Táithí gan Terrain is the name of a new mini series on TG4, in which “Irish chefs, farmers, nurses and fashionistas are forced out of their comfort zone as they try out their jobs in foreign climes”.

It started tonight and featured Cian (Pádraig’s good friend and celebrity chef) and Pádraig (another Pádraig, one from Galway and also a chef).

Over a week, the two lads travelled around a handful of locations in India, temples, villages, towns, huge cities. They found that, even in an overcrowded home for kids, the kids were happy, and they wondered why people on Grafton Street didn’t have that same lovely smile on their face as the family working their self-sustaining farm in the middle of nowhere.

The programme turned out to be a fraud.

Because it wasn’t about India at all. It was about us.

It was a reflection on our culture and society where we are all so busy that we have very little time to look out for one another, or: just to be happy with what we have  and who we are. It made us think about our world where two of the most popular resolutions for the new year are, every year again, to loose weight and to de-clutter.

Both Cian and fellow chef Pádraig (the one from Galway) repeatedly said they’d never in their lives forget this trip and the opportunity to share some of the happiness of some of the poorest people on the planet.

The focus is on us, the ‘rich’. Not on them, the ‘poor’. It’s us who’ll have to change. Not them

Otherwise we’ll continue to live on Mars. And from time to time take a week out to go and visit the poor – wondering why they are so much happier than us; when we are so much ‘richer’ and they are so much ‘poorer’.

Although I’m feeling much better, I’m still trying not to get to near Pádraig and the rest of the family. Can’t wait to get better. Can’t wait to start ‘living’ with the rest of the family and, especially, Pádraig again. Feels like ages that we spent time together.