Bio

The first time I opened my eyes in this beautiful world was in Poprad, Slovakia, on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1991. I was raised in Poprad too, traveled a bit around Europe while in high school, did an epic road trip along the west coast of the US and fell in love with California. Back in Europe, I went to college in Prague, spent a year in Trondheim, backpacked north of the Arctic Circle, circled back to California where I earned my Ph.D., and now I work in the heart of Silicon Valley on artificial intelligence that will probably take my job in several years. Alas, hopefully I will have earned enough money by then so I can start exploring the wonders of this marvelous planet full-time!

Most folks probably find me rather boring. I don’t drink beer or coffee, I don't read the news, I don’t watch [insert any popular sport here], I'm not a fan of Star Wars or Friends, no more than 10% of the music across all of my playlists has ever been played on the radio, I don't own an iPhone, and my food/nutrition views are, well, not exactly mainstream. But I do love adventure, I play the piano, and I hear I have pretty blue eyes. I like deep pow, the smell of pine needles, slow motion, thunderstorms, epic fantasy, slightly green bananas, yellow dragonfruit, soft blankets, roasted almonds and penguins (not roasted). My favorite color is the color of sunset and I hate getting up with sunrise. Um, what else? I prefer a tent in the mountains to a luxurious hotel at the beach, but don’t get me wrong, I do love a big, comfortable bed in which I can sleep in. Luckily, I've already found myself a wife, and boy, ain't she a perfect match for me!

So, what am I into besides, obviously, traveling? Working in AI these days isn't exactly a 9-to-5 job. In the remaining free time, I never get bored, unless I accidentally decide to watch an especially boring movie. There are days when I do a lot of in-depth reading on topics I am passionate about and find highly relevant to my everyday life, such as nutrition, finance, mindfulness, or how to get better at being human. Apart from that, I read books too, although it sometimes takes me half a year to finish one. I feel best in nature, so whenever the weather permits, I’m down for a good hike, shredding some trails on my mountain bike, or freeskiing in winter. When I bought my first camera in 2017, I fell in love with photography and editing pictures from my trips, discovering both well-known natural wonders and remarkable hidden gems in remote, difficult-to-access areas. If I happen to have a two-hour window of spare time in the evening, I watch a movie, a thrilling freeskiing or MTB documentary, or an episode of one of the wonderful BBC series about nature. No matter how busy I am though, I usually give myself the pleasure of playing the piano for at least a half hour, for it brings me peace and, by releasing me from the tangle of thoughts and to-dos, it allows me to relax and realign my focus, much like meditation. Music is in fact the one thing I am addicted to — see, I have music on at almost anything I do, and I enjoy virtually any activity as long as I can listen to my favorite music while doing it.

Hi, I'm Jurik

...pronounced /YUR-ik/. I work in AI research at Google Translate, nevertheless this website is about everything but technology. Besides being a computer scientist, I am a leisure-time pianist, a trailer music enthusiast, and a landscape photographer whenever I travel to a national park or any other beautiful place in nature. Over the past decade, I have also spent hundreds of hours educating myself on nutrition from an ancestral perspective, and along the way I have become a pro at avoiding gluten, yet being able to prepare traditional Slovak dishes and cakes as yummy as their original counterparts (my wife can testify to that).