My name is Michael Kinghorn, I am 24 years old and I am currently living and studying in Kissimmee, Florida, at Orlando Flight Training, working towards becoming an airline pilot. I have been in Florida since 31 January 2009 and will complete my training in January 2010, by which time, I hope to return home to find work. My hometown is Winnersh in the United Kingdom, which is about 5 miles east of Reading. For those unfamiliar with the area, you can find the town about 30 miles west of the centre of London. Whilst in Florida, I am living in a house at Bella Vida, Kissimmee. Whilst we do not have our own pool, the communal facilities are fantastic; swimming pool, hot tub, TV room, internet cafe, gymnasium and more. Not surprisingly, this attractive complex welcomes a number of holidaymakers all year round.

My background does not relate to aviation. In fact, I have had a handful of jobs - some good, others not so good - in an assortment of industries. Prior to coming to Florida, I worked for Barclays Commercial as a Servicing Executive in Reading, Berkshire. I spent almost two years in the role and thoroughly enjoyed it, working alongside a good team of people and dealing with the same customers on a daily basis, most of whom I got to know really well during my time there. The role involved working with customers, mostly solicitors, dealing with their day-to-day banking queries and opening and closing numerous client accounts for them each day. I left the bank in January 2009, a week before leaving for Florida, and I was sad to be leaving. If I had not been so passionate about flying, it would definitely have been a career.

I finished my GCSEs at the age of sixteen and picked up nine of the things with average grades. Like so many others, I was not sure what to do next. Should I go to college, stay at school for sixth form or get into the real world and find a job? It made sense to stay on at school - The Forest School - and I studied for A Levels in Media Studies, Photography and Information Technology, finishing two years later at the age of eighteen, and again with some average grades. In the months leading up to the end of the A Levels, just about every other student was making arrangements for university, but university really had no appeal to me. Time was running out and I was still not sure what to do next! Not too long after getting my results, I looked into degrees in the local area and came across the Moving Image course offered by Reading College - later taken over by Thames Valley University (TVU).

I started my two year course - a Higher National Diploma (HND) - in September 2003 and really enjoyed it, in particular, the practical work. We learnt the basics of film-making and then went on to make some half decent films as the course progressed. This experience opened my eyes to just how hard and long-winded the film-making is. It takes forever to write a film, just as long to shoot it and then even longer in the edit suite! Most of the projects I worked on were ten minutes or so in length, and they would take a four/five man team around three months to put together. When the course ended in June 2005, we were given the option to turn our foundation degrees into Bachelor degrees, which I decided was a sensible option, even if the the final year was about 70% theory! I graduated in June 2006 but decided not to pursue a career in the industry.

I was one of many students who had just come out of university without any clue as to what was next. I was still working at TK Maxx in Reading by this time and I had been there since April 2001. My part-time job in a department store had lasted five years and two months and it was about to come to an end. I had to find myself a full time job, and fast! I started at TK Maxx at the age of fifteen, working as a 'Sales Associate' and doing everything that you might expect a shop assistant to do; working on the tills, working on the fitting rooms and working on the shop floors. A year later, I became a Front Line Manager, looking after the tills and the customer service counter and dealing with customers dissatisfied for all sorts of reasons. I did briefly return to TK Maxx over the Christmas 2007 period to supplement my income from the bank, though this was only for two months.

My first full time job after leaving the bank was at Synstar (or HP CDS) in Wokingham, Berkshire. Running out of money and with no other jobs on offer, I had to accept it and I started in August 2006. The work was mind-numbing and it was a call centre. Although this was a career for some, it was not a career for me. Surely, with 16 years of education behind me, I could get better than a job paying just £14,000 a year.

