Who
am I? I've often wondered the same thing. Basically, I was born in
Sweden in the sixties. I grew up
in a small -- too small if you ask me -- village named Tormestorp
near Hässleholm and spent my first 18
years there. After a brief stint with the army <shudder>, I moved to
study Computer Science with Linguistics and Psychology at
Linköping University in
Linköping, Sweden. I quickly got
involved in all sorts of fun activities at the
Department of Computer and Information Science which eventually led to
them shipping me over to Xerox PARC
in Palo Alto,
California, as a summer intern in 1985. That
was such a kick that I eventually returned to California in 1991 after a
detour to Rank Xerox EuroPARC (now: Xerox
Research Centre Europe) in
Cambridge,
England 1987-1991. From 1991-1996, I worked at
NeXT Computer, uh, Software, Inc. in
Redwood City, California,
where I, uh, wrote software. After that, I moved on to a crazy little web
startup with insanely lofty ambitions called WebTV
Networks. It was so cool that it immediately got bought by
Microsoft, where I then stayed for
the following six years. As of 2003, I am happily unemployed and spend
part time in the US and part in Europe traveling, working on my "own thing,"
and doing occasional consulting gigs in between.
That didn't say much, did it? Nah, didn't think so. Well, how about this:
If it isn't obvious already, I love to travel. (My Myers-Briggs ENTP
personality type claims I'm a born explorer!) So far, I've visited some
30 odd countries on 4 continents, lost my passport twice, gotten robbed in the
Paris RER, had my skin badly sunburned in Greece, spent half a day in a
customs check on a deserted road between Kenya and Tanzania, puked my guts up
in a mountain village in northern Thailand, and blocked half of highway 80 to
Tahoe in California when my car spun on the icy road. So why do I keep doing
this? Well, I've also met a long lost sweetheart at the Swedish Embassy in
Vienna, had the best ever moules marinière in a small Parisian
bistro, gone island hopping on the deep blue Aegean Sea in Greece, seen the
sun set over zebras and giraffes grazing in the African savanna, been eagerly
fed moonshine at a Thai wedding in a remote village, and skied some grade A
pristine powder at Squaw Valley near Tahoe. Was the trouble it worth it?
You bet!
I also have a reasonably up-to-date copy of my résumé
and publications list online.
Credits