It’s been almost seven years since I first introduced myself on this blog, a lot has changed, so here’s a reintroduction.

I’m mcphee, and this is my blog.  I’m now 36 years old.

I’m originally from the north of England, but now live in Townsville, which is in tropical North Queensland, Australia

The beach is a few hundred meters from my front door, and a mountain a few hundred meters in the other direction, so it’s not too much of an exagerration to say that I currently live at the foot of a mountain by the sea in a tropical paradise.

In the photo shown above, my house is on the far side of the central mountain.

This is Kat (or Екатерина).

We’ve been going out for a little over 8 months now, I’m sure Kat’ll get mentioned many times in future posts.  If you’re wondering about the weird spelling of her name, she is originally Ukranian, altho has lived in Townsville since she was eleven.

I am a geek.  Altho due to the constraints of living in the hugely non-geeky Australia (They as a rule don’t even like Doctor Who!!), I don’t get up to much geekery at the moment,  I’ve been slowly revealing my inner-geek to Kat over recent months.  I’m not sure she fully understands how deeply it is ingrained in me tho.  I recently tried explaining the Doctor Who dance to her; she didn’t look impressed.

I play in a beach volleyball league on Mondays, we are a terrible terrible team, but I love it

I currently have an urge to become a polyglot.  I’m learning Russian, and continuing to learn German right now.  Kat (who already speaks Russian, Ukranian & English) wants me to learn French with her, so I might give that a go, see how learning three languages at once works out.

My job allows me to travel around North Queensland.  I cover (and I’m the only person covering it) an area over nine times the size of Wales, so I get to see plenty of the region, which is nice

Every November I visit the UK and meet up with friends and family.  This year I may be dragging Kat along for the ride, followed by a visit to Kats’ home city of Odessa in the Ukraine and then Moscow before flying back to Aus.

There are a lot of places in Australia and this part of the world that I want to explore, altho now I’m over here, I realise just how close mainland Europe was when I lived in Manchester, and how cheap and easy it was to get there.  I now have a list of European destinations I was never previously interested in but am now desperate to visit.  Typical.

In conclusion I’m a non-practising geek, living in a tropical paradise, with an awesome girlfriend.  Which is great.  But the vast majority of my closest friends, and all my family are on the exact opposite side of the world to me, they literally couldn’t be further away without space travel, which isn’t so great.

But on balance, life is definitely weighing heavily on the side of excellent.  I wanted to do a little bit of studying earlier today, so wandered down to the beach and spent a lazy few hours lay in the sun learning Russian.  I can’t really complain

Also I own a hammock for the first time in my life.

Plus, and perhaps most importantly, I get to see what happens in Neighbours months ahead of the Uk.