Tales from the Departure Lounge

#39 Adam-Lucas Pettit (Tag You're It)

• Andy Plant & Nick Cuthbert • Season 3 • Episode 39

Share episode

Send us a text

Is there a party at mother's? You bet there is. Life is just one big playground for Adam Pettit (AECC Global) who joins the TFTDL crew to discuss being a player in a global game of ‘tag’. After reading about a group of players in the New York Times, Adam and his friends decided to play the game themselves. A decade later, with players spread all over the world, the stakes are high and the tagging scenarios are extreme! 
 
This is a chatty episode that explores singing R Kelly songs in a Ugandan church to cycling to international education conferences. Adam is the Intled Forrest Gump and you never know what you're going to get! What we do know, is an adventure is about to happen. 

Final destination: Lincoln, United Kingdom 

This episode is brought to you in partnership with The Ambassador Platform, a leading peer-to-peer marketing and recruitment platform that connects your current students to prospective students for honest advice. Check out www.theambassadorplatform.com 

Tales from the Departure Lounge is a Type Nine production for The PIE www.thepienews.com

Andy:

Um, are you, are you actually, are you wearing trousers?

Nick:

No, that's it.

Andy:

For the duration of the podcast.

Nick:

Welcome to Tales from the Departure Lounge. This is a podcast about travel for business, for pleasure, or for study. My name's Nick and I'm joined by my co-pilot, Andy. And together we're gonna be talking to some amazing guests about how travel has transformed their. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey. Welcome to the podcast.

Andy:

Today we're joined by Adam Petty. He is the Director of Partnerships for the UK for AECC. He's also, as you termed him, uh, International Education's Forrest Gump.

Nick:

He's a runner. Just point him in the right direction and off he goes.

Andy:

And he also likes a bit of cycling as well, doesn't he, Nick?

Nick:

He has been cycling to international education conferences as part of the Canny Network.

Andy:

He's been slapping on the panniers and cycling across countries,.

Nick:

Climate action in the chafing sense.

Andy:

he does an international game of Tag with lots of very specific rules which he goes into and it's very interesting, but also they're just an incredibly creative group of people. I love the whole attitude towards this.

Nick:

I was sceptical about this. I thought, it's impossible, it's just friends meeting and then. Dob, you're it. but no, these tagging scenarios are extremely complex.

Andy:

it's a great story, definitely worth listening into. He's also talks about dragging a suitcase up mountains,

Nick:

It's this sense that an adventure is about to happen.

Andy:

Probably infuriatingly positive to some of his friends. He seems to revel in the chaos. He's the lovely lad from Lincoln, he thinks the world is his playground. From jumping out of presents to singing R. Kelly songs in a church in Uganda, let's get some tales from the Departure Lounge from Adam Petty.

Adam:

There's ten of us playing, and we have this international global game of tag, whereby we show up in each other's lives randomly, twice a year, to tag each other, and the curse gets passed along. There was this Mexican wrestler with a mask on. We posed for a selfie, and as soon as the picture was taken, the mask came off, and it was my friend Crystal. She tagged me and then disappeared, So he was getting up to people who looked around our age and saying, I'm sorry, is there a party at Mother's? And they'd go, Kay? he looked around the group and apparently everyone was looking distraught and then he saw me at the back and I was smiling I just knew that an adventure was about to happen.

Nick:

So before we get into the episode, a quick word about our latest sponsor. Most of our listeners spend a lot of time traveling the world, staying in hotels or apartments, often where they haven't stayed before. I don't know about you, but whenever I'm choosing a hotel, I like to check out online reviews, or even better, ask friends or colleagues for recommendations. International students face the same uncertainty with their study choices, but the investment that they're making is much greater than the price of a hotel room. They'll be investing in that study destination for years. This is where the Ambassador Platform helps your prospective students. It links them up with your current students to receive honest, personalized advice and to answer any questions that they have. This is a direct and trusted source of information. It provides instant reassurance for students and improved conversion for your university. And it's not just messaging. Your ambassadors can generate their own content and videos to share, showing prospective students from anywhere on the planet what life is really like at your institution. And it gives them confidence and reassurance about their decisions. To find out more about this highly impactful peer to peer platform, or to book a demo with one of the friendly TAP team, please visit the link in the episode notes or go to the ambassadorplatform. com.

now let's get on with the episode

Andy:

welcome to the podcast. Great to have you on. Uh, first question is final boarding call. If you could take our listeners anywhere in the world, where would you take them? And why?

