Holy Spirit Volunteer Meal Relva Azores

I was kindly invited by Carlos Lousada to go to the volunteers meal at Relva and yet again, I was amazed at what can happen in a small community of 3000 people when it comes to helping each other.

At the beginning of the evening we were invited to have snacks and a drink, which was welcome after watching the Champions League final in a local bar. The snacks were a meal in themselves, with pastries, mixtures to put on local bread and a rather delicious prawn spread that had me returning to the snack table too many times!

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Mobile Boutique Hotel

Richard Oetker, an eccentric corporate executive who tried to compensate for his traumatising experience of being kidnapped for ransom with this hotel on wheels.

With this unique mobile accommodation, business partners were initially driven to selected locations, housed and fed. He made sure that all feasible wishes of his guests could be realised. He created a unique fleet based on solid and robust Mercedes lorries and specially designed trailers and semi-trailers.

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Thailand 1997-1999

After a brief stay in Thailand in 1996 we went to Hong Kong for a year, where I worked on, what was then, the largest building site in the world. I welded for a year which earned us the cash for me to become a dive instructor. I also bought the equipment to make underwater video, which was a bit basic at the time, but it paid the rent for a good while.

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Back to Yorkshire

I have done work in the past few years for the NHS, who offer their staff a day out in Todmorden to ease their stress and, at the same time, guide them in a few areas to do with work. At the same time, they get to eat nice Thai food, plus hang out in a gorgeous town in the Calder Valley for a day, which to be honest would be what I would prefer over a day at the NHS in the current climate.

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Remote Working 2023

When I heard of the whole location independent, remote working trend back at the end of the last Millennia I was drawn to it like a bee to a honeypot. I had already found work whilst abroad, becoming a scuba diving instructor, making underwater video, welding in Hong Kong, but the dream was to be free of location with the ability to come and go whilst making enough to live.

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Bloktopia

I remember visiting the font where my father was baptised in Dublin, not far form the Guinness brewery. The small alcove where he would have waved his arms and legs and wailed his fresh lungs was my first bookend of his life, a life that started in a local tenement, the passion of poverty, the frailty of humans, moving within the wild waves of other people’s wishes.

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