A slightly different CV

Now, if you want to know the boring details, please go and see Résumé.

Born on Saturday, 1978-04-29 in Bad Oeynhausen. This makes me a taurus, a sign apparently reknown for stubbornness..

I grew up in the beautiful and rather idyllic city of Minden in Ostwestfalen-Lippe, a rather idyllic region of Germany. The ostwestfale is recognized throughout the nation for hir stubbornness, a trait which I also proudly excel at.

During school, I didn't exactly excel at socializing, which sucked quite a bit, but got better later on. Quite frankly, I will have to admit to having been a computer geek since third grade or so, and greatly enjoyed mathematics; I was fascinated by computers and the things one could make them do. However, this is about the other sides of my life; see Tech stuffon this site for more.

In the last years at school, I was able to swap religion for philosophy in my classes; a choice which has proven to be very good indeed and affect some of my ways quite fundamentally. also chose writing for the art class instead of music or painting (which I completely failed to get even remotely acceptable), and some Stories and Poems actually date back to that time.

I wandered around a lot at night, just walking the parks and back alleys of Minden, thinking and wondering, sometimes taking pictures, enjoying the coolness or the piercing cold during winter. One could say that I indeed do have a liking for periods of solitude.

After school and national service at the staff of heavy pioneer battaillon 130 in Minden, I moved to the gray and rainy city of Bielefeld (still in Ostwestfalen), where I lived and worked for around 3 years without ever talking to my neighbours or a random person on the street, which goes on to show the friendliness and open-heartiness of your average ostwestfale. We like to keep to ourselves, and not bother anyone else (or be bothered by them).

In Bielefeld, I worked for the regional internet service provider teuto.net doing network operations. This being early 1998 and at the very beginning of the dot.com bubble had the unfortunate effect that I did not manage to even start university and become a proper dropout; every try at this was countered with a slight increase in my salary, which in the end has proven to be just as well. I learned a lot during this diverse job, however I also burned myself out for various reasons - and finally decided that 22 was too early be have a burn-out syndrome and took my full vacation for the year in one go in January 2000 and found myself a new job.

It came to me as quite a shock when, prompted by this change of jobs and some change in my personal life, I moved to the amazing city of Cologne in January 2001. People here were so exceedingly friendly - even in the Kalk neighbourhood, a quarter of the city reknown for its excellent turkish fastfood and run-down houses, where I found residence.

This friendliness struck a horror in my heart in the beginning - when I stopped the car to ask for directions, people who didn't know the answer would grab other people on the sidewalk to find out! People would ask me in the street - if I looked lost - if I needed help! In the cities I knew until then this would have either been an attempt to mug me or someone who was really annoying and didn't have any friends...

However, I soon settled in, and found it to be tolerable most of the time, as long as I get out of the city for carnival. Seriously, this is just too much! When years ago a Cologne radio station tried to bring ``the carnival'' to Minden (as the city farthest north of the state) with three gigantic (to a school kid) party trucks, no-one showed up or cared. And this is how it should be.

My job has taken me around the world quite a bit since then, even though if mostly to the US and Canada; but I have had the pleasure to see Brazil and Prague too, and during my vacation in 2002 I travelled to Thailand and learned to dive in the amazing Andaman Sea.

To be elaborated...