Adam:

I'm hoping you're going to allow me, this destination, I have traveled quite a lot to hundreds of cities in 60 countries, I recently did the maths, across six continents, but there's one place that really stands head and shoulders above everywhere, and it's Lincoln. and I know you have international listeners, so it's international to some people, and it's honestly, I think, one of the most underrated, most beautiful cities in the whole of the UK. I've come armed with reasons why, so don't worry, I'm gonna

Andy:

When you, said Lincoln, I actually thought it was a country that I hadn't heard of. I mean, I'm, just over the river from Lincolnshire, so, uh, sell it to me and Nick.

Adam:

I mean, I get frustrated because places like York and Bath have excellent PR, and they are beautiful places, but next to Lincoln, they look like rancid little hovels, compared to this Beautiful, picturesque city. I mean, send students to York and Bath, and they'll have a great time, but just tell them not to visit Lincoln, because it's like finding a utopia and then being told you have to leave

Andy:

Adam, are you from Lincoln?

Adam:

yes, yes, is that allowed?

Andy:

Absolutely.

Adam:

People don't realise it was the third largest city in the UK at one point, and do you know that Lincoln Cathedral was the tallest building in the world, in the world, for 250 years?

Andy:

Lincoln Shire is a very flat county and then it is pretty much the only hill for miles around and it's got a great big castle and cathedral on top so it does look very impressive.

Adam:

Yeah, that hill that it sits on top of, Steep Hill, that was Street of the Year in 2012. So we've still got a plaque up about that. It was very proud. the biggest sainsbury's in the uk., and you know, Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world, I think, currently, and that's only been the tallest building for, 20 odd years. Nothing really, compared to Lincoln Cathedral, but it's the first time that the MENA region, Middle East and North Africa, has had the tallest building since Lincoln Cathedral overtook the pyramids as the tallest building, and I think 1035 or around there.

Andy:

Wow, you know a lot about tall buildings.

Nick:

Are you extending this out to all of Lincolnshire? We've probably all been to Skegness for our seaside holidays. This is something we all have in common.

Andy:

Ha

Adam:

It's just beautifully bleak. It's just the perfect landscape. And just north there's Donanook. Where all the seals breed. people take their families there thinking it's going to be a beautiful sight, but there's a lot of blood and placenta. It's really messy.

Nick:

and the water is the colour of mud. It's the opposite to tropical paradise,

Andy:

a horizon filled with wind turbines.

Adam:

we were very excited, recently because, J. K. Rowling wrote about it in one of her recent books, so everyone was like, oh, she must have been here. Jeremy from Peepshow is from, Horncastle. And Superhand is from Lincoln the guy that turns on our Christmas lights was in a Batman film once.

Andy:

ha, big names! hanging out in Lincolnshire.

Adam:

What do you need to know about lincoln? Oh, I tell you what come around christmas time first weekend of december. We've got The biggest Christmas market in Europe and that winds the Germans up no end. If you tell them that then they quickly bury themselves in their phone and, and then they come back to you after having proved it to themselves. And they're like, Hmm, okay. Maybe it's the biggest, by no means the

Andy:

Hang on. I think it's, it is no more. Wasn't, wasn't it, it was cancelled, wasn't it? Because it was too popular, too big, too dangerous. Uh,

Adam:

I'm just like myself.

Andy:

It didn't happen this year.

Adam:

It didn't this year. It's been canceled for the first year apart from COVID.

Nick:

Based on safety issues.

Adam:

Too many people coming to Lincoln for it.

Andy:

yeah. Nobody could move through the streets. It was pandemonium.

Adam:

It's a local place for local people. We didn't need too many tourists. Yeah,

Nick:

You've got a really popular attraction. Let's cancel it.

