I am a 24 year old Engineer, graduated from Oxford, originally from London but now working in Nairobi Kenya.  I am looking for interesting penpals to talk about history, politics, current affairs, sport, religion; anything interesting and stimulating.​  Willing to tell you about Kenyan life and culture, could have a shot at teaching you Swahili.   Drop me a line and let's have some fun exchanges.  No requests for money please, and no requests for my bank details or anything like that: I don't answer those.  Oh, I'd better explain the serious looking photo.  The guys in the office needed a photo of an engineer hard at work for a mag and I drew the short straw, I don't normally look like this!

Happy to hear from anyone, anywhere as long as you are willing for serious and fun exchanges (though to be honest I have a lot of Korean penpals so prefer people from other parts).  Feel free to PM me but please say something more than hey or hi.  A little bit about yourself would be great.

Reading history, politics, science; wildlife, esp birds; travelling; current affairs; messing around with mechanical stuff.

Don't like a lot of rock, can't stand rap and hip hop.  80s stuff is fine (they play lots of it on the radio here), soul, some jazz; love classical, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin are favourites, some Gilbert and Sullivan.

Carey Grant stuff, rather like Hitchcock, some Kathryn Hepburn, all Audrey Hepburn.  Some modern stuff is ok, don't like violence.

I don't watch TV in Kenya, its all American and Spanish soaps.  It seems all the soaps have the same actors and same story-line.  The only difference is that the Spaniards wave their hands around a lot more than the Americans when speaking.

History: Giles Milton and A.J. Roberts are favourites.  Politics and current affairs: like stuff by Robert Fisk.  Classics: Shakespeare (not Hamlet, too much angst), some Austen, Jerome K. Jerome, Dickens, Kipling's poems.

Philosophy quote: "There never was a philosopher who could endure the toothache"​ William Shakespeare.​  I like it as, like Shakespeare,​ I have a deep-seated suspicion that philosophers​ are actually practical jokers who are trying to take the rest of us on a ride.

Engineering quote: "To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail" (Mark Twain).  The remarkable thing is that in engineering every problem IS a nail!!