teabowl

I live in Toronto, Canada. I work in the software industry, for a systems integration consulting firm (a Microsoft partner), as a consultant, business and strategy planner, and occasional product manager. I love building software solutions and I’m passionate about gathering and analyzing business and user requirements. I’m particularly interested in information/knowledge management systems. My specialization is in a variety of Microsoft products, notably SharePoint and Office.

Even though that introduction makes me sound like a nerd (and I admit to being a bit of a nerd), I studied literature and philosophy at university and only gradually ‘fell’ into the technology field. I think many of the things I learned in school are still incredibly useful to me today – perhaps more so now.

I love music and actively collect CDs and listen to them. Asking me to specify the genres I like typically results in much confusion. I love something about almost all genres of music. I grew up listening to classical music and learned to play a number of instruments (recorder, piano, trombone, clarinet). As a rebellious teenager, I had a high school metal/punk band with a few buddies. I sang (yelled?) and played keyboards. Favourite musical genres include reggae, rock (all flavours), classical, jazz, world… I could go on and on :)

Recently, I’ve started to take a more active interested in fine art. I don’t know where this is going yet, but I feel that I’m connecting – for the first time, really – with the visual arts. I’ve been doing a little painting (all very amateurish, I’m sure) and have hung some of my own things on my walls (as a sort of test: can I stand looking at them day after day?).

I was born in Germany, moved to Namibia when I was 8 and grew up there. When I was 18, I moved to Cape Town, South Africa to go to university. Later, I relocated to Johannesburg, where I lived and worked until 2000, when I changed continents again and came to Canada. Toronto is a fantastic city – perhaps a bit of a ‘live’ social experiment, full of immigrant bustle, young people from all over the world, languages and cultures. While it’s certainly not New York and faces its fair share of socio-political and infrastructure challenges, I’m permitting myself to really like it here for the first time since I arrived. And I like that I like it here :)

I’m a committed vegetarian, interested in my own health and the planet’s, and have been known to do a little yoga. I’m sure there’s so much more to say… but let’s start with this.