London - Home of the Canary Wolves

I wrote this in 2014 and it's been hiding in the drafts folder ever since. I thought I'd finally share it.

I was lucky enough to have a work event in Westminster where I stayed in a run-down area of London called Mayfair. I was in a 5* hotel called The Westbury. If you are aware of this hotel, well done! You are either a taxi driver or you are paid too much! It was around £200 a night for the cheapest room without breakfast, which came at the additional cost of £26 a day. A croissant was £8. 

I definitely feel more at home in a £10 a night hostel dorm where I'm woken up by some fat man snoring. I felt as out of place as one of the many prostitutes that visit establishments like this, to see their oligarch clients.

However, it is interesting to see how used to this lifestyle one can become in just a few days. The idea that this hotel costs more per night than some families live on for a week in the UK just doesn’t seem real when you walk down the streets of Mayfair. The area is incredibly prosperous and financial problems seemed as abstract to me, in that moment, as Africans not having clean water seems to an everyday Brit. You walk down the road and see bags, watches, and shoes costing more than the average yearly salary.

I find this level of wealth uncomfortable. I don't see a need for it and I don't see why anyone would spend so much on a bag or a pair of shoes. That said, I don’t think it's much good to take the Russell Brand style of vitriol hate against this group of elites. If you truly believe in compassion and love then I think it is up to us as citizens, not consumers, to recognise the kindness and the generosity of the elites. We need to encourage them to donate millions for new hospitals. If it helps we can name the institutions after them, to feed the ego of these illusive and eccentric millionaires.

But some are beyond redemption. What do we do with the Dan Bilzerians, who promote the lowest of the lows in this set of elites? Buzzfeed reckons he is Instagram's most interesting man. I say shut down Instagram then if this is the case. I recently discovered this type of celebrity that some people seem to hold up as idols and aspire to be like. He basically lives the life of the Wolf of Wall Street. A great film and terrifically acted, but Leo’s character was deplorable.

These people should be vilified and ostracised from the mainstream, yet a lot of people I speak to seem to admire them. To be a multi-millionaire and have a lavish lifestyle is one thing. But to be a young millionaire and spend your days on yachts, sleeping with prostitutes, being a drug addict, and ruining the lives of everyone around you should not be anyone’s dream. It doesn’t make you happy and it should not be the role model inspiring the next generation. 

There are over 100 billionaires in London. How many millionaires? Around 3% apparently. That means it's not thousands, nor tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. Do they live the life of a Canary Wolf?

I believe that feeding the egos of these people is the way to save society. Rewarding their egos when they build schools by putting a fraction of the money into a statue of them outside, for their posterity. Force high net worth individuals into transparency by showing the public what charity work they carry out on top of how much tax they pay. Shame them into being more generous.

These are ideas that could inspire these elites to part with their excess wealth and start to contribute to building a grander world. Trickle down economics was a lie. It’s a “sucking up” economic system where inequality only grows. Maybe we can convince some of these people to spit out a few billion and help tackle the larger problems by rewarding their generosity.

I started this article to talk about London and the good time I had exploring the beautiful sights of my home city. It turned into a slight rant but I can’t help feeling these feelings when I see homeless people living in tents outside buildings that stay heated all night and have clean toilets. The juxtaposition is so extreme.

Anyway, enjoy the photos of London – my home town that makes me feel sad when I see the homeless and hungry on the streets. A city where inequality is as obvious as any other. However, it is a city surrounded by beauty and history. This is London.

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!

The Long Way Home

After leaving Korea, having been to Japan and China, we spent 5 months finding our way home. We visited Taiwan, The Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Borneo, Brunei, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. It had been a long trip and there was a sadness that it was now ending.

The journey home started with a flight from Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur. Our flight home from KL had been cancelled because AirAsiaX has stopped their flights to London. They had moved us to a different airline with an earlier flight time, meaning we had to arrive in KL a day earlier. I had tried numerous times to contact AirAsia and arrange some compensation because it meant we would have to fork out for a hotel in KL rather than just get a connecting flight. They did not reply…numerous times.

Upon arriving at KL airport we went to the help desk and explained our situation. We were informed immediately that there was a four-star hotel, complete with golf course and swimming pool, waiting for us and we had free airport pickup and drop-off. We had been concerned we would be spending the 15 hour layover on an airport bench so this was absolutely golden news!

