I was born in Tallinn (the same city where I live now) at January 27th, 1970. I have no sisters or brothers, but I have a zillion nieces and a nephews.
At the age of 7, I started going to a school; my mom put me into a special english-biased class, and for that I am really grateful to her. However, my interests were not in languages - I was average in English and weak in Russian, and I have never bothered to learn any other languages, and that is of course a shame. But I was sort of good in subjects like math, physics and chemistry and was considered rather bright in high school. Then sometime around the year 1985, when I was at my 8th grade, computers (bulky, unfriendly Russian-made machines, very unlike today's attractive graphical workstations and PC's) hit in. I was fascinated. Since that time, computers have been my main hobby in life.
After 11 years of learning in the same school, same class, with mostly the same classmates, I graduated from the high school and continued my studies in the department of physics at Tartu University, specializing on astrophysics. Tartu is the second largest town in Estonia and life mostly revolves there around its two universities; it is a liberal, academic city. I liked Tartu a lot and I still do, even as I must agree that it _is_ a province when compared to Tallinn. Life there is slower, more relaxed, not so tense and businesslike as in Tallinn.
My studies were going rather well at first. Besides the usual schoolwork we were doing observations of variable stars with some friends. We worked in the observatory of AAI (Institute of Astrophysics and Atmosphere physics) in Tõravere (about 20 km from Tartu). BTW, AAI has the largest optical telescope in Nordic countries; however, the equipment that we worked with was rather old. Also, we did some work in the old Tartu Observatory, that is situated on a small hill Toomemägi) in the very middle of Tartu. Built in the beginning of 19th century, the old building of it has a special scent of history and science that no modern, functional, glass-and-metal clad observatories can have.
Later on my interests turned to cosmology and investigating the characteristics of the large-scale structure of the universe. I graduated the university in spring of '93 with a degree that, i think, corresponds to 'batchelor', and continued my studies on the next step of the academic ladder (in estonian it's 'magistrantuur', and it is probably the same that is meant by "doing the masters'" elsewhere).
However I never finished my master's thesis, and probably never will. Instead, I went to work. (Well, I did work during my university years, but this was not full-time).
Currently I am employed in the Union Bank of Estonia (Eesti Ühispank), doing all kinds of computer stuff, and very far from astronomical and astrophysical matters. That is a pity, of course..
I have been asked - not a few times - why have I choosen such a silly
unpronouncable nickname. Come on, you don't mean that any real
person can be called 'Kaur Virunurm', such names just don't
exist! Maybe I am just a fake?
The answer is that this is my real name, given to
me by my parents when I was born, and if the name looks or sounds odd
to you it is because I happen to be an Estonian .
This is not a disease but a nationality, that is, I live
with some other fellow Estonians in a country that is called Estonia, and we
speak a language that is also called Estonian. We are a very small nation,
there are less than 1 million Estonians in the whole world, and most of us
have got similar twisted names. An average Estonian looks very much like any
other humanoid - two legs, one head (but see my picture over there). We are
similar to Scandinavians in appearance - light skin, fair hair (means
natural blondes!), mostly grey and blue eyes.
Oh yeah, and I myself think
that my name is OK and I don't give a damn if you consider it weird or
strange or simply crazy :-)
Estonia is a small European country, one of the three Baltic states in the northeastern Europe. If you take a look at the map, then Estonia is a small patch of land just between Russia and the Baltic sea, close to Sweden and Finland. Tallinn, the city where I live, is the capital of Estonia, and it has about 500 000 people living in it; Estonia as a whole has about 1 500 000 inhabitants. The first question that everyone always asks if we were a part of the Soviet Union; yes, we were, since the year of 1940 (that is the second World War) till 1991 or something. Now we have happily changed our course from socialism to capitalism and you better believe me when I say that times are interesting here.