Kelly St. Clair

"If you could travel back in time, what would you tell your 10-year-old self?"

Too much to list here. (I've thought about this rather a lot.)
I'd also want to mail off a couple of packages to NASA and the FBI, with news clippings if possible.

"Do you like your birth name? If you had the opportunity to change it, would you? What new name would you choose?"

I do like Kelly - it's a fine Irish name, and honors a grandfather who, unfortunately, I never had a chance to meet. But I've long considered adopting, in addition, a pen name which eliminates the gender ambiguity as well as using the more familiar form of my last name: Kyle Sinclair.

"If you had to choose a theme song for your middle or high school years, what would it be, and why?"

The soundtrack for my high school years was provided by John Hughes (RIP).

"Have you ever witnessed someone being bullied and just walked away? Have you ever gone out of your way to help someone who was being bullied? How do you think it impacted you and the person being bullied?"

Many years ago, in an online game, I stood up to someone I saw as a bully. He and his little gang were pushing others around and taking the game culture in directions I didn't like.

The impact? The bully and his cronies weren't bothered in the least (until the developers of the game finally stepped in, months later, and dropped the banhammer). The persons I thought I was defending found it inconvenient to be associated with me, and disavowed me; later, when they were no longer in a vulnerable position, their spokesman felt free to say many of the same things he'd reprimanded me for. I was so upset I ended up quitting the game for most of a year. And I found out that there were a lot more people than I thought who agreed with the bully's "anything to win" playstyle - many of the things he did are now common practice.

Still, if it wasn't him it would have been someone else. It was inevitable, with the demographics of the game changing as they did. The error was mine, for standing in front of the bulldozer.

"Do you often feel that random people ask you a lot of questions? Has anyone ever tried to ask you a lot of questions all at once? When people ask you a lot of questions all at once, do you ignore some of the questions? In those cases where someone asks you a load of questions, do you consider all the questions as one question, or maybe think of them as individual questions? After a lot of questions, if someone asks you to explain your answer, does that count as another question? Explain your answer."

No (usually I'm the one asking). Yes. Sometimes. As individual questions, usually. No; it's requesting elaboration, expansion and/or clarification on a question already asked.

"What do you want to do before you die?"

Visit Ireland and/or orbit.

"What's the hardest part about looking for a new job?"

Despair and hopelessness. Also the waiting, after the interview, when it's out of your hands.

"If you could only eat one kind of cuisine—Mexican, Thai, French, Italian, Indian, Chinese, etc.—for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?"

Italian. Definitely. (But Mexican's a close second.)