User:Chriswaterguy/Chris Watkins

English (native) Indonesian (fluent) Malaysian (conversational) Japanese & German (very basic - thanks, excuse me, delicious, mein linke Blinker ist kaput...).

Currently (August 7) indulging my Wikiholism for a few days, before I get onto doing the boring stuff I need to do (taxes, passport, sorting through all my crap...) before buying my one-way ticket overseas.

I love the way the internet facilitates collaboration, and I'm quite involved in several collaborations, as you can see below.

You can contact me:

• via my talk page,
• via my Wikipedia talk page,
• via gooogle chat. Take my wiki username, remove the 4 digits from that end, and that's the google username.
• via Yahoo messnger. One word, first part mbah and second part yogi.

I also like IRC chat... but you'll need to contact me first to arrange a channel. I plan to spend a bit of time on the wiki-related IRC channels occasionally (e.g. #wikipedia & #wikimedia on irc.freenode.net).

Please note: I enjoy chatting, but don't be offended if I sometimes say I can't chat for long (I believe in honesty).

Often when I'm on the computer, I've started editing one Wikipedia or Appropedia page, then realised I need to check something else and maybe correct it, which leads to yet another article... having 4 or more editing windows open plus various google searches is fairly standard for me. And it all starts with one little edit...

Energy development
Water purification
Urban studies and planning

Who I am

One of my reasons for putting this info here is to make it easier for people find me - e.g. people who went to the same school.

Memberships, places of study, associations

Current memberships:

• Engineers Without Borders (Australia)
• Australian Greens. Formerly a member of SHAG (Summer Hill Ashfield Greens), but now I don't belong to a branch as I'm leaving Australia.

Former memberships, associations (80s and 90s):

• Australian Democrats (until 2003) till
• Abbotsford 12 Foot Flying Squadron, on the Parramatta River - sailed 12 foot skiffs 1986-88, also sailed Sabots and Flying 11s before that.
• In the past I was involved with various churches & Christian groups around Sydney, including:
  • St Michael's and All Angels Anglican Church & youth group, Newport, NSW. (Sydney).
  • Southern Cross Independent Baptist church, Engadine and Harvest Independent Baptist Church, Narrabeen.
  • St Matthias (Phillip Jensen's church)
  • The Australian Navigators|

Places of Education (all in Sydney, Australia):

• Santa Maria Del Monte (K-3)
• St Patrick's College Strathfield (years 4-8).
• Pittwater High School (years 9-12). I enjoyed school much more here (in spite of being quickly given the role of school nerd), doing some debating and being in two school musicals. Was known as Harvey for a while after a couple of singing lines in Bye Bye Birdie. Also enjoyed living in the seaide suburb of Mona Vale.
• University of Sydney - Bachelor of Chemical Engineering, 1989-1992. First year was the worst. Second year was the worst too. Third year was even worse and from there it went into a decline.
• University of New South Wales - Master of Engineering Science (Water), part-time, 1994-97. Much more interesting. Thesis research carried out in Surabaya, East Java (= Jawa Timur), Indonesia.

Other stuff to help web searches to find this page

Christopher Watkins