The origin story is almost too good. He was walking past a perfume shop in a shopping centre and was offered a strip. He took it, did not pay it any mind, and put it in his pocket.

What happened next is the part that matters, and it did not happen to him. As they walked on, his family noticed a refreshing, lovely scent. Someone else smelled it first. The whole thing started because a piece of paper he had already dismissed kept working in his pocket without his permission.

He does not describe his taste as a preference. He describes it as a path with stages, and he lists them the way you would list a migration: simple synthetics, then familiar fresh notes, then unusual and complex compositions, then artisanal work with notes most people are not familiar with.

At first, he says, he saw fragrance as a way to stand out. He wanted people to notice him and to leave a lasting impression. He states this plainly, without embarrassment, which is what makes the next line land.

The notes teach me through my nose. It is not for them, it is for myself.

Everything after that follows from it. He wears fragrance for himself now, as a personal experience, something that reflects his mood, his destination, and the moment he is in. And the ambition changed shape rather than disappearing: he enjoys discovering notes he has never experienced before, and appreciating the artistry behind each composition. The audience simply stopped being other people.

Asked for a scent that takes him somewhere, he begins by declining the usual answer. He has no childhood fragrance memory, he says, because he was not interested in perfume then. It is a small honesty that most people would have papered over with an invented garden.

Then he gives the real one. A sweet gourmand profile, of the kind of Zoologist Rabbit. It reminds him of his grandmother. He wore something like it the last time they met, before she passed away during the pandemic, and he remembers that she really liked how it smelled on him.

He is precise about what the fragrance does now, and it is not nostalgia. It brings him back to that final moment they shared. It has become a quiet reminder of her, and it lets him carry a small part of that memory wherever he goes. She liked it on him. That is the detail the whole thing rests on, and it is why the bottle is not really about the bottle.

He answers the wardrobe question with an identity statement rather than a list. Roses, white floral, roses and woody is who I am, wherever and whenever I go. Then, and only then, the bottles.

The ritual has four parts and they are ordered by function, which is very much a developer's answer. Prayer first, to stay grounded and focused. Then a little time on a strategy or action game, explicitly to warm up his mind before the day's challenges. Then black coffee, a must. Then, at the end of it, the smiles of the people he loves.

Nobody else in thirty-two issues has described a game as preparation. He is not killing time before work. He is running the mind at low load before putting it under real load, which is exactly what you would do to any other system you cared about.

Asked what good taste means, he gives a one-word answer and then earns it. Growth. He used to wear fragrance because he wanted to be noticed. Over time he realised that the best fragrances are not the ones that attract the most attention, they are the ones that feel authentic to who he is.

His definition finishes with a line worth keeping: wearing something with intention, appreciating its artistry, and knowing that not everything beautiful needs to be loud.

The belief he would defend is the sharpest thing in this issue, and he built it as an image rather than a rule. You only have one sword in life. It grows sharper with every challenge you overcome. So do not waste its edge on battles that are not worth fighting.

Note that it is not about winning. It is about selection. The edge is finite and every fight spends some of it, so the discipline is in what you decline. Coming from someone who solves complex problems all day, this reads less like philosophy and more like hard-won operational advice.