Kym, Promotions and Administration Manager

Home Country and one great thing about it: Australia. One!? only one, there are far too many to list. Ok. It would have to be the people. Australians are mostly just like the cliche, laid back and easy to get along with, but of course I don’t harbour any delusions that this always applies.

Quirks/Oddities: I’m pescetarian, that is a cheating vegetarian, one who eats seafood. As Kurt Cobain said, ’It’s okay to eat fish, ’Cause they don’t have any feelings’

Star Sign: Sagittarius

Favourite Quote: Life just fings through your slippers, or life just slips through your fingers. - Leunig

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travels immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way. - Ralph Cranshaw

67% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Favourite 80’s fad: Scungies, glorified underwear that little girls wear under skirts to hide their knickers during sports games. And Scrunchies, hair bands wrapped in material that scrunch up. Well I was just a kid in the 80s.

Likes: Films: The Usual Suspects, Amelie, Fight Club, The Matrix.

TV: TV is best served on occasions when you need to totally zone out nothing helps this better than crappy American sitcoms set in NYC, especially Sex in the City, Seinfeld and Friends.

Music: Ben Harper, Manu Chao, Cat Empire, Morcheeba, Erykah Badu, Gomez, Coldplay, the White Stripes... also discovering the wonders of the Italian music scene, Vasco Rossi, Subsonica, Aritcolo 31, CapaRezza and Tiromancino.

Books: My favourite authors for this year are Isabella Allende and Margaret Attwood.

Dislikes: Uninformed prejudices made by narrow-minded, self-absorbed people.

How her co-workers describe her in 3 words: Carrie:

Handy travel hints: The first thing to learn to say in any new language is ’do you speak my language?’ Its just plain courtesy, and will give people a better first impression of you, well in most places.

A good pair of thongs (flip flops) are imperative for those times when the hostel you are staying in seems to have a micro cosmos developing in the bottom of every shower recess.

Places she has called home: Australia: Coffs Harbour, Sydney. England: London. Italy: Venice.

Best or most bizarre vacation ever: I spent a week in East Timor in 2000, 6 months after the vote for independence and resulting civil war had ended. Dili was a broken city, run by the UN, people were living in tin shacks, and almost every family had lost a member during the vicious Indonesian occupation. However, the feeling of the place was incredible, their new liberation had turned this beaten down country into a place of immense hope and graciousness. Oh and this was before I became vegetarian, one night I found myself sitting eating something called chicken, but actually looked suspiciously like dog, and my fellow diners consisted of Australian soldiers each with a machine gun propped up in the plastic garden chair next to them, very surreal.

Top 3 Sites: www.britain.tv - check out the R U Hot section. Some people are just suckers for punishment.

www.virtualtourist.com - An awesome site for global travel advice, the forums and articles entered are all written by real people from all over the world. The site has 450 000 members so the sheer amount of information is also incredibly diverse.

www.smh.com.au - this site is a must for any ex-pat Australian, I learnt this the hard way. My first big OE lasted a year, and was a break from my politics degree. Upon my return, I had absolutely no idea what had happened in Australia, or for that matter, the rest of the world because I had simply not read a newspaper in that time, not the best considering I then had to continue with my political studies. Check out column 8 for quirky observations of every day things.