Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people, then click publish.)

It took one week for this to come around to me. Guess I’m not as popular on the web as I used to be. That’s why I’m picking people who are unlikely to continue with a response.

1. I was born in Boston, moved to Norwalk, CT at 6 months, to a South Windsor, CT condo at 2 years, to a South Windsor house at 5 years, to Montreal for school at 18 years, back to South Windsor at 21 years, and to New York City for school at 24 years. Something tells me that this is yet to be my final destination.

2. I absolutely hate telephones. I prefer either face-to-face or online communications because either in-person I can capture all the gestures, expressions, and tones, or online I can just read and edit a response (and sometimes go to the bathroom or get a snack in between).

3. Despite my voluminous patronage to Starbucks, I do not think it is the best coffee in the world (though leaps and bounds better than Dunkin). I moreso admire their corporate business model for social responsibility (meeting CEO Howard Schultz was a life highpoint), but I’ll take a good specialty coffee roaster/coffee house (ie, Joe the Art of Coffee or Cafe Grumpy) anytime.

4. Despite my affection for coffee, I typically only average between one and two cups a day. I take my time to drink it and am not as “third wave connoisseur” as I’d like to be.

5. I have been a Montreal Canadiens hockey fan since I was five years old. My best friend in kindergarten, Chris Frechette, had French-Canadien background and also, he played goalie and his idol was Patrick Roy. I was only five, so I followed suit and have been a fan ever since. Go Habs Go!

6. There is nothing like a regular poutine from either La Belle Province or LaFleur. Here in NYC, Pommes Frites (123 2nd Ave) makes a good one also.

7. In high school, I wrote my senior thesis on ontological being. I boiled down our human existence on Earth to the two P’s: Procreation and Provision. Our existence serves to fit those two purposes in a perpetual cycle. If you believe in Jung-Myers-Briggs typology, I’m probably INFP, which could explain some of this existential introspection (and ridiculously long answers to these questions).

8. Most everyone knows that my favourite band is Rane. I’ve been to probably more than 200 of their live shows (one time driving as much as 4 hours to see them), and as they’re a local band, I had the privilege of playing three songs with them during a rehearsal (“Niagra,” “Broca’s Aphasia,” and “Flutter”.)

9. I started taking piano lessons when I was in fourth grade and carried it through high school, even though I never got to learn jazz piano. I always wanted to play the drums, but apparently when I was in third grade, I skipped lessons and my parents got a call home. Now I just go to music stores to sit at the kits and play.

10. I used money I earned from umpiring little league to buy my first acoustic guitar when I was 14. It was a $100 Montana guitar from Daddy’s Junkie Music, and I started to teach myself chords by following a music book of Hootie and the Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View. My goal was to write, record, produce my own album by the time I die. I started it in high school; it’s called Canned Introspection; hasn’t been touched since…

11. My first open mic was around August 2001, at the Equator Coffee Bar in Manchester. I played “Rain” and “Sounds of Sleep” by Rane and “Don’t Panic” by Coldplay.

12. I started my web site back in 1997 after learning some rudimentary HTML in South Windsor High School’s Internet Club. The club was a bust, but I’ve had my own web site ever since. Its content has evolved from more high schooly type of livejournaling to now more media reviews and socioeconomic observations. Keeping the management of my site up-to-date has led me to a mild knowledge of how the internet has grown in capability.

13. People have actually called me “smalrus” as a nickname (smalrus comes from “Spencer Mitchel Ross”; also a morphology of “small walrus” as in, “I am the Walrus, goo goo g’joob”). Active use of it as a nickname started from my first-year floormates in Molson Hall when I was at McGill. I do respond to it.

14. I met Judi on JDate. I wasn’t back from Montreal but two weeks before we started dating. We’ve now been together for 4 1/2 years and the wedding is this Labor Day weekend. I’m trying to do my part in it… =)

15. I proposed to Judi on the ice at Bryant Park. The details are well documented on my website, but what was special about it was not that it was done on the ice, but that most of the wedding party was there, yet Judi hadn’t a clue.

16. My parents named me after my mother’s mother, Sadye. My Hebrew name, Sonder, is a masculine variation of her Hebrew name, Sanka. In trying to make sure the nekudot are right on Judi and my ketubah, I went to the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary, only to find out that Sonder is short for Alexander. The Hebrew equivalent of Spencer is actually Avigdor.

17. My top three non-North American travel destinations would be: 1) Iceland (was supposed to be our honeymoon) 2) Switzerland 3) Austria. Theoretically, I could continue that list outwards indefinitely, but you’ll find it top-loaded by Western Europe (I want to go back to France), East Asia, and Southern South America (eg, Patagonia).

18. I’d love to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Some of the roundtables, dialogues, and plenary sessions there have the most phenomenal names in business/politics/non-profits speaking.

19. I recently applied to Ph.D. programs in marketing. Two MBA professors planted the seed, it grew, and now I think its the most passionate, viable, and personal career paths for me. In fact, my personal statement included how I wanted to use my Ph.D. research as a springboard to Davos. It will be a shame if I don’t get into one.

20. I used to be a huge Star Trek fan, particularly in grades 3-6. All my schoolwork revolved around Star Trek, prompting a call home to my parents for me to be more creative. I also dressed up in school/at the theatre for the movies.

21. I learned to read when I was 2. I used to read store signs and traffic signs and progressed into the funny pages. Perhaps my brand recall was a sign of future developments. My favourite book was Mike’s Kite. Then Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

22. New Yorkers remain convinced they have the best pizza in the world, but with more than 2000 shops that all have their own styles/quality, I’m not convinced. Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napolitana in New Haven is still where my loyalties lie.

23. I have man crushes on Jack Bauer and Gordon Ramsay. 24 is one of my favourite current shows and Gordon Ramsay’s British television persona is vastly different from his American one. Plus he can cook.

24. My two all-time favourite movies are Fight Club and Amélie Poulain. Though drastically different in terms of style and substance, I feel the themes speak deftly to the human condition. (See #8)

25. I still have a tendency to spell in Canadian English and sometimes slip into Canadian accent. People think it’s a conscious effort for me to “be Canadian”, but the reverse is actually true; living in Canada for 4 formative years and now reading British publications has made it more effortful for me to “be American.”