Application
OOC;
name: Kelly
age: 20
experience: http://z10.invisionfree.com/Hetalia_Headquarters/index.php (America, Austria, Swiss, and Russia); http://s7.invisionfree.com/School_of_World/index.php (America, Austria, Swiss). I briefly modded Hetalia HQ with mystiksushi. This is my first time roleplaying on LJ.
e-mail: kazeno12000@yahoo.com; AIM: inuchan81; Skype: inuzenko. I have limited internet access for the next two weeks or so (I can't be on during evenings), so if you need to talk to me it'd be easier to send me a message and we can work out a time to talk.
IC;
nation: Republic of Austria (Republik Osterreich)
name: Roderich Edelstein
nickname(s): He despises nicknames; unfortunately, this has not stopped members of his family from calling him “Roddy” since infancy. To his unceasing displeasure, the nickname has the tendency to stick.
age: 26
date of birth: October 26, 1984
hometown: Born and mostly raised in Vienna, Austria, and he's spent enough time in Salzburg for it to feel like a second home.
occupation: Currently on an extended, doctor-ordered vacation from his job as his business mongul father's second in command.
residence: Roderich lives in an apartment owned by an old friend of his family's in Ocean View.
family: Roderich's immediate family is small and consists of his divorced parents, his maternal grandmother, and himself.
first impression: “That boy really needs to lighten up.”
TEN TRUE FACTS AND A SECRET.
1.) Best to get the most obvious out of the way: Roderich's family is rich to the point of being indecent. His father comes from old money that can be traced back to the old nobility. Not content with simply inheriting a fortune, his father has spent the last 25 years of his life building a successful career in banking. As a result, Roderich's family has business contacts in nearly every states in the EU and lucrative investments in both Europe and North America. Roderich is uncomfortable talking about his family's finances, first because it strikes him as terribly impolite, and secondly because he finds the gaping disbelief many people sport after discovering exactly how much his family makes in a year highly disconcerting.
2.) His parents divorced when he was ten. It wasn't exactly a magnanimous split, but it wasn't one full of acrimony, either. Roderich remembers his parents acting like two people who wanted the uncomfortable business as over as soon as humanly possible. His parents shared custody: during the school year he lived with his father in Vienna, and he spent his holidays with his mother and grandmother in Salzburg. His grandmother explained the divorce to him by saying his parents just “fell out of love”; it was easier than trying to explain to a ten-year-old that his mother had married when she was barely eighteen, or that his father's dedication to enhancing the family's wealth had taken priority over actually spending time with the family. To this day Roderich finds the idea that two people could just fall out of love both mystifying and a little frightening.
3.) While Roderich's immediate family is small, his extended family on his father's side is enormous. He's convinced he has cousins in nearly every country in Europe. The cousin he's closest to is Antonio Fernández Carriedo . The stuffy, aristocratic young son of a billionaire and the son of poor tomato farmers made quite an odd couple, but when you're twelve years old and the most interesting topic of conversation is the recent fluctuations in the stock market, you take what interesting company you can find. Just don't ask either how, exactly, they're related. Roderich would have to draw out the family tree, and Antonio is just content to have been invited to the wedding that made them - in a very roundabout way - family. It's been several years since Roderich last saw Antonio.
4.) His obsession with music began at age four when his mother brought home and fixed up a dilapidated old piano. His mother ultimately had more interest in fixing the instrument than she did playing it, but Roderich was mesmerized by it. How could such a simple action - the pressing of a few keys - produce such beautiful sounds? For months he refused to be parted with the piano, and his love of the instrument only grew over the years as he moved beyond simple nursery rhymes to the great sonatas and concertos. His father tolerated his son's dedication to music, if only because of music's proven beneficial effects on cognition and learning. However, father and son have clashed more than once over Roderich's preference to spend the day with his music rather than securing valuable business deals.
5.) Liberty isn't the first time Roderich has lived in the United States. Hoping to put some distance between himself and his father and perfect his English, Roderich attended and graduated from the Harvard School of Business. He found himself enjoying his time at Harvard much more than he thought he would, mainly because he spent more time attending performances by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra than he did studying. He still can't figure out Americans' obsession with The Sound of Music.
6.) Roderich's sense of direction is abysmal bordering on incredulity. It stems from absent-mindedness more than his inability to tell where he's going, and occasionally results in some spectacular screw-ups. To this day his family and co-workers cannot figure out how a grown man of sound and stable mind ended up in Rio de Janiero instead of London and did not notice until he stepped off the plane and found Heathrow oddly tropical. Roderich himself doesn't mind that much - Carnivale was excellent that year - and if he absolutely needs to be somewhere on time, he brings an escort along. For some reason, he ends up in Luxemburg a lot.
7.) Roderich has a questionable relationship with the outdoors. To him, “getting some fresh air” means dragging his favorite arm chair onto the porch and spending a few hours with a good book and a steaming mug of hot chocolate. It boggles his very athletic mother's mind (being the daughter of a successful sporting goods entrepreneur) and she gave up after her few attempts to teach him to ski invariably ended with her son more interested with the piano in the lodge than with mastering the bunny hill. He is even more adverse to summer sports; too much time in the sun turns his skin a very unbecoming lobster red. Naturally, he can't swim very well.
8.) It has been observed by many that despite Roderich's large circle of associates, acquaintances, and business contacts, he has very few close friends and is reluctant to let anyone get to know him very well. It may very well have something to do with a close friend he had and lost during childhood, but Roderich refuses to speak of it. This unwillingness to divulge information about himself has wrecked a relationship or two.
9.) Despite appearances, Roderich can be quite the playboy, if somewhat unintentionally. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of family money and his good looks means he has never wanted for female attention, and, well, he has never made a claim to sainthood. To his credit, Roderich usually prefers long-term relationships to one-night stands. Usually.
10.) Roderich has a strong aversion to anything that is disheveled, out of place, dirty or damaged. Several times Roderich has wondered if it stems from any kind of childhood trauma, but over time has decided it is simply part of his nature. Usually Roderich will simply clean or fix whatever it is bothering him, but repeat offenders will find the normally aloof and absent-minded young gentleman angrily snatch away the offending article, item, or person until it can brought back to a presentable state.
11.) Roderich is ostensibly in Liberty, USA on an extended vacation after several months of non-stop work looking over his father's business investments. Originally he had planned to take a week off and spend some time with his mother at a ski resort in Mariazell, but an attack of chest pains and dangerously high blood pressure meant a longer vacation was necessary. His mother made inquiries, and an old friend and business associate offered one of his ocean-view apartments in Liberty. Warm weather and a relaxing ocean view sounded just about right, and before he knew it his mother had packed both him and his beloved piano onto a plane headed for the states.
THE SECRET:
He's happy. Very happy, even. No company mergers, no billion-dollar business deals, no more feeling his blood pressure rise in direct proportion to how much the stock market fell that week. No more having to hear his father's obsession with legacy and how imperative it is he succeed his father because Roderich is the only one he can trust. Just a beautiful view of the ocean and all the time he needs to perfect his violin technique. He's even begun to imagine, however fleetingly, what it would be like to stay in Liberty instead of going home. While he makes weekly calls to his father assuring him he's keeping up with business trends, he's found that the longer he spends in Liberty the more he feels like he never wants to see another stock portfolio ever again.