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Life from an Outsider's Perspective.
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The life of an expat Australian starting a new life in Spain. A former research scientist now runs a pro road bike hire business. Cycling in a place with no flat roads!
The importance of Mental & Physical health in today's society...
Recent Posts Tagged With 'mental anguish'
Advice on emmigrating to another country
If you’re truly open to another culture, then once you move out, you’ll never look at your homeland the same way again. Because you’ll soon be able to recognise the faults or flaws that exist in your own country. You also won’...
Stress Theory:
I’ve had this draft here lying around for too long so I thought I’d share it. I believe these are not my own words, but I think being aware of several current theories about stress is interesting in light of one of my other posts. Hans Se...
“You got a one way ticket on your last chance ride”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), someone around the globe commits suicide every 40 seconds. In the year 2000, 815,000 people lost their lives to suicide — more than double the number of people who die as a direct result of armed co...
The website is back online.
As you are probably already aware, if you’ve tried to access this website in the last week, it hasn’t been available most of the time. It was either extremely slow, full of errors or showed an “account suspended” message. Thi...
What causes chronic depression?
When I was younger, around 25 years old, I simply did not believe that depression was real. Being a hyper-optimist, I was one of those people that denied that it even existed, I used to tell my mother that it would never happen to me because I have a...
Down Under in Tenerife
Living outside of your own country is never that simple. What could be more challenging than to live in a strange new land and foreign culture? While travellers have it easy, I think that it is particularly difficult for expatriates. Obviously the gr...
The main site goes down. Damage report.
So I woke up today to find that the website didn’t seem to be working properly. Here’s the full damage report: The main website is missing all the contact information + navigation bar, my two subsites www.BikeNode.com and www.ProBikeHire...
Life in a nutshell.
Western society totally idolises an athletic body shape but resents the physical exertion required to attain it. We try to minimise human physical work by any means possible. As far as I’m concerned, every time you switch on any form of electri...
The politically correct assassin.
The worlds’ gone stark-raving mad. You hear responses like this to absurd news stories spoken every single day. What exactly am I referring to? I’m referring to insane cases of “personal rights, freedoms and civil liberties” i...
Should I split my blog?
I’ve been umming and ahhing over the past five or six months about whether I should bisect this blog or not. As the number of categories has recently grown, the articles have since shifted away from the original cycling theme (in line with the ...
Technology’s secret revenge.
Some people claim that technology improves our lives by improving our standard of living. I certainly don’t deny that since we have less physical work to do, we now have more leisure time than ever before. Before I get any further, I should say...
How to get back into cycling.
How to lose fitness: I don’t know what happened to me in the last year. I seemed to lose all motivation for riding my road bike. It’s the same old story: you turn 30 and your belly starts to accrete fat molecules like an asteroid belt orb...
“Tenergrief”
The rate of construction taking place in Tenerife is mind-boggling. Just 50 years ago, before mass-tourism, the whole La Orotava valley was cultivated land. Today, pretty much every space below about 500m altitude has already been urbanised to some ...
Who’s Diego Velázquez? And what’s up with Google “special edition” logos?
To date, there have been 185 “special edition” Google logos, which can be seen here. I, like many people, use Google to perform internet searches almost daily. I missed a lot of other trivial logos shown previously. So here’s my ch...
The link between physical & mental health: ADHD.
Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) is a mental disorder of which the primary symptom is the inability to concentrate. While the symptoms are widely accepted, the causes are disputed. Conventional studies of this disease have focused on bra...
Human Lemmings?
Before I continue with this story, I wish to make it perfectly clear that I am in no way humouring this subject. On the contrary, I’m attempting to highlight this afflictive social dilemma, thereby drawing attention to it. In fact, the popular...
The top 100 strangest search terms ever?
Many readers who do not host their own websites will not realise this, but yes, whenever you visit a website, the server records how you got there. What does this mean? Well, whatever you enter into google is usually stored by the host-server, and it...
The Irony of a close-knit, well-integrated society.
Consider this: a society is able to perform many tasks, share work, trade labour, food and everything else required to stay alive. A strong, interactive community obviously makes life easier than a loosely bound one. On the other hand, a solitary ...
Mission Impossible: Driving in Spain, a rite of initiation.
In many cultures, the passage of childhood through adulthood is defined by various types of initiation cermonies or “rites of passage”. In Vanuatu they exchange pigs, mats, kava, and other goods between a child’s father’s an...
The ultimate quest for happiness. What is the meaning of life?
We live in a time like no other. We’ve essentially won the struggle for life and dominated the planet and now we wonder what the real purpose of life is. I could say that “the point of life is to live”. You may think that’s...
Driving me insane; the legendary Spanish driving test.
In case you hadn’t realised, this has turned into a 5 or 6 part series on getting your license in Spain. Today I attempted the final driving exam for the first time (yes in Spanish). I just got back and I failed. This is despite completing ove...
Spanish driving lessons, a billion-dollar-a-year industry.
In Spain, if you want to get a driving license, official driving lessons are compulsory. There is no such thing as learning to drive with family members or friends. Not only that, but unlike the USA and Australia, learning to drive an automatic vehi...
‘Entrar es fácil, lo difícil es salir’
I really really like this advert… it’s an anti drug campaign created by the program “twelve months twelve causes”, broadcast by channel 5 here in Spain. As the title of the program indicates, for each month of the year there ...
