I like to be busy. Whether a week day or the weekend, I start most days around 5am. I am obsessive about schedules, about making efficient use of my time, about maximising my output for every day – whatever the tasks and activities may be.
I love learning and reading: journals, classical literature, poetry, artificial intelligence, telecommunications technologies, philosophy, and python programming – I enjoy them all. I have a passion for knowledge and the older I get, the more I want to learn.
I set myself very high-standards, and the quality of both my technical and creative writing always has to be perfect, as does always getting the right answer in mathematics. I’m compulsive about detail and will persevere, check and check my work again and again before being satisified.
I enjoy teaching and mentoring students of all ages, but equally I enjoy listening and learning as much from them as I can in return. With two ears and only one mouth we should listen as twice as much as we speak. Listening provides us with the opportunity to learn, to understand a different perspective, to empathise with someone else’s circumstances. To be listened to, and to be truly heard and understood is a most precious gift of someone else’s time.
In my software quality assurance and telecommunications career, I have worked as an individual specialist and in positions of team leadership and group management and I have had the opportunity to travel to and work in many different countries. I have worked for large and established cellular telecoms companies including Nokia, Ericsson and Keysight Technologies, as well as in New Telecom Solutions – a radio access network base station start-up, and from 2G through to 5G. I have managed the functional, performance and interoperability testing of cellular handset and base station RAN protocol stacks; the global certification activities of a smartphone; the implementation, verification and validation of handset conformance test assets with fronthaul to backhaul manufacturers and telecoms industry standards bodies.
I have always enjoyed studying and teaching technical subjects such as mathematics, but through my TEFL career, I have become very passionate about literature and the artistry of the literary craft. I think one has to have experienced life’s ‘ups and downs’ in order to truly relate to many literary themes, plots, and contexts and develop a keen eye for each author’s unique and ingenious application of literary and stylistic devices. In fact, it was also from teaching English that I also became profoundly interested in poetry and recently decided to try to pen a little verse for myself.
Over two hundred and fifty poems later …