July 2004 - Aug 2005: System Tester at Bright Grey, Edinburgh. Involved in all aspects of testing new web based application, including automated scripting.

Dec 2003 - April 2004: Michael returned to Brazil to continue learning Portuguese, practice capoeira and pursue some freelance journalistic projects.

Sept 2003: The Independent - a month on the foreign desk, publishing four stories including a European page lead. Michael also assisted with research, interviews and monitoring wires, and contributed ideas; including one which subsequently led to the paper's Asia correspondent travelling to Bangladesh to follow up his leads and produce a feature.

May 2003: Work experience at the Guardian Unlimited website on the Travel section. Researching and writing online content, uploading to the site, contributing ideas and generally assisting as required.

April 2003: Work experience at Sunday Times (Scotland) features section. Published articles on a variety of subjects and assisted other journalists with research.

Mar/Apr 2003: Work experience as a radio journalist at Radio Forth, Edinburgh. Out and about the city interviewing those making the day's news. Also involved in researching and editing material for broadcast.

Sept 2002- Aug 2003: MA Multi-Media Journalism, Bournemouth University, UK.

Sept 2001 - May 2002: Travelling throughout South America, initially taking a one month Spanish course in Galapagos Islands before continuing though Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil and Colombia. Also gained an Advanced PADI diving certificate during this time.

Aug 1998 - Sept 2001: Variety of roles as an IT contractor, principally at Scottish Power - including User Acceptance Testing, Disaster Recovery and Test Support. Team Leader for Year 2000 testing project - this involved performance analysis / reporting and liaison with project managers, business representatives & technical / environmental support staff. Technical skills include UNIX, SQL, WinRunner, Test Director, Access database design, JCL, DB2.

Jan 2001-Jun 2001: Web Site Development - own company has designed and maintained all aspects of sites for local businesses (Ashfield Medical Practice , Munro Guesthouse). These projects were conceived, designed and realised from scratch. Has also undertaken part time training/experience at Camvista.com, a web camera site based in Fife, Scotland. This exposure has given him a broad understanding of the stages involved in designing, writing and maintaining complex web applications.

Nov 1995- June 1998: Traveling solo through South East Asia, and Australia and working in various temporary capacities in Hong Kong and Australia in order to keep moving forwards.

July 1994- Nov 1995: Database Programmer / Administrative Assistant: Dr. Livingstone & Partners, Ashfield Medical Practice, Milngavie.