I’m now 5 weeks and 80 additional working hours into the lesson planning project mentioned in my last post which has me effectively shackled to the desk and so I decided that for my next couple of days off I was in need of some serious leg-stretching exercise! Thankfully Ruian gladly provides in that respect […]
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 […]
0-100 in 36 hours
The twisted metal and shrapnel surrounding the tunnel entrance didn’t do anything to allay my fears. I was already convinced the coach driver had decided to end it all and take us with him such was the nature of his ‘driving’ (think how you drive playing GTA after you’ve come home from the pub drunk) […]
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 […]
Portugal: Travel-by-numbers
Travel update : The numbers I appreciate a lot of my posts have been pretty wordy so for my final update I’ll focus on the numbers to mix it up cause that’s just the kind of crazy fecker I am 🙂 Total nights : 13 Towns & cities visited : 7 Days in which initial 13 […]
Portugese man-‘o-flu
Travel update! Caution, may contain traces of plague. I was hoping 2 weeks in the relative warmth would sort out the cough that’s been bugging me for a while. Instead it seems to have joined forces with a European variant to create the ‘Portugese man-‘o-flu’ which is doing its best to kill me using a […]
Crackheadageddon
Travel update: A near miss / crackheadageddon. I got to Porto yesterday evening as planned, it was difficult not to notice that there was a collection of homeless getting charity meals given to them at the top of the street I’m staying on (although I was glad to see them getting meals) My ‘hotel’ (I […]
Wonderboy Wanders 