About me - a personal touch.
I was born just West of London in a hospital funded by the Canadian Red Cross. After spending my early childhood in the beautiful county of Kent, our family moved North to Manchester.
Following in my father's footsteps, I had two passions in life - cycling and flying! At the age of 13, I joined the Air Training Corps where I learned how to fly light aircraft and gliders, shoot a rifle and read a map as well as learning the principals of flight and how engines work.
Unable to pass the RAF medical because of my eyesight, my second choice of career, architecture, also came to a halt following a disillusioning trip to Manchester University, so I joined Ferranti as a technician apprentice where I was taught electronics, fabrication and machining in the training school. I then became a member of the Research and Development mechanical drawing office, where I stayed for the next 10-years. By the age of 25, I was managing site installations on Navy bases of equipment I had designed.
Outside work I decided that I needed to be good at something, so I set out to find the most challenging martial art in the area and one name cropped up a couple of times. I joined the Tang Soo Do club in Ardwick, which was a bit of a journey for me, but I loved it, and at the age of 19 I was teaching in Cheetham Hill in North Manchester whilst still a Blue belt. I gained my midnight blue belt (1st Dan) at 21 and my 2nd a year later and since taught many students all over Manchester.
From a young age, travel has always been in my blood. I have so-far visited 35 different countries on 4 continents - something I have strived to pass on to my own children.
My 'Bucket List' included working abroad, learning how to fly, learning how to sail, getting a black-belt and seeing inside an active volcano. I have now lived in 7 other countries with work, which included helping to renovate a house in Spain. In Lanzarote, I gained my day-skippers license, which allows me to take charge of boats up to 60 feet in length. I still need to see inside an active volcano though!
While working in Spain, I was in charge of the legalities of purchasing the house as well as buying the raw materials, so I had to learn Spanish very quickly which resulted in a job offer at the estate agents. In Austria, I was encouraged to learn both German and the North Austrian dialect. I passed my A1 Dutch exams in Belgium. In Norway, I decided that learning Norwegian wouldn't help me, so I chose the most challenging language that I could think of to learn that would be useful - Mandarin Chinese.
I have always done everything I can to help others - my wife and I looked after over 30 students from all over the world as a host-family, I have taught hundreds of students how to defend themselves, and I have mentored many less-experienced engineers.
Just to show my versatility, I created this website in Visual Studio using HTML, CSS and JS.
I don't take the easy options in life, but that's what makes life interesting.