Adam:

I know. It is very sad because it brought in a lot of money to the city and Lincolnshire is a little bit cut off from the rest of the country. It could do with that revenue,

Nick:

For balanced journalism, Lincoln is accused of being very boring.

Adam:

Not boring, there's a lot of Brexiteers, there's a lot of anti vaxxers. There's the largest, consumption of heroin per capita in the UK.

Nick:

really?

Adam:

oh, Salt of the Earth people, lovely, lovely people, they're so genuine, friendly, and will look out for you.

Nick:

The backbone of Britain,

Adam:

we were famous for, having 70 percent Brexit rate in, I think, Boston.

Nick:

Boston was one of those places that a lot of Polish people came to live, this huge division of society between white, old, British people and then a Polish community

Adam:

yeah, my family who don't travel very much and only left Lincolnshire a handful of times to come places like London and never usually out of the country I asked my dad if he would mind reading something other than the Daily Mail in the run up to the Brexit referendum to,, hear some other views and his response was, what's your problem with the mail, you're a communist, and so I thought, you know, We've got too far to go in too short a time, so you can just do what you want.

Nick:

I went to a lecture about a year before the referendum And he showed the tabloids, particularly the Sun newspaper, saying things like, do you want to be ruled by the Germans? They're trying to make our bananas straight, and I just walked away thinking, we're going to leave.

Andy:

We're naturally chaotic beings, so if you've got the opportunity to stay with what you know, that is quite sensible, or, fuck shit up. A lot of people are going to choose to just fuck shit up to see what happens. And that's, uh, that's what we saw

Adam:

That's actually usually one of my mantras. I've got this friend he believes that I love chaos, but I don't I don't necessarily love chaos. I just love when stories happen. I'll never refuse a call to adventure.

Andy:

I know you like biking and running. Nick's also a runner. Tell us a bit about how you've done that internationally.

Adam:

I started doing marathons when I was studying at Loughborough University. I thought, I better get on board with all this sports stuff. So, I ran the New York Marathon for charity. And when I was there, the pastor a carb loading party the night before. I met an old man in Central Park who, was there doing his 100th marathon. So I thought, okay, I'll have to revise my target. I'm gonna do a hundred in my life before I die. But some caveats, they have to all be in different cities, in different countries. I'm gonna try and use it as a way to, because honestly, I don't really like running. It's more about efficient tourism for me. You get to see everything in a city in four hours. You've done it. You've seen all the sites because they do, the routes normally take you around all of the major landmarks. So New York was my first one. And since then I've done London, Rome. Paris, Berlin, Leicester, so all the big ones, um, also one in, uh, Slovakia, an Italian called Kosice, which apparently is the oldest modern marathon in Europe, uh, where else, Florence,

Nick:

You're obviously a very natural runner. how much training are you doing to keep yourself marathon fit?

Adam:

I don't really believe in training I think There's a 5k loop up to Ikea and back near my house that I do fairly often. But other than that, I don't follow a plan or anything.

Nick:

that's 3. 1 miles or something like that. What is your best time in the marathon? What was the Berlin time?

Adam:

The other time was 3 hours 40, so that's great for me. I'm normally around the 4 hour mark. My first one, the one in New York, I read that if you do it in under 4 hours, they'll put your name in the New York Times, they'll do a list of all the finishers. And I finished that race in Four hours and twenty nine seconds,

Nick:

so frustrating.

Andy:

And then also, you like to hop on a bike? Is that because Lincolnshire's flat? Is that how you got into it? Because it was easy to bike around here?

Adam:

D'you know what? I, um, don't like cycling, and I didn't own a bike until a couple of months ago when I bought one to cycle to Rotterdam for the conference.

