Born in England in 1966, I am the youngest of three, my sister Robin, the eldest and my brother Graham in the middle. When I was 18 months old, my family left England on a small sailboat, Riduna III, in 1968 for a six month cruise. It was the start of great adventures. After exploring the Mediterranean for a couple of years we sailed across the Atlantic to the Caribbean in early 1970. We bought a bigger boat, Kim, in Grenada, in about 1974 and spent many years fixing her up, two years of that was in St. Lucia. Then we ran a family day charter business from Grenada, taking about 800 tourists for day trips up the coast and back. Some of the time my brother and I went to local schools and and my sister to night school. Running the charter business was a real family effort. In 1979 the cuban backed revolutionaries took over the island and after a pretty hairy incident we closed the business and sold the boat to a mad frenchman who took off without paying all the money. Dad chased after him, had the boat impounded in Dominica where she was promptly destroyed, along with most of the island, by hurricane David. We ended up buying a 28" Winebago motorhome in Florida and spending three months driving across the US, to Vancouver Island, Canada.
We lived in the Winebago for about five years while my brother and I finished high school. My sister stayed on in the Caribbean, crewing on other boats, then she came to Canada for a year or so before returning to England where she is now. My brother and I were about three years behind in our schooling but we went straight into the correct grade for our ages and spent the first year working hard to catch up. We both graduated from Mt. Douglas High School in Victoria. During holidays we explored and got to know most of the beautiful island's national parks and campsites. Graham and I got into white water kayaking, spending many weekends running rivers or surfing out on the west coast. Towards the end of high school I concentrated a bit more on parties and less wholesome endeavours.
Immigration controls were very tight in the early eighties and
though we had a sympathetic visa officer who kept our visitor
visas updated, we never got citizenship. Without a work permit my
father was unable to work so we simply lived frugally off savings
and hoped the controls would ease up. Sadly they never did. As
soon as I graduated in 1984 my folks sold everything, bought
another boat, Wader II, in Majorca, and went cruising again. My
brother stayed in Canada got a lawyer and after several years of
legal battles, finally got his citizenship. At eighteen I was not
looking very far ahead; I had vague ideas of sailing the high
seas with mum and dad again. After a spell in England, laid low
with glandular fever, I joined them on the boat. My sister and I
spent a few weeks riding from London to Spain on her motorbike.
She then returned to the UK alone.After about three months on the boat, my folks suggested I get a job. Job? Yuk! I liked things as they were, who wants to work anyway? So I jumped ship, onto a Danish catarmaran called Ra II. Not a job really, a young dane and some friends were heading to Greece. So I joined them and we cruised through the Med and ended up in the Ionian islands when winter came in 1984. We put the boat on the hard, the danes went home and I chased a girl on Kefalonia until my money ran out. I ended up with £1.40 and a plane ticket to Athens. Flew to Athens in February, slept rough for a couple nights, earned some money busking on the metro with a bunch of fellow bums (I played spoons and watched for cops!), then got a bed in a dive of a hostel, that place was fun! I sold my camera and took took the magic bus to Kings Cross, London, for twenty-five quid.
After a month on the dole and living with my sister in London, I moved down to Godalming in Surrey, near mother's mother. My mother was in England at the time and she helped me find a bedsit, gave me a little Honda motorbike to get around on, and introduced me to the local career's office. When I was travelling, people would ask what I was going to do with my life and, not wanting to admit I had no idea, I said I was going to go to England to study electronics. I had no money, no support to study as many do, no chance to go to university. Through the career's office I got two job offers, one building fireplaces out of marble, and one learning how to build and assemble mainframe and mini computers. I took the latter, as I figured it had more potential. It was one of those key cross roads in my life. I could be a stone mason in Godalming to this day!
I missed Canada and my friends and didn't feel at home in England having never lived there since I was less than two. Technically I was English but inside I was different. Having spent my formative years there, Canada had become my home yet I had no status, I could not go back. My love of Canada and my deep longing to return was to be my driving force for the next seven years. Every year I applied for Canadian citizenship. Each time I waited eagerly for good news but the reply came back: too young, no needed skills for Canada, not educated enough, not enough experience, full quotas, no job in Canada, etc.
