About me

Hello! Thanks for visiting my website. My name is Chris (Owain). I am from Ynysddu in South Wales, but due to my father's job, I currently live in Gloucestershire, just across the border. I'm a prefect in year 11 of Whitecross Comp, and when I've done my GCSEs, I'm going to go to collage to study languages. I can speak Welsh and French, and I'm learning Japanese too.

After school, I work in a chip shop to earn some money (£3.20 per hour...), read books (I especially like sci-fi at the moment), and hang out with friends in the woods.

Things I'm interested in:

Languages: I really like languages and they are my best subject in school. I am predicted to get an A* or A in English and French at GCSE which will be enough to get me into college. I want to go to college in Wales.

Computers: I like computers and last year I finally saved enough money to buy myself a PC.

Specs:

• Intel Pentium III
• 128MB RAM
• 20GB storage
• Creative Sound Blaster Live sound card
• CD Burner!

It cost me £899 from Dixons on Westgate Street in Gloucester. I want to get better at programming, but our school doesn't have a good ITC class.

Computers

I continued to improve my HTML (and later Java) skills and even learned quite a bit of Python, but I found that my true computing love was typography. A well-layouted page is a thing of beauty, which is what makes me all the more shocked by the state of this place.

I was so chuffed with this computer though. It was blue (rather than the usual beige monstrosities of those days) and had speakers attached to the sides of the monitor (which was also blue).

I had saved up for two years and eventually begged my grandmother for the last £100, which was my combined birthday and Christmas present that year. I remember buying it in the shop, but it had to be delivered, and it took over a week. When it finally arrived, my family didn't see me for about a month!

I paid extra for the CD burner, but it was worth it, as I charged my friends money for downloading songs on Limewire and burning them to CDs.

The PC became my lifeline when we moved back to Wales. Social media as we know it now wasn't a thing of course, but there was a website called Faceparty where I met a great circle of friends.

Writing: I love writing short stories and I'm trying to write longer ones, but they turn out very boring!

Writing

I actually started writing more after this time period; I would daydream on the bus home from college and then write up what I'd been thinking about in the form of a short story in the evening. A lot of them were ham-fisted attempts at erotica though, and they – thankfully – have been lost to the sands of time.

My first attempt at a full-scale story was a Star Trek fan fiction (without any erotic elements!) which I was so happy with, I had it printed out and I still have it somewhere. The next project was a semi-autobiographical story about my first crush. Only fragments of that remain, but at around 200 pages, it ended up being my biggest writing venture.

I may not have become a writer, but it was good practice: my scientific writing isn't quite as dry as it might otherwise have been!

Rats: I have two rats:

• Basil is a hooded rat and is two years old. He is good at some tricks like bringing me he ball and throwing bits of paper into the bin. He's very old and likes sleeping these days.
• Jason is a black rat and is 5 months. Jason is lazy and refuses to learn any tricks :D

Rats

Basil and Jason are long since dead, of course. Basil probably died about a month or two after that picture was taken, and Jason not long after – I think he only lived to be 18 months old. He never did learn any tricks, but he enjoyed climbing up the curtains and observing everything from up on the curtain rail.

All Basil ever wanted in his last few months was to curl up and sleep in the stomach pocket of my hoodies.

I had one more hooded rat (named Basil II) who lived to the grand old age of three before having to be put down, but that was it for pet rats. I have a labrador /terrier mutt named Cnŵt now, and he's far filthier than any of my rats ever were!

Piano: I started learning piano when I was about 8, so too late to be any good! I still have lessons once a week.

Piano

My new house in Wales didn't have a piano, so I stopped playing. I only started again almost 20 years later in Germany, so needless to say, I'm very rusty these days. I actually enjoy it now though!

ATC: I am a senior cadet with the rank of corporal at 614 (Lydney) squadron. I'm hoping to take the staff cadet examination next year. I earned the ATC marksmanship badge last year on the L98-A1 rifle. I currently have 577 flying minutes logged and hope to get at least 100 more by the end of the year.

Air Training Corps

I left the cadets two years later as a staff cadet with the rank of sergent. I enjoyed my time with them so much that I seriously considered joining the Royal Air Force, but the Iraq war was just getting started at that time and I didn't fancy dying in the Middle East for Bush and Blair's enjoyment. To add to that, most people I spoke to in the forces were die-hard monarchists, and they really didn't like my opinion towards the Windsors.

I eventually realised that it was the activities and the comraderie that I liked, and that I probably would have had exactly as much fun in the scouts.

I did love flying though, so much so that I got my glider pilot licence, but I quickly let it lapse after leaving the cadets as it turns out, it's an expensive hobby. I keep telling myself that I'll pick it back up someday though.

I still enjoy target shooting, and I'm confident I could still pass the marksmanship test (at the time that was 5 × 10 rounds fired at 25 yards).