Tag: blog

Get To Know Me Q&A

by patrickmungovan, posted in Lifestyle
  • Hi guys, I decided to post a questions box on Instagram to let you ask me questions that you want answered! Thank you to everyone for the questions, I have narrowed it down to 20 as I’d be here all day trying to answer them all! Here we go…

    • 1. How many countries have you been to? Seven

    2. Did you go to college? I studied tourism and business in GMIT but I hated it so I didn’t finish it. I went on to join Profi Fitness School in Dublin where I completed my aqua fitness courses. Personally I think it’s a very hard decision trying to decide what to do after secondary school, I hadn’t a clue what I wanted so I ended up doing a course that I had no interest in. Take your time deciding and even take a year out of it helps you decide your college course or career for the future.

    3. Do you have any goals for the next few years? I’m not sure to be honest, things have been going great for me in 2019 so far so hopefully it’ll stay that way!

    4. Which is more important, quantity of friends or quality? Well for me this is an easy one to answer, 100% quality! It’s easy have 100 friends but the real ones are the ones who are always there for you through thick and thin. I’ve realized this a lot over the past few years and I am lucky to have a small group of great friends.

    5. Your favorite holiday? It would have to be when I visited my brother Declan in California. We flew into San Francisco and hired a car and traveled all the way down through California by the coast!

    6. Cat or dog? Dog

    7. How are you getting on working with Spin South West? I’m getting on great, I’ve always wanted to be a SPINI and I really love meeting new people and seeing new places.

    8. How many pairs of shoes do you have? Haha I knew this would be asked, to be honest I have more pairs still in boxes than what I wear! I’d say I have about 15 pairs altogether.

    9. Can you play an instrument? Yes, I played the tin whistle for about 6 years. I can also play the piano and fiddle.

    10. What’s your favorite accent to hear? I’ll have to say the Australian accent.

    11. I want to be a swimming instructor, would you recommend it? Yes I love working as a swimming instructor. I have been teaching lessons almost 8 years now and it’s very rewarding when I teach a child or adult to swim and seeing them so happy makes it all worth it!

    12. How tall are you? I am 6 foot tall.

    13. Do you prefer iPhone or Android? I prefer iPhone. I’m currently using the iPhone XS Max and I love it.

    14. What’s your date of birth? 11 September 1995.

    15. Tips for starting a blog? Just go for it! Write what you want to and the most important thing is that you enjoy it. I based my blog on WordPress which I find very easy to use, feel free to email me if you need any help with it!

    16. Your favorite food? Chicken.

    17. What is your favorite place in Europe? My favorite is Poland. I was there for a week in 2016 and it was such a lovely country and so much to do. We visited the salt mines and the concentration camp which were both very interesting to see.

    18. Which clothing brand do you prefer? When I’m not in swimming togs or wearing my Spin South West uniform, I’m more than like wearing a SuperDry or Diesel hoodie!

    19. What did you want to be when you were a child? I wanted to be a customs officer. I think it’s such a cool job and very interesting. There’s always different things to do every day and I would love that challenge.

    20. What camera do you use? I have the Canon EOS 750D. I got it in Harvey Norman and it’s one of my favorite gadgets that I always use.

    Thanks for reading! 🙂

    Fat free 3in1

    by patrickmungovan, posted in Food

    Heya, I love a 3in1 from the Chinese but as I’m following a fitness plan, I won’t be visiting the Chinese any time soon! I decided to make my own, which is just as good and is basically fat free. I started off by getting my ingredients ready:

    1. Boil in the bag basmati rice
    2. Unislim rustic cut chips
    3. Mayflower medium curry sauce mix

    I started by boiling a bag of this rice for 10-12 minutes. I used this basmati rice as it has very low sugars and saturated fat. 0.1g to be exact. While this was cooking, I prepared the chips.

    I used these unislim chips as they also have very low saturated fat content. I placed the chips into the airfryer and set it for 17 minutes. The next thing I did was to cook 2 eggs in a frying pan and then add in the cooked rice and mix it together.

    I cooked the curry by adding 2 tablespoons of powder to a sauce pan and adding enough water until I was happy with the texture of it. This curry tastes even better than the Chinese curry, it has to be tried to be believed. It’s amazing! 😍 Let the curry simmer for a few minutes while placing the rice and chips onto a plate. When you are ready, pour the curry over the rice and chips together, and enjoy! 😍

    Start of my fitness journey

    by patrickmungovan, posted in Lifestyle

    It’s that time of year again for me to start exercising and cutting out rubbish food. For those of you who know me, I usually go on about 4 diets a year with each one only lasting for a couple of days normally. The reason these diets don’t work for me are because once I start the diet, I stop eating everything that I would normally eat, and concentrate mostly on eggs, beans, fruit, and vegetables. I now realise that this is the wrong thing to do, and the trick is to cut out these bad foods one at a time instead of going crazy and giving them all up together.