Andy:

This is what I was leading to. That you cycled to Rotterdam for the EEAIE conference

Adam:

I'm part of this group called CANI, the Climate Action Network in International Education, and so they were trying to encourage people to not fly, to, Take the train or come in a more sustainable way to the conference. And I thought I'll try and go a step further and cycle. So I bought a bike, which I know is counter to the whole sustainability thing, but I will reuse it many times, and I think it was the Pioneer Awards on the Friday night, and then I woke up on the Saturday and just set off to Rotterdam. cycled from London to Har, took a ferry and then cycled from Hook Van Holland to Rotterdam. one of the most. demoralizing moments was when I arrived quite proud of myself having cycled all the way from London and I got to my hotel and I was like I just cycled all the way like a long long time and the lady at reception went well check in's at three so and uh I was sat there in reception for a couple of hours helmet still on just holding on to my penny ears waiting to be allowed to check into my room. No sympathy.

Andy:

a very sore bottom,

Adam:

Everything was in pain by the time I got there, but luckily I had five days to recover at the EAIE conference. And then I hopped on the bike again, up to Amsterdam for ISEF higher education. where, I was doing a panel about the accommodation situation in the UK and then meeting other, university partners and then back on my bike. Cycled home, and I'm glad it's over with, it was pretty tough.

Nick:

Adam, what I'm loving here is you have this mindset that you can just do it. You're just gonna do it. It doesn't really matter. You're just gonna bounce along and it'll all be fine and great and you'll meet some lovely people on the way.

Adam:

think that's why I like it when things go slightly wrong because I always just think that the world will provide like the universe will send us in the right direction and we'll get there eventually and we'll be able to do whatever we want to do. But this is the reason why my friend Jamie, who I mentioned earlier, thinks I love chaos because he always refers to a time when we were in the middle of nowhere in France. And, we'd missed the last bus, back to civilization. And we really were in the middle of nowhere. And he looked around the group and apparently everyone was looking distraught and then he saw me at the back and I was smiling and my eyes were like lit up and he was like, what is wrong with you? Like, what are we going to do now? But I just knew that an adventure was about to happen.

Andy:

That's a great visual. Everyone else is panicking, looking distressed, you turn around and you're looking deranged, with your eyes wide and your head big smile. Yeah, let's go!

Adam:

I remember uh, another friend being annoyed with me once because I'd lied about the last train back because I was having too much fun. Um, actually in Nottingham, and, I was like, don't worry, there's a casino here. I'll win us some money and we'll get a taxi back and this is in student days. So we didn't have that much money and he was like, it doesn't work like that. And the world isn't that simple, but I won so much money that we also got a bottle of Merlot and a box of chicken wings to share in the taxi back and made it back safe and sound. And I remember seeing him in the back of the taxi nibbling away on his chicken wings, being like, I really wanted you to learn a lesson this time. But in hindsight, I'm glad that it did work out.

Nick:

Fortune favors the brave,

Adam:

I'm not a regular in casinos. I've only been in like three in my life, but I always win.

Andy:

the next section is called any laptops, liquids, or sharp objects. And this is where you can dispense some travelers wisdom or travel hacks, that you used in the past.

Adam:

oBviously when I cycled to Rotterdam, I didn't have much space to carry stuff. So I do find that, you can do most trips with hand luggage,

Nick:

If you've got to carry it on a bike, what exactly did you take?

Adam:

I think my backpack might have actually been reserved for laptops and liquids, so I think I just had that in my backpack and then in my panniers on the back of my bike I found that if I folded shirts really small I could fit three shirts in each shoe, so that's six shirts and two shoes, and then the, underwear, trousers, I You know, worst case scenario, you can do some laundry on the go if you're lucky enough to be staying in the same hotel more than one night. One time when this caught me out though, is cause I always travel very light. I was going to Japan. Not a work trip. So I was in Japan for, Two and a half weeks, I got that, the Japan Rail Pass, so I was just gonna travel from city to city, see all the sites. and I met, a girl called Meg at a wedding, the weekend before I was due to go. And she was just so much fun. This was the first time I've met her. We're good friends now. she was a teacher and she had just wrapped up for the summer holidays. So I was like, why don't you come to Japan with me? And she did, and I love spontaneity like that. So she turned up, but I hadn't really briefed her on the activities we were doing. So one of the key things was we were going to do Mount Fuji and she brought this giant shell suitcase, really, really big packed. Very tightly full of a lot of stuff and so we were going up one side and down the other and that was crucial to the itinerary so that we could move on to the next city so we couldn't leave it in a locker or anything so we were like we're gonna have to just take it up over the mountain and so everyone else on the mountain was you know had their platypuses and their hiking backpacks and some of the more serious ones had their poles and we were just dragging this giant shell suitcase up mount fuji and people kept stopping those and pointing and being like what are you doing with that and we were like we're looking for terminal one you Is it this way? in reality we shared the burden, but every time we walked past a checkpoint, I'd give it back to Meg so she could walk past in her sunglasses, just like she's just strolling through a resort in Spain. I was thinking, I do have a post trip ritual that I do. every time I come home from a trip, you've been on the road for a long time, you've been speaking to people everywhere, and you come home and you just want to, lock the door, turn the lights off and order a family bucket of KFC, to yourself, lay out a tarpaulin and just get deep in a family bucket and it just get greasy. That's, um, that's my welcome home treat to myself. Whenever I come home from a recruitment trip, I have a welcome home KFC.

