Hey Listservers, I've been on here for a long time now and was starting to think the winning email had forgotten about me; yet here we are. I'm 23, am what's known as a 'Third Culture Kid' and currently call the landmass of Australia home.
My story: As a baby, I grew up during the apartheid in South Africa. Despite personally having no recollection of events, my parents must have been concerned enough as we moved to Switzerland, the opposite to South Africa in pretty much every way. We didn't stop there though, 5 years (and 1 little brother) later we packed up again to move closer to family, this time to Australia. Adelaide, South Australia is where we settled, to be with family on dad's side.
Now Adelaide is a special place. Instead of the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, it's the 2 degrees of Adelaide (no, seriously, 2 degrees, I've never broken this rule). We are home to the highest number of serial killers and churches in Australia (coincidence?) and even when visiting the city centre, it still feels like a massive country town. That is to say, people are still friendly! If you like warmth, wine and all kinds of festivals and sports, Adelaide is your place to be from Dec-Apr.
A bit about me: I was boring and straight laced growing up, opting to tread the path that everyone else expected me to (school, degree, job, family, kids). I was offered a good job out of uni in corporate IT, a decision made difficult by requiring re-location interstate, away from a girlfriend and life I'd come to seriously love. That one year in corporate IT turned out to be the worst year of my life, experiencing a break-up for the first time, losing touch with a big portion of people I considered friends and generally finding it difficult to be living out of home so far from everything.
But with every cloud comes a silver lining, and with it is one piece of advice which I will impart on you. Never let others get in the way of the things that you want to do and never expect people will always be there for you.
With that advice in mind, I am now back in Adelaide and have co-founded an IT start-up to focus on business apps, hopefully you will use our products one day!
If you: skate, skim, surf, snowboard, are also from Adelaide, love IT/tech or are an IT entrepreneur, hit me up with an email!
And if you're one of the people wondering what the subject line means, it's a re-purposed album title. :P
Kyle C
[email protected]
Adelaide, South Australia