He is retained as a Senior Consultant by Capital Communications, the leading corporate and financial communications agency, and lives in central Budapest in an apartment almost next door to Parliament.

Paul is an avid user of Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media. He blogs at paulstjohnmackintosh.com and Tweets @pstjmack. He speaks French and Japanese, and is working on his German and Hungarian. He is also official clan poet of the Clan Mackintosh.

1. When did you arrive in Hungary and what brought you here?
I arrived in spring 2011 with my Hungarian wife and our two beautiful daughters, to move into a country place in Piliscsaba - though since then we've all moved into the capital. We came for a better education for the kids than where we were - Hong Kong - and the far deeper and richer natural and cultural environment, the beauty of natural and made or built things that you just don't find to anything like the same degree in Asia.

2. Have you ever been an expatriate elsewhere?
Yes: I lived for 12 years in Hong Kong and moved straight from there to Hungary with no breaks in the UK, or anywhere else. I've travelled to most places in Asia, and still keep up old ties and working relationships there. These days I find it hard to imagine moving back to the UK - though I still long to visit. Life in just one country and culture is just too limiting in today's globalized world, with all the rich diversity of human experience around you.

3. What surprised you most about Hungary?
The sheer beauty and grandeur of the place. Buda Castle district and the Danube Bend near Visegrad are simply awe-inspiring by any standards. And the countryside, especially around the Pilis Hills, is both lovely and amazingly unspoilt.

4. Friends are in Budapest for a weekend - what must they absolutely see and do?
Walk across the Chain Bridge and take the funicular or hillside lanes up to the Castle. Take the Number One metro line from Vorosmarty Square or the Opera to Heroes' Square, then walk through the park to Vajdahunyad Castle. Ride the tram along the Danube to the Central Market and grab a grilled sausage on the upper floor. Hang out in the Basilica piazza. Try to take in a chamber concert at the Liszt Academy. Finish off by partying at Szimpla, Instant or another ruin pub.

5. What is your favourite Hungarian food?
Chicken porkolt with noodles, preferably washed down by a good Villany. Nothing beats a good heartening mix of paprika and sour cream.

6. What is never missing from your refrigerator?
Milk. In fact I eat out a lot so there is rarely food in there. But there's almost always a bottle of Hungarian wine open * on * my fridge.

7. What is your favourite Hungarian word?
Bögre (mug). It is such a richly descriptive word, it sums up the flavour of Hungarian for me.

8. What do you miss the most from home?
English literature, English music and British culture all around me. That and the family home in Hampshire.

9. What career other than yours would you love to pursue?
A venture capitalist or private equity investor.

10. What's a job you would definitely never want?
Censor.

11. Where did you spend your last vacation?
It's so long since I last had a non-working trip, I can hardly remember. Last holiday for pleasure was Christmas 2011 with my parents near Winchester. Last working trip was to Kuala Lumpur.

12. Where do you hope to spend your next one?
I have good Japanese (thanks to a Japanese first wife) and I'd love to get out into the Japanese countryside again. That or Bali.

13. What was your favourite band, film, or hobby as a teen?
Reading and writing. Still is.

14. Apart of temptation what can't you resist?
A good conversation with a beautiful woman.

15. Red wine or white?
White - my usual clubbing tipple.

16. Book or movie?
Book: I love movies, but I live in and through books.

17. Morning person or night person?
Night person: I don't have a problem getting up in the morning, but I live by night.

18. Which social issue do you feel most strongly about?
Accountability: people and especially politicians and businesspeople being held to account for what they do. I detest the cynicism of leaders and magnates who believe the public are sheep to be herded and fleeced.

19. Buda side or Pest side?
I live on Pest side, but I'm constantly drawn by the hills and lanes of old Buda.

20. What would you say is your personal motto?
The clan motto: 'Touch not the cat bot a glove.' It goes under an image of a rampant snarling wildcat on the Mackintosh clan badge, and it means: mess with me at your own risk.