Team Spotlight: Introducing Oliver

Every week we ask a Terra team member to let us know who they are. Here's Oliver:

Oliver! Which wearable are you using today?

Oura ring, Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, and the Whoop 4.0.

Why are you using so many?

Because Kyriakos bullied me into the Whoop, and the other two I bought myself.

What sort of activities do you track?

Right now just weightlifting but I've used it to track skiing in the past.

How does it track skiing?

It goes by the GPS and the skiing route which is pretty accurate. But it does tend to overestimate the calories I burn - one day it said that I burnt about 2,500 calories

Have you skied a lot?

Yep. Basically every year since I was very young, mainly in France. But this year we went to Spain.

You can ski in Spain?

Yep! In the south of Spain out in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

What else did you say you used wearables for?

Weightlifting, shooting and cycling, but not as much cycling recently.

Shooting, how long have you been doing that for?

Since I was about 8 and I've been hooked ever since!

Wow, that's young... What type of shooting do you do?

Mainly clay pigeon shooting, I've done target shooting in the past but I don't like it as much. I haven't competed at all, but there's a friendly comp in the club and my highest ranking was 2nd. But rumour has it in the club that the guy in 1st place was cheating...

And where are you from?

London, born and raised in Wimbledon. I don't particularly like the weather here though. I would much rather be in Spain, probably Ibiza. My grandparents used to have a villa out there.

Do you speak Spanish?

Not even slightly, but I'm sure I'd learn if they just dumped me there for a while.

Well, when are you moving out there?

No immediate plans, but maybe after I try university again. We'll see.

What happened with the first university course?

I dropped out, Terra was a much better choice.

How has your experience been so far?

Nothing too crazy, it was a bit of a mess when I arrived. And I tried to sort it out as best I could.

What are your future ambitions?

I plan on heading back to uni to do a computer science course, after that I'm not too sure. I've thought about joining the airforce and I applied for it before COVID but then of course COVID hit and ruined everything so I've had to push that back.

Wow, have you flown before?

I have as an air cadet, I flew a few times while still in secondary school.

Where did you get this passion for flying?

I like planes, and I want to be a fighter pilot if possible. I'd be happy with being a helicopter pilot too though. Fighter pilot is an ambitious goal though as they get a lot of applications and very few people make it through.

Gotta aim ‘high' though right? What's the day in the life of a fighter pilot like?

Well we often get Russian planes flying over to bother us so jets get sent out to scramble them, other than that it's all pretty secret.

And if not a pilot, what else?

Well, I've always got software engineering to fall back on...

Jaafar mentioned some beef in the team?

No no, just playful banter. It's definitely friendly!

It's also customary that I ask how many languages the team speaks

So I speak English and a little bit of French. Enough to get by. I'm not as linguistically talented as Alex.

How about travelling, do you do a lot of it?

Recently I've been going to more tropical places like Singapore and Bali, Malaysia and China.

Where would be your favourite place?

It's Bali. Beautiful weather and scenery and amazing scuba diving in extremely clear water. Everything is so cheap and you can ride a scooter everywhere.

So you scuba dive a lot?

Yep I'm qualified for open water, it was amazing in Bali. Fish everywhere. The water was super warm and really nice to dive in. I'm also a qualified powerboat driver, and I can sail.