Hi guys. I never got a chance to write a response to this thread because there were some fairly major things going on in my life that I could not, at the time, talk about publicly for various bizarre reasons. I can now, so, here we go.
I'm Gautam Mukunda (no middle name). I was born in Washington, DC on January 14, 1979, the only child of two Indian immigrants. Which makes me 23, the youngest person so far to respond to this thread by almost 10 years, I believe. Hehehehe. My father is an engineer, and my mother a nuclear physicist. On my Mom's side, at least, I am the first male in the family in four generations who will not become an engineer (if you give my grandfather, an applied Chemist, an honorary membership), the cause of some degree of tension. I grew up in Maryland and went to high school in Silver Spring in the Montgomery Blair Math and Science Magnet Program. Blair is rather unique in that it's a Magnet program inside a normal high school that is majority-minority with almost 40% of the student body on free and reduced lunch. I spent the summer of my junior year doing research in MIT on neural networks, and all of my other summers in high school doing research in optics at NIST. I went to Harvard for college, where I concentrated (Harvard-ese for majored) in Government, doing my senior thesis under Stanley Hoffmann, whom some of you old Vietnam War protesters should recognize. He's just as far left now as he was then, which will surprise many of you, I'm sure, and I worship the ground that he walks on. After graduation in June of 2001 my job status was very bizarre, so I ended up taking a position as the Administrator of the Russian Investment Symposium, the largest gathering on the Russian economy in the world. In January I was diagonally promoted to my current position, Coordinator of the Kommersant Program, an executive education program that sends American businessmen and professors to Russia to teach about Western management practices. I'm also currently writing the lead article for Russia Watch, a magazine whose topic should be obvious from the title, advocating a new and closer NATO-Russian relationship. The big news that I couldn't write about is that in September I will be taking a position as a Business Analyst in McKinsey & Company's New York Office. Needless to say, I am _extremely_ excited at the thought of getting the chance to work at a place like McKinsey, and to live in New York. I will be there for 21 months, until June of 2004. At that point The Firm (for some reason _everyone_ seems to refer to them as The Firm) will, if all goes well, offer to pay for my MBA, and I'll have to decide whether to return to my current passion of political science or stay in the private sector. So expect a major life crisis from me at about that time :-) Perhaps I will even adopt the Yankees once I'm in the Big Apple. Stranger things have happened :-) In my (non-extensive) personal life - I've spent the last few months trying to join the Naval Reserve, something that I probably would have done anyways but was made more likely by 9/11. I had actually decided on going for active duty, but I (much to my surprise) received the McKinsey offer, and even my friends in the military told me that I would be insane to turn it down. Unfortunately it now turns out that I will probably be unable to join, as I am (rather severely) color-blind, which is a disqualification from serving as a line officer, as well as a number of other positions. My attempts continue, but I can't say that I am in the least hopeful. I am, as all of you know, a baseball fanatic, although I also follow the NFL. I like classical music, watch Buffy, Alias, 24, the West Wing, and the Simpsons religiously, and spend too much of my time reading bad science fiction and not enough reading good history and literature :-) I'm currently writing a murder mystery novel set at Harvard that was inspired by a true story and spending the rest of my free time lifting weights. I'm currently single, as is also obvious from my posts. Let's see - my favorite novel is probably Gore Vidal's _Lincoln_, and my favorite movie definitely depends on my mood, but I'd probably pick _Heat_ more often than I'd pick anything else. I'm not sure what my favorite non-fiction book is - I tried to figure it out but I couldn't. Maybe Carl Sandburg's Lincoln biography. My favorite science-fiction novel is _The Fountains of Paradise_ and favorite fantasy novel is probably _Tigana_. Lois McMaster Bujold is probably my favorite currently active sf writer (if you count Arthur Clarke as inactive) and Robert Jordan my favorite fantasy author. Miles Vorkosigan is definitely the sf character with whom I'd most like to sit down and have a few drinks. So, in summary, I'm 23 - young enough to claim that I still have potential and old enough to say that I've wasted a lot of it already. I still don't know exactly what I want to do with my life (or, more accurately, I know what I want to do but not the best way to do it) and I greatly enjoy participating in this active community of fascinating and eccentric people. Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. Anything else? Let's get this thread started again - I know there are lots of people who haven't replied yet. Gautam Mukunda