Driven by my quest to become legal in the country I called home, I jumped each hurdle that each rejection put in my path. Needed skills - how about high tech electronics? Not enough education? Right, I went to night school and day release for three years and got a diploma in Electronic & Electrical Engineering. Turned down again. After becoming trained as a Wireperson I left my first job and moved to a desk job in Middlesex for the duration of my studies because I simply could not afford to live. Even at the new job it was pretty grim. I worked and I studied and I wrote long letters to my friends in Canada and dreamed of going home.
By 1986 I managed to save up enough to fly back to Canada for a summer holiday. It was so good to be back. I had a summer romance with a girl and we vowed to save up and go travelling around Europe the following year, when I finished my studies.
Part time studies are tough, all the work of full time and none of the fun. I counted the days off on my calendar, my girlfriend came over, and we did indeed travel Europe for about four months, ending up with a month with mum and dad, by that time in Turkey.
Back to the UK, my friend went back to Canada and I back to my sister's. Another application had been turned down. Through a local paper I found a training course designed to cross train people in the customer care side of the booming PC industry. Six months later I was a computer service engineer with a lot of confidence but no experience. While on that course, used to studying, I took a SCUBA course at a local club.
With five job offers to chose from, I started at Micro Care Ltd in Middlesex in early 1988. I got my first company car! Moved into a flat with Jim who started at Micro Care just after me, then moved into a bigger flat with two other guys, Neil and his school buddy, Pasty, and later, Mike. A true bachelor pad, we had a lot of fun, living in Teddington, pub crawl every Friday night, etc. Three computer guys and a paramedic - computers and medical kit all over the flat, three company cars and an ambulance, parked outside. We taught ourselves new computer skills with whatever we could beg, borrow or steal. I took up windsurfing, and later, mountain biking. I had always had motorbikes as well, ending up with a Honda Silverwing.
I decided to specialise in Novell networks, read all the books, played with the software and in 1990, conned my way into a Netware Specialist position at a bigger computer dealer, Bonsai, in London. More money, bigger car. Ended up installing LANs for corporates all over the UK. In 1991 my colleague and good friend, Tom, and I installed a system in the city for a new bank called EBRD. I ended doing a six month stint for Bonsai, onsite at EBRD. Used to covering the whole of the UK, I hated being stuck in one place though the people were good and the pace very fast. I used the opportunity of being on a steady routine, to study navigation. But when I finished the navigation course and the learning curve at EBRD flattened out I bailed out and went back on the road. Soon after, Bonsai lost the contract at EBRD.
EBRD, The European Bank for Reconstruction & Developement, was set up in early 1991 to assist the countries of the former Eastern Bloc make the transition from a central to a market economy. The concept for EBRD was dreamed up by a well known French intellectual, Jacques Attali. It is of worldwide benefit that these countries are assisted as they will form a massive consumer market in years to come. He managed to persuade some fifty countries to put proportionate amounts of public money into a pot for the new bank to invest and use to develop the region. There was much competition for role of host country for the headquarters of the planned institution, slated to grow to more than a thousand staff, a role eventually won by the UK.
I was involved in setting up the systems in the headquarters in the City of London from the very beginning. The growth rate of the Bank was spectacular, going from zero to some three hundred within months. We worked like hell to install IT systems from scratch and keep pace with the growth.
Once the headquarters was more or less established and work began in the countries of operation, the Eastern Bloc, there was a need to gain greater local prescence by opening local branch offices in each of the capital cities.
That's where I came in. Someone would have to set up a computer system in each of the offices as they were opened. Remembered for my work at the headquarters, my contacts at EBRD rang me up and offered me the job which, after negotiations, I accepted. The pace at the Bank was still so hectic that I was basically given a desk and a telephone and left to my own devices on how I would carry out my task. I must admit I was pretty daunted at that point, I sat there and looked busy for about three days before I remembered the proposal I had written when I was offered the job.
