Paul

Information de voyage

Actuellement, je suis

Les activités qui m'intéressent :

Clearing debris

Description

INTENTION
My intention is to live doing work that I find meaningful.

To clothe, feed, shelter and to teach and learn with others is what has the most meaning to me: it is the sustaining of life, and the potential to transcend the bounds of suffering.

WORK EXPERIENCES
In my life, I have been trusted with many odd jobs.

Back home in Wales, in high school, I was part of two work experience projects: one in which I shadowed a local council cabinet member for a week, attending meetings and discussing government over expenditure, and another in which I earned 72 hours of experience as a teacher assistant for an English class over the space of 2 years, teaching children aged 13 -14: in this I helped children with their literacy as well as organising creative writing activities.

In between high school and university, I volunteered as a cashier in a Cancer Research charity shop; I also sorted, dry cleaned and ironed an industrial amount of clothes during this time.

During my higher education, I worked long term at a night club, helping with stock, cleaning, maintenance and health and safety. (I was a barback)

I was also hired for landscape gardening and furniture removals occasionally.

Alongside work and studies, I have also had to look after my ageing mother.

After 3 years of higher education and seasonal work, I earned a BA with Honours in Philosophy and Religion. This is a subject that is very important to me, and it is something that each of us will be studying for the rest of our lives whether we like it or not.
In understanding people's beliefs, we can understand the reason behind each way of life and each livelihood.

In 2020, I volunteered at Kibbutz Bar'am in Israel for a year, I lived and worked alongside various people from Israel and all over the world.

I thoroughly enjoyed the regimented day to day work schedule, waking up at 5 am and working until 3 pm; in this experience I have worked in all stages of an agricultural process, from the cultivation of the fruit to the processing and export thereof. (Bar'am produces apples, apricots, kiwis, lemons, nectarines, mandarins, pears, peaches and plums). I am very familiar with planting trees, pruning, shaping trees and harvesting fruit.
I also learnt a little bit about the science of tree breeding, tree cloning, and something called 'sandwiching' or 'grafting', in which trees are spliced together in a surprisingly easy way in order to cultivate what would otherwise not root itself in certain soil. They just have to be of a similar genus to each other. I.e. similar seeds can be compatible with each other in constituting the body of a single tree. It would be cool to see any other tree labs and exchange any insights.

Aside from agricultural work, the kibbutz also trusted me and a group of other volunteers to perform tree surgery around the fences of the community for security reasons. I have lost count of the amount of trees I have felled by sheers or by chainsaw, or have reduced in size, and I have lost count of the amount of shrubs that I have rolled down embankments.

At the start of 2021 I returned to the real world and lived and worked around Turkey with various people.
It just happened to be the coldest winter Turkey had seen in decades, so I spent a while in the beautiful northern countryside up to my waist in snow and surrounded by semi wild dogs. I worked with sheep, chickens and geese every day and enjoyed every minute of it and everything that I learned.
I observed some extremely efficient organic composting techniques (similar to the Hugel method) while working in greenhouses, and I also tilled the soil.

I spent the spring of 2021 in Antalya working in a hostel, and in the summer I was briefly in Georgia helping with the construction of straw houses, vegetable gardening and food preservation.

I then spent the next 2 years in between Georgia and Armenia hopping between a lot of different work positions through word of mouth and through workaway as well.
Continuing with agriculture, naturally. in Armenia I spent some time at a pig farm in Ararat and did some garden clearing near Karabakh, and I might even go back to Armenia at some point to help with an eco village project that one of my friends is trying to set up out there.

In Georgia I spent a month or two helping with fencing, composting and hole digging in a commune next to a German village near Tbilisi; after that I spent a long while helping and learning at a winery in Kakheti region, again, a lot of garden clearing, construction work and also some hospitality in between.
I finally ended up doing a whole lot of garden clearing, renovation and wood chopping in a place in the Imereti region and was trusted to the premises by myself for about 5 months. With 20 years' worth of overgrowth trimmed down, there was a lot of kindling and compost to make.
I also fermented a lot of vinegar out there, and learned a lot about food preservation and preparation, with dehydration, bletting, pickling.

