Introducing AJ

Hello everyone! My name is Alexander Johnson, also known as AJ. I'm a 20 year old student studying Electronic and Electrical Engineering with Computer Science at University College London.

This is the first year of my course, and I am taking my time adjusting to city life. I come from a reasonably small commuter town outside London where I have lived for as long as I can remember. Before I can remember I lived in, of all places, Detroit; where I was born to an Austrian mother and a British father. How they ended up there is a story for another time.

How does one write an introduction? I have started with some basic facts that allow you to broadly place me, which have come with a couple of side notes to moisten that otherwise rather dry morsel. Do I delve into interests? I have many, and no mere mention of an interest will do- I cannot, for example, mention that I enjoy sailing without mentioning that I have been sailing since I was 7, normally sail an obscure dinghy class called a Heron but while at university I sail Fireflies which is a pretty standard boat for university competition. Can I possibly leave out the notable achievement of coming 2nd in the Heron National Championships this year? Or that my home club boasts an Olympic medallist among its former members? Had I left it at the word "sailing" it is possible that your thoughts would have jumped aboard larger boats; you might have thought me a leisure sailor or someone who ranks sailing equally with everything else on the long list that contains my interests.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself that such slight misunderstandings are generally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things: that if I had erroneously stated that I sail an obscure dinghy class called a Miracle your understanding of me would have been no different from what it is now that I have given you the correct information. This is, of course, true. What have you learned about me from how I've presented myself however? That I view sailing as my primary hobby? That I like details to be accurate irrespective of relevancy? That I overuse the rhetorical questions?

I once got a birthday card on which Holmes and Watson went camping. Holmes wakes Watson and asks him to look up and say what he can see. Watson answers that he sees the sky and many stars. When asked what this tells him, Watson embarks on a long and complex diatribe on constellations, the phases of the moon and likely weather patterns for the coming day. He returns the question to Holmes. At this point I opened the card and read the words: "Watson, someone has stolen our tent."

In this introductory post I have fed you a moist morsel of basic facts on my position in this world. I have discussed the correct level of detail that an introduction should reach. And in all this I have failed to give you many of the obvious facts about me that you could otherwise use to categorize me. I have discussed the nature of the universe, but I have not mentioned that I am currently sitting in the middle of a field somewhere freezing my balls off because some bastard stole my tent.

Now this is the part where you may judge my character. And not just the character of the type of person who fits into that fandom, watches that show or enjoys doing that thing (I trust that sailors are so absurdly stereotyped that no one actually believes me to have an anchor tattoo, eat spinach and smoke a pipe). The fact is that I want to be imagined complexly. John Green has it damn right on that. I want to be seen as an extensive maze containing many interesting wonders. You may learn some routes quickly, tread others often- but you know that to learn all the maze's secrets would require the study of a life time. It is fine, of course, to not want to enter this maze, or to be content with some of the simpler routes near the entrance. There are 7 billion mazes in the world and I don't want some blurry aerial photograph to be considered all there is of this one.

My apologies if this is a little dense- I can get rather philosophical at times. As time goes by I'm sure all my hobbies and interests will come out- and in greater detail than I could possibly have covered here, as they will have entire posts dedicated to them. Also- pretty pictures from wikimedia commons (what, you didn't think I would source them myself did you? Oh, the one at the top? Yeah that's just some random guy).

I also like sarcasm. You may want to remember that. The picture at the top is of me- I'm doing one of my very favourite things. But that's just going to have to wait for another time.

See ya later, and DFTBA