I’ve got Seoul but I’m not a soldier

Caution! Slightly whiney post alert!! 🙂 Apologies for the leap forward in time without an update! Following on from my hospital bed post, the surgery was successful and I’m well on the way to recovery although I still have to wear a back brace for the next 3 weeks and stairs are still an issue […]

Daegu-ja Vu

It’s currently half past midnight and I’m lying wide awake in a dark hospital ward in the centre of Daegu, South Korea. 48 hours ago my plans for this week were very different but frustratingly life has a way of sneaking up and kicking you in the balls when your least expecting it (usually just […]

Nobody should ever get that excited about BBQ sauce…..

PAYDAY!! It’s 11 months now since I handed in my notice at and walked away from my old job to start off on my ‘adventures’ and so when my first payday in nearly a year came around last week, a celebration of some description was obviously in order! That celebration took the form of a […]

Back to the grindstone…

Apologies for the lack of post last week guys ‘n girls, it’s been a chaotic last 10 days or so which has really swallowed up every ounce of free time. Allow me to expand! On Thursday last week I was pulled into a meeting with a few colleagues and asked if I would be interested in being […]

Wonderful West Lake

Having dealt with British Rail on a bank holiday weekend in the past I was expecting the worst. On the first day of ‘Golden week’, with almost half of China’s population on the move and an estimated 11 million people headed for the same city as us,  surely the train was going to be a […]

Madness, madness, they call it madness…..

So tomorrow is ‘national day’ in China, a universally celebrated public holiday commemorating the founding of the Communist party and marking the start of 4 days public vacation. In keeping with the way things are done in China, they go big. When the holiday comes around, the cities shut down & everyone heads out either […]

You can take the boy out of Dublin Gospel Choir but……

Singing in Chinese is hard. Especially when you don’t speak Chinese your singing to an all-Chinese audience of Rai’an’s movers, shaker’s & bigwigs And so as I was ‘encouraged’ out onto the stage hand-in-hand with Camille, a 50-something long-time Chinese student of King’s, in front of a few hundred potential new clients at the new […]

Stick or Twist : New Beginnings

It’s 20:45 and I’m sitting in my room in the Clayton Hotel by Manchester airport. In 6 hours I’ll be getting up and heading off into the (relative) unknown of 12 months in China working as an English language teacher for adults. Is it weird that given to get here I’ve quit a well-payed, stable […]

Homeward bound

So there we go then, all done and halfway back to Blighty! It’s 10pm in Dubai airport but my body clock is at 1am and flagging, not ideal when my flights not for 5 more hours. Spent the final day in Bangkok just wondering round, taking it all in one final time and getting in […]