badass

455 days on the road – The good, the bad and the badass!

by Mark on August 22, 2010 in Outlook

As I sit in Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow Airport, I’m left to ponder the last 455 days of my life. How the hell did I get here?

I quit my 9-5 career job almost 18 months ago now without too much of a plan. All I knew is that I didn’t want to be an Insurance Project Manager for the rest of my life – kids stick to being astronauts or firemen, seriously!

I return now to the UK with a part-time job that I really enjoy and where I can work from anywhere in the world. I have started a business with a friend that has serious potential – I feel 100times more confident about this one than any other business venture I’ve tried. What I have “achieved” in that sense I feel is not important, though it is inevitable what everyone will ask. That’s ok, it’s something easy to explain and tangible.

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hong kong

Couchsurfing and a different side of Hong Kong

by Mark on August 19, 2010 in Mark's Travels

Hong Kong is my new favourite city. This place makes the rest of Asia look like it is either back in the stone age or so far up it’s own ass it can’t tell a cigarette from a calculator – I’m looking at you here Singapore.

Hong Kong, now part of China, retains much of it’s Britishness in the way of names (Harbour instead of Harbor for example) and has a certain colonial era charm. It just felt cool passing through a subway station called “Admiralty”. In reality, the building is probably now home to the new Red Army or something.

My first impression wasn’t as good as I had expected however….

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farm

Australia on a Whim

by Mark on August 9, 2010 in Mark's Travels

Back in April this year, I went to Australia on a working holiday visa. These are special visas granted to citizens of participating countries who are under 30 and want to work to fun their travels. This was perfect for me as Australia is a highly developed country and I could earn good money there.

When I set out on my trip back in May 2009, I knew that if things were tight then I could always go to Australia and make some cash while living fairly comfortably. My friend Pete and I decided to do this together, after a month and a half of crazy partying in Thailand of course…

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Visit Every Country In The World

Visit every country in the world

by Mark on August 1, 2010 in Outlook

One of my major long term goals in life is to visit every country in the world. I’m not sure when I decided I wanted to do this. It was more of a gradual feeling that I got as I began to travel more and more. A guy from India recently completed this task in the shortest time ever (6 years) and did it on an Indian passport.

Fortunately, I have a UK passport and thus more travel freedom than any other nationality in the world. Where US citizens have issues with countries like North Korea of Cuba, UK citizens are generally fine. Furthermore, I do not need to a visa to visit the majority of countries in the world so this makes things even easier.

The task of going everywhere is still very tough. There are a lot of countries to visit! Actually the first hurdle is to work out how many countries there are in the world. The common view is that the number of United Nations members is the number of countries. This is not really true.

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