If
you haven't quite figured it out yet, my name is Ravi Hiranand.
And this is my website. Who I am is a fairly boring story, so
I'll keep it brief. Born and raised in Hong Kong (remarkably
without the ability to speak Cantonese -- I know, I know) as
the oldest of five children, I spent four years of my life in
Kingston University on the outskirts of London studying for
a business degree that has nothing to do with what I actually
do now. I'm a freelance journalist specialising in technology
stories, though I did start out writing about games for a variety
of magazines and websites (including EGM,
OPM, GMR,
IGN, GameSpot,
Gamers.com and 1UP),
as well as a summer stint at CNN.com
Asia. That summer stint helped me nab the position I currently
hold (again, only on a freelance basis!) at CNN International
in Hong Kong working on tech stories for Techwatch.
I've appeared on TV as the Techwatch Gadget Guy, and you can
find videos of those stories in the Movies
section. Incidentally, links to some of my older web stories
are in the Bookmarks
section.
Alright,
the boring stuff is out of the way. As you can tell, I'm a bit
of a gaming and technology nut. Thanks mainly to my dad (helped
on by various uncles), the addiction struck fairly early on,
and I had my first system by the time I was six. That system,
incidentally, was a Nintendo
Famicom, the basis for my life-long devotion to all things Mario
(and the basis for my budding journalism career -- it started
with Nintendo
fansites, then moved on to the professional gaming websites,
then magazines, and now I've taken tentative steps into branching
out, using my knowledge of gaming and the industry's growing
profile among the mainstream... but I digress).
As
I said, I'm also a lover of technology. Actually, it's more
"gadgets" and technology in general rather than more
hardcore computing stuff (contrary to the generally-held belief
of my extended family, no, I do not know how to program anything,
not even HTML). Consumer technology and gadgets that affect
our daily lives in an entertaining way are what I'm after --
things like an iPod,
or camera phones, or even Wi-Fi
wireless internet. You can see my current line-up of gadgets
over at the aptly-named Gadgets
page.
No
page about me would be complete without the other big love in
my life... Liverpool Football
Club (were you expecting something -- or someone -- else?).
I'm a huge sports fan in general, able to watch anything from
the American sports (the Lakers being another habit I picked
up from my dad) to F1 to even golf, but football (or "soccer")
stands supreme among all sports for me. And among all football
clubs, I'm utterly devoted to Liverpool. "True" fans
will no doubt slate me for not having been born in Liverpool
itself, taking an interest in football at a fairly late age
(9) and only supporting Liverpool on the back of their incredible
success in the 1980s (which is partially true... I supported
them only because they were the only English club I had ever
heard of, which admittedly was because they won all the time
back then), but anyone who knows me personally knows that I
really am passionate about the club... probably far too much
so, even. And while we're on the subject -- if I may namedrop,
the gentleman with the dyed hair in the second picture on this
page is Japanese football hero Hidetoshi Nakata. Given that
he's long been a personal favourite of mine and is quite possibly
the greatest Asian player of all time, meeting him last year
was an honour.