One of the nicest rooms we stayed in on our trip with
THE BEST shower Katie had ever had!

After a short swim, we went down for our courtesy free buffet dinner…You could say we took full advantage.

Round 1: Salad, soup, sushi, and bread

Round 2: Ceasar salad, squid, prawns, potatoes, and meat!

Round 3: Lamb, lobster, ham, turkey, etc

Round 4: Cake and coffee

Round 5: More cake and coffee and some healthy fruit

There wasn’t much more to do than have a lovely shower and get some sleep… waking up in time for a buffet breakfast!

A few hours later we were aboard our 14 hour flight back and were inundated with even more food, courtesy of Malaysia Airlines. It was a very comfortable flight where we watched a lot of films and reminisced about the good times.

It had been an unbelievable 17 months full of highlights, a few struggles, the odd accident, and it all ended on an absolute high in Thailand. All this, plus a super freebie at the end, had ensured that we made it back safe and sound, eager to travel again soon. But first it was time for some much missed cider.

Cider time! 
Katie got asked for ID when we ordered!

Preparation Preparation Preparation

Captains blog 28/01/2011

Be prepared. Not scared.

That's what I keep repeating to myself - I mean it's useful but more importantly it rhymes and I'm a sucker for poetry. So preparation for me is making endless lists of things to take and whatnot so I don't forget my nail scissors because they definitely don't sell them in Busan, Korea, home of the World's largest department store.

Being scared, on the other hand, involves me sitting in a dark room breathing heavily in a panic attack state while resisting the urge to use my gun to paint the walls with my brain. I realise it's only a BB gun so the best I can hope for is blinding myself in one eye and maybe spraying some tears on my nicely newly decorated wall.

I'm writing this blog, which I share with my beautiful girlfriend Katie, as a way of keeping up my writing, amusing peeps and letting my parents know that I haven't died in a nuclear holocaust. I'm allowed to say holocaust because I'm a Jewthiest, i.e. atheist who has more Jewish blood than the butt of a German rifle in the 40s.

So the plan: Me and Katie (or is it Katie and I?) are moving to Busan, South Korea, to teach Engrish for a minimum of 12 months. Wow, I know, we're cool / crazy / unsure of what to do in life / terrible at English but 3 weeks today is the arrival date and no I'm not prepared and yes I am scared!

Things you should probably know: I speak no Korean besides "annyong" meaning hello (courtesy of Arrested Development). This means I have to navigate myself around Busan without being able to read anything, which will be kind of like trying to find a needle in a massive pile of needles while only using my penis, in the sense that it's gonna be painful and confusing as to why exactly I've decided to do this...

What I know about Busan is that it's the second city of South Korea. The Birmingham of Korea then ... so full of Asians and people who I can't understand - a fair assessment one might say. Oh and it has a beach so fuck you Birmingham.

We applied for our visas today in the Korean embassy which had the lowest security in the World. It was protected by not one, but two tiny Korean girls who almost fell over when I sneezed. This is when I came up with a new acronym (KILF - Korean I  Like to Fuck) - Katie really appreciates this one. Prepare to see that one a lot (with photos ;)). We also went to STA travel to get some random young person's international card that may give me discounts somewhere maybe. Anyway we met a very annoying girl in STA who just really grated on my for no reason besides the fact that she spoke quite posh and her natural lip position seemed like she was performing Blue Steel from that Ben Stiller movie.

We also recently bought matching bags that we'll be using to transport our ENTIRE lives with us to Korea. That's correct - matching bags, we're cooler than a cucumber with sunglasses smoking a spliff listening to grime.. The bag is only 120 litres in size so I should have enough whiskey while I'm there, ay? Aren't I such a lad!?. Seriously though, why are bags measured in litres? Is it only for people that shop duty free? I think socks would be a better measurement. That bag can fit 4000 socks. Really? I can wear 10 socks a day when I'm in Korea then - fabulous!

The bag, by the way, is very girly and I'm concerned the scraps of manlihood I still cling on to may disappear when I turn up in Busan after a 17 hour flight, tired, confused and dragging my 6 year old niece's suitcase with me. Anyway, I want people's first impression of me to be that I'm a big softy and then bang! I can punch them in the face unexpectedly.
Note to self: Stop watching UFC.

Apart from that, I don't have much more to say. Next time you read, I'll be in Korea.Or I may be in England writing a blog rather than preparing for this great adventure.

DJ Sobell