User Profile

Name: Edward Ross
Age: 36
Birthday: April 01, 1971
Height: 5'7''
Weight: 220ish?


Appearance: Ed prefers to be comfortable with the weather. As a teacher, he wears button down dress shirts and slacks with shiny shoes, but it is not unlike him to unbutton the cuffs and roll them up as the day progresses.

When not in class, he's partial to a plain old t-shirt and jeans/long shorts. His hair is always shaved and brushed down, and he wavers between keeping a mustache and goatee on and off. Both of his ears are pierced, but he never wears them while teaching.

Visible Markings: One of those faboo little scars right through the eyebrow. Left side.

Edward is played by Timothy Z. Mosely (Timbaland)


History:
Edward is a South African export, born in the township of Soweto. Apartheid was rocking the nation, and even though Edward's father tried to keep an honest living at a printing company while his mother stayed at home to keep her children safe, it was an unstable time. Soweto was brought into the harsh world spotlight as a result of the Soweto Riots in 1976, which only seemed to stir the pot in making the township a violent, repressed place. Even at the age of five, Edward felt the uncomfortable press, and helped his mother as best he could along with his other siblings. They helped with housework and distracted their mother with games, all the while watching the sun fall and wondering if their father would be coming home.

In 1980, only a few years before Soweto would see its own people govern and fall into more uprising, his father scored a lifesaving bit of luck. The printing company was moving locations, and Edward's family had been offered an invitation to come with. Leaving their shanty behind, they traveled to Papatoetoe, a suburb of Auckland.

New Zealand brought the Ross family one-hundred eighty degrees. Edward and his siblings had the opportunity to grow up as equal as their neighbors, no matter what race or creed. It also brought about something else he'd not been much exposed to in Soweto: schooling.

Having ditched school for the home life in South Africa, Edward fell in love with it. A veritable sponge, he and his siblings worked hard to catch up with their peers. He also kept odd jobs as a teenager, a paper route and counter boy at a local deli. His father continued to work in the printing industry and his mother opened a side business, braiding hair out of her home with her daughters. It was a cautious success, the family always having a pain in their hearts for the state of their homeland.

University was a confusing thing for Edward. Never one to turn down knowledge, he took on a double major in Political Science and Theology.. and failed miserably in his second year. Feeling more then a little put off at the finer nuances of higher education and his own inability to keep up with the workload, he took a year off and drowned his sorrows in writing bad poetry and staring out windows sadly.

By that time, his mother's business had managed to become a little local success. Having a moping twenty-something sulking around her house was bad for business, and she often set her daughters and their friends on him to chase him out of the house. One of those friends was Adelaide, a former classmate of Edward's and a transplant from Wellington.

She was pretty, smart, and utterly unsympathetic to his woes. She laughed at his poetry and often flicked him on the head, telling him there would always be obstacles in his way. Did he really think his troubles were over because he'd had such a rut when he was a child? She infuriated him, but he was hooked.

Three years later, he and Adelaide wed. They kept a house close to his home, while she worked with his mother and he took up his father's printing job. The marriage was short lived, after it came to light that Adelaide had been having an affair with a former professor all that time. The two skipped town for Fiji and were never heard from again.

Now Edward was really angry with life. What was he to do now? He moved back into his parents house and picked up his old life of moping. Almost thirty, with no life, no degree, no wife, not even a dog! His siblings were marrying and having children left and right (except for brother Leonard, who now preferred to be called Lulu), what was wrong with him? His mother grudgingly allowed him to sloth around, provided he made himself useful. By now his nieces and nephews were of school age, and he often entertained them in the back of the 'shop' and helped with homework. It was something he found he enjoyed, and after almost a year of it, he had made a decision.

He would take another crack at the school! This time, teaching. And in a show of puff and pride, not just the little ones he'd enjoyed learning numbers with, no - secondary school kids!

Oh, Edward.

To the relief of his family (and his mother's refrigerator), Edward managed to graduate with a teaching degree from Auckland University, with honours even! But where would he go? During his degree, he'd run across the name Harold Arrowny plenty of times. The man was a supposed oddball, going as far as getting a school sanctioned by the Japanese Education Department in That Country.

Equal parts overachiever and eracism (har) activist at heart, he was tickled by the concept of the school! Laughing off the snide remarks about freezing in any kind of snow, Edward sent off his resume w/ an extremely looooong cover letter and prayed to every god he knew, did the haka, hung a horseshoe over his door, etc etc.

If he hadn't gotten a chance at Second Heaven, his mother just might have started billing Harold Arrowny for all their grocery bills.


Personality:
For all the moping he's done in his life, Ed is a pretty happy guy now. He tries to be engaging when he teaches, he knows maths aren't the most exciting subjects in the world. While sensitive to students who admits they are not the best with numbers, he will not take it as an excuse. Instead, he tries to offer different ways at learning them, always telling them 'you will get this'. A little hypocritical of him, considering while he always gives 100%, he is prone to being severely put off by rejection and failings.

While he tries to lend an ear if a student is having other troubles, he is mostly baffled by the things kids are hairy about today. Discipline is mostly done in-classroom. You want to disrespect him, he'll dish it out right back, right in front of all your friends and make you look funny! Only if one continues to be a disruptive ass does he normally take it to the next level.

Outside of the classroom, he is still prone to many of his college habits. He stays up/sleeps in late, gets very excited about sports (ALL BLACKS FTW) and gaming, and still likes pizza far more then he should. He also likes his TV and computer. Please do not try and keep him from them.

A deep lover of bad jokes and terrible puns.


Birth Location: Soweto, South Africa
Why Second Heaven?: HAROLD ARROWNY PLS PICK ME PICK ME PICK MEEEE
Favourite Color/Food/Activity!/Subject: Rusty Gold/Penguin mints/Gaming and/or teaching/Maths, obviously.
Least Favourite Color/Food/Activity!/Subject: Pink/Mint jelly/Driving/Statistics never got any love from him.
Other Likes: World of Warcraft, Mercy Street, New Zealand Idol, pizza (sausage, mushroom, onion, and pineapple), being somewhat of a backseat activist, debating, long drawn out discussions, corny phrases about the pythagorean theorem.
Other Dislikes: OH GOD SEEING THE SUN FROM THE EAST UPON WAKING, quitters, teenage relationship problems, uncomfortable situations, the Jerry Springer Show, people who shout their opinions instead of talking about them, Adelaide Ross.
Not readily visible Markings: A ta moko, a tattoo of Maori design covering each shoulder. Done the first time around in college.
Family: A mother, a father, and a whole pack of siblings, nieces, and nephews.
Languages Known: Afrikaans, a smattering of Maori words, and an even bigger smattering of Latin.

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