My name is Kamala (Hirsch) Vander Kolk, and where do I begin? Maybe I should start out by saying that I'm a fun-loving caring girl who works as a multimedia guru by day. Not really sure how to sum up what I do at night, but I try to better myself in several different ways. I'm a jack of all trades (not sure about being a master of any, though). I can cook, sew, design, write, draw, and remember anything. You can find examples of everything listed above scattered throughout my website (except for the food, you'll have to come over to sample that). On top of these daily activities, I LOVE to travel. I have a personal goal to visit at least five of the seven continents by 2010, though I will accomplish that goal by mid-2008. Maybe I'll need to revise my travel goal to visit all SEVEN continents by 2010. (See my travel map at the bottom of the page.)

My name comes from the Hermann Hesse book Siddhartha. Kamala is the name of the courtesan who teaches Siddhartha about all of the pleasures this world has to offer. Kamala is an often mispronounced name, so let me give you a couple of mnemonic devices to remember how to say it. Think of the punctuation mark comma and add "la" to it: comma-la. Or like the name of this site, pronounce it like the ".com" you would see in a website's URL. Although spelled the same way, I am in no way related to the WWE wrestler from ten to fifteen years ago, Kamala (pronounced ka-MAL-a).

For lack of creativity, I'll include a list of my favorites:

Movies

• Clueless
• Moulin Rouge (It was robbed of the Best Picture Oscar)
• The Departed rocked!
• A Christmas Story and Home Alone (I'm a sucker for those silly kids Christmas movies)
• Most all Disney animated features (and Pirates of the Caribbean rules—so much so that Dan and I were Capt. Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann for Halloween [2003]. Go to the Pictures section to see the photos.)

Television Shows
For shows it makes the most sense for me to list what I have on my Tivo's Season Pass manager:

• American Idol
• The Sopranos
• Lost
• Friends
• Sex and the City
• Jeopardy!
• Best Week Ever

Books

• 1,000 Places to See Before You Die (I still have around 900 more places to see, but I've got time!)
• The entire Harry Potter series
• Everything by Bill Watterson from the original Calvin and Hobbes to There's Magic Everywhere. Mr. Watterson is a brilliant man.
• The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg—I know this is a children's book, but if you haven't seen it, go to your nearest book store right now. It is like no other book around.

Gadgets

• Tivo
• My Casio Exilim Z-850 digital camera (and a tripod)
• Nintendo Wii (I'll kick your butt in Wii bowling)
• Verizon Voyager (way faster than the iPhone, QWERTY keyboard and Mobile TV!)