CURRENT MISSION

To wander, aimlessly, absolutely anywhere, and learn everything I can along the way...

ABOUT ME

I'm an Australian university graduate and am riding a bicycle until I decide that there's something else I want to dedicate my life to. Up until the start of 2016 I hadn't travelled outside of Australia since 2011, which I spent travelling, trying to discover as much as possible with as little advice from external sources as possible. The moment I read something in the Lonely Planet guides, or on some forum or something, the experience once I finally find it is lost for me because it doesn't feel like my own discovery. I love the sense of being on the edge of the known, detatched from everything I know already and absorbing every new experience flung my way. I hate "studying" in a structured environment, but I love learning - it's the feeling of discovery and independence, not the attainment of the information itself, that really makes me feel like I'm doing something with my life. I don't like having a plan, but a vague, attainable goal to meander towards. I like meeting new people, which doesn't mean I don't like spending time with friends I know well but that I like the feeling of breaking away from them for long enough to be reminded of how much they mean to me.

After a couple of bike trips from Canberra to other parts of the southeast corner of Australia, I rode from Canberra to Lakes Entrance in the far south and then up the east coast to Cairns in the north. There I found a job on a cruise ship and made my way to Papua New Guinea, where I rode to Indonesia and then through to Singapore before following Malaysia up to Thailand. Then I kept going north, through Laos to China, and from Beijing took the Trans-Manchurian/Siberian Railway to Moscow to escape being stuck in a north Asian winter. From Tallinn, Estonia, I worked and travelled around Europe, spending most of my time in Germany, Poland, France and the Netherlands, with some adventures into the UK and Scandinavia.

After a year of that I rode to southern Italy in late 2017 and caught a cargo freighter to Israel, from where I rode across the border to Jordan. I ended up finding a job in Amman for 2018, and it was while I was there that I met Émilie MacIsaac, a Canadian woman from Montréal who was working in Jordan as well. Hence, after our contracts finished we decided to move to Canada together.

Now we are both gearing up for a bicycle trip across Canada to raise funds for ALS Québec, a cause of personal importance to us due to the fact that Émilie's father suffers from ALS. We are aiming to be in Vancouver in October 2019, from where we will catch a ship to Australia - the first time Émilie will have been to the country, and the first time I will have been back since 2015.

Émilie and I are both fascinated by the world, and the thing that excites us most about our upcoming trip is the opportunity to engage with people from a range of different places in Canada. Émilie counts both English and French as her native tongues, while I am a native English speaker and comfortable to fluent in French.

PHILOSOPHY

I want to learn, but to do so while I'm discovering it. I don't want to be told it. I want to think about it and deduct it from what I see and feel as much as possible. That doesn't mean I don't like having conversations about it - discussion is a great tool for discovery. But I don't want to be planted in the same place every day and be told by someone whose job it is to tell me.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I'd like to be involved in hosting at the moment, but due to circumstances am not fully able.

While I was staying with a guy in Almaty, Kazakhstan, who I actually DIDN'T meet through couchsurfing, I felt really... guilty that I might be intruding on his space. I kept telling him that I was thankful for his help and doing everything I could to help with the maintenance of the apartment. One day he said to me: "Don't be so thankful. I really am so glad that you're here. Just promise me that when you have the ability, like I have now, to help people in a new environment settle, that you will offer your services." He told me about his stay in New York, where on a ferry he started talking to the ferry driver about his problems - couldn't find decent work, a place to stay, felt alone. This ferry driver took him home, to his one-bedroom apartment, and dedicated huge chunks of his time to helping my friend find a place in that city. This program provides the framework for interaction that can better the world in so many ways, and I want to be a part of it.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've had relatively little couchsurfing experience - I've couchsurfed once in Kazakhstan, and a few times in Eastern Europe. I do feel that there are serious benefits to a hostel, and I think generally there should be a balance between the use of both to really meet lots of different people and get a wide range of different experiences.

Interests

Anything that I haven't really done before that allows me to experiment and fiddle without really being told what to do. For example:

Cooking
Writing
Drawing
Playing guitar
Learning languages
Running/Wandering at a quick pace
Viewing art (perhaps, when I have the tools, experimenting myself with it)
Learning about topics and things in fragments, little bits from a book or lecture here and there. Not specialising, but trying to learn everything

• arts
• writing
• books
• environment
• cooking
• running
• traveling
• drawing
• guitar
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Soooooo many:
Books - Shantaram, Three Cups of Tea (yes, even if it is made up), Life of Pi, Mountains of Heaven, Travels with Herodotus, travel writing (but of a certain type)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Seen a snow drift curling off the summit of Nanda Devi through Himalayan pines...
Looked at K2 and Broad Peak from a 6000m peak only a few kilometres away in the early morning over snaking glacial valleys...

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Belize, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Poland, Russian Federation, Scotland, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Thailand, United States

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