CURRENT MISSION

Conquer America

ABOUT ME

I am a young, adventurous, open minded 22 year old male from New Zealand, who is currently living in the United States of America on a working holiday. I have written, self-produced and directed three full length plays so far in my life, and plan on doing much more along those lines - I always have a number of writing projects on the boil. I am extremely easy going and generally find it easy to get along with most people. I crave and thrive on new experiences, situations, sights and people and take great pleasure in anything that strikes me as unique, unusual, or just plain beautiful. I currently have a girlfriend with whom I am staying in Lawrence, Kansas. I am a competent cook, and an avid amateuer photographer. I can be quite opinionated, but try my utmost to live and let live - so long as you are a kind, decent person and you don't force your views on others you are fine by me, and I am always ready to have a frank, in depth discussion or friendly debate about just about anything, or, by the same token, perfectly happy to just avoid the topic altogether if its going to cause tension. Feel free to ask me more questions about me or my home country - I look forward to meeting many weird and wonderful Americans while I am here.

PHILOSOPHY

I believe in keeping an open mind while attempt to retain a strong sense of morals and perspective. Basically in terms of morality I believe that so long as what you do doesn't effect others negatively or undesireably then do it as much as you want. I think its important to know where you stand on divisive or important issues, but to always remain prepared to alter or completely recant an opinion when presented with new persuasive information. In general, I live my life to be happy, and make those I love and care about happy. Family and friends are the two most important things in my life, and I aim to make it as rich and varied and thoroughly fun a life as possible.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Primarily I am interested in finding friendly people and places to stay during my upcoming roadtrip around the United States during the month of May 2011. I will be travelling first through Chicago, then down the East coast from Boston, West through the south, then north up the West coast to Seattle, then making my way back to Lawrence Kansas before I return to New Zealand at the end of June. During some of the time that I am travelling I will possibly be travelling with a good friend of mine named Clay Burkhead, who lives here in Lawrence. Unfortuanately, as I am staying with friends here in Lawrence, I am not at liberty to offer their couch to strangers, so I am not able to host - but I would be happy to meet up with someone after work or on the weekend and show them around Lawrence for an hour or two if anyone is passing through.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Up until last year I had only couch surfed at good friends places, or the relatives of good friends - however I travelled from Lawrence Kansas to San Diego in July 2010 and with a friend - she had a membership on this website, and we stayed with two different people over the course of the trip, one in Colorado Springs, and one in San Diego - it was a really great experience and we met some wonderful people - so I am eager to replicate that experience again!

Interests

-Theatre (Primarily playwrighting, Lighting, and Directing)
-Improv
-Photography
-Poetry/free writing
-Travel
-Food/cooking/eating tasty things
-Woodwork/basic carpentry
-Meeting new people
-Having unique/interesting experiences

• arts
• writing
• books
• poetry
• photography
• dining
• cooking
• recipes
• running
• traveling
• woodworking

Music, Movies, and Books

In no particular order, and by no means complete or comprehensive, here are some of my favourite books, movies and bands:

Books:

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
Spike Milligan's war Autobiographys
Anything by Michael Crichton
1984 - George Orwell
Anything by Shakespeare
(comic) Y The Last Man
(comic) The Walking Dead
(comic) The Goon
(comic) Preacher

Movies:
Back to the Future trilogy
Mars Attacks
Children of Men
Anything for Her
Die Hard Trilogy
In Bruges
Starship Troopers
Anything by Kubrick
Total Recall
All the Monty Python Movies, particularly Life of Brian
Naked Gun
etc etc

Music:
Radiohead
Harry Nielson
The Beatles
Split Enz
Wu Tang Clan
Biggie Smalls
Big Pun
David Bowie
Nirvana
Neil Young
Bob Dylan
Regurgitator
The Drones
Grizzly Bear

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I've seen a whole pod of whales beached on a shore as a young child, and got to 'help' refloat some of them - being something like 4 or 5 years old my version of 'helping' was running back and forth from the ocean and throwing tiny buckets of water on them to stop them from drying out, and threw my meagre weight into trying to push them out to sea when the tide came in but hey, I did what I could.

Teach, Learn, Share

Uhh, most of my skills are in the arts - if you want a second opinion on a script you're working on I can give you one for what its worth. And although I have no training I'm an ok photographer and could give pointers to a novice - but if you have any kind of real experience you probably know more than me. I have very basic woodworking skills. I'm a decent cook, and I'm always on the look out for authentic recipes to add to my cook book.