I’m Anastasia, a twenty-something life-time student presently on my second bachelor’s degree. Keeping it Australian I’m at Murdoch University for this one. (my first degree was in IT at UOWD, I graduated in 2006) You would think one Bachelor’s degree would be enough, right? I also hold an audio engineering diploma from SAE which I received in 2008), and a certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults, so why would I want to keep studying? And why a second bachelor’s degree? Simple answer - I love Media. Media/Journalism is actually something I wanted to do way back after I graduated high school, unfortunately when I came to Dubai back in 2000 the only options I had for a degree at a university were IT and Business. IT seemed like the obvious choice, considering the technological boom in those days and computers have only just started taking over the world. A few years into the IT degree, I realized whilst I like computers, and I definitely enjoyed building them, I wouldn’t want to work in the field full time. In fact, as much as I did tech support for most places I’ve worked for on the side of what I was actually hired to do, this isn’t specifically what I wanted to do with my life. So a career in IT is definitely out of the question unless it’s mixed in with something challenging and creative.

Because of my indecision on a career, I’ve managed to dabble in a lot of things including spending three years as a Library Assistant at University of Wollongong in Dubai during which we had to move the entire library several times in a very short period of time. (That’s a couple of thousand of materials, equipment, shelves and all that had to be moved and set up at the new place as quickly as possible) It didn’t pay much, but I enjoyed working with the people and I love books, plus I had a dream manager throughout the time, Jane Whiteside. Thanks to her I got hired without any experience and have grown to become very well versed in the Dewey Decimal System and the workings of a library enough to consider doing a Masters in Library Sciences later on unless I settle down in a dream job if I find one anytime soon.

I have also worked for Showtime Arabia where I had to design, code and successfully launch their Intranet to work within the entire Middle East, all in the course of 3 short months! Huge thanks there to Albert Tonks, the manager who hired me for the job despite my obvious lack of experience. It was a very challenging job, with some ‘experts’ and cynics believing that someone without much experience with SharePoint couldn’t do the job. But I love a good challenge, even more so when the odds are stacked against me, as it makes me work harder and more efficiently in order to complete a goal. There was a significant amount of double digit shift hours involved in that one, but the final result was well worth it, and I got the bonus 10K for completing the project on time! Today, Showtime relies on the Intranet more and more for carrying out their internal communications and inter-department dealings.

I also do translations of all sort of documents and contracts; mostly from Russian to English and English to Russian. Well known for rush jobs when it comes to translating. I don’t tend to use the online translators or the auto translation services, preferring to do the translation manually, as I believe in proper grammar and spelling when it comes to official documentation.

In addition to that I was also a stage manager for a live show production at Jumeirah Beach, where my work involved sound, lights and props for the acapella show given by Dubai Harmony on the day. That was the job which led me to get a diploma in Audio Engineering later on. Some say you have to be insane to do live events, well one of my SAE instructors said that. Personally, I don’t know, I’d rather do a live event than go through a recording session in the studio. It’s great fun! As was the audio engineering diploma I did as I had the chance to learn a great deal of things about the audio industry.

I’ve always been a creative person, at least when it comes to writing since I can’t draw to save my life. Over the years, I’ve dabbled in both fiction and non-fiction and had some of my non-fiction work published in magazines and newspapers in UAE. I spent a year as a writer and an editor for a Student magazine called StudenTalk based in Dubai Media City. (unfortunately the magazine went out of circulation as far as I know). Whilst there, I was involved in a lot of aspects of the magazine world, that included writing and editing articles and laying out the issues. It was fun, and definitely something I would love to be involved in more. Now I am, since whilst at the brand new Murdoch Dubai campus, I’ve already jumped on in and we came up with a student newsletter which the university agreed to publish. For more on that see the Published section.

What else? Ah of course, some might wonder, “what’s with the usshorizon.org URL?” well, I’m a sci fi fanatic, and I host and own a simm (RPG) based in a Star Trek universe (but with a few other twists and turns). It’s a writing game of sorts. Have a look at the main USS Horizon website (built using PHP and mySQL mostly) and the role playing forums hosted on vBulletin software (by far one of the best forum softwares available) and if you like writing and sci fi (doesn’t have to be Star Trek, we take all kinds of characters) then feel free to contact me about joining, we’d love to have some new blood er... fresh faces aboard.

Other than that I do watch a variety of shows on TV or on DVD and have quite a collection of Series on DVD (mostly imported from US and UK because release dates here are sketchy at best). Shows I watch include (but not limited to) Doctor Who, Torchwood, Chuck, NCIS, Stargate SG1, MacGyver, Magnum P.I., JAG, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Boston Legal, Life on Mars (UK), Quantum Leap, Bones, Eureka, Dark Angel, Farscape, Red Dwarf. Sometimes I tend to draw inspiration from some of them when writing certain scenes and characters aboard the USS Horizon or any other snippets I may write from time to time. All in all, I’m quite proud to be a female and a sci-fi addict. Nothing wrong with good ol’ sci-fi. It’s great stuff, and we’ve already started seeing some of the science fiction turn into reality. Who knows where we’ll be in twenty or so years.