April

Not much has changed since my last post, hence the quiet interlude. I’m still working in a Cookshop, working from day to day until I go travelling. I was recently asked to also go and set up a new store in Wells (Somerset somewhere) and go and set up their stockroom over the course of a week. So if that goes ahead, I’ll be off at the end of this month for a week to do some back-breaking work. Organising our stockroom when we first opened shop was tough work but it’ll be nice to have some more responsibility. Chances are that we’ll be doing 10+ hour days to get the job done on time. Either way, it’ll be something to break the monotony of day to day retail work.

In other news, I visited Imperial the other week to learn a bit more about the course and life at Imperial. It was good to get the chance to meet current students there and really get a feel for the place. If it’s one thing that I’ve learnt it’s that there is going to be a hell of a lot of work. That’ll be fine once I figure out a routine and get into the habit of doing things. The one thing that I’m trying to figure out at the moment is how to take lecture notes? I know that it sounds strange but just think about it for a minute. Do you note down what the lecturer is saying, what he’s writing or what is on the Powerpoint slide?? Ideas anyone? It’ll probably be some combination of the above with some time spent afterwards tidying up and adding to my notes. Then there’s the question of whether I’ll be using paper or a computer for note-taking. I’ve always been a paper sort of guy myself but if I go down the paper route, will I end up bathing in notes by the end of term – how does one even begin to organise all of that for revision? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Just some food for thought.

PEACE.

Listening to: FLY-BY ALIEN – VANT

^ One of the coolest songs of the year. Has a real Scott Pilgrim (the film) feel to it, maybe it’s the visuals and American rock vibe.

But can you speak Spanish?

That’s right, the language learning journey has begun! As of a few weeks ago, I began relearning Spanish in preparation for my travels to South America. I think that even a basic knowledge of Spanish will be fab to have and will make my trip that much more enjoyable. It’ll also be of great help at the South American airports for flights and whatnot.

Some of you may have heard of Rosetta Stone but if not, it is a language learning tool designed for use on computers and it has a very specific (almost unique) way of trying to teach you a language. The application teaches by use of no English whatsoever, the whole course is in Spanish and is designed to work much like the way that you would learn a language whilst being immersed in a culture that speaks no English, and only the language that you are trying to learn. It’s actually quite tough, trying to figure out the English by inference alone (comparing the phrases to pictures), but I think that it might be working?? I’m following the Speaking and Listening course and I can sort of figure stuff out without looking at the words, but Spanish people do speak really fast tbf – they do not make it easy. so maybe by the time I’m ready to depart, in a few months, I’ll be half-fluent, if even such a thing exists. The best bit about this application is that every exercise involves a Spanish person speaking some text and so you quickly get used to how they speak, hence, it is probably one of the most ‘real’ ways to practise a language.

But if you were ever looking to learn a new language, I would definitely recommend Rosetta Stone, but I imagine that a combination of this application and wrote learning (to learn lists of words) would be the best way for to learn a language.

Do I smell proline?

Didn’t see this one coming.

As of a few days ago, student finance for 2016 entry went online and so I began the application for my drinking fund (I only joke) recently. You have to enter in a lot of details about your financial situation and your chosen university course, and whilst I was double-checking everything, I logged onto UCAS Track (a place where you can check up on your university application) to find my course number. Lo and behold, my course had been changed from Biological Sciences to Biochemistry almost a MONTH ago, haha.

I don’t know if you’ve been following my application but I wanted to switch to the Biochemistry course at Imperial College and I had rang a while ago to inquire about this. With all this time gone by and no email I had just assumed that it was a no-go! But the gods have been kind!

Day = made.

BTW: Proline is an amino acid encase you were wondering.

Flights Confirmed

Finally booked the rest of my flights for my trip and it looks like I’m going to have a whale of a time. I think in total that there are 7 different flights for my trip, pretty cool ‘eh? At least the layovers will give me some time to do some reading, my carry-on luggage is just going to be books by the looks of it. I’ll also need a sleeping bag for the 10 hour layover in Ecuador (plz help me). The reason being is that every flight to GYE (Ecuador) gets into the airport late at night or very early in the morning, and the Galapagos flights tend to be midday, hence the huge layover time. As it turns out, most people travelling to the Galapagos end up sleeping at that airport before departure, ha! You’re probably wondering why I’m not spending the morning in hotel – one: expense; two: too dangerous. Ecuador can be a dangerous place at times, so best not risk being kidnapped (#traveladvice101).

I also decided than Miami isn’t a particularly interesting place to visit – lounging around on the beach isn’t my sort of thing, so I’m off to New York for a bit instead. I have been there before but I want to go and see some of the sights again, plus they have a rad drum shop in Times Square, so wouldn’t want to go to New York??

