Peter Stewart
Munich, Germany
Who Am I?
Rather than get into an existential diatribe, I'll keep it simple.
The Technologist:
When my dad brought home an Apple ][ back in the early eighties it was the start of life-long love affair with technology, my first computer games, my first lines of code and indeed the start of my career came from this wondrous machine. That said, this was the first and only Apple computer (although an iPod nano did make a brief appearance) that I ever owned, and the PC and particularly the x86 world soon took over and with it the world of BBSes, CompuServe and free early internet through OzEmail with 9.6k, 14.4k, 28.8k, 33.6k and finally 56.6k (the holy grail) modems. Since then my technologist life has had many ups and downs professionally but privately my finger has remained on the pulse as an early adopter and avid reader of technology news. Now at the age of 35, I am 3.5 months away from gaining my Bachelor of Technology (Computing Studies) from RMIT and it seems I have come full circle, as my hobby becomes my occupation and I make myself ready to assume the mantle of a professional technologist!
The Expatriate:
I was born and lived in Sydney, Australia until the age of 26 before moving to Uppsala, Sweden in 2005 and then to Munich, Germany in 2010, which is where I met my wife and now mother of my first child born in late November 2013. I have been back and forth between Europe and Australia many times and while it used to feel like returning home when I visited Australia, now the tables have turned. I think at some point in any expatriate's life, there is a moment when you realise that you feel like a stranger in your own country and you almost forget how it feels to be, in my case, an Australian. I am still passionate about Australian sport, but my accent is long gone and I am mistaken for English rather than Australian most of the time, which is odd because despite having a British passport through my mother, I haven't spent more than 5 days in total in Britain since I arrived in Europe almost 9 years ago.