I'll admit, the one conversion I can never wrap my head around when I'm abroad is the temperature. Someone will say "Oh it's gonna be 18 degrees out today" and I'm still standing there wondering "So... do I need a coat, or...?" Anyway, I'm sorry that I'm the uncool roommate. I'm a little bit mad at you for bringing up the idea of breakfast lasagna - that sounds like SUCH. A GOOD. IDEA. So you like food, rum, photography, and the metric system. What about books? Favorite genre? Favorite author?
Ok, now here’s where everyone loses respect for me.
I don’t read nearly as much as I want to or should. I read very little fiction, or non-fiction for that matter, outside of the Internet. Are we counting manuals, help pages, documentation, research papers, Wikipedia, other reference material, or source code? If not, I don’t really read.
In the past though, that hasn’t always been the case. I read a lot of science fiction. The Forge of God was very good, and so was The Swarm. I’ve read the entire Harry potter series in a time span short enough to be able to chart Rowling’s progression as an author. Perhaps the most impressive part of those books isn’t their story or the world, but watching Rowling’s story mature with its readership. It is like watching something take on a life of its own.
I read smut or plot-porn depending on the author fanfiction written by some incredibly talented individuals (I don’t want to list, for fear of forgetting someone), but other than that my reading lately is limited to practical endeavours. I’m trying to change this, but it is hard when I already don’t have enough time to the hobbies I’ve got.
I tend to ingest stories through interactive media, mostly video games. Some games I play for their mechanics (Antichamber, Frozen Synapse, Blur), while some I play repeatedly for the story (The Swapper, Alice 2, Chrono Trigger). Some are a combination (Portal and Portal 2). Some I play because I’ve heard things (Spec Ops: The Line, the new Tomb Raider), and others are just mind-bendingly well-rounded packages (Bastion, Braid, FF3/6).