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new plans

Woah, the last few weeks have been a little busy as I have made some big decisions that required me to use the left side of my brain which I normally like to avoid doing at all costs. I decided to hand in my notice two weeks ago as I realised I wanted to try to work and travel, since I read the book “How to work your way around the world”over a year ago I have had this nagging feeling that I have to go out and travel again. Not that the first time was very far away. That book was how I first found out about TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) and I did the classroom course way back in January 2010 with the intention of using it after Uni.

But that was postponed as I was lucky to find a great job whilst still at uni as a bathroom designer, this was a pretty insane step up that I really had to jump at. It got me loads of experience, I loved drawing and designing everyday and I think that if I do come back to work in England I would want to do something like that again. (That is if I don’t like teaching)

Of course after living in Worcester for a few years I decided to branch out a little bit and move up to Manchester, I found a nice job at Studio North and although it didn’t really include the creative side that my previous job had it has been a great experience to move up here and I have no regrets at all, I’ve made some really great friends and felt at home here almost straight away. I’ve learnt loads about how a digital and print agency works, I harnessed my inner geek and became addicted to mashable and even wrote blog posts about social media, something I never had a clue about before. I went to an amazing talk at Northern Digitals and got introduced to world of digital and techie stuff that I had no clue about at all before.

But now it’s time to pack all my things into that suitcase again as I have decided that the life of an adventurer is calling me back.

In the last two weeks I have decided to move to South Korea for a year, to teach english to kindergarten children who have little grasp of their own language. I don’t speak Korean, I don’t know anyone in Korea and I have never taught English before. Well that’s not really true, I taught loads of people how to improve their English when I was in Greece, but they knew a little bit already.

But that’s the whole point, it’s a massive challenge and I don’t really know what to expect. There are endless horror stories on the internet about awful teaching experiences, but I chose my recruiter and school carefully and I hope this will make things a little easier. Who knows? It’s really great to be 23 because you can say cliched things like ” If I don’t go I’ll never know” or “Even if I come back crying at least I tried” and you get away with that kind of optimism.

I am WELL excited. There are loads of things I need to do to get my visa sorted and it’s all coming together, I probably won’t feel like it’s real until I have my flight ticket in my hand (paid for by the school by the way) so I won’t give be giving too much away on where abouts I’m going until I get there.

February 17, 2011

in for fun
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a bit of old

Don’t even act like you dont love this, if you have ever been to a wedding in your life you know you had a good time to this soundtrack. bad taste rocks.

February 10, 2011

in design, for fun, inspiration, positive thinking
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BLAB

Yesterday I went to the sixth BLAB event organised by Northern Digitals at the Deaf Institute in Manchester. The first speaker Hoss Gifford gave an account of his life so far with insights he’d learnt along the way. Working under the job title of “innovator” he ran us through different projects he had done, including those for Glasgow Film Festival and the Commonwealth Games. But his biggest achievements seemed to be more personal, the things he had taught himself, done on a whim or projects he had taken on that may have been out of his comfort zone.

Hoss showed how important it is to always be open to learning new things, especially technology, as he said “if you don’t know there is always a book that can teach you.” His talk really seemed to inspire the room without us feeling like we were at a self help meeting.

It was great to hear someone with so much experience and knowledge speak really honestly about how they think and work, living by the rule that we all should, “basically if in doubt just fucking do it.”

Next up was Mr Bingo, you’ve probably seen the hair illustrations before .This guy finds inspiration everywhere, he shared some of his photo collection with us, the funny stuff he sees on the street and the weird little details of handwritten notes, postcards, vintage drawings and really bad typography. It was kind of strange to hear someone talk about how they imagine chairs in a room to have conversations and describe in depth their complicated personalities, not because I found it weird but because I was nodding my head in agreement. Mr Bingo basically makes a living by drawing all those secret odd things that you think only you think about.