Andy:

Lay out a tarpaulin?

Nick:

I thought this was a euphemism for something else.

Adam:

No, I've got this neighbor called Diego and he's so, good natured. He caught me going out to pick up my family bucket for one and, he, he was like, Oh, where are you going? KFC? I'll join you. I'll eat with you. So I had to have a decoy KFC in the shop with Diego and then get home and order another. bucket so I could do my ritual alone.

Andy:

We met years ago and you told me about an international game that you play with your friends. Do you want to tell our listeners a bit more about what that is?

Adam:

Oh gosh. Okay. I don't know where to start. I'll start with where I met these people. I've got this group of friends. I call them my China friends. none of them are Chinese, but we met in China, on a study abroad in 2010, my final year of my undergrad. We were at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. And we were like, we're all from different universities, though, so how are we going to keep in touch when we move back to the UK, and later on move to different countries to follow our careers? So we read about these guys in the New York Times who've got this game of tag that they play, and we reworked the rules, to work for us. So there's ten of us playing, and we have this international global game of tag, whereby we show up in each other's lives randomly, twice a year, to tag each other, and the curse gets passed along. So, the rules are June and December are the tag months, so each tag opportunity is a window, so June is a tag window, and December is a tag window. if you get tagged in June, you have to wait until December, but then you've got all of December to tag someone else from the group. The only rule is no backseas. So you can't get the person that got you, but you can get any of the other eight people playing the game. And these days, Glenn lives in Saudi Arabia. Georgie, she's, based in, South Carolina. We've got someone in Vietnam. someone was in Australia briefly, but it's now up in Scotland. So we're really all over the world. And so we really have to make the effort to surprise each other.

Andy:

A lot of questions. how did you decide who was it first?

Adam:

um, Glenn volunteered to be it first. And to be honest, the tagging started quite low key. He just turned up at someone's place of work, tagged them, big surprise, in the office, got them, gone. it was Georgie that he got, and she then, six months later, posed as a waiter at a restaurant where we knew our friend Crystal was, going with her then boyfriend. Um, and she just delivered the meal, tagged her, and disappeared. it was Crystal that then first got me. So, I think it was June, it was a June tagging, and a friend of mine who was in on it, said, I really want to go to this wrestling convention, and I thought, that's strange, you've never expressed an interest in wrestling before, but okay, I'll go along. And he was like, Doing a really good job, actually, of pretending to be really excited by all of the famous wrestlers that were there. And I was being a good friend, going along with it, and he was like, oh, let's get a selfie with this one. So there was this Mexican wrestler with a mask on. We posed for a selfie, and as soon as the picture was taken, the mask came off, and it was my friend Crystal. She tagged me and then disappeared, because that is one of the other rules. You can't stick around and chat. Although we rarely see each other, you can't stick around and chat. You've got to disappear as soon as the tag is done.

Andy:

This is brilliant.

Nick:

No way. This is so cool.

