Name: Richard Huckle
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 14/05/1986
Hometown: Ashford, Kent, UK
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Nationality: British
Marital Status: Single
Religion: Christian - Baptist
Political Views: Conservative
Languages: English (fluent), Tamil (basic), German (very basic), Malay (very basic)
General Interests: Photography, Travelling, Web Design, Cooking

Contact and Social Networks:
E-mail: huckool@hotmail.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/huckool
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/huckool
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/huckool
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/huckool
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/huckool

Education and Qualifications:
Kuala Lumpur Metropolitian University (KLMU) (2011-2013): Diploma in Information Technology
British Council Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2008): CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults)
South Kent College, Ashford, Kent, UK (2003-2005): AVCE ICT (Computing), GCSE Photography
Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone, Kent, UK (1997-2003): 5 A-C GCSEs (Art, ICT, Maths, English Lan, English Lit)

Countries Visited:
Africa: Morocco, Namibia, South Africa
Asia: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, India, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka
Europe: Belgium, England, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Scotland, Spain
Middle East: Qatar, United Arab Emirates
North America: Canada, United States of America

About Richard Huckle:
I was born in Ashford in 1986, and lived the first few years of my life there, before moving to and schooling in Folkestone. I then moved back to Ashford in 1997, but continued my education in Folkestone at the Harvey Grammar School, passing 5 GCSEs in 2002. After a poor year of AS Levels, I studied an AVCE in ICT and GCSE Photography at South Kent College for two years, whilst working part time for Sainsbury's supermarket.

I had a few major trips abroad during my academic years, including three trips to North America (Los Angeles and Las Vegas (1996); New York, Boston, Quebec, Toronto and Washington DC (2000); New York (2005)), a German exchange with my school (1999-2000), and a Namibia Team Challenge (2002), which included trekking through Fish River Canyon.

My trip to Namibia was the starting point for my interest in travel and photography, and I received my first digital camera, a Fujifilm A203, for my seventeenth birthday, and took my first amateur photo albums in Cornwall, Gibraltar, Morocco and Paris (2003). I quickly gained profile as a notable amateur photographer, especially in my church, which I also joined just after my seventeenth birthday. My church members were keen to see my albums of numerous church activities, including baptisms, with photos being posted online still being a relatively new concept.

After becoming a Christian at Spring Harvest festival in 2004, I was baptised at Ashford Baptist Church in April 2005. After completing my college studies, I took a Malaysia Gap Challenge, where my placement was a Sunday School teacher at a Tamil church, Community Of Praise Taman Wahyu. After my second week of teaching there, I became passionately fond of Tamil culture and became very involved with the church and its members. I learnt to read Tamil characters within a few months, and slowly began to learn some of the language. I also took trips to Brunei and Cambodia in my first eight months based in Malaysia.

I returned to UK in May 2006, but couldn't get my experiences from Malaysia out of my heart and mind, and struggled to find employment for the rest of that year. After a few months of temporary work, I quickly returned to South Asia, firstly visiting God's Garden orphanage in Tamil Nadu, India, before my long awaited return to Kuala Lumpur and the Tamil church community. The most notable part of the trip was meeting a young girl called Ranjitha, who I developed a close bond with in the several weeks I was there, and increased my passion to be in Malaysia even more.

From March 2007, I held my second solid job as a quality control technician for mobile phone repairs. I also joined a Tamil Baptist Church in Palmers Green, North London, to continue my passion with Tamil culture in the UK. Later in the year, I got a placement to study for a CELTA (English Language Teaching) at British Council Kuala Lumpur, and quickly booked my third trip to Malaysia in November 2007. After a brief stop over in Chennai, I spent the school holidays with Ranjitha, and met other members of her extended family on a trip to Port Dickson, including her sister, Deepa.

