Contents
Personal Interests
- Traveling
-
- The world is my oyster! I like to see
the different cultures of the world up close. So far I've
restricted myself to reasonably 'civilised' parts of the
world (or at least cultures not too
different) as I'm a bit of a coward I'm afraid. So far
the most exotic has been Goa in India but I'm going to
have to branch out soon as I'm running out of 'civilised'
places to go to and ended up in Argentina in November
2000 (pretty civilised: not really "South American"
enough for me). I was off to Bulgaria in August 1999 to
see the eclipse and hoped to see my next one in Ceduna on
December 4th 2002 but 'twas not to be and the next one
will likely be Turkey in 2006. You can see my pre-trip
notes for some of the recent trips here (Australia, Hawaii,
Hong Kong, New England,
New
Zealand,
Paris, Singapore,
Thailand, and the American
Wild West) which could save those of you planning
trips to those places a good deal of time & effort
hunting through the guidebooks as I have included page
references to all the sights worth seeing. Since we've been living in
the south of France, I've spent a good deal of time in running up a guide to
the Pyrénées Orientale
and areas adjacent to it.
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- Reading
-
- I read pretty widely, or at least I
used to as I just don't seem to have the time these days.
I was once accused of being a 'living encyclopaedia' but I'm
not really: like most people I know lots about some
things, a little about a lot of things and nothing at all
about a vast expanse of human knowledge. In recent times
I have been doing a lot of reading about the places that
I've intended to go to (I have more travel books than
most bookshops!), quite a bit about investment (mostly
keeping up to date via magazines and newspapers) and a
fair bit of science fiction and fantasy. I like to slip a
classic into my reading schedule now and again and also a
book from a new area the odd time (I've not much time for
non-course reading at the moment). I'd love to do some
serious writing but it takes a lot of effort to sit down
and start writing anything substantial after getting home
from work so I guess that the novel will have to wait a
couple of years.
- Studying
-
- I sort of like studying in the sense
that I like having achieved the end result and I quite
like the learning along the way. It's just the exams and
the homework and the lack of free time that I don't like
(Hmmm, perhaps I don't really like studying??). Sometimes
I get these urges to do degrees but mostly it passes and
I regain my senses: so far I've only succummed five times
with the Computer Science degree straight after school,
the MBA three or four years ago (warning: trying to do an
MBA part-time and a full-time job at the same time is really mad!), the
marketing diploma just after that, the French diploma in October 2004 and I
started on
the Spanish diploma in February 2005.
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-
- Languages
-
- I keep telling people that I like
learning languages but so far it's just French, a little
Spanish, a lot less Greek (it's actually pretty easy to
learn once you get past the alphabet 'cos they don't have
all the little exceptions to the rules that crept into
later languages) and an absolutely tiny amount of Latin (I'm
fairly practically minded and learning a 'dead' language
seems rather pointless: it was one of the compulsory
subjects). During a brief period of insanity in 2001 I
applied for the Open University French diploma and
finished that in October 2004; the insanity has continued
and I'm starting the Spanish diploma in February 2005.
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-
- The country
-
- I love the country and I currently
live in the vineyards in the south of France after having
had a rush of blood to the head and buying a hotel in
October 2003. When I was little the family rented a
cottage in the country since before I was born and while
my granny was alive we all used to stay there over the
summer months, travelling to work in the car. To say that
the cottage isn't terribly grand is something of an
understatement: we're talking 1850's vintage thatched
cottage here, no indoor plumbing, no electricity and a
rent of about UKP 1 ($1.50) a week. It did make a nice
change from the city though.
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-
- Photography
-
- I enjoy taking photographs of
beautiful places. I generally don't take pictures of the
people though, except in 'western civilisations' as it
seems a bit intrusive. I sometimes print my own
photographs in the old fashioned way (Cibachrome) but really I need to see about getting a few
more hours added onto the end of the days...
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- Genealogy
-
- Specifically the
Stewart, Montgomery and Douglas families. This is a
kind of background interest for me as you seem to spend
years searching for some information then are inundated
with it. I thought that I was doing pretty well sailing
back into the 1700s when I hit a pothole: when I tried to
confirm some information that I'd picked up from the
Mormon website in order to join up with a
probable connection 50 years earlier, it seemed that a
number of locations that I'd collected for places of
birth and the like weren't as accurate as I'd been led to
believe. That's knocked things on the head for a bit as I
will need to confirm a line straight back to the early
1800s which will take quite a while.
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- Investing
-
- I used to be really into this but with
the hotel, it's taken something of a sideline for now. It
has been very useful in funding the purchase of this
place though.
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- Internet
-
- Apart from work my main interest in
this is to help the above. I don't really see it as an
end in itself and I never frequent the chat rooms or
anything like that although I have used chat to talk to
friends that I've known in other ways beforehand. In case
you were wondering, these pages were started for two
reasons: 1) to build up my CV and 2) as a means of
keeping in touch with friends and family around the world.
Current Projects
- developing the hotel into a fully
viable business;
- losing more weight and getting fitter
(on the back burner at the moment);
- working backwards with my family tree
(I'm back to 1805 with the Stewarts, with a possible link
back to 1728 which I'm checking out);
- keeping an eye on James and John; and
- keeping this website more up to date!
Biographical Information
Queen's
University of Belfast
- Honours Computer Science (BSc (Hons)),
July 1982
University
of Ulster
- Diploma in Management Studies (DMS)
with commendation, July 1992
- Master of Business Administration (MBA),
July 1993
- Diploma in Marketing (DipM) , December 1993
Open
University
- Diploma in French (Dip French), October 2004
- started on a Diploma in Spanish in
February 2005
British
Computer Society
- Professional member (MBCS), January
1989
- Chartered Engineer (CEng), May 1990
- European Engineer (Eur Ing), September
1992
- Chartered Information Technology
Professional (CITP), May 2004
Me
- interests as above
- brown hair
- hazel eyes
- 5' 11" (1.80m)
- still a little heavier than I'd like
to be
- I don't smoke or drink
- a little impulsive and some say that I
don't stick to the rules
- sometimes I plan too much and I'm
taking steps to correct that: I used to be very
spontaneous and I'm intending to be that way again
Contact
Information
Street address
Auberge Mas Camps, 66460 Maury, France
Electronic mail address web@arnoldstewart.com
Web address http://www.arnoldstewart.com
Comments and
Suggestions
Please mail me
with comments,
suggestions, queries and possible improvements or write them into
my
.