Hi there!
I am an almost 30 firmware engineer from South Africa.
I've only discovered "proper" boardgames recently, due to the shortage of these games in South African stores (we mostly have Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, Uno). Designing board games also seem like a fun hobby, especially for an engineer as well - a good mixture of fun and logic (if there ever was any:).
I really admire simple games which are fun and requires strategy (Quirkle and Carcassonne comes to mind) - I think the minimalistic aspect is also probably due to my career choice as well:)
I already posted my first post here: http://www.bgdf.com/node/8222 about a simple game called City Centre. Hope to learn a lot and have fun:)
Regards
