I am an independent software developer whose main interests include ecommerce, the social web and web services. But it was not always like that. I hated the extra computer science papers that I took while doing engineering. And they were the only lectures that I really enjoyed sleeping in. The lecturers always seem to kindly dim the lights before they started.

By training I am actually an Electrical & Electronic Engineer. I graduated from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ which I reckon is a beautiful place with wonderful people. I enjoyed my engineering management classes and even did a year of postgrad management after my bachelor. Turns out, it was just that particular lecturer that made management interesting. I missed engineering and went back to complete my masters and at the same time did some work on IPv6 for a networking manufacturer, Allied Telesis.

I was offered a job when my contract finished and decided to stay on as a software engineer. My passion has always been computers. The experience of working at a network equipment manufacturer was similar to that of a kid at a candy store. You get to play with new toys, design leading edge technology and create bugs in enterprise software. At one stage, I was attached to Tokyo for a few months and that made me realised that I dreaded big cities. Yes, it was fun and interesting but not somewhere I would want to be for the long term. Surprisingly, the japanese were very hospitable, friendly and happy people. Quite different from the impression that you get from reading their emails.

However, life didn't turn out the way I wish it did so I returned back home to my hometown in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Once back home, after mucking around for awhile, I decided to learn to write web-based software, which I believed was the bees knees at that time. So I decided to give a shot at launching an ecommerce site targeting only Malaysia. My inspiration was the story of trademe.co.nz. Finally, after 6 months, ejunction.com.my was launched along with an escrow service called safetrader.com.my.  

But this attempt failed, well actually it didn't fail. I killed the project. There were a number of reasons why I did this. Firstly, it was the lack of financial capability to really drive traffic and to continue to drive traffic to the site. Secondly, e-commerce in Malaysia is still at its infancy and the general population have not really embraced e-commerce as a viable and trustworthy concept. Lastly, fraud cases.

I think I have the answer to the aforementioned problems and I'm currently working on a solution. Some insight was also gained from dealing with site users. At the moment, I'm mainly into building solutions with C#, jquery, and MSSQL. Up to this point in time, I have ported a Java and PHP application to C#, i.e. pesta and raya. 

The objective now is to get the ecommerce app up as soon as possible. Strangely enough, I seem to be enjoying myself. I guess the main difference with web development compared to say building a network switch, is that developing for the web allows me to create a complete product that is usable by people. With building a network switch, you only get to write code for a part of a product. And with web development, the tools available are much better.

To be continued ...