I came out of that closet— university wasn’t for me, not yet, and regardless of my family lamenting that I’d never go back and I’d end up flipping burgers, I finally went with my gut instinct and dropped out. I still think it was the smartest thing I ever did.

Thus began several years of self-employment (I never did well with an employer, never could get the hang of someone else calling the shots for a third of my life), and then I started thinking about a move. I wanted to get out there and see stuff. I’d already hopped around briefly here and there, having lived for short periods both in California and Montréal, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to see more, learn more. So when I found myself in a relationship with an Englishman in 1997, it didn’t take much discussion to decide that it would be I who would move to England and not the other way around. When I landed in Manchester in March of 1998 to make England my permanent home, it was the first time I had ever set foot in the UK. I had absolutely no money, no prospects, and very few belongings.

Nonetheless, I made my way in this new world. I had to relearn my native language several times (anyone who’s lived in different parts of the UK knows what I mean), and I had to find a way to get on some kind of visa so I could stay in England. I had already been thinking about going back to school, and when we learned that a student visa was a fairly easy one to attain, that pretty much sealed the deal. I did a preparatory year of A-levels whilst applying to universities. Actually, I only applied to one— the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, Paul McCartney’s renowned “fame school.” Looking back, this was a very risky move; had LIPA not accepted me (and the competition was stiff to say the least), I had no backup plan and probably would have been forced to leave the country. But from the moment I first looked at the prospectus, I knew this was the school for me, and after the first university fiasco I saw no point in applying to other schools I wasn’t interested in. I mentioned that on my application, and again in my interview. The interviewer smiled and nodded, and my acceptance letter arrived the following week.

My time at LIPA was amazing. I’ve never felt so at home in my life. Much to everyone’s surprise, I didn’t pursue a degree in music. I felt like I’d tried that before and it hadn’t worked, and I wanted to explore a complementary route, something that combined my natural critical listening abilities with my love for both gadgets and mathematics. I majored in Sound Technology, which combined record production with technical sound engineering and critical aural analysis. I excelled at the aural analysis much more than the techie stuff, but regardless I worked hard at what didn’t come naturally and graduated with honours in the spring of 2002. Soon after I was able to secure a permanent resident visa for the UK, and I opened up a music school teaching piano, voice, performance coaching, and songwriting workshops from a studio I built in my home.

In the early part of 2004 my relationship with the Englishman came to an abrupt halt, and in May of that year I took a one-week vacation to Turkey with five of my closest friends. We arrived on a Sunday; by Tuesday I had decided I wasn’t going back to England. I had made a brief visit to Turkey the previous summer and had been enchanted and mesmerised by it; this second visit had proved to me that it wasn’t just a fluke. I was in love with the place. I went back to England, packed my things, got on a plane to Antalya, and didn’t look back. Once again I didn’t have a penny to my name, but I knew from past experience that I could make it work, and I did exactly that.

Three years later, and I’m still here. There’s a much steeper cultural learning curve here than there was in England, and as you guys know I try to document as much of that as I can here. About a year after I moved here I met Emirhan— we’ll be celebrating our two-year anniversary in September, and I’ve never been happier in my life. We’re planning our next move as I type this; watch this space.

Wow, I challenge you all to try to write about your entire life in just a few paragraphs. Reading it back I cringe at the huge holes I’ve had to leave in the interest of brevity, holes that might actually make the story confusing… but I thank you if you’ve stuck with it this far, and I thank Chris for prompting me to write it.

Now, the really fun part— eight random things:

• I like to give everything a fair chance to impress me; subsequently I find it impossible to have favourite things, like a favourite colour or musician or food. I feel like if I lock myself into a favourite something then I’m closing myself off from being open to a potentially better thing that might present itself. I think this objectivity is one of the reasons I did so well as a music critic. However, it makes it frustrating for people who ask me a question about a preference and expect a one-word answer.
• Probably my most serious hobby is language study and linguistics. I know a lot about a lot of different languages and language families and can read pretty well in several different alphabets and writing systems; actually speaking languages is not my strong point… in fact, I’m awful at it.
• I’m the most flexible person I know. I can do all those freaky things like lying on my stomach and bringing my feet over my back to touch my ears. I don’t seem to be losing it as I get older. You’d think this would make me awesome at yoga, but no. I do enjoy yoga, but I’m not particularly good at it.
• Soon after I dropped out of university I joined the armed forces in a moment of desperation about what I would do with my life. The army didn’t work out for me and I got a dishonorable discharge for reasons I can’t go into.
• I talk funny. People expect me to sound American but I just don’t. Six years in England and three in Turkey can really bend an accent. Most people guess that I’m from somewhere in the Southern hemisphere, but I’ve never even visited that half of the world. I’m currently working on getting my American accent back, mostly because Emirhan likes it.
• Many years ago I was a professional opera singer. It’s something I’d like to pursue again at some point.
• Up until about a year ago I couldn’t cook anything at all. I have no natural ability whatsoever in the kitchen. Before I moved to Turkey I had no clue about anything even as simple as boiling eggs. I didn’t even know what it meant to boil something or how one would begin go about it. In general I hate the idea of food preparation— for me it seems like a waste of time when there are perfectly good restaurants that can do that sort of tedious work while you’re doing something fun. Recently some nostalgia for meals I can’t get in Turkey has prompted me to learn to make a few simple non-Turkish dishes. I still screw them up frequently, often badly enough that they have to be thrown away and we just order pizza instead (which was a better idea to begin with).
• I grew up in one of the hottest hotspots in the United States for alien sightings and abductions, San Antonio’s Olmos Basin. I wanted so badly to see something extraterrestrial that I used to drive and walk through the woods of the basin at night, hoping that if there was something out there it would see me and contact me. I never saw any aliens, but one night wandering around in the woods I got the holy bejesus scared out of me by a black Labrador. I stopped going in the woods after that.
• I find politics mind-numbing and soul-destroying, and I can’t spend more than about thirty seconds listening to political talk before I want to slit my wrists.

Now, for the twist: I know I appear to have written nine random things, but don’t be fooled— only eight of them are really about me; one of them is a complete fabrication. Can you guess which one?

Thanks for indulging me on this, it was great fun and I’d love for you each to do it in your own blogs and link in the comments.

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