CURRENT MISSION

go with the flow

ABOUT ME

I am a human. I love words; my favourite word is ukulele. I enjoy board games and trivia quizzes. I don't eat meat but I am not a vegetarian. I get very high-pitched when I see dogs that I deem to be funny/ugly/cute/unusually large. I love cheesecake more than is socially acceptable. I find humour in odd things. I am a bit anal about spelling and grammar. I am currently working on getting over a lifelong fear of birds. I have a tendency to over-use the word "basically". I love travelling to new places, meeting new people and hearing good stories. I can be annoyingly competitive when playing Scrabble.

PHILOSOPHY

You get back what you give, so give generously and often. And always remember, no one can live your life for you.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Have surfed some couches in the USA and met some CSers in Australia - nothing but great experiences so far. Hopefully one day I will settle somewhere long enough to be in a position to host, and can give something back to this wonderful community.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've met amazing people who have enriched my experiences of their home towns so much.

Interests

Writing. Meeting people and hearing the stories they have to tell. Formula One and other motor sport. Literature and film, and talking about literature and film. Travelling. Horse riding and pretty much anything to do with horses. Politics/history and human rights. Animals. Seeing new places and discovering new fun things to do. Many varieties of craft. Cooking. Attempting to learn other languages.

• animals
• dogs
• horses
• birds
• writing
• literature
• human rights
• cooking
• vegetarian
• politics
• trivia
• board games
• traveling
• socializing
• sports
• history
• languages
• software

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Goodfellas, True Romance, Heathers, Gone with the Wind, Some Like It Hot, Cry Baby, Reservoir Dogs, Inception, The Departed, They Live, Die Hard, Pump Up The Volume, Edward Scissorhands, Casablanca, The Towering Inferno, The Shawshank Redemption, The Lives of Others, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Goodbye Lenin, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Terminator 2, The Social Network and many more...

Music: rock, pop, punk and acoustic loveliness. I'm not keen on R'n'B and I don't like super-dancey stuff like hardcore/house/trance etc but other than that, anything goes... I've been asked to elaborate on this so a few of my absolute favourites are The National, The Wildhearts, The Shins, Elliott Smith, Charlotte Hatherley, Blondie, Guns'n'Roses, Nicola Roberts, Little Boots, Kerbdog and old-school Radiohead.

Books: I find it easier to list authors than titles... William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Vladimir Nabokov, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Douglas Coupland, F Scott Fitzgerald, Mikhail Bulgakov, Dave Eggers, Siri Hustvedt, Tom Wolfe, David Foster Wallace, EL Doctorow, Raymond Carver, Emily Bronte, Iain Banks, Bill Bryson and many more...

Special recommendation: 'Zeitoun' by Dave Eggers. It's a story that needs to be read.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Far too many to mention.... I've been away from home for over two years and in that time I've learnt that if you open yourself up to new people and experiences, you can feel at home no matter where in the world you are. Almost anything in life can be amazing, if you let it.

Teach, Learn, Share

I love learning about new places. And I'd love to learn other languages, although I tend to find this inexplicably difficult.

In terms of teaching others, I've worked as a production editor in magazine publishing for six years so can help anyone with proofreading/editing written work or using InDesign software on a Mac.

Other than that I'm not sure what I have to teach others, although I think we can all learn a lot just from talking to new people.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Cambodia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, United Kingdom, United States

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