I dropped out of a decidedly average university to do customer support for the first ISP in Australia. After a couple of years of that, I got itchy feet and fou

I dropped out of a decidedly average university to do customer support for the first ISP in Australia. After a couple of years of that, I got itchy feet and found myself in London, England. The plan was to follow the footsteps of many thousands of Australians before me, and get a job in a bar (note: I had zero experience in bar work), and get enough money to hang out in London for a while, and maybe do some side trips into Europe. It was '96 or '97, and the dotcom boom was just getting started. Deciding to try my luck, I picked up one of the trade papers to look at the job listings. I bought myself a suit at Marks and Spencers and jumped on a tube to go to my first job interview. I took the tube home, and by the time I got to the other end I had a message waiting for me saying I got the job. I found myself reporting to the brilliant Jack Lang (https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/farewell-jack-lang https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/farewell-jack-lang), tweaking software developed by Tim King's company, Perihelion. I really was just making minor tweaks to a bunch of perl scripts, so I managed to stumble through it and not make a total fool of myself. Even though I was working with folks with extremely impressive bodies of work behind them and I was just some scruffy backpacker dude, they were always kind and generous to me. I met some great people there. I never did get a chance to learn how to pour a beer.