by Dr. Iain
Corness
This week I was enjoying lunch at the Art Café in
Naklua, while also enjoying the company of Johanna Stetten, a website and
graphic designer, and incidentally the wife of the Art Café’s GM. This
is Johanna’s story.
She was born in the northern part of Germany, the
younger of two children in a medical family, her father a doctor and her
mother a nurse. Both of her parents had a strong influence on her life,
with her father’s interest in medicine being given to his children.
"My goal was to be a doctor. It was his dream that one of us would be
(a doctor), but neither of us did - my brother is a career soldier - but
medicine is still one of my greatest interests."
As she progressed through secondary school, her
interests changed. She discovered ‘boys’ for one, but secondly, she
discovered that perhaps medicine was not her true direction, and went off
to study tax laws to become a tax consultant after the 3 year training.
During the following 8 years of her life as a
professional tax consultant, she made more discoveries - and one of these
was to last for the rest of her life. In one word - computers! This was
back in the very early days before the omnipresent PC on everyone’s
desks. These were the days of the 64K Commodore, the dinosaur of the
computing world.
However, the concept of computers Johanna found really
interesting, but initially it was not so easy. "It was so hard for me
in the beginning, trying to understand just how computers worked. It was
somehow like a drug after I discovered it was all one and zero!"
After the revelation of 1 and 0, the international
computer "building blocks", Johanna began to become interested
in programming and she began to delve even deeper. This was the era where
everyone was self taught, and as the IT age developed, so did Johanna. She
moved away from tax consultancy and took a position in the Human Relations
(HR) department of a large German company, rising to become the director
of HR. At the same time electronic data processing (EDP) was coming in,
and Johanna, being one of the few people conversant with what was
happening, also became the EDP manager.
With the introduction of PC’s and the phasing out of
the huge reel to reel magnetic tape computers, she became involved in the
training of the personnel at work to use these new tools. I asked her if
she ever felt in danger that she herself was being left behind, with the
huge strides that information technology (IT) was taking. "No, I
never felt that. I was reading, reading, reading as well as doing the
necessary practice."
With all the responsibility of EDP and HR, Johanna was
by now on a good salary and in her vacations she was able to indulge
herself in travel and adventure. She visited Sri Lanka and other parts of
Asia, all of Europe and then Kenya in Africa. The last country was to have
a profound effect on her life - she met the GM of a hotel in Kenya, a
young German called Jo Stetten, who followed her to Germany.
Back home, the two, Jo and Johanna, linked up more than
their computers and were married. When Johanna fell pregnant she had to
take a break from working. "My job took 12 hours a day, and it wasn’t
possible to continue." However, after a couple of years of parenting,
the Stettens were on the move again. This time it was Vietnam.
While it might have been thought that this move would
fall in line with her love of travel and adventure, it did not. "It
was completely boring for me, sitting around being an expat wife." To
counteract this she began to brush up her computer skills again and began
graphic designing, helping her husband by producing every menu, point of
sale posters and the like for the hotel.
During this period, the internet became stronger and as
it expanded, Johanna expanded her talents into web site design too. By the
time Jo was offered a posting in Thailand, Johanna was ready to follow as
she could maintain her own sense of identity through her work on the
internet, still being of the opinion that the usual expat wife life was
not for her. "Coffee chats? There’s nothing more boring!" she
said with conviction. During the past five years in Thailand, which has
encompassed Bangkok, Phuket and Pattaya she has found that where she
resides was now unimportant. "It doesn’t matter where I am - you
are absolutely independent. Though I have to say I love Pattaya."
Her father’s influence is still with her, having
given her a life-long interest in medicine, and in her spare time reads
medical bulletins and journals and says, "I am the doctor in the
family." Her late mother’s influence is also strong, having been a
gifted artist in her day, giving Johanna a great interest in the arts and
photography. Johanna has been taking photographs since she got her first
‘real’ camera when she was 16 years old and takes photographs of
plants, animals and portraits. Who else do you know who has 2000 pictures
of horses, for example? Her favourite camera is the Olympus with the Zeiss
lenses, and she has been moving towards digital imaging, not a surprise
when you are computer literate like this lady.
But there is one hobby predominant. "My biggest
hobby is still the computer, and I guess it always will be." This is
not really a hobby, however, as Johanna begins on the computer by 7.30
a.m. and goes through until the late hours.
Johanna Stetten is an independent woman who has been lucky to find
something in life that she has found so satisfying. She has also been
fortunate that her ‘something’ was a portable skill at which she
excels, and not dependent upon others or geography.
