3. History

A Young Me

Burgess Beach, Forster

I spent a lot of my childhood living in Forster (pronounced Foster) on the mid-north coast of NSW (New South Wales is a state of Australia, on the east coast). The first photo was taken from outside the house where I lived during the early eighties. At the time, coastal real estate was reasonably affordable

This is a picture of me at about that time. I find it hard to imagine myself at that age, but I guess this is the photo to prove it happened! I think I have changed a lot since then. For one thing, I am now a lot taller, and also the remainder of the cuteness has been driven out of me. It's easy to look back at the old days, and think fondly of how easy things were as a child....

Sunrise

I now live in a surburb of Newcastle, which is a city just to the north of Sydney on the east coast of Australia. This picture was taken from my bedroom window, but unfortunately it is quite misleading. To say that the view is even average in reality would be optimistic... Update: Actually things have now changed since the photo was taken. The tree has gone, and the view of the horizon has been replaced by development. I guess that's progress for you.

IOI92 Team

This is a photo of the Australian team for the 1992 International Olympiad in Informatics, held that year in Germany (I'm the one standing). It is an annual computer programming competition for students. That was my first experience in overseas travel. We didn't win anything in gold (If only I'd known about the knapsack problem...), but we had a good time, and the silver still looked good.

→ Next... Water-Skiing Techniqe