me in a nut-shell
Random facts
I love life and I enjoy it, I also love to create good and working things. Things that do good.
I live by the scout law. I love things that just work. I despise tech that does not work.
I love precision.
I like orange (Can you tell?)
I was born in Wiesbaden but the place where I really grew up is Walluf. This is also the place where I spent a lot of time outside, exploring the river and the forests and where I went to primary school.
Once at middle school in Eltville, I was one of the first students that had the option of taking on IT lessons and so I did. This was back at the time when Wordstar was running on a 80286 processor in DOS text mode on a green (or brown) monitor. But it triggered my interest for IT.
In my spare time, I did some programming for a local company called DMC that developed a pretty good DTP system called Calamus. That earned me some good money that I put into computer parts and hiking equipment.
Scandinavia
Most summer holidays, which were about 6 weeks in Germany, my older brother would take me for holidays to Norway and Sweden, where we hiked the mountains for those 6 weeks – that’s how long summer holidays were back in Germany.
Sometimes we did not see anyone for days – just plenty of landscape.
University
I tried a semester of IT studies at the University of Mainz across the river Rhine. IT was boring and I did not get the math, so decided to stop after the first semester and rather pursue my luck in architecture studies.
Why architecture? My dad was an architect and I did spend a lot of time on various construction sites and have always been impressed of how buildings were put together.
I graduated from uni with a diploma (which is in between a masters and a bachelor) in 2001.
Fresh from uni, I wrote 101 job applications, got 3 interviews, no job, but managed to get casual employment through contacts and finally proper employment at a local architectural practice. That ended after 3 months due to no jobs coming in. Started somewhere else for half a year and moved back to the previous position on a contract basis.
Shortly thereafter, I also started my studies of building biology.
Self employed
In 2002 my wife and I founded “architecture & design”, combining both our expertise in architecture and graphic and webdesign.
We were quite successful, but 9/11 together with declining world economics lead to a worse payment morale of clients and us spending more time chasing invoices than working. Combined with less profitable jobs coming in, we had to consider alternatives.
Move to New Zealand
We examined options within the country, in Europe, and in the USA. Europe looked bleak and although we applied for a Green Card for the USA, we were not lucky to draw one. In hindsight, maybe lucky.
Canada would not easily let anyone in, either, so we looked at Australia. Which I ruled out thanks to the climate data (I cannot stand too hot).
But what was this little Island nation down below Australia? That looked good from an economic view and from a climate perspective.