Ian Carman's Photo

Verified Profile

  • Payment verified
  • Phone verified
  • Government ID not verified
  • Address Verified

Wants to Meet Up

  • Last login about 9 years ago

Join Couchsurfing to see Ian’s full profile.

Overview

  • 28 references 23 Confirmed & Positive
  • Fluent in English
  • 34, Male
  • Member since 2010
  • Forester
  • Bachelor of Forestry Science
  • From Wellington, New zealand
  • Profile 100% complete

About Me

CURRENT MISSION

Travelling and learning about different places. Catching up with friends and family all around the world and tasting all the foods and drinks nom nom nom.

Drive slow, take chances, enjoy life to the full. But then again sometimes if you try and do everything you end up doing nothing well. Sometimes you just need to chill out, relax, choose a few things and save others for next time. Keep schedule's flexible in order to respond to unexpected opportunities. See both sides of a coin and both sides of different cultures and places. Not just the side the local tourism office wants you to see. Take the back roads. Order off menus that aren't in English.

ABOUT ME

At the moment i'm travelling with my girlfriend Alex. We are in Malaysia and at the start of April we fly to London to start a 6 month+ trip in Europe. From there we are not sure what the plan is! At the start of 2015 we spent 3 months travelling around my home town of New Zealand. Seeing some bits I've never been to and returning to some old favourites!

I've done a fair bit of travelling around my home country and around some parts of the world. I can definately appreciate the feel of a home away from home when you've spent the last week in hostels with people you don't know. Even though that's great fun you can get sick of it.

PHILOSOPHY

FREE SKI YOUR HEART OUT!

Give and you shall receive in one way or another!

Dream big dreams.

Be yourself and you will find people who appreciate you for who you truly are.

[insert more cliche's here].

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Hosting, networking, surfing, spreading the good word and living the life

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Hosted maybe 100 people so far - all been interesting and very friendly, no mishaps so far!

Interests

Skiing, snowboarding, cycling, reading, cooking, gardening, forestry, hiking, music, travel obviously, brewing beer, growing food and then eating it.

  • dining
  • cooking
  • wine
  • beer
  • coffee
  • drinking
  • flying
  • gardening
  • reading
  • traveling
  • homebrewing
  • music
  • cycling
  • hiking
  • surfing
  • skiing
  • snowboarding
  • forestry
  • tourism
  • mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Books:
One flew over the cuckoos nest, Heart of Darkness, History books, LOTR, Emperor series, conqueror series, Conn Iggulden (Author), Pillars of the Earth etc, Ken Follet (Author), War and Peace, The Godfather (way better than the movie though that is also good).
Read a great book recently about a journalist travelling through the Balkans on and off for a period of 20 years. Dealt with the end of communism, rise of fascism and the serbian genocides as well as the background history going back hundreds of years. Sounds like a fascinating place with so much influence on European History, yet I know so little about these places. Would love to visit or host someone from the region.

Movies and TV:
Seinfeld, Arrested Development, Ali G, Unauthorised History of NZ (Hilarious), Flight of the Conchords, South Park, The Simpsons (earlier seasons), Monty Python, Apocalypse now, Man from Earth. Something with a plot line preferably!

MUSIC:
Led Zep, Hendrix, The doors, Beatles, Dylan, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Neil Young, Fat Freddys Drop, RJD2, Buddy Guy, Beethoven, Carmen, to list a very very few.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Hard question to answer, I try to think of every day as being amazing and beautiful even if bad things happen to others or to myself. There is a lot of suffering in the world so I suppose the most amazing thing is that I am lucky enough to be able to travel and choose what I do with my life and what I do each day.

Some of the most amazing things i've ever seen have been out the window of a plane. Shame on those people who fly with the window shut the whole time... Flew over the Gobi desert that was amazing! So vast...

I love being in the mountains and away from crowded places. Every day is different up there depending on the weather, who you are with, what you have for lunch and who else is around. The trees change, the waters change. I find peace there.

Delphi, Greece on a winters day, fresh snow on the ground and no one else around.

Teach, Learn, Share

My Brother went on a skiing trip from Beijing to Venice travelling overland on public transport (most of the way) it took 3 months. They didn't CS but they had the time of their lives were able to ski in all these places which have virtually no infratructure which no-one associates with skiing. Check out www.skiingthesilkroad.com if you want to know more about it!

What I Can Share with Hosts

Certainly food and drink and music. Advice on where to travel within Australia and New Zealand is always free. Skiing tips too. New Zealand music is great and I can certainly share some of this with you as I always travel with a lot of music on my hard drive. Let's share a beer or a wine or a coffee. If you don't drink any of that good stuff I also really love drinking water!

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, New Zealand

Join Couchsurfing to see Ian’s full profile.

My Groups