Why Relativity Should Matter to You

 

Some of you might have heard in the news recently about the discovery of gravitational waves and how this is the discovery of the century. I’m here to tell you why all this matters.

The complicated looking equation above is what governs you, me and the rest of the universe (thereabouts). This was Einstein’s revelation that changed the way that we now think about how the universe works. Over the past few months I have spent my lunch breaks at work reading about Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, so that I can really understand how the universe works at one of its most fundamental levels. It has been a very long journey to understanding this equation and the mathematics involved is pretty hard-going. Through the help of an absolutely fabulous book titled “A Most Incomprehensible Thing” and about 200 pages of mathematical ground work, I have finally come to admire the ingenuity of Einstein’s infamous field equation. When people think of Einstein they think of E = mc ² but really the above equation is what made Einstein the man that he is today.

This is the equation that gave us accurate GPS, the Apollo Missions and awesome movies like Interstellar. It’s also the equation that describes black holes and gravitational waves, and tells us how to time travel (gravitational time dilation). Just to note, the discovery of gravitational waves further proves the success of Einstein’s field equation, i.e. they were predicted to exist from the equation.

And the craziest thing about this is that we, as the human race, are able describe the workings of the universe with some made-up symbols that would have no meaning to any other beings in any universe. Literally just a set of symbols describing our existence. An equation that describes how the planets were assembled, how stars were formed and how the fabric of spacetime is BUILT. Is there anything more awe-inspiring?

And to top all of this off, this equation was the result of one man’s mind, one man’s interpretation of how space and time are knitted from the same fabric. (Please bear in mind that he did have a bit of help along the way, especially with the maths. A genius nonetheless).

Although the theory of general relativity doesn’t quite explain the universe in its entirety (see Quantum Gravity), just imagine what the next step for humanity will be, with the collective minds of physics working together to find a theory for everything, using Einstein’s field equation as a stepping stone.

Trailblazers and Beyond

Blogging is hard. When I say that, what I really mean is that it is tough to keep up momentum – as is apparent by my lack of blogging recently.

SO. Let me fill you all in. Cambridge was a no-go. I did not make the cut, even though the interviews went surprisingly well. As disappointing as it sounds I am still really excited to be going to Imperial to do study Biological Sciences, like really f****in excited. It’s a fantastic university and I will happily settle for 8th in the world lol. Saying that, I did recently reach out to the admissions team asking if I could switch from Biological Sciences to Biochemistry because of the greater focus on all that lovely molecular biology, but I haven’t received a reply from them in over 3 weeks. I did speak to them over the phone about it and they said that the biochem’ course was filled up and that my request had been passed on to the head of biochem’ admissions. That being said, I would happily study on either course, they’re both extremely similar and lead to basically the same profession!

In other news, I finally got my travel plans sorted.

Probably tough to know from the photo, but that’s the Galapagos Islands. THE Galapagos Islands. The place where Darwin travelled and did all the sciency stuff with the Finches, you know evolution and all that? So I figured that having all this time to travel somewhere that I should probably go somewhere that I’ll probably never get to travel to again, hence the isolated islands off of the coast of Ecuador. I plan to go for 2 months to do some conservation and work with the wildlife over there. The cool thing about the wildlife over there is that it’s not too scared of you because of the limited human contact, so I should be able to get up close and personal with it! The I’m looking at visiting Miami on the way back because of how the flights and layovers are going to work. TALKING about flights, it is going to be one hell of a journey getting over there; three different airlines and about 30 hours of travelling, with a 10 hour layover in Ecuador. Plz. Help. Me.

That is all I have for you for now, but stay tuned for sweet new House of Cards posts and general TV antics.

And as I always remind myself, the universe always has a plan.

PEACE.

May the Interview Gods Have Mercy

Cambridge interview date confirmed and it’s exactly 3 weeks from now.

Honestly, I’m not really sure of what to expect. There are 2 interviews in total with a 30 minute prep for the first one and all in all it should take about two and a half hours to complete, gulp. I don’t think that any amount of interview practise is going to prepare me for what I’m going to be asked, it is definitely going to be something a bit out of the box. AND, that 30 min prep is for the first interview which is meant to to be a maths interview, lol what? It has to be either chemical maths or just maths, but either way it should be interesting.

I have begun some interview preparation, i.e. reading my chemistry notes and re-reading chapters of books relevant to my personal statement, and making notes on a few bits here and there. Aside from that, I have another practice interview lined up for this Friday and then hopefully another one in week or two, too much? I can’t wait until it’s over. I will be able to start reading all the other books I have on my list (don’t want to start now and cram my head with too much information) and continue with some of my projects that I’m yet to finish.