I had an intense few months of study at British Council, but was pleased to have passed the course. I stayed based in Malaysia a few more months, with trips to Brunei and Laos, and did some voluntary teaching work with a small tuition centre in the same village Deepa lived, which I regularly visited after attending a Chithirai festival there. I also continued to work hard with the church, and to be a good role model and social service worker to my newly acquired goddaughters, Deepa and Ranjitha.

I moved back to UK in June 2008, and after some temporary summer work, I managed to settle in a job at Tesco supermarket. Despite being settled in a job, that still didn't stop my desire to visit Malaysia, and travelled there every November and June for the next two years, taking my total number of visits to seven. I worked hard at Tesco, and still attended the Palmers Green Tamil church whilst in UK, and continued to do what social and community work that I could in the short periods I could get leave to spend in Malaysia.

On December 2009, my father and I bought our first professional DSLR camera, which had me as official photographer for two weddings in UK in 2010, that of my close friends' and my brother's. In November 2010, I left UK for Malaysia for the eighth time to finally begin my new life there. After spending the school holidays with my goddaughters, Ranjitha and Deepa, I received a temporary job at a local college, only to find English Language Teaching was a little more difficult than I thought.

I then moved into the Boys' PETE Hostel and took a couple of months to try and come up with a new plan for my life, realising I was too under qualified to obtain a work visa here, so I enrolled at Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan University (KLMU) to begin studying a Diploma in Information Technology from June 2011. From May 2011, I had also started working as a freelance professional photographer, most notably for La Seleccio Kuala Lumpur, a youth team coached by my friend Jamel.

Towards the end of 2011, after a visit to Malaysia from my father, a number of big changes happened over the next few months; I parted ways with Community Of Praise after six years of loyalty, moved out from the hostel, and privately rented for the first time in Malaysia. Jamel's football club disbanded, so I lost my regular line of work. And in January 2012, I changed my studies from Diploma to a Degree in Information Technology, after realising a Diploma would not get me where I wanted in life.

In March 2012, I co-invested in an apartment to head tenant, and at the end of that month, I visited the UK on vacation for the first time to meet my first niece, Rowan.

About the Huckool Network:
Huckool Productions started in late 2002, hosted as a free domain by Yahoo! Geocities. The site started with a very basic concept and layout, and after 18 months slowly evolved into presenting some of the basic elements (Productions, Photography) still familiar with the site today.

The site slowly grew further, with two series of The Sims: Big Brother on Productions, and Photography had a number of new albums. On February 21st 2005, the site went from Huckool Productions, to HuckoolProductions.Com, where all the sites content was put onto a single server, hosted by GLXHost, finally escaping its dependency on numerous free hosts. Exactly a year later, Huckool.Com was added as an additional co-domain for all site content.

Soon after becoming a dot-com, a Forum was added, and a Blog was started from April 1st 2005, updating every Friday. Productions continued with its Sims Productions, whilst Photography slowly took shape into its fixed album groups (Religion, Travels and Miscellaneous). From September 2005 to May 2006, the first live Travel Blog was posted, from a Malaysia Gap Challenge.

On September 24th 2006, HuckoolProductions.Com upgraded to the use of PHP, transforming the site into a better structured and more sophisticated website. The site continued to evolve, with the Blog adding the Namibia Team Challenge, and two more live Travel Blogs, Photography was hosting over 4,000 photographs, and Sims Productions continued to flourish on Productions.

From October 10th 2008, some big changes were made to the website. After a short run with GoDaddy, the site moved to being hosted by Valcato. The base of the site was now at Huckool.Com, with the HuckoolProductions.Com name being used only for Productions, whilst two new domains were introduced for Photography and Blog; HuckoolPhotography.Com and HuckoolBlog.Com respectively. A new comments board was also added, as a more open feedback alternative to the Forum.

2010 brought two new successes to the now newly named Huckool Network; in January, HuckoolProductions.Com began a stop motion series, Minibot Wars, which gained much popularity on YouTube, and from February, HuckoolPhotography.Com began professional work in the UK, and started offering Huckool Photography Services in Malaysia from May 2011.