Hi Steemers,
My name is Alex, and this evening I stumbled across steem and though that it looked well worth joining.
Here is the story of what lead me here.
I live in, and was born in the UK at a hospital called Torbay in the South West of England. Until the age of 18 I only ever lived in Devon growing up in the countryside with frequent visits to Northern Ireland (troubles or not) to visit my mother's family. I grew up in a small village going to the local town for school, hence I basically grew up with all the same people from day one at school to the day I left it at 18. This meant I had a good dose of all the usual trouble available to those who grow up in places where there isn't even a bus to take you to the cinema such as being chased by cows, kicking wasps nests, den wars and simply getting lost or scolded for turning up home with one welly and covered in mud.
Along side the outdoors bits a pieces I always loved technology and naturally as a kid this led me to computer games with the original C&C being my first PC one, more on this later.
When I was 17 I learnt to drive and suddenly the world got a lot bigger, I was able to leave the village at the weekend and get up to increasingly interesting activities such as going to the beach to camp, surf and chase girls. Once I was 18 I set of to Cardiff Uni to study Biology, at topic which I always enjoyed and still harbour a great love of the natural world. It was at Uni with all the extra time on my hands that I properly got into gaming sinking days into fallout 4, EVE, Dragon Age and some epic games of AoE 2 in my house. That said maybe I spent a little too long on this and other hedonous pursuits as I left with a grade that I was disappointed in.
To those of you at Uni what you put in is what you get out on the academic front, no matter how clever you believe yourself to be....
I was lucky to talk my way onto a masters course at Bath Uni in Management and Finance having decided that I couldn't see myself pursing a career in Biology, so the September after graduating from Cardiff I moved to Bath for a year during which I had an incredible year living in a beautiful city. It was this year that helped me to mature into finding the balance required between work and play, which allowed to recover my academics including a top grade in my dissertation.
Upon leaving Bath I had decided that I wished to train as an accountant, so I moved back to my parent's in Devon and set about applying for jobs.
To help with the next bit it is important to understand that this was September 2012, the UK was still badly suffering from the financial crisis in terms of jobs and unemployment, London had recovered but had badly left the rest of the UK in it's wake.
From when I started applying with my masters degree result in September it took 9 months until the following June to receive a job offer (naturally I had been doing casual work in the meantime), during this period it became apparent that the only realistic career opportunities would require me to move to London. This move somewhat forced upon me and the number of final round rejections I was receiving did lead me to a period of depression, not a situation I ever wish to repeat and I can only give great thanks to the IGN podcasts at that time for being some small bits of humour to certain days.
However moving on from the despair, I mentioned that I received an offer in June 2013. This required me to quickly move to London within a month to start work in audit as an ACA trainee. I think there is many experience worth sharing as someone who moved to London for work, however that can be talked about later. After some testing times during my training (those exams get seriously hard) I qualified as a Chartered Accountant in August last year.
Once I qualified I decided it was time for a change and in February this year I landed a job in a start-up company (still in London). When I moved I get friendly with the tech director, who I got talking to about crypto currencies, this being the time that Etherium was starting its rocket launch! I had been aware of bitcoin for a long time but never had the money, skills or time to really get involved. Again I find myself still in this position not having the money to invest in or the location to run a mining rig, however the interest is not purely financial hence I often find myself wandering the internet on articles. This meandering finally led me here to steem where I am hoping I can both learn and share all manner topics.
Expect to see articles about almost anything from me, but topics I do particularly enjoy are photography, rugby, music and all science (including tech).
For those of you with the perseverance to reach this far, here is my picture and I look forwards to meeting you soon! If anyone want to ask me anything about anything please do!