Kaoru
Posts: 23
Joined: 10/25/2009 From: Redlands, CA Status: offline
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Geez! I'll admit, I feel rather humbled to be in the presence of wisdom, experience, and very, very neat day-jobs, all in one, on this board! But since this thread was one of my prime reasons for buying the game in the first place - after all, who wouldn't want to be part of this community? - I figure I might as well contribute. I don't have much of a story to tell, I'm afraid. Name's Neil Goldstein, born in San Diego, California, in 1989 - October 16th, less than a month before the Berlin Wall fell. I obviously don't remember that event, but I've always considered it - and the ideas of reunification, national unity, personal freedoms and the end of long struggles - central to who I am. I grew up in Vista, a little town outside of Oceanside, a member of the first generation not to fear communism since the 1950s. I graduated with honors from Rancho Buena Vista High School in 2007, and have been attending college since then. Except for a little hiccup involving running out of tuition for my chosen university, I've been a steady college student - at my local community college, I currently maintain a 4.0 GPA, for all that GPAs will be worth once I'm out of college and working (read: not much, I know. ) I consider military service in some capacity to be a goal of mine, despite the fact that everyone in my life is adamantly opposed to it - my parents don't want me to go into the military, my friends don't want me to go into the military, and the wolves would probably say something against it if they knew how to talk. (My family keeps wolves, you see.) Despite this, I remain intent on working the old saw - 'serving my country' - even in the face of the modern-day unpopularity of the military. My currently-preferred service is army - after a planned stint in the ROTC, and what I imagine will be a longer stint learning what being a good commander really is (since I'm the ROTC will be as lacklustre as ever in actually training me for that.) I've talked with recruiters, and taken a series of battery exams, that solidified my decision: according to the exams, I'm already more capable and qualified than 98% of the men and officers currently enlisted. Realistically speaking, this probably means I have a lot to learn from them. If I can't get army, I'm also very interested in the Navy. (Obviously, or I wouldn't be playing a game like WitP!) Military service does not run in my family's traditions, unfortunately - civil service does. My maternal grandmother, when she wasn't raising a family of seven or so children, worked for the government in various capacities - usually in support of my grandfather, who was one of the engineers involved in the Manhattan Project. My mother's side of the family can also claim a dubious descent from the late president Zachary Taylor. I imagine that I'd have to look back about that far to find significant military service in that branch. The Jewish side of my heritage and family, my father's side, has never seemed too interested in involving itself with conflicts. Whilst still members of the Russian aristocracy, they fled the country when the Revolution came about, which seemed like a better idea than sticking around and getting shot. Technically, this means that I also have some old Russian royalty in my blood, but that's worth about as much as having a sliver of English royalty floating around in one, these days - or less, considering that Russia no longer even gives token recognition to their old monarchial families. My username comes from my history. I was originally "GameMaster5001" on Starcraft, the first game I ever played online, but I eventually decided that my username wasn't exactly flattering, in a lot of ways, and also made a rather large and egotistical claim that I wasn't necessarily prepared to advertise myself with. I was obsessed with the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion at the time, and so chose the username KaoruNagisa as a replacement. That was over a decade ago, now, and since I've only ever identified myself by that moniker - or by Kaoru, or Kaoru Nagisa - anywhere I've gone, online, I've stuck with it. After all, everyone who's ever known me has known me by this name, speakin' in digital terms. Unfortunately, it's not the most original name, so not every Kaoru you see out there is me. There are even some folks who've taken to using the name in contexts that I'm not entirely comfortable with - but enough about that! That's me in a nutshell, at least. Probably not worth the paragraphs I've spent describing myself. Look me up again in fifty years, or so, I'll see if I can't have something worth reading about up here by then. ~Kaoru
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