Whilst working for Synstar, I was approached by a UK-based agency offering English-teaching positions in Tokyo, Japan. One of my biggest passions is travel, especially to Asia, so this seemed like a very attractive offer and I was keen to find out more. The working week was in the region of thirty hours, accommodation was provided and so was a London to Tokyo flight. With a mere £500 being paid monthly, I had to rule the idea out. Japan is not cheap and £500 was never going to be enough to live on each month! After a little more research into TEFL/TESL, I stumbled across South Korea, again in Asia. I knew nothing of the country, its people or its culture, but the perks were the same as Japan and the salary more than doubled. I went for it and was quickly assigned to a school in one of the poorer cities in Korea - Gwangju - about 150 miles south of the capital, Seoul. I left Synstar, took a quick holiday in Thailand, returned to the UK and then headed off to Korea just five days later.

The director of the school picked me up from the local airport late on a Saturday night and took me to my private apartment that I had read so much about. As we moved further away from the airport in his car, the area seemed to get grubbier, and I already started to have doubts about Korea! We pulled into a dark and narrow side-street and stopped outside a small block of flats. I grabbed my suitcase and was led into the building, up three flights of stairs and then to my apartment. The door was the most unsightly metal thing - like something you would see in a prison or somewhere equally as disgusting - without a single window in it. We entered the dingy apartment and exchanged telephone numbers before the director left. Looking around, I was disappointed. This was a very small studio apartment, it was damp, dirty and cold, and the bed sheets looked disgusting. Despite being exhausted after many hours of travel, I could not get to bed because I had to wash the sheets. Sleeping on the hard floor was not an option because that too was disgusting.

The school was about as exciting as the apartment - not very - and I soon grew to hate the place. The Korean teaching staff were great and very supportive towards me but the children were impossible to teach, especially without the assistance of a Korean member of staff, and they stole from me on several occasions. I one day walked into the staff room to find one brat rifling through my drawers looking for stuff to steal and quickly reported him to the most senior person I could find. To my horror, the child was beaten by one of the teachers, and I felt a little guilty. I seriously had to consider my future at the school. With Christmas coming up, I booked a flight home for a week and got out of Korea. On New Year's Eve, I was dropped off at Heathrow Airport for the long flight back to Seoul but did not want to go. I knew I hated the place, the school and the apartment, so it seemed pointless getting on the plane, but stupidly, I did. Ten days after arriving back in Korea, I was stolen from again, and that was the final straw. I was not enjoying being at the school, I despised a number of the children, my apartment seldom had hot water and heating (not ideal when the night-time temperature dipped to -15C) and the city of Gwangju was a dump. I made a quick call home and told my parents that I had had enough of Korea and that I was coming home. I booked a flight and discreetly left one Friday night without telling anybody of my plans. My last lesson finished at 6.00pm so I emptied my drawers and my pencil pot, bagged up my slippers (shoes could not be worn in the school) and made the one-mile dash home. I shoved my last items of clothing into my suitcase and ran into the street to hail a taxi. By 8.00pm, I was on a flight to Seoul, and the following morning, I was London-bound. It was the best feeling in the world! Upon returning home, the job search began and that is when I found Barclays, which was more of a success than Korea!

My biggest passion, alongside flying, is travel. Before coming to Florida, I used to take a handful of holidays each year. It was in 2003 that I found my new favourite destination in the world and that was Thailand, and so, I have visited at least once a year since then, taking in the sights of Bangkok and some of the country's beach resorts, including Phi-Phi and Phuket, two islands battered by the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. I also thoroughly enjoy photography and own a Canon EOS 400D camera and writing, hence the website. In my spare time in Florida, I like to fly all over the state, building hours and discovering new places every time.

I am now working towards my FAA Instrument Rating having just sat and passed my final ATPL exams. The ATPL was a hectic 6-month long course, which required us to study for fourteen subjects and then sit an exam in each, achieving a score of at least 75% in each. I was pleased to have failed only two of the fourteen exams - Instrumentation at 71% and Meteorology at 70%. After much study, I re-took the exams and came away with 87% and 90% respectively. Overall, my scores ranged from 78% to 100% and my average grade worked out to be a respectable 90%. All that remains is for me to complete my Instrument Rating and my Commercial before heading home.