    Now I will admit, I’m not a big fan of exercise. To be very honest, I hate it! Even the thought of going exercising is enough for me to stay sitting on the couch eating a share bag of doritos 😂

    The part that I find most important for anything is to get all the correct gear before you start! I started off by getting myself a triathlon watch(I know, it’s probably a waste). I bought the Garmin 920XT after getting recommendations from a couple of people I know in my local triathlon club. The main reason I got this watch is because it can track your swimming, and as I am a swimming instructor, I can spend a lot of time in the water! I like this watch because it connects to your phone via Bluetooth so you can keep records of how you are getting on, and it also shows you notifications such as new text messages, new snapchats, straight to your watch ⌚️


    The only thing about this watch is that is it quite expensive! So far I’m loving this watch, and I am constantly checking it to see how many steps I have walked so far each day 😂

    The next thing I had to get for my fitness journey was a nice pair of shoes. I have my wardrobe full of shoes at this stage, many of which are still in boxes! 😅 I decided to get these Nike runners, mostly because I liked the colour of them as they are very bright so they will stand out. The only thing I will say about getting new shoes is that you ‘break them in’ before setting off walking or running. I didn’t realise I had to do this the first time I used them and I came home with my two heels all cut and blistered. This caused me a lot of discomfort while walking around the house afterwards.


    So anyways, back to the fitness part again, I downloaded an application to my phone called ‘MapMyRun’ which you can use if you do not have a watch to do it for you. This app uses your GPS location to find out where you start your walk from and shows you the route that you walked on a map, as shown below:

    Day 1: For my first walk, I went with a few friends to make it easier and the time goes a lot faster when you have someone to talk to, rather than walking alone. We set off on our hike with all the gear ready to go. We decided to take t handy for the first day, as I didn’t want to be getting any cramps or anything that would turn me off the idea of exercising again 😅 The walk took 55:21 minutes and we walked a distance of 5.43 kilometres. I know this was rather slow, but I was delighted for my first time walking this distance ever 😇


    When I came home, i was staving. Instead of eating a bag of crisps, I decided I would cook scrambled eggs and baked beans as they are a lot healthier than anything else I would usually eat! I am going to continue this walk and try to walk a bit faster and a bit longer each day. If you would like to see more updates of my journey, you can follow me on Snapchat @patrickmungovan and we will work through this together 😊 You can let me know if you have any tips or suggestions 👍🏽

    Day 2: The second day of my fitness journey went great. I had pasta for my dinner, no chocolate and no crisps. This was a huge success for me as I eat all these rubbish foods on a daily basis. I went for my walk again with friends. We did the same route as the previous day but just made it a small bit longer today. Today we walked 5.66 kilometres in 1:00:37 hours long. My feet were a bit sore today from the blisters I had on the backs of my heels, but nothing that a few plasters wouldn’t sort!

    Useful iPhone tip 

    by patrickmungovan, posted in Lifestyle

    Hey everyone, hope you all had a great and enjoyable bank holiday weekend! So today I just wanted to share this iPhone tip with you that I think is extremely handy and important. I went out with my friends last Friday night for a few drinks and we are always messing with each other’s phones to try and guess the pin code to gain access.


    I picked up my friends iPhone but it would not unlock because my finger print hadn’t been set up to work on his phone. It was just then that this idea came about.
    I let my three friends set up their fingerprints on my iPhone 7+ so that, god forbid, if anything ever happened to me when I was out or if there was ever a problem that they needed to use my phone in an emergency, then they would be able to access it to contact someone. We then all passed our phones around one by one to set this up for each other. I know that on the iPhone you can have up to 5 fingerprints added at one time, I’m not too sure how many for a Samsung. I just said I would share this with you all as a small tip that could come in very useful for someone. At least by using the fingerprint scanner, the phone is still fully secure if it was lost or found by a stranger.

    To set this up on an iPhone:

    1. Settings
    2. Touch ID & Passcode
    3. Fingerprints
    4. Add a fingerprint


    A bit about myself

    by patrickmungovan, posted in Lifestyle

    So for my first blog post, I will tell you about myself and where I’m from. As you know, my name is Patrick Mungovan and I come from the countryside of county Clare. I am 21 years of age. I have always had a big interest in social media and computers since I was a young age. I spend most of my day on my phone scrolling through Facebook or sending pictures on Snapchat, I usually post a photo or two on instagram every now and then 😎 I love to snapchat, I use it constantly throughout my day. You can follow me on snapchat using my snapcode:


    I am the youngest in my family. I have two older sisters Majella and Jennifer, and an older brother Declan. I also had a twin brother Stephen and an older brother Michael but unfortunately they have both passed away due to unrelated tragic accidents. I live with my parents, Danny and Geraldine who run our family owned business Quilty Holiday Cottages. My parents own 32 holiday homes along the wild Atlantic way. Our holiday homes are overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, with breathtaking views of the sea, without even having to leave the house! Spanish point is just across the bay.


    I am a self employed swimming instructor and lifeguard. I work from home, in our private swimming pool which is based onsite at our holiday home complex. I work with my sister Jennifer and we teach swimming to the local kids and schools in the area. I enjoy my job, it’s great to see the kids looking so happy when they learn something new!


    Thank you all for reading my first blog post and I already look forward to writing my next post!