I'm mostly making it up as I go along. I know people like links, so:

I made a video of what I got up to over the second half of 2014: http://vimeo.com/113142556

A video of me dancing has over 200,000 views. (NB: I can't dance) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj17yjA9XSA

I co-built a mobile community kitchen that cooks meals entirely from food waste http://vimeo.com/88437323

I once wrote a 'poem' that was published in a newspaper: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/searching-for-the-right-lines-about-the-tube-6501844.html

PHILOSOPHY

"The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native soil is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the whole world is as a foreign land." Hugh of St Victor

"Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our lives are frittered away with detail. Simplify, simplify..." Henry David Thoreau

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Been a member for 7 years now. In that time I've hosted Jan, Julia, Sylvia, Soph, Yoav, Jaione, Yann, Melanie, Celine, Hugo, Melanie, Jakub, Karl, Ben, Marek, Mimi, Karma and Phoebe in Durham, Kolkata and London, and stayed with Winston, Lelde, Avik, FX, Hugo, Tuisku, Mats, Nina, Kenneth, Aoife, Clemens and Fabien in Tbilisi, Stirling, Kolkata, Delhi, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Singapore, Dublin, Tunis and Marseille.

And met and unofficially couch-surfed with an assortment of others in Alpine meadows, old French colonies, Georgian vineyards and other such unlikely scenarios.

Interests

Ok, if you really want to pin me down, a mixture of outdoorsy things - sailing, hiking, scrambling, surfing, skateboarding and so on - and cultural stuff - often cultures other than my own, but also interesting art, film, live music, architecture and that. I studied world history, so it comes into that. Nationalisms and perceptions of other cultures, media and governments' attempts to control it, and basically trying to figure out how things really work. So CS interests me.

Music, Movies, and Books

music: a fair old mix of things: folk, trip-hop, electronic, hip-hop, bits of balkan, reggae, funk/soul, afrobeat, dancehall - read: Gonzales, Nextmen, the Beta Band, Roots Manuva, Half Man Half Biscuit, Beck, Fela Kuti, Pixies, Cinematic Orchestra, Gruff Rhys, Wax Tailor, Tom Middleton, Portico Quartet, Jacques Brel, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Goran Bregovic, most things played by Gilles Peterson, Cornershop, Nightmares on Wax, Fairport Convention, Battles, Caribou, et cetera.

books: too many to list, but Joseph Conrad, WG Sebald, Bernard Shaw, Graham Greene, Herman Hesse, Amitav Ghosh, Milan Kundera, Peter Carey and lots of history/ anthropology/politics/music /travel books.

films: currently liking Satyajit Ray.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

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Teach, Learn, Share

I can make you a customised map of almost anything you can think of.
I'm trying to improve my French at the moment, but should be trying harder. Contactes-moi en Français si tu veux. Trying to get a handle on politics in various Asian countries at the moment. Oh, and then there are all the other things that I keep meaning to read up on...

What I Can Share with Hosts

I love to cook and share food with others; swap music, film and book recommendations; and learn more about those idiosyncrasies that make other countries so endlessly interesting. I can probably share more than that too, but it will do for the moment.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, India, United Kingdom

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