Hello Blog. It's me, Katie!

2014 was a very good year. I made some wonderful new friends, which I hadn’t really done since Korea. I got a good job, learnt a lot and worked with some lovely people. Living in Brighton was really fun – it’s a great city and being so close to London meant I got to see a lot more of some friends who I had been far away from for several years. I visited Italy for the first time and took Dave to Paris, which was his first ever trip to France. Vikki became the first of my friends to have a baby; beautiful Dominic who I can’t want to meet this week! And several of my friends got engaged, including Hazel who is the most wonderful and deserving fiancée I can imagine – congratulations again to you and Joe!

Having had such a great time over the last 12 months, it would have been easy to stay put for a bit longer. But that’s not our style is it? And besides, we always knew Dave’s work was going to involve relocating at the start of 2015 so it was never really on the cards. I don’t think either of us fully expected the news we got at the start of September though, even if we had both been sleeping with our fingers crossed for weeks. But sure enough, when the email came through about Dave’s next placement it was clear that it wasn’t in the UK, although when he shouted “We’re going to Jacarepaguá!” I had no idea where it actually was.

Skip ahead 5 months and here I am, getting ready to jet off to Rio de Janeiro. Dave is already there and starting work today. There was recently a weather warning in Rio because it was so hot (whereas last night it snowed in Kingswinford!) but he has done well and hasn’t burnt yet, apparently. I have a lot to do in the next 2 weeks before I leave – people to see, things to pack – but I am enjoying being home and having a break before the big move. Not that I’ll be doing much once I’m out there! Well no, that’s not true but I’ll be on a tourist visa to begin with so won’t be allowed to work which is a shame. I am going to be blogging a fair bit though, which will be fun.

But aside from writing blog posts, what will I be doing in 2015? Well self-motivation is not my forte but Dave is going to crack the whip and make sure I achieve the goals I have set for myself this year. It is going to be a very different year to the last two and I really want to make the most of it. First of all, I want to have a good go at learning Portuguese. I have let it slip a bit the last couple of months but once I am out there, I refuse to be as linguistically lazy as I was in Korea.

I’m also going to teach myself how to use some photo editing and design software. Given that the majority of my job last year centred around design work, I think I need to get to grips with using programmes other than Publisher 2003. Do not worry though, dear reader. I promise never to put doctored photographs in this blog unless clearly stated, so you can be sure that anything weird and wonderful we post here will be real, legit and unairbrushed.

As Dave mentioned previously, I turned the blog posts about our adventures in Asia into a book last year, and I can’t wait to have enough material to make a second one. I have also been thinking we could branch out a bit and maybe join the twitter-sphere but it’s hard to know if anyone would actually follow us. It would be great to find out how many of our readers use twitter though, so if you could let us know in the poll below it will help with the decision about setting up a twitter account for the blog.

And with that I had better be off. I still have a lot of packing and life-admin to do, as well as lots of exciting activities. Tomorrow Mum and I are going on a road trip to visit Vikki, Alex and Dominic, then to Bristol to see Hazel and on the way home we're going to the Bombay Sapphire Distillery for a tour and gin workshop! I'll let you know if it's any good.

It's good to be back on the blog, and I hope you all had as much fun in 2014 as I did.

The Revival

Captains Blog – returning after a 2 year gap to bring you updates on the adventure that you’ve come to expect from the SobCoe team.

Most people that read this are probably aware that we didn’t disappear from life like we did from the blogosphere. What happened instead was an adventure in the UK, the country we have known since our existence but have been experiencing with a new mindset.

I touched on this in the last post, on my reflections about altering one’s mindset to experience life as a traveller, a tourist – rather than a passive observer. And I feel we have lived up to this. So what have we have been doing?

I got a job with a multinational pharmaceutical company and have spent the last two years under the thumb of this corporate entity. A cog in a very large wheel. A drone in an autonomous machine. It hasn’t been bad per se, but it is a far cry from the K-life and the travels we shared together...

A great part of the job was the move to Scotland in January 2013. This meant that I got to travel around a part of the UK I had never properly explored. The best part was that Katie decided to come with me and secured a job at a college. I am going to post a brief montage of the past two years after I get over this initial blog update, which shall contain many photos from the 12 months we spent living on the west coast of Scotland.

We have had several holidays to Eastern Europe, Italy, India (for Katie), Portugal (for me), and the US (for Katie). Again we plan to post photos and stories that I wrote at the time but never found the gusto to publish here during these times.

After a year in a non-independent (i.e. dependent) Scotland, we moved to Southern England to a city called Brighton. And what a city it is. I didn't quite realise how great this place was until we moved here. In my years growing up in London, I hadn't bothered to take the time to visit it. Now I would say it’s one of my favourite cities. With the new traveller mindset being fully embedded, we have explored Brighton and Hove but still feel there is plenty more to see. And now over 11 months in, we're going to be sad to leave it. Here are some of our favourite photos / memories (who knows the difference any more!?)

We live (for another month) in north-eastern Brighton in an area called Woodingdean. It’s located in the Downs and is home to some spectacular views as shown below.

No they are not bats as seen in Mulu...

We have been house sharing with the Phils (Phil and Philine), Woof, and more recently Mike. We went to the Phils’ wedding and have had some truly fantastic times!

What else have we been doing with our time? Well, Katie has turned the “Blog of the Morning Calm” into the “Book of the Morning Calm”. The 166 page coffee book has a lifetime of memories in (actually it is closer to 17 months) and has been gifted to Katie’s father Gazza.

Pictures of our blog book of our blog.
Talk about life imitating art imitating life!

After my somewhat half arsed attempt at creating a TV show before being swept up in the corporate life, I realised my dreams of being a writer/director were probably a bit far fetched... As much as I enjoyed it, I guess with the fall-back of a decent career, it is always going to be difficult to take that leap of faith. I have kept up the writing though with brief spurts of holiday writing and random paragraphs of angst, as well as concentrating a large proportion of my free time on a novel.

It’s a sci-fi novel called "Centum 184" and it will be a series of at least 3, most likely 5 novels. Of course I have vague notions of being published and figure it would be easier than getting the capital to start a TV show. The first major draft is finished and I have sent it to a few close friends for a critique so I can have it back in time for a New Year re-write. For you see, my time at the moment has been taken up working and learning Portuguese.

And that is because I have a job in Rio de Janeiro with the same corporate powerhouse that currently feeds me. The full SobCoe team will be present and this is the main reason for the revival of the blog. I am not simply going to bore you with inane chatter in a vain attempt to be creative. We shall be exploding onto your phones, PCs, tablets, and Google Glasses with tales of Rio Carnival and the million other exciting things we are ready to experience. So hold onto your keyboards folks, because the SobCoes are going to bare all in 2015's Brazilian blog posts!