A glimpse of the Martian
The photo that used to be here! The Martian herself

You decide to try and figure out your hostess. Here is a summary of the things you learn.

She appears to be called Eleanor Anne Martin, but is mostly known as Ellie. She was born on 7th November 1977, in Cambridge, England, where she spent a long time living, working and playing.

She went to a school called "The Netherhall School", and got GCSEs, along with most British school kids. These are qualifications, not some dreadful disease. She then switched to a place called "Hills Road Sixth Form College", and took A-levels in Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.

This combination of subjects has sort of lead fairly naturally to Engineering, which she has just finished studying at Cambridge University. Since then she's decided that she doesn't want to be an engineer after all, and has headed rapidly towards software. Ellie will be starting a job with Dorset Software shortly, and as a result will be moving to the Poole area really soon.

But that's all pretty tedious, really. (For those people who like to know all the gritty details, Ellie's CV is here.)(That's a resume in American.)

From the instruments lying around, it's obvious Ellie plays flute, piccolo, and tenor saxophone, and kind of plays clarinet. How well she plays is open to speculation. She obviously likes music, and really rather dislikes silence. (You are a very observant person if you managed to pick that up.)

She reads comics and books. At aome point soon, a list of the ten most recent books she's read may be available, but not currently.

Adding to the general clutter is a fair amount of sports equipment. Ellie has been known to enjoy football (soccer), (field) hockey, cricket, squash, tennis and badminton. There's also some rollerblades, but from the layer of dust on them, it'd be fair to assume she's not had a lot of practice with them.

The thing that she really appears to be a bit of an anorak about is bikes. Normal pushbikes, even. She appears to enjoy bike maintenance, and when she can afford one she would dearly love a decent road bike. Mountain bikes aren't something she appreciates, but Ellie freely admits that coming from a flat place like Cambridge she's not had a lot of experience of them.

She juggles. Four balls on a good day, and in wicket keepers gloves if asked to.

There's more to tell, but this could get severely dull. Feel free to go back to just standing in the living room, or consult the map.