About The Blog

Name: Quickroute - ok - so its not my real photo -

* Gender: Male
* Industry: Non-Profit
* Occupation: Bum
* Location: Originally from Dublin : Currently in Hong Kong
* Born in Dublin then went wandering the earth like a nomad and lived and worked in Copenhagen - London - Sydney - New York - Buenos Aires. Now chillin' in Hong Kong


Quickroute's Blogs: Paddy in Buenos Asia

General spiel of everyday life and experiences and comparisons / memories from back home, of an Irish expat moving to Buenos Aires then Asia to travel the length and breadth of the countries, the continents and beyond. WARNING! - may contain nudity, bad language and Irish humour!

Some would say I'm a wanderer, others might call me a tinker or a gypsy or a knacker. My first big adventure away from home was for a month about 150 miles from Dublin in the Gaeltacht (Irish language summer camp) of Ballyvourney County Cork . You stay with a local family and take Irish classes during the day. I was 12 years old and practically starved due to an extra stingy mean host but survived off my card gambling earnings. On return to Dublin, I literally cried a river and thus began my wanderlust.

At 20 years old, during college summer break, I went to Copenhagen, Denmark in an effort to earn money to help pay for my upkeep. I landed a prestigious job in Burger King where half of Dublin seemed to work and became an expert at tossing whoppers (sounds lewd but it's not!)

The work was mind numbingly boring but we made our own 'craic'. You'd start out bottom rung of the ladder, cleaning the toilet, restaurant and work your way up to the broiler, fry station, whopper table, sandwich table and maybe even as a cashier if you could memorise 'double whopper med ost'. (double whopper with chese!)

I can still visualise and almost smell the nasty grease tray from the broiler which collected the drips of fat - yeuch! I went back for a second stint a year later as you could make more money in BK at that time than in a 'real' job in Ireland. After all the hard work, I figured I had earned a well deserved rest so I ended up blowing most of the dosh in 10 days island hopping around Greece :-(
fyi - I have not eaten in Burgerking since then - When you know what and how its cooked you steer clear! - Don't Supersize me!

After college it was either join the dole (collect unemployment benefit) or go to London, so off I trodded to the UK. I spent 3 years there and in retrospect had a good time although it wasn't where I wanted to settle down forever and Irish people were not flavour of the month at the time due to the troubles in Northern Ireland (Thankfully now over). So I headed to Australia where I spent another 3 years. I saved enough money to go walkabout for 9 months and if it wasn't for a slight visa complication (um..err.. I didn't have one), I might still be there as I absolutely loved the place.

I headed back to the UK and tried to make a go of things in Liverpool for six months but it just didn't work out so I returned to London where within a week I landed a good contractor job at a US bank. It was then that I won the lottery, yes I WON THE LOTTERY! - WAHOOOO!!!!!

Okay, unfortunately it wasn't a money lottery, it was a green card visa lottery where you submit your name and if you're lucky, a computer picks your name at random and if picked and after much paperwork you get to go and work in the USA. I managed to swing a transfer with the same US bank and off I went to the Big Apple, New York. It's a fantastic city and there is so much to explore in and outside of NY. I ended up staying 10 years and traveled extensively east coast, west coast and in between. The bug had not subsided so back I went to London for 2 years and rode the Ryanair/EasyJet cattle planes many many times to see as much of Europe as I could.

I've now been in Asia for 4 months and still exploring

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