Jetting Educated

I love taking pictures of my travels- who doesn't? Whilst physical photo albums aren't common for people my age to posses, having a hard drive full of pictures is the modern equivalent. Its not as nice as a beautifully assembled album, but is more practical to carry around and takes far less time.  When I become a real adult and get a house of my own, I'll have to make some physical albums. For now, I browse my memories digitally, and recently I came across a folder labelled: ''Chinese Staff Party and Club''. The pictures brought back a blur of strange memories from one particularly odd evening China... The evening was an end of term celebration, something that is particularly necessary after a 22 week slog at a kindergarden. Why they have such marathon school terms in China is still beyond my reckoning, but just add it to the list of Chinese stuff I don't understand. We arrived at a large function room in a hotel and a champagne welcome wh

After leaving Auckland I headed up to an area called the Far North, a region of the country so remote that there is only one road leading there. My reason for travelling there was my first agricultural job: picking avocados for eight days on an orchard. I was pleased to have some employment as it took some time to find it. Having sent over 40 emails to farms all over the North Island, I received fewer than five responses. I was advised that e-mailing the same person more than once helps your chances here in New Zealand, so I did do a bit of repeat mailing and ended up lucky. Eventually I got a reply giving details of the job but warning that the same e-mail had been sent to many people even though there was one space- I rang right away, secured it and packed my bags. If you're going to climb a tree in order to make someone rich off avocados, you may as well appreciate the view The work was 400km away but thankfully I didn't have to eat in to my work profits with

Part 1: The  Food Investigation Part 2: The Strange Stuff The Food Investigation  Recently I’ve been enjoying juicing- no, not injecting steroids in to my muscles/groin, but putting fruit and veg in to a blender and drinking it. Raw food is claimed to have many benefits so I’ve been giving it a go and enjoying it. The thing is, produce is not only quite unappealing here, but not very cheap either. Carrots aren't always this bad, but they are usually soft and grubby, a bit like the old ladies I see around here   When people say that China’s food is cheap, you might find that the savings cash in when you eat out, rather than at the supermarket. In the UK its the reverse, where restaurant eating costs much more than cooking for myself. To investigate the cost effectiveness of dining out, I indulged in the Food Investigation: I didn’t cook anything for myself, and let others do it for me. Would I save money, would it be healthy and, most importantly, would I e

When I was a child I used to love looking through Guinness World Record books. My Dad would often get them as a stocking filler at Christmas, as I loved looking at all the amazing examples of nature; like the worlds tallest man, pointless achievements; balancing eggs on top of each other,  or random trivia; Jackie Chan has A LOT of pop hits in China. I specifically remember a song title of his: "Big Happy Face" and thinking it was pretty silly. I also clearly recall a picture of a tiny box-room in Tokyo, which was the worlds smallest hotel room. For a period of time, I imagined that everyone in Japan lived in little capsules instead of houses... but then again I was probably on eight when I decided this. Towels? Yes please Ugly brown pyjamas? Ok... I guess. Now I do know that not every Japanese person lives in such little spaces. In fact, I did took the opportunity to stay in a capsule hotel in Tokyo on a recent trip to the land of the rising Sun. I wanted to know

I work at a preschool in China as an English teacher. I am surrounded by the Chinese language but I'm still pretty clueless about it. This week I've been thinking about names. Here are a few of the nice English names that the schoolchildren have: Here are the name cards of some students  with some unique English names Its so useful that students have English names in addition to their Chinese names- remembering 120 Chinese names like 'Wang Jia Yi' which is Wendy's Chinese name, would be quite a struggle. Whilst I am thankful for their binomial nomenclature, having a name that's written in English and having 'an English name' are not one and the same.  Example: The child who is called “Chocolate’’.  Whilst I can't deny that her name is written in English... its not a name I'd expect to hear anywhere in the UK! Equally eyebrow-raising the name Herny- though I think he’s supposed to be Henry. If I could communicate with th

Spending six days in Tokyo was one of the highlights of a recent three week trip to Japan.  I guess it’s a place like London, Paris or New York- A city that you might have a clear picture of before you've ever been there, through its portrayal in film and TV... But how much of that can you trust? The notion that I had over-huped the city in my mind did occur to me, but I was still really eager to visit for myself and see how it matched my expectations.  Those expectations were that it would be crazy, cool and super busy.  I have to say that I was not disappointed at all. I’m going to describe the great things I did in Tokyo to give ‘at a glance’ ideas for other travellers, as well as transport and capsule accommodation. Including: Food Drink Shibuya Crossing Ghibli Museum Pokemon Centre and Hello Kitty Store DisneySea Metro Skylines & Shrines Odd Cafes Robots Capsule Hotels Food What do you think of when I say ‘food’ and ‘Tokyo’ in the same breath? I’m fai