I also have some exciting news about a new project that I want to start in my gap year, stay tuned as you may well be super interested. All I can say for now is that it will be open to the public, ’nuff said. Still working out the fine details of it.

The Blogger Returns

Hey there. Been a little quiet on my blog lately so here is a well deserved update. I can’t remember where we left off, but I imagine it was before or during training for my new job. Training is now complete, it was pretty full-on and involved lots of product demos, till training and sales practise. After 2 weeks of training, I then spent a week helping set up shop and boy was there a lot of stock to move. Our stockroom is so tough to navigate with all the stock in it! :s Anyhow, our opening day was the Saturday just gone and it went really well. It was really busy, people were loving the free coffee and cake and we sold a really expensive coffee machine 😀 #win

Enough of the boring work stuff. I recently travelled down to Cambridge with my uncle to have a look around and get a feel for the college that I’ve applied for. We spent the first morning there on a tour around the Cavendish (physics) laboratory and it was amazeballs. It was like the ultimate man’s workshop, they had every tool that you could ever imagine and they were all just tinkering with their own projects, it was amazing to see. There was a machine that a researcher there had built over the majority of his life and it was absolutely massive, definitely looked like something out of a sci-fi film with all the vacuum pumps, aluminium casing and TUBES. My uncle and I then had lunch with some of his old teachers and co-workers, who knew physicists were such big fans of Thai food!

I then popped into the heart of Cambridge to meet a friend who’s studying Anthropology there (study of the human race I believe? – trying to be as broad as I can). She showed me round a bit of her college and it was definitely fancier than I thought it would be.

The next day was spent mostly at Fitzwilliam (the college that I’ve applied to), having a look around and then lunch at the high table. The lunch bit wasn’t as daunting as it sounds, it was actually very casual and I picked up some great advice for the Cambridge interview. All in all, it would be an absolute pleasure to study there, I loved it there, and I now feel that I have a better outlook on the place.

So that’s all from me for the time being, writing these blog posts takes forever so I think that I’m going to wait until something else exciting happens before I write another one.

PEACE.

The Cons of An Unplanned Year Out

• No friends to hang with
• Friends post all their crazy freshers and ‘nights out’ photos on Facebook
• Job hunting is tough when nobody wants you
• You run out of stuff to do fast if you’re not working
• You have all these crazy plans of stuff you plan to do in your year out but the reality is that a lot of that stuff won’t actually happen
• You think of how things might have been different if you got a place at university instead
• …

The one thing that I’ve come to realise with a year out is that things can get pretty lonely at times. You really do have to be one for self motivation. But it has given me a lot of time to think about my future, the things that I want and what I want to become.

For some people, a year out is exactly what they need and want. For me however, I think that I was very ready to go to university this year, to move on with my life and to take that step into the land of self-responsibility.

I think I need to go for a bike ride in an attempt to find some more inspiration and motivation.

Praise the job god!

Alas!

 

My life is now officially back on track – the job hunt is over. Admittedly it’s only part time (16 hour contract) but there will be extra shifts when the shop opens and at Christmas, so basically until the end of the year. And who knows, maybe they’ll offer me more hours if I perform well? Either way, I have a feeling that I’ll still want to look for a bit more work, maybe some more volunteering or something.

And it was the Cookshop of all places that gave me the job, aha! The shop is set to open 7th of November but I have 2 weeks of training beforehand. Training starts next week and I’ve got to travel all the way down to Buckinghamshire for a week of training. Should be good to meet all the other new staff. Then the following week I will be back in my current town to do some additional training. Then I’ll be unleashed on the world, give me strength.

Now to talk about some other bits and bobs, it’s been a while since I gave a general life update. Cambridge SAQ (supplementary applicant questionnaire) is officially off so that’s all the paperwork done for my university applications, now I just need to get some more interview practise, yipee! I have also been learning a little bit, but it’s hard to find focus when you’re jobless and lack the motivation. I’ve started a MOOC (massively open online course?) in Medicinal Chemistry and that’s given me the opportunity to revise a little chemistry, biology and hopefully some maths later on in the course. I’m also due to start another MOOC next week in immunology (study of the immune system), although I’m not sure how that is going to happen all the way in Buckinghamshire. Furthermore, I’ve also started my basketball coaching again, first session was the Sunday just gone. Had to lead a session all by myself but I felt more ready to do that, having acquired my basketball level 2 coaching award over the summer. But it was good fun, the kids loved it, and next time I’ll plan my session so I know what I’m doing and don’t end up floundering during the session, thinking of drills to put into practise.

So that’s my life so far, hectic or not? Oh, forgot to mention that I’m building my own computer tomorrow, the level of chaos is about to turn up to 100.

PEACE.