I am a thirty-one-year-old chef who has travelled since I was eighteen years old, after leaving my home in Ranui, Auckland, in New Zealand. I come from a family where our mum loved us unconditionally and our dad was emotionally vacant. Though initially he didn't want his kids, he did for a few years get into the idea of raising us then realised it was too hard. Where as mum, worked herself in the ground raising me and my brother and the child we called dad. I've seen things from kids being raped in public to people stealing and murdering people for one slice of bread to human being treated like a commodity or cattle to make the stupid rich by abusing their lack of knowledge or, as we call it, naivety. I'm sick of it, and this will cut down those situations.
I have interacted with people from all walks of life who all have one thing in common. They all say to me, "Matty, stop stereotyping everyone, we are all individuals and cannot be labeled." Well, I disagree, and in this book, I have proven that. Stereotyping for me is fun due to the fact that a person can be many different stereotypes in the course of their life, or they are one for the duration of their life it all depends.
This meant that whenever I went out or went somewhere new, I was always watching, always observing, always taking in anything and everything I could and growing my mind every minute of every day. This made me seriously fucked up and nutty and emotional to the point where I would eat a lot.
But ever since leaving home, I have had the travel bug, and I have excised that for years, learning form the world around me, watching people, and in some cases, I'd watch more than I'd work. but through all the pain and suffering and emotional depression came alot of knowledge about people that i have now decided to share with all of you.
