About The Author

AKA Teacher Charlie, AKA Mando (“mahn-doe”)*

Carl Charles “Mando” Atteniese (pronounced “at – ten – easy” in American English) is a native New Yorker who has lived for spells in Colorado, California, New York City, South Korea and Japan. Recently he has returned to Tokyo after visiting Mongolia.

He has worked as an ESL teacher in the US, Korea and Japan and holds a TESOL/TEFL certificate–as well as a 10 year certification for teaching English.

Carl loves movies, comedy and learning about spaceflight and aviation, Mongolian, Korean and Japanese language and laughing. He also loves writing poems, drawing, taking photographs & editing them and discussing philosophy and science — as well as making others laugh.

Carl went to art college in Manhattan and has worked as a draftsman & illustrator, a vintage art & book seller, a hydroponics farm-hand in the Mojave Desert and a guest relations agent in the clouds of Rockefeller Center, at New York’s Rainbow Room, during its second heyday; there, he served celebrities, statesmen & women, dignitaries & spiritual leaders, one of whom is one of his heroes, the Dalai Lama!

He loves teaching, performing stand-up comedy, reading his poems to an audience and rock climbing. He is also fascinated with hard science fiction, orbital mechanics, Haiku and Ukiyo-e. And he can whistle, sing and dance (when he has to)….

*’Mando’ has nothing to do with the Mandalorian. It is a Dharma name. Carl is a Secular Zen Buddhist and Stoic.
NOTE: Carl doesn’t usually write or speak about himself in the third-person, but he isn’t here, right now, and didn’t want you to think he was alive–behind the screen. This is just the internet. There are no real people here. Get outside and meet real people. That is what makes the world go around.