Helloooo, and welcome to my home page! As is the case with many other personal home pages, this one mainly contains some more or less coherent ramblings about my various interests. However, I like to also keep my page interesting and entertaining for any guests who might drop by. If you have any similar interests, have a good joke that you'd like to share or, want to offer me a starring role in a major motion picture, please send me e-mail.
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My name is P.H. Rankin Hansen ("Ping"). I live (right here) in a small Danish town called Storring with my wife, Sussi , and my oldest son, Rune.

My primary interests are soaring and beekeeping.

Other interests include amateur ("HAM") radio (callsign OZ4PH), homebuilt aircraft, hovercraft, astronomy and space, scuba diving, photography, german shepherds, reading good books, practical ecology, and, naturally, my family.

I am currently attending college in order to become a surveyor. After having worked 20 years in the IT/electronics business, developing computer programs end embedded electronics, I came down with a severe case of stress (nasty stuff, not reccomended) - and was promptly laid off. Anyhow, the time was ripe for a change of profession. I did consider taking up teaching as a profession, as I have always liked working with young people and, drawing on my background and my various hobbies, hoped to be able to make school a little less boring. Alas, I chose not to take that path, as I don't have much patience with people who couldn't be bothered to make an effort - i.e. most students. Having chosen surveying, I can now leave the stuffy office behind and get a nice dose of nature, fresh air and plenty of excercise while working.

I enjoy traveling and am so fortunate that my father was an airline pilot, which has enabled me to travel throughout the world. This has naturally spurred a general interest in other cultures and languages. The problem with travel, is that whenever I go somewhere, I realize that I am only scratching the surface.

Take a country like Japan. I visited Tokyo in '77, but can I really say that I have been to Japan, as I never left Tokyo and never had the chance to meet people in private ?.

Actually, my stay in Tokyo was a little out of the ordinary. The first few days I left my passport at the hotel, so it wouldn't be stolen. Then one day, when I was walking towards Asakusa, a man suddenly appeared right in front of me, saying 'Paspoto, pliis'. He was a police officer, and as I did not have the passport with me, I was arrested and brought in for questioning. Well, they were all very nice and smiling, and soon drove me back to the hotel for my passport - with a kind warning. A lot of funny things can happen when you travel.

Another time, I was on Madeira with my family during the local election time. There was the occasional election-bomb here and there, and one day one was quite close to our hotel. I was sharing a room with my brother, who was out, so I'd left the door unlocked when I went to bed. I woke up when a person charged into the room with a drawn gun, looking here and there and everywhere. He was a police officer (again!) and was looking for the bomber, who had been seen running into our hotel. I was tired, so after he was gone, I turned over and went to sleep again.

One time in Kenya, we were having tea on a terrace, when a waiter got busy with a stick right behind our table. It turned out that he was trying to kill a Green Mamba. I had to help him out a little. Well, it wasn't that big ;-)

I read a lot !. Some years ago, while listening to Voice of America, I heard one of the speakers interview people on the streets how many books they had read in the past year. The categories were: 0, 1, 2, 3-5, and, 4-10. I got up and counted the books I had read in the past six months - I stopped when I passed fifty. I read a lot !. I read books in many genres, but currently I mostly read science fiction.

As a child I was never very athletic and one of the bullies at school got a little rough when his teasing didn't work, so I took up judo. After being thrown a couple of times, the little jerk started looking for other people to bother. As judo practice was in another city, I soon stopped taking lessons.
Some years ago I read about aikido and liked the idea of letting the opponent do the work in a purely defensive style of fighting. When I found out that I could train aikido practically on my own doorstep, I signed up and had a great time. When I later moved to Svendborg, I took up ju-jitsu instead, but had to drop it when my son was born. I am not currently training, but hope to interest my sons.

Hot Interests...

ping@piteraq.dk

Web Page design by P. H. Rankin Hansen (Ping)

Hey! What the hell are you doing way down here?