here’s me and my two sisters... Christmas ’96, I think (or maybe ’95... I don't know !!!)
so you wanna find out more about me... OK, let’s see, where should I begin???... I guess I’ll have to start from the beginning !!! well, here goes...
year: 1974
date: September 3rd
location: Christchurch, New Zealand
The Beatles only split up four years ago, most of the Spice Girls are yet to be born, Jewel and Alanis Morissette are still in their nappies (that’s "diapers" to all you Stateside folks) while, on the other side of the world, a miracle occurs (just a subtle hint of sarcasm there) - I am born !!! can’t really remember too much about it but apparently I was a really big baby...
as soon as my parents, Trevor and Beverley, take me home from the hospital I discover I have a sister, Tania, who is a year and a half older than me... worked out OK for me in those first few years though, cos I was the youngest so I got most of the attention !!! that soon wore off...
I guess for the next four years I did all the same stuff all pre-schoolers do... learn to walk and talk and stuff, go to kindergarten and whatever else they do... I dunno, my memory’s pretty vague about those years too !!! :-)
then in 1978 along comes my younger sister, Katrina... finally I wasn’t the youngest kid anymore, I had someone else to fight with and to blame when I got up to stuff I shouldn’t have been getting up to...
the following year something really weird happened... I started going to this really strange place called "school" where every day I’d sit around in this room with all these other kids while this person called a "teacher" would go on and on about all this really boring stuff, then I’d have a bit of lunch and suddenly it was back to all that sitting around again... I never quite understood the purpose of it all (boring place... dunno how I managed to stay there for thirteen years !!!)
1983 and I discover (as well as computers and "Return Of The Jedi"...) when dad brings home Michael Jackson’s "Thriller" album... my life is changed forever... soon I discover artists like Billy Joel, Tim Finn and his band Split Enz (an amazing New Zealand band who sadly split up the following year) and Dance Exponents (another AWESOME NZ band who *are* still together after eighteen years)... from here on there was no turning back...
a couple of years later my family moves to Auckland (NZ’s largest city, where a third of our entire population lives)... school is just as boring as usual, just a little harder... it’s around about now that I discover Dire Straits’ "Brothers In Arms" album... WOW !!!
the real music breakthrough for me came in about March 1987 when I first heard Pseudo Echo’s "Funky Town"... that song had a MASSIVE impact on my life... it turned me from a casual music fan to a compulsive radio-addict... soon I was into bands like U2, Bon Jovi, Icehouse, Crowded House, INXS, Duran Duran, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Pretenders, Genesis, a-ha, Wang Chung, David Bowie, Prince, T’pau, Erasure, Madonna, Alison Moyet, George Michael, Tom Petty, John Farnham, OMD, Midnight Oil, Sting, Pet Shop Boys... pretty much anything and everything the radio was playing !!!
1988 and my family moves back to Christchurch... school’s still boring but I’m finding myself listening to more and more music...
the highlight of my life (so far) happened on 14th September 1991 when, for my school newspaper, I got to interview Jordan Luck, lead singer of one of my all-time favourite bands, Dance Exponents (but renamed The Exponents by this stage)... WOW !!! that was amazing... at the time their current single, "Who Loves Who The Most", had just hit #3 in the NZ charts which is their highest chart position to date... so I got to meet and chat with my idol for an hour or two at the peak of their popularity !!!
and so 1992 rolls along... Nirvana rocks !!! and it’s (at long last) my final year of school !!!
1993 and I get myself a full-time job at Pacific Telephones, which started out around 1988 as a small business importing phones and stuff but who by now had really made a mark on the business world... today, in 1998, they not only supply to all the major chains in NZ but to all the government departments too, which is kinda cool... you can’t go many places in NZ without seeing a Pacific phone somewhere... they also own the NZ division of B&W Loudspeakers (I have many unpleasant memories of unloading the goddamn things off trucks !!!)...
anyway, I spent about five years there handling the inwards goods database, managing repairs (which is mainly just taking care of abusive phonecalls from customers wondering where their phone is...), sending out orders, loading and unloading trucks... which is why I started thinkin’, "There must be a better way to make a living"...
...which brings me to 1998 when I (finally) realised I needed a change so I enrolled for the Certificate in Computing course at Christchurch Polytech, which I am currently studying...
and that’s about it - my entire life in "a few" words !!!
if you’re still awake after reading all that, hopefully now you’ll want to click on "go back..." and check out some of the other cool things my page has to offer... and maybe even sign my guestbook (if you haven’t already)...
