About

Find out how my goal came about, how this website/blog came about and even a little bit about me.

• Hap
• Goal
• Blog

About Hap

“Gidday”, I’m Hap, real name Mark, but have answered to Hap my whole life. And yes Hap is derived from ‘Happy’. It came about as I was a baby that didn’t stop crying, in the words of my father, “I was a grizzly little bugger”, so he nicknamed me Happy. Somewhere along the line it got shortened to Hap. Its managed to stick around like a girlfriends older brother at a teenage party.  Trust me I have explained the name ‘Hap’ a few times.

I was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1981 in the 11th month, on the 11th day in the 11th hour and 3 minutes before the 11th minute -I blame that on my father being too excited that night.

My first memory after my childhood blur was in Nelson, New Zealand watching a digger at my family home. The remainder of my childhood I lived there with my Mother, Father and sister. I walked the same way to school my entire schooling years, from kindergarten (preschool) through to college (highschool for the American readers)-God knows where I got my nomadic ways from, there must be some gypsy blood somewhere down the line.

The new millenium saw mummy’s boy leave the cradle and enter the world of University. My school was Otago University, bright hopes of post graduate study were destroyed after a 2nd year University working holiday to Australia that showed me there’s a world outside of New Zealand.

So I graduated with my BCom (Marketing, Management) -I really have utilised that $30,000 I invested in that piece of paper- and entered my new classroom, the world. The rest is documented in this one-stop-where-is-hap-now-shop.

PS, I suppose this is the section I write what interests me, what revs my engine. Alright, here goes in bullet form 

• Outdoors, the environment, places with trees, beautiful natural landscapes.
• Sports; soccer, taekwondo, cricket, snowboarding, water-skiing, wake-boarding, hiking, salsa.
• Being active, anything that doesn’t involve TV or PlayStation.
• Anything that involves being around people/friends/family and socialising, I love meeting people.
• The most important, laughing!
• And of course, TRAVEL

About the Goal

‘To live and work in every continent of the world before I’m 30′.

The seed of this goal was planted whilst I was on my university holidays working for 2 months in Australia. Even though Australia is very similar to my home country New Zealand, I found great love in the small changes, the new scenery, the people I met, the places I saw.

I went back to New Zealand to start my 3rd year of my Bachelor of Commerce degree at Otago University in New Zealand, with a new love in life, ‘to travel’. Middle finger in the air to my previous plan of going on and completing post grad at University.

After passing my final year exams I completed an Outward Bound course in January 2003, there I committed to paper my goal, ‘to live and work in every continent of the world before I was 30′.

In April 2003, the journey began to achieve my goal with no plan what so ever, just have a good time along the way

About the Website\Blog

I created this blog at the end of 2007 after I had been travelling nearly 5 years. The blog allows the reader to follow my current adventures through the blog. The ‘chapters of my journey’ allows you to explore where my quest to ‘live and work in every continent of the world before I’m 30′ has taken me thus far.

The blog came about when I was back in New Zealand to briefly visit family and sort out my US immigration problems, before heading to Perth, Australia to earn money for the next chapter of the journey. A week before leaving for Perth I had an unfortunate accident that saw me fall 5 metres fracturing my vertebra (Pair Plunge 20m From Bush Swing). So I had Doc’s orders to do absolutely nothing, no work for at-least 2-6 months and take it easy.

So with over 2 months of no work on my hands, I got out my wounded credit card, bought a lap top and started to collate my past emails. My 5 years of travel had seen me keep in regular contact with friends and family through bulk emails about some of the funny and less fortunate travel moments that I constantly find myself in.  So with all the positive feedback from these people telling me to write a book, I decided to take a step in that direction and create a blog. So thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback over the years. Hope you and the rest of the world enjoy the tales (although not all of them, I will I have to leave somethings for the book as this is a family show!).