Who is Thomas?

What is your full name?
Thomas Svendsen Silseth


Where were you born?
Kristiansand (a medium-sized town in the south of Norway). Moved to Stavanger when I was around 11 years old.


When were you born?
1985 — Thus making me by far the youngest on this little field trip.


What did you study and where?
Political Science and History at NTNU Trondheim.


Whats you favorite spare time activities?
Playing computer games, arguing about politics and drinking, often in combination.


How do you know the other team members?
Well, I met Fredrik at a café in Trondheim when he worked here for Google, and Rico I met at our first planning session in Serbia.


What do you think of the other team members?
Fredrik is one of 3 people in the known universe who has the ability to make me appear shy and introvert. Rico is a man of dubious pastimes, involving bicycles and hills. This makes me deeply suspicious.


What do you bring to the team?
General knowledge about navigation (ie. getting lost), a rudimentary knowledge of the history and political scene of Central Asia and a huge Pith Helmet, as mentioned in a previous blog post.


What are your main strengths and weaknesses?
I am the guy with the stupid ideas, Rico and Fredrik are people who get things done. My main weakness is my general lack of gentlemanly behavior.


What kind of travels have you done before?
Mostly backpacking and traveling through Europe, nothing really spectacular, though I did on one occasion manage to get my self locked in the only castle on the Shetland Isles that still has a lockable gate. I have a plan about visiting every single European country before I turn 30, but this trip is my very first outside Europe.


How would you describe your driving skills?
My driving instructor claimed that she was never frighted when we drove together, horrified, but not frightened.


How would you describe your mechanical skills?
I have the enthusiasm of every boy everywhere, with tinkering. Lots of enthusiasm for puzzles, but lacking in any actual skill.


What would you most like to do on the adventure?
I really want to go to Tajikistan and see how NPA is making the world a better place. Except for that, I am just improvising.


What places are you looking most forward to?
Pretty much all of them. Some of the places we are going to have been populated for thousands of years, some of the greatest civilizations throughout history made their cities here, I can’t wait to have a peak at it all.


What is your biggest fear on this adventure?
Visa trouble, customs guards, secret police, rabies, malaria, corrupt civil service, dysentery, armed guards, minefields, shitty roads, poor plumbing, flat tires, snakes, scorpions, plane crash, Central Asian pop music and a heart gripping fear that there might not be bacon in all the countries we are going through!