Hello, everyone! It’s nice to meet all of you. I’m Torgen, also known as The Wandering Nutcase, Mr Smooth and Carmina Burana. You can also call me Ethel, if you insist. I’m twenty years old and at the moment I live in Luxembourg, a tiny country locked between Germany, France and Belgium with only half a million inhabitants.
I was born in Denmark to a Belgian father and a Norwegian mother. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, I know. We stayed in Denmark for two years, then moved to Germany until I was eleven years old, then to the other side of Germany for three more years and then finally to Belgium, where my parents still live. In the immortal words of The Grateful Dead: ‘What a long, strange trip it’s been!’
I graduated from high school two years ago. After doing some jobs like thrash collection and mail delivery, I landed my dream-job: a translator/interpreter function at the European Union. Normally they only hire people with at least a college degree, but because of my eccentric life, I was fluent in French, German, English and Dutch (the fact that I’m a huge, huge dork for those languages also helped). I started as the assistant and interpreter of a Belgian MEP (Member of the European Parliament) and last October, I got the opportunity to move to Luxembourg for a function at the European Court of Justice. Of course they didn’t have to ask me twice! So since that time I have been kept very busy. The job is a lot of hard work, especially the simultaneous interpreting, but I love doing it: the people I work with are great, my boss is the best boss I could have ever hoped for, the pay is good and Luxembourg is a very beautiful place.
Why the hell did I just type all of that boring stuff?! Christ, talk about making a terrible first impression... I guess I’ll leave it in anyway; I typed it for a reason and perhaps some of you need something that helps put you to sleep. :p
I have a dæmon (God, it’s weird saying that... this is weirder than coming out to my parents) and his name is Cicero... or Cissy, although he hates that. When I first started seeing him many, many years ago, I saw him like a dragonfly. For some reason I have always had an obsession with dragonflies. Interestingly, I did a ‘spirit guide’ test a year or so ago and it was a dragonfly. I lost Cicero out of sight when I got older and was busy with so many things. One day he popped back up as a rat and stayed like that until I moved to Luxembourg. I forgot about him again for a short while, but he quickly came back, again as a dragonfly. He’s been with me throughout this last half year and his shape has remained that of a dragonfly.
Maybe some more personal things: I am openly bisexual (it helps living in a very tolerant society) and have had relationships with men and women. I love all genres of music: pop, trance, metal, jazz, blues, rock, hip hop, R&B, classical, GOA, folk, industrial... I might not love all bands of those genres, but I am very open-minded – not only about music, but in general. I bought a guitar a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still resting in its leather bag most of the time. For some reason I just can’t get myself to practice, even though I really want to learn. I’m just afraid I won’t be able to do it.
My tastes in literature are similar: I read anything from classics like Charles Baudelaire and Fyodor Dostoevsky to fantasy and horror to pulp and action. I also love non-fiction in general: history, biographies, philosophy, psychology, poetry, mathematics, biology... I’m always looking for new things to discover and explore, even if I don’t understand anything. :p
Uhm, anything else? Yes! I love role-playing, which includes ‘real-life’ games like Dungeons & Dragons and also online in chat rooms and on message boards. I’m such a dork... and proud of it! I also like going out to find new pubs, new restaurants and new clubs. I love to meet new people, but there are days when I just want to stay at home and relax (like... most of the week after an exhaustive day at work). I’m also a snob: I wear Prada glasses and shirts that are really too expensive but I buy them anyway. :p
I guess that’s about it. I know I’ve been rambling a lot. Anyway, I would love to get to know all of you wonderful, attractive, imaginative, witty people and have many glorious conversations together, so... here’s hopin’ to the start of several sterling relationships!