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NAME: Carl Michael Paulino Valderama (And you thought YOUR name was long?!)
AKA: Spidey, Spider, The Fish (one of my SCUBA instructors said I took to the water "like a fish", ergo...)
ETHNICITY: Try to guess first--you'd be surprised what I hear from people! Let's see... I'm mostly Filipino, a little Spanish, a wee Chinese... Am I forgetting something?
LANGUAGES: Fluent Tagalog (I was born and raised in the Bay Area, but this was my 1st language), fluent English (my 2nd language), passable Spanish, and a little German.
BIRTHDAY: June 1st--yup, I'm a two-faced bastard of a Gemini! =)
LOCALITY: East San Francisco Bay Area
TECHNICAL LICENSES: Emergency Medical Technician-1A; Ambulance driver's certificate
MUSIC: Let's see... Eric Clapton, Tamia, Babyface, Yanni, Brian McKnight, Toni Braxton, Otis Redding, Sade, Eagles, Nat King Cole, Phil Collins/Genesis, Maxwell, Lenny Kravitz, Chicago, Sting, Third Eye Blind, Blink 182, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Zoot Sims Quartet, James Brown, Prince, Etta James, Earth Wind & Fire, Bee Gees, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, Stone Temple Pilots, No Doubt, Janet Jackson, old school Madonna, Garbage, Jennifer Lopez (ooh, BABY!), Jessica Simpson (damn, she got lungs!), Garbage, Marc Anthony, Diana Krall, Miles Davis...
FAV MOVIES: Austin Powers, The English Patient, Braveheart, Titanic, Event Horizon, Schindler's Lust (errr... List!), Face Off, True Lies, The Big Hit, Die Hard With a Vengeance, Speed, The Godfather I, & II, Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects, Stand By Me, Top Gun, Air Force One, Con Air, The Professional, Starship Troopers (although, I have NO idea why!), Armageddon, Forest Gump, Star Trek: First Contact, Cruel Intentions (ooh, BABY!), The Blair Witch Project (just goes to show you that you don't need a big budget to make a good film), The Fifth Element, The Negotiator, The Matrix, Ronin (the best car chase scene EVER!), U-571, Men of Honor...
CRAPPIEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME: Showgirls (gag)
FAV GAME: Gran Turismo 2 and 3 on the Play Station. My favorite cars?.. The '99 Toyota GT-One (yup, I got it!), the Team Oreca Viper GTS-R, RUF CTR2 Sport, Lancer EVO VI, new generation Celica Rally Car, turbo'd Mini Cooper, Castrol Supra GT, Vervis Trueno GT racer, Renault Espace F1 (a van that's faster than 90% of the cars in the game!!! Hahaha.). I have almost 80 cars and 27 million in credits. Yup, I have too much time on hands sometimes... =) (click here for my old GT2 garage (98 kb))
FAV MUSICALS: The King and I, West Side Story, Grease, Ms. Saigon, Broadway cast of Rent (when my bestfriend and I went to NYC, we got lucky and won the lottery for the show--second row, BABY!), Broadway cast of The Lion King (without a doubt the best costumes EVER!)
FAV SHOWS: Dawson's Creek, Star Trek: TNG/Voyager/DS9, The Pretender, Trauma:Life in the E.R., The Simpsons (Doh!), Southpark, JAG (Catherine Bell is such a hottie), Whose Line is It, Anyway?, Battle Bots, Junkyard Wars, Northern Exposure, the old Robotech series, Paramedics, Trauma: Life in the ER, American Choppers, Monster Garage, Great Biker Build-Off, Rescue Me, almost anything on Discovery, History, and Discovery Health Channels...
FAV DRINKS: Henry Weinhard's Premium Draught Style Head Root Beer, Safeway Select Grape Soda (I know that it's all sugar--prob'ly artificial sugar at that!--but I'm just addicted to it), Coke/Pepsi, anything with strawberries in it (ask anyone who knows me!), a Kamikaze for the few times that I drink.
FAV FOOD: Filipino food (duh), Chinese, Japanese, Italian, East Indian (my friend, Monica B., has a mom that makes great Indian food. In fact, I miss it right now...), some Korean food (some of it's too damned spicy for me!), authentic Mexican food, and the occasional steak (medium well done--in other words, once I stick my knife into it, I don't want it to kick back), hamburgers, hot dogs, sloppy joe, spaghetti...
PET PEEVES: Well, I actually have quite a few so, click here to find out.
HOBBIES: Cycling, photography, rock climbing/bouldering, SCUBA diving, playing the guitar and piano/keyboards, target shooting, drawing, motorcycling, working on my Corolla GT-S and the family's cars (yes, the usual "guy things"), anything and everything regarding the medical sciences, researching Nazi Germany's history and the Holocaust, watching races at Laguna Seca (World Super Bike, CART, Toyota Formula Atlantic, American Le Mans Series), participating in SCCA Solo II (autocross) events in the SFR SCCA (click here for pics of me racing), and last but certainly not least, collecting and building Lego sets.
GOALS: Emergency/Trauma Medicine, kayaking, whitewater rafting, skydiving, and piloting both private planes and helicopters, getting myself and my car competitive in SCCA SOLO II racing, and opening a shop as a fun, on-the-side business for me and my friends.