I started on a six month contract in June of 1992 and in September 1997 I am still on the job. The split of several countries in the region meant more capital cities and more work for me. I have installed PC networks in about twenty-three countries and smaller systems in about five more. It has been a fantastic experience, I've learnt a great deal, met many interesting people and working mostly alone and in strange places, have become more self reliant and broadminded.
In the beginning I traveled almost constantly, living from my suitcase and making the best of wherever I was. I lived on the adrenaline of constant action. I was hardly getting back to the UK anyway so I rented a flat as a base in Prague and moved important things - stereo, CD's and mountain bike over there. It was a pretty dingy flat and I didn't spend much time in it but it was a base. I loved Prague and the Czech countryside. The mountain biking is the best I have ever found - there are some 40,000 km of marked and mapped trails throughout the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
I spent my holidays
in Canada with my brother (at left in picture) and old friends
from school days, sailing, skiing and mountain biking. In 1993 I
got together with a girl I have known since school, we both come
from sailing backgrounds and had the same dreams (including a
dream of going cruising) - it seemed perfect and we got married
in 1994. We celebrated with a bareboat cruise from Martinique,
down through the islands, to Bequia and back. Sadly with my mad
travel and her ambition to make a career on the sea, we split up
at the end of 1995. She's now toiling for top position on the bridge so hopefully that's one ship that won't run us over if she's on duty!By mid 1995 I was exhausted and starting to suffer from stress, my separation made me realize I was working too hard, so in 1996 I decided to enjoy life more and slow down a bit - it was either that or quit. It was a good move and my work productivity didn't drop enough to bring my systems crashing down around me!
At about this time I moved into a lovely little flat above our EBRD office in the center of Prague. Prague is roofed with red ceramic tiles and most buildings have huge attics which are only now being converted into character loft apartments. It's quite small but perfect for me. It's open plan with a half mezzanine up near the ridge of the roof. The mezzanine is a small bedroom, just big enough for a double bed and bedside table, with a view down through three hundred year old oak rafters and beams to the living room below and a small opening skylight with a view across the roof tops and spires of the Old Town. A dormer doorway leads onto a sizable terrace nestled in the rooftops.
In the summer of 1995 we went on a fantastic
kayak trip on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Six of us were
dropped off in one of the the remotest areas of the coast. We
paddled for ten days, camping on the beach each night. The
isolation made for stunning scenery, crystal clear sea and air
and an abundance of sea life and food. At the end of the trip we
were picked up by motor boat and whisked back to our starting
point. This was another trip I will always treasure.When I got back from Canada and my fateful separation Christmas I decided to not sit around and mope, but get out there, and you guessed it, laugh more, cry less, watch more sunsets, eat more ice cream ....
The evening I met Tatjana she said she
wanted to cycle along the Danube in the coming summer of 1996.
From Passau, Germany, to Vienna, Austria, some 400 km. I said,
"Me too!", and we did just that. It took us a week,
cycling through the day and stopping in little riverside guest
houses each night. It was one of the best trips I have ever done
and we arrived back in Prague just in time to throw a big
barbecue on the terrace for my thirtieth birthday on June 16th.
Later we cycled another stretch of the Danube from Regensburg to
Passau. Those of you familiar with Tristan Jones and his book,
"The Improbable Voyage" may remember that he voyaged
that way on his trip across Europe on his trimaran.In July we hired a yacht in Croatia and went sailing for a week. Just the two of us on a 38" foot Bavaria, it was great! Tatjana had never sailed before so I pretty much single handed it - had some fun getting in and out of some tiny, crowded harbours. Tatjana took to the sea well and wasn't bothered by the motion. The Adriatic coast of Croatia is a wonderful cruising ground with dozens of islands to explore - I'd really like to cruise there again and for longer .....
I was still traveling a lot for work still and set up systems in Sarajevo, Bishkek, Zagreb, Baku and Ashgabat during 1996. It was a busy year but a good balance of fun and work.
I'm just about finished my task setting up the offices and I am just about ready to move on. I'm not cut out for the corporate life, I need to get back to the sea, take time off and enjoy life, somewhere warm!
To be continued .......... more links and more story soon as I can find time!