About Me
Autobiography
I was born in Paraguay (middle of S. America). My Parents were Scottish missionaries, so I started off with dual nationality. To that I have added Australian nationality, so I'm entitled to three passports.
Naturally I learned two languages at once and by the age of four I could read in Spanish and English. The local doctor's wife arranged for me to visit her then to teach her English. I remember that I was only interested in her pet monkey, so I don't know how she learned English from me, but apparently she did.
Most of my education was home study, because the local education system was worthless (a teacher asked if the UK was a town further down the river). My mother taught me the alphabet by baking biscuits (cookies) in the shape of the letters, and I could eat them only after correctly identifying them.
My mother also taught me knitting and crochet. My father taught me wood carving. Somewhere in there I learned to care for dogs, hens, goats, rheas, turkeys, guinea-pigs, horses…and how to butcher most of them.
The correspondence course included Latin and French so Dad had to learn them a step ahead of me to help me through the studies. At least he had no trouble persuading me to read all the books - I would read anything that appeared, and then start reading the books again when I ran out of new books to read.
Later Secondary Education
When I was fourteen I went to school in the UK. I was upset by how little science was in the course. My correspondence course included anatomy & physiology, botany, and physics. My new school just had something vague called "science". The woodwork class was inferior to what Dad had taught me, but at least I enjoyed the metalwork class. It used the same tools as I had used for cutting, shaping, and polishing cow horns.
Next year I moved to the home for Missionary's children in England as my parents went back to work. I continued to be the organist for our church, but added violin playing to my studies with 1hr practice a day for each instrument. I also learned to play croquet, table tennis, and got myself a bike. Science was now split up into physics, chemistry, and biology.
Problem With exams
Somewhere I had lost enjoyment of the chance to show off in exams and made myself sick with worry whenever the exam started. I was also near the bottom of the English class because I couldn't write essays. It seemed that there were so many rules for writing that as soon as I corrected one thing the teacher found half a dozen more rules that I had broken.
Then I found a book that gave me the secret of exams. Suddenly I was at the top of the Englsh class with my essays, and the teacher sometimes asked me to read them out to the class. I enjoyed writing so much that while I was in the queue for school lunch I would pick a subject at random and write a summary of an essay which I would complete immediately after lunch.
I've started to put my exam-techniques book on to a website a page at a time. Read the first page about exam techniques here.
The headmaster said I had as much chance as the man in the moon of passing 3 GCE ordinary level subjects so I passed 11 of them plus 2 advanced level GCE subjects to get to Aberdeen University.
University
The first year was repeating what I had already studied at school so I got very lazy. The second year required a better memory than mine for two or three of the compulsory subjects, so I failed.
Jobs
So far I had had holiday jobs as Christmas Postman, brickie's labourer in a fireworks factory, poultry man, dairy man, harvest hand, tractor driver and street photographer, but I couldn't seem to get a proper job. So I applied for a job as nutrition research assistant at the Rowett Institute of Research into Animal Nutrition.
The day before the interview I read Dale Carnegie's book about how to win friends and influence people - one and three quarter times. At the interview I interviewed my prospective employer for two and a half hours, getting his promise to lend me his doctoral thesis about rumination. Then he glanced at his watch, and went to the door where all the applicants were queued up and said "I'm terribly sorry, I didn't notice the time, could you possibly come back tomorrow?".
Years later he told me that all the applicants were overqualified so he had chosen me simply because he knew he could get along with me. One up for Dale Carnegie!
Naturally I read everything on his subject. Then I started doing abstracts of nutritional articles in Spanish for the Commonwealth Bureau of Abstracts. The editor made me aware of the use of international scientific language. For instance in some countries the word "cattle" includes sheep, goats etc.
One day I came across a book about telemetry as a tool for animal research. So I started to experiment with it and took a Higher National Certificate in Applied Physics to help me. It didn't help as much as I had hoped, because I knew more about transistors than the Electronics lecturer (he was a valve man), but I learned a lot from one of my classmates who was designing electronic projects for oceanography research.
Once I qualified I asked the director for a promotion, and he said that he didn't believe that this newfangled electronics stuff would ever be useful in research, so he wouldn't make a place for me. He recommended moving to London where weird science was more common. So I emigrated to Australia.
Electronic Designer
From 1970 to 1990 I was an electronic designer. Towards the end of that time the throwaway culture was growing, and nobody wanted any repairs done, and designs just involved hiring a programmer.
Programmer
So I re-trained as a programmer. I got a job as a programmer for a year and a half before the depression struck, and 8 employess including myself were retrenched.
You're Overqualified
Each time I went for an interview I was told "you're overqualified" because it was not legal to refuse to employ me for being over 35 years old.
I re-trained as a computer repairman and got an interview. The interviewer was really enthusiastic when he heard that I could also repair monitors. However, it turned out that he was looking for a teenager who would accept minimum wages! I don't know how he expected experience from a teenager.
So I re-trained as a desk-top publisher because I read an article saying that the printing industry was desperately short of people who knew about computers. That was true, but they still insisted on employing people with 10 years of experience with the old linotype machines that were lining the walls because they couldn't find anyone stupid enough to buy them. Naturally people with 10 years of experience with the antique machines would not know much about computers.
Internet
As I couldn't find work I started using the Internet. I taught myself HTML coding when they were still talking about bringing out HTML version 2 and put up a site for the Australian Barbershop singing organisation. That site no longer exists.
Then I got professional qualifications as a translator from Spanish to English, and put up a website offering my services. I didn't get enough work to pay for my professional insurance which was about $1500 per year, so I closed the site.
Then I took an online university extension course in HTML, HTML advanced, PERL, Javascript and website promotion. I found a web host for the non technical but I was so proud of my new qualifications that I decided to save myself $300 and do it all myself. I created a website that included a 10-lesson course in HTML programming.
After a year I worked out how much I had spent, and it came to over $2000. So I promptly started a site with the non-technical host, because I calculated that $300 was a little less than $2000. In a few months I was getting more traffic to my studying site than I had ever had at my expensive site. I'll have to update my expensive site sometime because much of what I said is out of date now. For instance prices have fallen across the board, and XHTML with CSS is replacing HTML. It seems that PHP is now the buzz word instead of PERL.
health Interests
It's hardly surprising that with my background in Nutrition Research I should develop a keen interest in natural health and healthy diets. As I grow older I look a senile people my own age who are taking more and more drugs. My doctor complains that if everyone was like me he would be out of a job. I mostly visit him to get a certificate to say that I am fit to drive a bus-load of passengers, or that I am fit to give blood.
I strongly believe that my healthy diet is the reason for my health. Oh I also walk for an hour or two each evening.
At the barbershop singing rehearsals I clamber over the back of seats to reach the next row, or kneel to sing a sloppy sentimental declaration of love, without needing to be helped up again like the other singers.
I'm too busy now for most of my hobbies. I'm still an organist, and an unpaid desktop-publisher for two newsletters, and a volunteer bus-driver, but I don't have time for dog-training, or teaching people to use their computers, or organic gardening…