• If you were to describe yourself using colors, what would we see … and why?

Hmm… I think you’d see lots of green (nature), yellow/orange/red (stars), black (empty space)… That’s not really me, but those are the colours that I see when I listen to entrancing music and everything disappears around me…

• What does your ideal (personal) future look like … between now and when you’re 100 or so?

Well, I guess my ideal future looks like this… At 23 I get my Master’s degree in Astronomy, at 27 I get my PhD in Astronomy, hopefully having travelled around a lot to other places, and having met many cultures and people, around that time I marry somebody I deeply love. I continue working at university as a researcher, publishing papers and doing innovative work, at around 30 we get our first baby, with a second one following a few years later. At around 65 - 70 I’d probably…

…retire from university completely, continuing the happy life with my wife… This is of course an ideal ;)… And I have absolutely no idea yet where I want this future to take place… Belgium sucks for astronomy, the Netherlands is great for astronomy, so I guess I’ll spend my first years here. The US sounds nice too, but I’m not sure I want to live there forever either. So… not sure about that yet :)…

• What is your favorite holiday, and why?

My birthday of course! No, just kidding ;). Hmm… I think Christmas evening is my favourite holiday. It’s actually not really a holiday since the day before Christmas is not a holiday, but I’ve always had much fun on Christmas Eve.

• What is your favorite type of candy?

That’s an easy one. The sourer the better ;). God, I love the ones in the picture below… Sour strawberry candy belts ;)…

• Tell us about the worst food experience you have had.

Heh… **glances at Susanne**, cheese with mustard was pretty bad **shivers**… Oh and Greek fèta is sooooo disgusting. Another thing I remember is from years ago when I was still a kid. We were on holiday in the UK, and we had chicken nuggets or something like that in some kind of fast food thingie. My goodness… I suffered… In the picture you see from left to right: feta cheese, cheese with mustard, chicken nuggets with fries (just look at those fries… Good Lord… even the Dutch don’t make them that fat…).

• If you were to pick a time in history to be transfered to, to where and when in time would you go?

I’d love to live in the Stone Age once… Hunting mammoths in Southern France :P (anybody who read the Earth Children series by Jean M. Auel?). And I’m also pretty curious about living in Caesar’s time. I guess I’ve been reading too many Asterix comic books ;).

• What does your name (Tijl) mean?

My name doesn’t mean anything, at least not that I know of. The question is… where does it come from? I was named after a famous historical Flemish character called Tijl Uilenspiegel (litterally Tijl Owl’s Mirror). He lived near Bruges in the late medieval ages. He was some kind of jester, that spent his time making fun of people, embarrassing them by showing them their true selves with his ‘mirror’. I guess my parents were hoping I could show people their true selves as well…

• Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.

During those 20 years I’m on this planet, I closely escaped death twice now. Both times because of my own stupidity. When I was 9 or so, I did a back flip from the side of a swimming pool, of course with the intention of landing in the water. However… I didn’t… I hit the border of the swimming pool with my head, knocking me unconcious in the water. Luckily somebody noticed me ‘floating’ around because it was quite busy at the time in the swimming pool, so my teacher immediately jumped into the water with his clothes and everything and got me out. I ended up with a wound of about 10cm/4in long and 2.5cm/1in wide. But luckily I didn’t drown or anything. And the second time I faced death (even more closely I think) was when I riding on my bike through town, just coming back from school. I was doing some calculations in my head, I don’t remember what exactly. But because I was concentrating so hard on these calculations I never noticed the light was red… I rode through the red light, and less than a second after I passed the middle of the crossing, a bus crossed that same point coming from the right honking his horn like a mad-man… For a few seconds I thought my heart had stopped :|…

• Have you ever created/invented/etc something? What?

Heh, I usually get creative when I’m procrastinating… In high school I once made a ‘Tic-Tac dispenser’ in Lego. I would just press a button and it would automatically drag a tictac to some kind of slide, dropping it in my hand :P. There is one thing I’m really proud of however. I designed my own pendant. My mother had it cast in silver for my 18th birthday. A lot of people wonder whether there is any meaning behind it. To be honest… There isn’t. However I like to think of it as showing the struggle between Inbalance (the lightning-kind of thing) and Balance (the whirlpool-kinda thing resembling a Yin-Yang sign). I’ve been wearing it for more than 2 years now, both during the day and at night…

• What are your most cavemanlike attributes?

I actually have quite a few caveman traits I think. For example I’ll happily pick something back up from the floor if I had dropped it and eat it. I also love walking on all fours ;). Anyway, I actually would love to live as cavemen some time. We have grown into a too hygienic society that cannot cope with any hazards from outside. Our immune system is not getting better by this ultra-clean environment.

• If you could re-live a day in your life, which one would you choose and why? (e.g. because it was a great day, or because you want to undo something)

There aren’t any things that I would like to undo, or at least not any that only took place during one day. There are however a few days that I’d love to go through again. One of those is August 11th, 1999. That day 6 years ago, when I was 14, I witnessed the total solar eclipse in Northern France. Such a grand phenomenon really makes you feel tiny and insignificant to the grandness of the universe. It’s a symbol for my studies and my view on the universe :).

More questions tomorrow by iceberg.