After travelling for a while, I went home after being out for about three years, and I visited my family for Christmas. I ended up volunteering at a bookshop in my hometown. The last surviving second hand bookshop in my hometown.
I got to put my old student habits back to good use categorising and sorting by size vast quantities of literature, and by the end of my time there, the book shop was in proper order as a working space once again.

I left the UK again around March, and then continued to work at the hostel in Antalya for another 400 days.
By now, I am too familiar with the check in/check out process as well as training new staff in this same process and all the other minutia of maintaining hospitality and order in a liminal space. Aside from that, I had a whole lot of experience there cooking for a staff of 4 or 5 people almost every day and learnt how to improvise even more with whatever ingredients were at hand. I now can confidently make a few Iranian, Turkish and Spanish specialties. I could write a modest recipe book with all the cuisine I learnt about while travelling...

LEARNING
I will often write notes in order to learn.
I am always open to learning new things or correcting mistakes and improving methods if I am wrong.
I do not get offended if I am told that I am wrong.
I am happy to share whatever knowledge I have with whoever asks.

WORK ETHIC
I take pride in whatever job I do and will complete it to the best of my ability.
I prefer not to stress over anything, and prefer not to be hurried needlessly.
Stress and hurry are half the reason people make mistakes and cannot sleep at night. Work can be done slowly, calculated, and so with excellence.
There will be chaos: a schedule is only a prediction of what will be. If a job is to be done, it will be done sooner or later, but it will seldom be done the same minute each day.

I can work by myself and a lot of the time I prefer it.
If I do work with others, I prefer that they are not stressed and can go at a relaxed pace, that being said, whatever work we have, I see as duty: doing something halfway is sometimes worse than not starting at all, so if we set out to do something, let's work until the job is done!

REST
I try to observe Shabbat. One day out of the week, I will cease work entirely. That means no phone, no buying or selling, no carrying things, no tinkering with tools. The only obligation we have on this day is to live and breathe.
On Shabbat, the only tasks I would prefer to perform are whatever will prevent disaster.
Consider whatever I do for you on the day of Shabbat to be a favour, only done so that our burdens might be lighter and our rest more peaceful.
If there is rest, it should not be sullied with work, and then when there is work, no one will fall asleep on their shovel.

You would be surprised, it is almost impossible to go a day without doing anything at all!
I do not believe anyone has ever successfully lived Shabbat in complete peace.
Perhaps the day that a peaceful Shabbat will be lived will be the day the world is repaired, perhaps it will be the day the world is utterly destroyed. One day maybe there will be nothing left to do.
It is written: 'there is no rest for the wicked'; perhaps our wickedness gives us work, even on the day of rest...

STAFF MANAGEMENT
I myself have been in positions of managing staff, and I can tell you that both you and the staff would prefer to focus on one task at a time; i.e. if you ask someone to juggle, expect them to drop the ball.
If you ask someone to do 5 things all in the space of one minute, expect them to forget the last 3 things you said; you probably cannot remember what you just said either, after all that yapping.
Do not nag people if you could just do it yourself in a shorter time. There's not enough time on this Earth for needless stress.
People will learn what you teach them, but they can only learn piece by piece. Learning takes time.
You will never save time by hurrying and you will never feel more calm from worrying.
As the old cliche goes:
'If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself'.
If people are tired, I let them rest. Tired workers are a liability, and it is shameful to drive a person as if they are a mule.

I have seen people fail to grasp this simple method of management, and as a result, they have lost their staff and have consistently failed to keep anyone long term, and they have even lost their friends.
Many managers and bosses now live in a ghost world, enclosed in their dreams and imaginings. They themselves live only as ghosts, they tirelessly speak, sometimes only to themselves; they ask the living to do their bidding. They live without breathing; their only friends: work colleagues.

