This is the hub page for the personal stuff on this website.

This page has a summary of how I've spent my life, and will get more links to other life-related pages as I add more content and write more stuff.

I created a different version of the full story of my life in an easily digestible format. I had a lot of fun making it, and definitely plan to expand on it. Check it if you want a quick overview of my history without reading a bunch of text!
Or if you just like fun visualizations.

The Beginning

I grew up in Kristiansand, in the far south of Norway. My parents divorced when I was little. We weren't poor exactly, but we weren't swimming in cash either. We didn't really travel - the most ambitious trip was driving from the south to Alta in the far north to visit my dad's family. That drive took 3 days.

I got my first PC at 14, and that was more or less the start of a lifelong relationship with computers . I did my military service in 2001, a year in Troms. After that I went through something of a rough patch - a goth phase, jobs I hated, and a general sense that I was going nowhere. I was miserable and angry.

Australia and Asia

In 2006, something shifted. I think I decided to try to be happy instead of accepting a life of misery. I started working out, stopped wearing exclusively black, and decided I needed to get out of Norway. Through a short detour at a Microsoft callcenter in northern Sweden - which lasted about a month - I ended up on the Gold Coast in Australia doing a personal trainer course. I had about 30,000 NOK saved up and not much of a plan.

I lived there for a year. Got in the best shape of my life. Took up boxing. Worked as a trainer, which was mostly sales, but it was fun. When I left, I traveled through Malaysia and Thailand for a couple of months. I did my first scuba course on Koh Lanta. I went to a full moon party on Koh Phangan and had an experience that genuinely rewired how I see the world. I came back to Norway in December 2007 and immediately started saving to leave again.

Koh Tao

The next few years were one of the best periods of my life. I went back to Asia in 2008, backpacked through half a dozen countries, started my Divemaster training on Koh Tao , and eventually became a diving instructor. I issued over 300 certifications. I swam with whale sharks, manta rays, sharks and once I even snorkeled with 3 whales. I did my deepest dive at 47.5 meters.

And I met my wife. She was a Japanese instructor working at the same dive school. She was not interested in me at all. That lasted about a year before I wore her down. We were together on Koh Tao for about 3 years.

Back to Norway

We left Koh Tao in late 2012, stopped in Japan so I could ask her father for permission to marry her - in front of the whole family - and settled in Kristiansand. We got married in December 2013. Bought a house in 2014 after 14 months of living with my mother to save money. I spent this time working a sales job and it was terrible enough that we almost just went back to Thailand for the scuba life.

Then I had an idea for a game. I figured - and this is not a joke - "how hard can it be?" It was hard. But it made me realize that programming was something I could actually do. At 33, I enrolled in a computer science degree at the University of Agder. My first son was born in 2016, my second in 2018, the same year I graduated. I started my first frontend developer job a few months later.

Developer years

I've been a frontend developer since late 2018. The work page has the details and further links. The showcase has live demos of some of the things I've built.

Traveling with kids

In 2023, my mother gifted our family a month-long trip to Malaysia. I suggested to my wife and kids that instead of one month, we go for longer. They agreed immediately. We spent 8 months backpacking through Southeast Asia with two kids aged 6 and 8. Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Bali, Cambodia, Okinawa. We rented a tuk-tuk on Koh Lanta. We went snorkeling and diving and ate delicious food and we usually had a pool so the kids could play, which they did, sometimes until after sunset! The kids did Muay Thai. My youngest got bitten by a monkey at Angkor Wat. I could go on, and I will, but not here.

We moved to Aichi in September 2025 so the kids could go to a Japanese school and pick up the language properly. I worked remotely. My wife's parents have a small apartment we used. It was overall a pretty good experience, and the kids' Japanese level shot through the roof.

And now we are in Norway, as of July 2026. Business as usual. I love to be back to my stuff; my home office with my PC, my own bed, my big TV, but living in Japan was great in a lot of ways.