CURRENT MISSION

Get my PhD

ABOUT ME

Hi there,

I recently moved to Canberra, Australia to commence a PhD program in Physics at ANU. I am from the UK, where I did my undergraduate degree, and have spent a few years in between schooling working in different places overseas (Pizza chef in Canada, English teacher in Japan, NGO project worker in Kenya), and recently took an extended trip through Asia. As you can probably tell, I enjoy traveling and experiencing different places around the world, hence my decision to make the big move to Australia for the next stage of my studies. Such moves are always scary, but I've done a couple now, and I've always found myself at the end of the stint having made new friends from many far-flung places and with a wealth of experience that couldn't be found in my home country.
So, for the next 3/4 years I will be working hard to get myself trained as a research scientist, learning a lot at school, but hopefully outside too, and perhaps at the end of it someone, somewhere will want to give me a job! In the meantime, I want to make the most of the opportunities available to me in Australia, travel as much as possible and see some of the amazing natural landscapes that are apparently ubiquitous in Oz.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I spent a couple of days sleeping on a floor of a cool Venezualan guy in Dublin, where I was visiting to take part in a fundraising event for a charity I was working for.

Interests

Literature, Film, Music, History, Philosophy

• literature
• documentaries
• festivals
• running
• traveling
• billiards
• music
• teaching
• history
• physics
• science
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Electronic, Rock, Folk, Hip-hop music: e.g. tribe called quest, aphex twin, simon and garfunkel, bob dylan, fleet foxes, boards of canada and many more

Books: Tom Wolfe, Ernest Hemmingway, Cormac Macarthy, Jonathan Franzen, F. Scott Fitzgerald

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I spent 3 months in Kenya working for a charity after graduating from University. I was working in a rural secondary school in Nyanza province, close to the banks of Lake Victoria. During my time there I had a chance to visit a few other places in Kenya- one being the Masaii Mara game reserve. While I was there, the annual wildebeast migration was taking place, in which over a million wildebeast make the journey from the Masaii Mara reserve into the Serengeti in Tanzania, in search of greener pastures. There were wildebeast as far as the eye can see, and there is a famous river they must cross to reach their destination- this river has been featured in many nature documentaries, as it is full of crocodiles that lie in wait of the migrants in hope of a nice lunch. I didn't see any attacks (which I'm pretty glad of), but there were plenty of carcasses around, and many sinister looking crocs waiting patiently for the next straggler.

Another amazing experience was road tripping from Golden, British Columbia, Canada, to Calgary, Alberta, for the Calgary stampede, a huge rodeo festival held every year. I was staying at a hostel that one of my friends was running in Golden, and one day he just asked 'Shall we go to the Stampede?'. 'When?' I asked. 'Now' he replied, to which followed us hiring a Ford Mustang and making the 150 mile trip that afternoon. We arrived early evening, and after spending a few hours at the rodeo site and deciding it wasn't really our scene, went and shot pool in one of the local bars. We then wondered around at night looking for a place to stay, but everything was full for the festival. We opted to sleep a couple of hours in the car, before driving back to Golden in the early hours of the morning. A seemingly unimpressive trip, but then as we drove over the endless plains of the Alberta countryside, with the rocky mountains ahead of us, and a perfect sunrise behind us, with cows grazing in the fields all around and Billy Idol's 'White Wedding' playing on the stereo, it seemed like a modern day Keroac-esque trans-america adventure, and is one of the most memorable experiences of my time in Canada.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Serbia, Spain, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Canada, Japan, Kenya, United Kingdom