About & Contact

Things I've dabbled in

I've tried a few things in my life. I was into running for a while, doing marathons and trail races. I even did a couple of triathlons. Despite my skinny physique, or perhaps because of it, I spent quite some time in the gym doing the Stronglifts program... until I did my back in, which I'm still hurting from all these years later.

I've made a few educational websites, some of which have been going for 20 years. I started an open source project which was fun while it lasted, and I made a video game you can buy on Steam. I do like playing games. I even have a gaming blog dedicated to the hobby.

Speaking of hobbies, I've been learning Chinese for a while and take classes at my local community college. For some inexplicable reason for a man in his 50s, but I'm addicted to watching Chinese dramas - mostly romance! I've logged over 40 of them!

Why not Japanese? Ah, that's because at some point during my journey, I reached a Japanese level that was just enough to get by in daily life. I passed the N2 Japanese test, but the jump to N1 was so massive that I just stopped studying. Anyway, I wanted to try sometihng new so I picked up Chinese. Maybe it'll be useful someday?

Work stuff

The English teaching landscape has changed a lot. When I started teaching in 1998, classes were almost entirely for adults. That's completely flipped now with adults leaving English Conversation schools to study online or with apps. Most classes are now for kids, but as I get older, I don't have the energy for the little ones. So my focus now is to supplement my lessons with freelance work - building automated business tools. I'm just getting started on that so we'll see how it goes. You can follow my progress on my Nick Builds blog.