Hi i'm Olly, i'm a 28 year old guy from Bristol. I like chickens and climbing. I also like traveling to new places.. and peas. I'm not very good at talking about myself, although my housemate reckons I have narcissistic personality disorder so I should be really good at it right? I don't have narcissistic personality disorder.. I really like cooking and eating and more cooking. I have an amazing girlfriend and a super-cute kitten called mi-mao (or Kitty Jenkins… NOT COLIN) This year I stopped smoking and drinking (so much) and started doing a PhD, so i'm much less of an animal than I was - but I still like to 'make a party' from time time time as well as talking about politics and big serious things too.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I'm traveling to Sri Lanka and south east asia with one of my best friends Kate who is an amazing wonderful person. We are traveling on the cheap and want to meet lovely people rather than staying in some corporate hotel type thing. I guess you are always a tourist when you go somewhere and your not working but I like to try and really get to know a place when I travel. I've done Wwoofing before and loved it. I think i'm pretty open minded and tolerant and have hosted lots of friends of friends in the past from all over the place so am hoping to host some couch surfers in Bristol soon I reckon!!

Interests

I'm quite addicted to climbing, I've been doing it for a couple of years and finally I've found a form of physical exercise that I love! As I mentioned before I'm a bit of a food addict, love eating it, love cooking it and sometimes trying to grow it. The PhD is kind of taking over my life a little bit at the moment - its too complicated to try and explain what it is here but its about social value and trying to make stuff better essentially - but I have been known to go and meditate and i'm going to throw myself into doing stuff to help the local green party when I get back from my travels. Since the party partying slowed down I've been really getting into board-games… I'm a mean scrabble player too. I LOVE MUSIC (who doesn't?) Particularly electronica but lots of other things to (think Giles Peterson on Radio 6 plus a million more things. If you have heard of dimlite (nobody has) and like him then we should be friends for ever!

• animals
• chickens
• dining
• cooking
• exercise
• meditation
• partying
• drinking
• gardening
• politics
• traveling
• music
• camping
• rock climbing

Music, Movies, and Books

I just kind of covered this in the box above. I guess I've kind of covered music… I've grown up in Bristol so I have been lucky enough to be exposed to more super good trip-hop, deb, dub step, jungle and reggae and dub and stuff than I would have been if I had grown up in pretty much any other english city I reckon which is pretty cool. I really love electronica… somewhere between the beautiful melody and really lush sounds and the glitchy crazy warped stuff, or ideally something that moves between the two. Music with space in… if that doesn't sound too pretentious. Also I listen to folk music sometimes, and jazz, and other things… quite varied. Film-wise I really like Sci-fi a lot, good sci-fi about time-travel and quantum stuff that makes your head hurt a little bit. Also really good french / belgian things which are beautiful and moving but without being massively pretentious and stupid zombie films and anything that moves me in some way. Leon the detective is still one of my all time favourites and gets me doing a little cry pretty much every time I watch it.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

This is probably going to sound really lame because most people have probably done a million amazing things but I can't really think of anything that incredible. I went camping in Wales and woke up to the most amazing sunrise I have ever seen that burnt its way through the clouds and covered the entire landscape with molten-gold all the way to the lighthouse by the sea. That was pretty amazing… I didn't really 'do' it though… I just saw it! That will have to do…

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm good at cooking (did I mention that already?) and i'm super up for teaching people how to cook stuff (especially curries) I'm pretty good at looking after ill chickens if that is of any use to anybody? Generally i'm really interested in learning how other people do things / think about / see the world and i'm super happy to share my thoughts and feelings on life.. I have a lot of opinions on things I guess but I also love people who have lots to share!

What I Can Share with Hosts

If people were up for hosting me I can share my time and stories and I can cook and clean and generally make myself useful. I get on pretty well with animals and children and like hanging out with them… i'm reasonably handy and really like gardening / digging / bit of lugging heavy stuff around / chopping up wood e.t.c if anybody is in any need of assistance in that department.

Countries I’ve Visited

France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey

Countries I’ve Lived In

England