Adam:

Then I went on to tag someone, on Christmas day, actually. So I was inside a giant box in my friend Faye's house in Milton Keynes on Christmas day. And I thought that's suspicious, a human sized box. So it'd been delivered two weeks earlier by her sister, who was also in on it. And her father. was said I'll do a photo of the family and on three is when you jump out the box. It's actually going to be a video. on Cue. I jumped out her and her husband and cat posing for a picture. The cat got so scared, it disappeared for three days. but I tagged her and then jumped in a car and drove back to Lincoln. Uh, so yeah, no sticking around. We have another rule, if there's a group gathering, we're all together for the same event, during a tag month, then there's an amnesty. So no one can be got. So, for a whole week of my tag month, which was June, I couldn't get anyone. I was there with them, for the whole time, at this wedding, in Venice, which was beautiful, but the whole time I was thinking, when I get back, I need to get someone, and they're all on high alert. and it got down to the last day, and I thought Everyone's going to be on high alert. So I got several of their partners to send me stalker footage of their other halves so that I could make it look like I was in many parts of the country, keep everyone on their toes. When in reality it was, Cara, I got her husband to take her to Danzler Noir, the dinner in the dark place. And I'd been in touch with the staff who were like, yeah, absolutely come along. we'll make this work. And they just snuck me in, in the pitch black room where they're eating their meal in the dark. They put my arm on her shoulder and I just leaned in and said, I'm afraid you're it and then the waiters led me out of the restaurant. So, um, these days, um, a lot of us have families and stuff so Saqqara then she tagged Faye who's actually the one that I tagged previously as well Faye Uh has two kids and was volunteering at a charity grotto for Christmas. And so it was quite a low key tag Kara turned up dressed as an elf And it was very you could see the shock in Faye's face But she couldn't react because the charity people running the event had said don't be loud because we don't want to scare the children So she just walks in tags her there's no escape and then she leaves

Andy:

It's beautiful, it's so joyful.

Adam:

So it got a bit of attention, at one point, because, we had a BBC News article about it and we were on Australian Breakfast TV, because Georgie, she'd lived in South Carolina, and, someone had tagged her, dressed as the Grim Reaper in like a haunted house thing, hood back, tag, you're it, and then she'd flown around. to Scotland and posed as a gardener at, this guy Drew's, family wedding. It was a big family event. I think it was a christening. the photographer said, could someone ask that gardener to move out of shot? And everyone was in on it. They're like, Drew, you go, you're the nicest. And as he walks over, she pulls off her disguise. She's dressed as Jennifer, the gardener, but it's, it's Georgie. She tags him and then jumps on a plane back to South Carolina.

Nick:

Oh my god, this is so good. has there been any failed tags?

Adam:

Well, you know, if you fail the tag then you're out the group, sadly, and we don't want to lose anyone, so far there's not been any failed tags,, it's worked out. We've even thought about what happens if you die, like a reverse Hunger Games, or a reverse, Battle Royale, because whoever's left is probably it, because if you die, While you're it, you're allowed to leave it to someone in your will, or if you forget, it reverts back to the person that got you. So if you die, you're no longer it, and you're out, and you're safe.

Nick:

And all players are still active. They haven't got partners who are just like, what is this ridiculous game and why are you spending money on this disguise? Let alone the plane ticket.

Adam:

we have a game called, um, for, for partners, for choosing partners for our friends, because it's not really up to them. We have this game called It's Not You, and if we think a partner isn't fun enough, and isn't going to get on board with our games, our silly games, then we, it's not you then, and it discontinues.

Nick:

Oh my god.

Adam:

No, but in reality, everyone's partners are very fun, and, I think we find the sort of people that are also into this sort of ridiculous lifestyle.

Nick:

I have an issue with the word tag because it's an Americanism, isn't it? Yeah. It's Dob, isn't it? From Nottingham.

Andy:

I, I've never heard, I've never heard dog before. That must be a Nottingham thing.

Adam:

I've,

Nick:

Dob, you're it.