This last part should go without saying, but some people need reminders, so it should be said anyway:
Just because you are 'boss' and the person you manage is not boss, it gives you no right to speak to someone as if you purchased them off the banana boat.
Whatever authority you may have is completely diminished when you do not treat people with respect.
Respect given is respect earned.
Trust given is trust earned.

Remember that each person has a soul; they are not simply a resource to be spent.
When the job seems impossible and the tasks too numerous, remember to have patience, be forgiving, and strength will come to you, and you will overcome whatever obstacles with your workforce, perhaps not in the way that you plan, but things will come together the way they are meant to be.

Say little and do much, and receive all people with a pleasant and cheery countenance.

MOTIVATION
I am always excited to see and learn new things in the world, because there is always more to do and always more to learn.

My interest and motivation of voluntary work is to gain more experience and to expand my knowledge of agriculture and to learn whatever else might be necessary in keeping humanity and the human spirit alive in spite of the evermore uncertain future that we are faced with.

Moreover, I am interested in learning new languages and learning different worldviews and traditions. There is something very important in knowing these things: they are different modes of thought between different people, but there is common sense universally shared by all of us, and there is nothing truly hidden
In understanding languages, worldviews and traditions, we can understand other people in a meaningful way; often, things are more simple than they seem, and all the pretences of nuance and perplexity are nothing more than an aesthetic which we ought to look past to see the fundamental truth.
In the unveiling of simplicity, we can ultimately learn to live life without divorcing ourselves from reality, and we can learn to make the world a better place for everyone.
Genius can be conveyed simply to everyone, if G-d wills it.

My other motivation for voluntary work, I will admit is that I would prefer to free my mind by being occupied with simpler things.
This has also been my motivation toward learning languages and travelling generally; to think simply and to speak simply, it allows you to live simply. Your energy is conserved for better things.

Of course, I also wish to use volunteer work as a way to make friends and to build bridges between likeminded people.
Perhaps one day I will try to get a place of my own and do similar work, learning what works and what does not work from the various places and people I have seen. Maybe we will all work together again, and recline at the same table.

While I may have written a lot here, please do not mistake me as someone overly verbose.
I actually prefer to listen instead of speaking; it is tiring to be expected to speak all the time. The secret in all things is in silence.

Centres d’intérêt

Animaux de compagnie

Soin des plantes

Plage

Jardinage

Menuiserie

Événements/vie sociale

Cuisine et alimentation

Dev. durable

Voile / bateau

Dev. personnel

Langues

Auto-stop

Randonnée

Histoire

Camping

Culture

Livres

Architecture

Langues

Langues parlées
Welsh: Courant
Anglais: Courant
Sign language (American): Intermédiaire
Espagnol: Intermédiaire
Hebrew: Intermédiaire
Armenian: Intermédiaire
Georgian: Intermédiaire
Turc: Intermédiaire
Arabe: Débutant
Russe: Débutant

Plus de détails sur les langues qui m'intéressent
All of the languages are linked. Teach me whatever you know and I will teach you whatever I know.

Trouver un partenaire de langue

Compétences et connaissances que j'aimerais partager ou apprendre

Ça m'intéresse :  

Éco-projets

S’occuper des animaux

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J'ai des connaissances :  

Jardinage

Bricolage et projets de construction

Préparer les repas / cuisiner pour la famille

Aider dans une ferme

Aider à la maison

Accueil / tourisme

Travail associatif

Langues

Projets artistiques

Enseignement

Quelles sont vos compétences ?

I know basic operation and maintenance of chainsaws and hand tools.
I can repair clothing.
I know how to camp.
I have problem solving skills as well as critical and analytical skills.
I know how to clean very thoroughly and without a reliance on chemical products.
I am a fast learner.
I can be a creative chef with limited ingredients.

Âge

28

Autres infos...

We are born that we might suffer, we suffer that we might learn, we learn that we might live, we live that we might be happy.

Informations complémentaires

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  Fumeur

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  Permis de conduire

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  Allergies

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  Régime alimentaire spécial
  No pork. No shellfish. No humans. No blood. Stay kosher.