I am, to borrow Anne Frank, a bundle of contradictions: adventurous yet domesticated, easy-going and passionate, chatty yet a good listener, respectful and irreverent, God-fearing yet skeptical, idealistic and old-fashioned, optimistic yet cautious, lively and stoic, flexible yet uncompromising, inquisitive yet oddly incurious. People hold me in thrall, stimulating exchanges of ideas and insights with those who care, dare or both in any of my seven tongues. Night owl, bookworm, chameleon, crane and cat all call me kin. Causes swim inside me like fishes in the deep blue sea of lovely pearl-string islands I call home. This mélange makes me, if the mood catches, a Gauguinesque child of the tropics, a wondering nomad like Waugh, deconstructed intellectual with Sartrean leanings, uppercase Romantic in the best Pushkin tradition and glass-half-full fellow in Mandela mold.