Andy:

Tig, you're

Adam:

there are other variations. I guess it's because we copied these Americans that we read about, and so we just Always called it tag. Should we re record? If I could tell one more quick story, a friend of mine, he was going to a medical conference in, Barcelona and I said, Oh, that'll be fine. It will be like in friends when Ross goes to a conference and we all go with you. But I was with my China friends the week before, and I was like, do you want to come to Barcelona? And of course they all did. so they all booked flights and came as well. And we were like, what is the most fun way that we can introduce you to Jamie? because he's not expecting this group of 10 people to come along. So we devised this game, and we said, Jamie, meet us outside Sagrada Familia in the big park opposite. And, Crystal looked the most Spanish. So we gave her this note, and when we saw him, we were all dispersed around the park like a network of spies, and when we saw him come out of the station, she walks up to him and gives, and goes, and gives him this note. And then she wanders off, and the note says, Jamie, ten people in this park know who you are, and they're all here to party with you this weekend. And to activate these sleeper friends, you must go up to them and ask, Is there a party at Mother's? And if they respond with, The party continues till dawn. Then, they are here for you. So he was getting up to people who looked around our age and saying, I'm sorry, is there a party at Mother's? And they'd go, Kay? start finding people. And they'd be like, the party continues till dawn. Because that was all they could say until he'd found everyone in the group, and then just followed him around like chicken licking while he discovered the rest of the group.

Andy:

Brilliant.

Nick:

Life is just one big playground.

Adam:

What is life if not just a giant playground? that's what it should be.

Andy:

the next section of the podcast is called, What's the purpose of your visit? So why do you do what you do, Adam?

Adam:

My grandma always said that there's, three types of jobs. Jobs you do for the money, jobs that you do for fun, and jobs because they're jobs worth doing. And actually I think this might be the, perfect equilibrium. If I wasn't, I'd be a journalist. Because that's what I started my career doing. making documentaries about people who are too fat or have too many kids. And, when I realized that I didn't have enough safety nets in place, I thought, okay, I'll go and get a money job for a bit. I'll do that until I've got enough of a safety net and then I will go back into some more creative pursuits, get back to the documentaries, the journalism. but then I found that In this role, I've got everything. We're widening access to education for people from all over the world, where bringing people to the UK, we're sharing UK values around the world. We're doing great things. I think certainly the fun element, the travel bug was always there. I always wanted to do something that involved travel. And I think that's down to my grandma. I credit her with like raising me for the most part. And, uh, she, she, we never really went abroad when I was growing up, but, when I was older, she had this bit of a breakdown. Apparently. God told her, I'm not religious, but, she was very religious and God told her to go to Nepal, so she just went there, in her, 60s, and just set up a charity, she had a displaced, housing project, she, had an alcoholics anonymous counseling service, domestic violence service, she set up schools, the old church too, So I used to spend my, breaks from university going out there to visit her and working on these projects. And that's what got me interested in, travel and different cultures and different things. So that was, I guess thanks to her.

Andy:

God showed you the way.

Adam:

I was a young friend of Lincoln Cathedral, so I used to spend my Sundays scrubbing statues in the cathedral with a toothbrush, as us young friends did, and as a reward, you were allowed to take home a photocopied passage from the Bible. That was, that was your treat that you could take home.

Nick:

You're a bit like Forrest Gump, dare I say it. small town boy, who loves his mum. And God. You just keep on running and life's like a box of chocolates. You're just literally just rolling from one adventure to the next

Adam:

I think if you're open to adventures and opportunities, things just do happen

Andy:

the last section of the podcast is called anything to declare. It's a free space for you to talk about whatever you want.

Adam:

Currently I'm working for AACC, which is an education agent. They're more famous for sending students to Australia, which they've been doing for 15 years. But more recently, we've been sending a lot more students to the UK. And so I've come from the university side over to working for a student recruitment agency. And often everyone asks me how it is. The agents and the counselors that I'm working with, they care, I think often a lot more about the students that they're looking in the eyes of than the universities to whom they maybe aren't meeting them directly. these people are counseling them as if they're their own siblings and they do care a lot.

Nick:

What does it mean to be a university partner?

