May 7th, 2010
Pokhara, Nepal

I've finally decided to formally write about some of my experiences from the past several days as I am hiding in an Internet cafe, mid-day, clandestinely defying the Maoist strike along with the owner of this establishment. There is a large group of youth with bamboo canes sitting around the entrance, and the owner does ( Read more... )

In a vain attempt to improve my self and reconcile the creeping stagnation that threatens my professionalism (that whole everything in IT going obsolete thing) I decided in the fall to apply for a Master's degree in Education (Information Technology) which is pretty applicable to my great job teaching post-secondary level IT courses and opens up a ( Read more... )

 Rife with good space and healthy thoughts, the full potential of my recent visit to the Mediterranean island country of Malta was just never reached. That's not so bad though, because I think I'll go back.


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Last month I saw an opportunity to escape the desert landscape of Qatar and go somewhere interesting and new, and where did I choose to go? Why, the desert landscape of Morocco, of course. “What do you mean, ‘of course’?”, you might ask. There are a lot of places in the world where one might end up, why would Morocco be such an obvious choice?

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There are a lot of different challenges one faces when traveling. There are “unpredictabilities”: delays, spontaneous changes of plans due to unforeseen circumstances and environmental causes. I’ve experienced a fair few of them now, but heading off to Sri Lanka left me faced with a whole new situation. I was traveling side by side with a friend, a ( Read more... )

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There were more than a few reasons I had to postpone writing about the second part of my trip, but none of them were because I had run out of exciting things to talk about. Following my encounters with sharks and baboons, penguins and foggy mountain paths, I still had yet to face what would be the focus of my trip, the tiny land-locked country of ( Read more... )

Two years had passed if it was a minute since Andrea Saldanha and I had last tromped about, and we put the pieces of our lives together in brilliant collages of foggy mountain stories and salt-spray grins. I spent those first days climbing on Table Mountain, the majestic flat rock that forms the hub of the vibrant, pulsing city of Cape Town. We ( Read more... )

When you beamingly receive a holiday package that has been ransacked by customs, you're living the true expat xmas experience.

I am Matthew Dolmont, and I am the invigilator, one eye on my exam-writing students and the other on my holiday checklist. Although there are a few familiar bullets, my “send gift to dad” entries are flanked by ominous ( Read more... )