My Irish Times article featured in Courrier International

A little while back I wrote a piece for the Irish Times about moving back to France after 15 years in Malaysia (link here).

Courrier International asked me if they could use it and have translated it into French and featured it in their latest edition (link here).








Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to comment or provide proof-reading feedback.

Thanks

Marc

Popular posts from this blog

The Sasé Apparition - Through the abandoned villages of Aragon

Image
Lire en francais I booked myself a plane ticket to Amsterdam. I had been working for almost two months non-stop and needed a break from the mountain refuge. As the departure date drew closer, I felt less and less like returning to “civilization.” I didn’t want to see cars and bars. I wanted to stay in the mountains. So that’s what I did. The plane left without me. I filled my backpack with all the essentials for a trek across the mountains and walked towards the Breche, the weight on my back making my ascent slower than usual.  Sparse tufts of grass grew on the frontal face of the moraine. The wind carried the roar of the waterfall from across the cirque, sounding like ever-crashing wave as it flailed and splashed its way down the face of the Marbore. I passed the widening gap in the glacier and veered away from the route, following the water that trickled over the smooth rocks to join a pool in a glacier-gouged limestone hollow. I stripped off and waded into the...
Read more

Lost Kingdom - A road trip through rural Kedah

Image
The landscape of coastal Kedah is unerringly flat; a fluid place existing at the juncture of land and sky and sea, a place where the earth is more liquid than soil and stretches out in every direction until it is lost in the not-so-distant horizon’s humid haze. This is one of Malaysia’s main rice growing regions, where the high water table spirit-levels the landscape flat. Alor Star, the principal town of Kedah, is easily passed through. Like every other town in Kedah it is a sleepy uneventful place.  The K1 cuts a narrow two-laned straight line south across the sunlit landscape like an exercise in perspective, the vanishing point blurred by the hot and shimmering air. Traffic was light. My car moved over the tabletop flatness of this water-world where cauliflower cumulous clouds are reflected in the perfect mirrors of canals and flooded fields. The dark mud of newly ploughed padi fields shone and sparkled wetly under the sun. Other fields were filled with the vibran...
Read more

A travers les villages abandonnés d'Aragon.

Image
Read this in English Cette conte est parue en deux parties dans la Revue Pyrénéenne d'octobre et decembre 2013 Cela faisait près de deux mois que je travaillais au refuge des Sarradets sans un seul jour de congé. Je ne me plaignais pas - C’était mon choix personnel et j’étais content de pouvoir travailler, mais prévoyant une pause nécessaire en milieu de saison, j'avais réservé un billet d'avion pour partir à Amsterdam. La date de départ approchant, loin d’avoir hâte de retrouver des amis aux Pays Bas je sentais de moins en moins l’envie de retourner à la "civilisation." Je ne voulais pas voir des voitures, ni passer mon temps dans des bars. Je voulais rester dans les Pyrénées. C'est donc ce que j'ai fait et l'avion est parti sans moi. J'ai rempli mon sac à dos avec tout le nécessaire pour une randonnée à travers les montagnes et je me suis dirigé vers la Brèche de Roland. J’étais rodé à cette courte montée d'environ deux cent ...
Read more