English Poet and Author... Computer programmer/Developer, Forex Trader, Investor

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Though meeting and staying with your hosts will certainly be great, you will soon realize that the benefits of Couchsurfing go far beyond that. Adapting to different lifestyles, homes, cultures and traditions will make you both more sociable and flexible in your travels. This experience also will give you a completely different outlook on any country. By spending time with locals during your stay, chances are that you will experience more than many foreigners on their journey.
Capturing everyday life abroad is priceless. If you give Couchsurfing a go, you will be amazed by the diversity of our world and its people. Even in one single country, you can see how there are tons of different lifestyles.
Getting to know people who live a different lifestyle than yours will also make you question what is generally known, about their country, as conventional wisdom. Because the world and humans in general are far more complex than we are taught to think or than what makes the headlines.
The biggest advantage of Couchsurfing is to meet locals. By inviting you for free into their home, they are generally expecting more than just exchanging a few words at your arrival. Talking with your hosts, getting to know them will teach you more about the country you travelled to than any tour you might join. 

Interests

Sitting at a desk, staring at a blank screen, struggling to take the idea in your head and make it come alive. It’s a familiar feeling for any artist or creator — and that includes coders and poets, two activities you wouldn’t expect to have much in common.
“With both poetry and coding, you have to take the building blocks of language, either English or C++, whatever coding language you use, and you make it your own.

• writing
• travelling
• exploring
• programming

Music, Movies, and Books

What a debt of gratitude we owe to creative expressions of the human mind! To those creative spirits who dedicate their lives to creating art, movies, stories, songs and poems — leading us to hours of introspection, entertainment, catharsis and epiphany.

Sometimes I worry what would happen if people stopped writing books or making movies. What if I complete reading all the worthwhile books in the world and watching all the good movies, and there is no more to be had? I shudder at the idea of such a banal existence. What if artists stopped painting and poets stopped writing poems? What if here had been no Shakespeare? A horrifying thought! Not only would literature have been so much poorer, but our lives also so much less explained or understood!

Life would be so dull and painful without the benefit of the works of creative minds – works that tease our brains, help us explore our hearts, and as Pablo Picasso said “wash the dust of daily life off our souls.”

The best expressions of creative artists do not tell us anything directly, but make us look beyond what is seen, read or heard, to figure our own truth and feel our own emotions. The best art is that which has a transformative experience since it touches our emotions and helps us focus on a truth we can relate to. We have all been moved at some point by a good book, a mellifluous song, an exquisite painting, or a great movie.

Such an immersive experience brings together people of diverse backgrounds and culture. The same outstanding art, movie or book is enjoyed and discussed across the world. It arouses similar emotions in people despite cultural and sociological differences, and differences of gender or social stature. People may agree or disagree because everyone’s experience of creativity is personal, but what is important is that the creative arts make such a debate possible!

Any work of art invites you to experience, to think and to discover. It is an intellectual experience, but also a highly emotional one. The quest of a good artist, writer or songster is to unravel contemporary life with an honesty that has less to do with reality, and more to do with the artist’s engagement with his own filters of imagination, creative unrest and constant search for ideas and explanations. In Oscar Wilde’s words, “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

So much...

Teach, Learn, Share

If teachers do one thing well, it’s share: content, curriculum, success (and failure) stories, and empathetic anecdotes.

The future of education is already being explored and created at this very moment by teachers and education leaders who dare to disrupt rigid, outdated practices and attitudes and replace them with innovative tools, pedagogies, and ideas. Teachers from all ranges of experiences can benefit from tuning in to education blogs that publish relevant content on a regular basis.