Sunday, 06 October 2002

I suppose I should write a few words about who I am and why I'm writing, for those who found this site by accident and don't know me. I'm originally from Illinois (I was born in Tennessee, but lived there only eight months), and came to Australia about three years ago on a work assignment. I work for a company you've probably heard of; that company has been going through some rough times lately, as has the entire industry, but we're hanging in there and hoping to hit bottom soon.

I came to Australia to do the thing I did for a living these past eleven years - build a cellular telephone network - but it didn't work out as planned: When the telecom boom went bust, the customer cancelled the network; I was transferred to New Zealand for a while, and had to claw my way back to Oz. (Not that I really have anything against New Zealand, except for the weather - but I had someone very important waiting for me in Sydney, so I had to get back there.)

I've been living abroad since March 2000, with a few trips home each year - but none in the past 18 months. When I last lived in America, Bill Clinton was President and the economy was booming; when I last set foot on American soil, the World Trade Center towers were still standing. I was in New Zealand on September 11th and learned of the attacks the following morning, seven hours after they occurred. I witnessed first-hand the outpouring of sympathy that America received in the aftermath of September 11th, and since then I've seen how the outside world has perceived America's response.

In my spare time I write computer software and send out rambling e-mails to friends and family about Australia, travel, politics and life in general - so rambling into a weblog is really just a change of format. Mostly I write to keep in touch with people on the other side of the planet, but lately I've also been having some one-sided discussions (in several senses of the term) with a number of political bloggers on the web. I think that political debate between private citizens is a sign of health for our democratic society, and should be strongly encouraged; I also think that the rabid, fire-breathing right-wing side of the political spectrum is extremely well-represented online, and that viewpoints from the center or the left are harder to find. So, I'll at least add a different perspective every now and then, for whatever it's worth.

For those who remember me from somewhere, but can't quite place me: I attended the University of Illinois from 1987 to 1991, earned a B.S. in Computer Science, was (am) a member of the Alpha Chi Rho social fraternity, and was way too involved in the student government. I receved a M.S. in Management from Purdue in 2000. Online, I wrote a series of parodies called the Usenet Olympics and was a Priest of the Internet Oracle for several years. There are a few pictures of me hidden in the photo album pages - look through the photos of Cambodia and New Zealand to find them.

I also tend to start more projects than I finish, like most people, so there's a chance that I'll experiment with blogging for a few weeks/months and then develop a renewed interest in genealogy or photography and go back to letting my web site lie dormant for years at a time. These things happen.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 5:45 am. comments.