Adam:

University partners it's are you going to communicate with your agent? Are you going to turn offers around? invest in events and help us nurture leads, or are you just going to give us a piece of paper and then sit back and assume and wait for all the students to come flooding in? I think some institutions feel like they can, give you a contract and that's a huge favor. And then they can just step back. And I've noticed actually from working with a few European universities lately who are not as au fait with working with agents. I'll sit down opposite them in a meeting, and they'll say, Oh, hi, lovely to meet you. Here's a contract. And I'm like, Oh, it's much more than that. It's the partnership around that. We need to be working together to do something proactively. Um, we can't just sit on these dormant contracts. We need to actually make it happen because you've got your fan favorite universities that are popular in every market, but especially the universities that need to raise their Profile, their reach and reputation actually grow some interest in certain markets. You do need to be proactive and work with the agents.

Andy:

it's very much about partnership and mutual benefit

Adam:

The agent quality framework that's just come out from Brula is. Excellent, actually, because it like helps us identify ways that we can demonstrate what we're doing and how we're meeting all of those commitments and showing that we are in everything for the right reason. And as long as we're applying all of our compliance and all of our, stringent checks to that, then there shouldn't be anything to worry about. But I think there is a bit of a fear around universities at the moment.

Nick:

My experience of agents is that really they care more than anyone about the students welfare and how the student's being supported because their, their own livelihood literally relies on it, their reputation lies on it,, they have to invest so much in that student journey and satisfaction they always want to do a good job. As partners

Andy:

Have you got any stories you want to tell us, Adam, that you

Adam:

This one just came to me it was my friend Nicola's wedding recently and, she, she flashed back to this story it was actually really fun, maybe a bit, um,, uh, inappropriate, basically, we were in Uganda and we were asking around, uh, like, what do we do on weekends? like, Oh my God, you have to come to church. It's like the thing to do on the weekends. Uh, so we found ourselves on a Sunday morning in church and we were listening to all these songs being sung. And then, you know, The horror moment when they say on stage. Oh, we've got two special guests with us at the moment We've got adam and nicola all the way from england come up on stage And so we we come up on stage and they say So you've heard all of our songs from our culture now give us a song from your culture on the spot in that moment I froze and was just like running through my mind different things that I'd learned from being a young friend of Lincoln Cathedral, uh, but before I could even think Nicola launched straight into ignition by R Kelly

Andy:

Ha ha ha!

Adam:

started, hot and fresh out the kitchen all the way across the stage And I just remember looking out over this sea of ugandans that were bopping along to this song and it was, one of the most wildly inappropriate things that, I've ever seen, but I just had to get into it and follow along. Um, and then yeah, she did a, at her wedding, recently, I was, officiating the wedding. So I mentioned this story, and as a reprise in the speeches, she'd reworked a whole song to the tune of Ignition by r Kelly, which was

Nick:

Amazing.

Andy:

Were you thinking it's inappropriate because R. Kelly is now inappropriate?

Adam:

And yeah, also how, respectful is it to sing that in a house of God? even though I'm not religious myself, I still think, Oh, my grandma think she probably wouldn't care.

Andy:

I think just being put on the spot like that,, you can't be held responsible for your actions

Adam:

She was very quick off the mark. I'll give her that.

Andy:

Adam, thanks so much for coming on the podcast, it's been great to have you.

Adam:

It's been really fun, more fun than I thought it was gonna be. No, uh, actually really fun.

Nick:

I feel like we've only scratched the surface.

Andy:

Now run, Forrest, run.

Nick:

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for listening. As always I want to say a massive thank you to the ambassador platform I hope you're enjoying this series.

We have a new social media campaign. People are sending us their travel pictures and we're putting them all up online. Or you can send them to as sick bag tales from the departure lounge.com.

Nick:

Uh, it's really good to be back. and Andy's made a jingle to celebrate. Safe travels.

Andy:

Welcome back, welcome back. Hi mum. Yeah, my wife, thanks, good to be home. Nah, jet lag's okay actually, just a bit tired. Oh, don't kiss me in public. What's for tea anyway?

Nick:

Tales from the Departure Lounge is a type nine production for the pie.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Andy Plant

Host
Head Shot

Nick Cuthbert

Host