Staying Positive: Looking Ahead to a Stellar Summer After Exams!

It's that testing time of year again, in the most literal sense possible. Exam period.

Pressure's on as far I'm concerned. Usually, I am quite a confident chap when it comes to my education, yet as the need to ace my results and begin achieving my journalistic ambitions looms large, unease is mounting within me. Admittedly, it's tempting to just procrastinate and figure that everything will turn out dandy, but deep down I know that's hardly a winning attitude.  I'm certain I'm not the only one starting to lose a little sleep and quiver in my boots.

Sums up the exam feeling perfectly!

In between extensive, occasionally successful attempts at understanding everything I've been taught during this entire year, I have been attempting a little self motivation; things to revive the original, exciting and ultimately bearable brand of lifestyle I had been proudly sporting before teachers around the country started panicking about their competence and exam results.

Much like many teachers' desperate attempts to shove every student up a grade boundary and avoid an unceremonious axing, I ended up doing some pretty strange things to lift my confidence and mood. These include:

- Ordering a baseball jacket personalised with 'SK' on the front, among a startling variety of other unnecessary Amazon purchases

- Playing a role in several night time bonfires
- Starting an extensive collection of secondhand books
- Developing a man-crush on Paolo Nutini, and regularly turning to him for pathetic amounts of reassurance
- Burning exotic incense in every corner of my room, a sure sign of pining for a foreign atmosphere
- Drinking to exam completion before exams had even begun (not alone!)

Such a dream of an album; could get a man through the roughest of patches

Although these quirky little courses of action made a pleasant change from what I like to call 'textboox trauma' (where a person starts to become so accustomed to being alone with solely a textbook for company that they forget entirely how to interact with the people and world around them), I found that I had so much reward to look forward to in the future, I didn't need to focus so much on the struggle of the present, since it would all be worth it!

Things I have on the horizon that just make all the exam effort so much more worthwhile.

Cheeky excursion to Turkey!

It's crazy to think that in fifteen days and after four exams, I'm actually off on holiday! I've never visited the sunny shores of Turkey, and am thoroughly looking forward to seeing a brand new side to Asia. Unfortunately, a little Psychology revision on the beach will have to occur, but this is an art previously mastered in Thailand, and I couldn't ask for a better place to soak in twelve core studies alongside my fair share of sun rays and Turkish culture.

Lycian tombs - Emgrained in the Dalyan cliffside circa 400BC

Unable to resist a little research into this mysterious, Ancient region of Turkey, I have discovered that Dalyan is renowned for its picturesque beaches, mud baths, and curious sea turtle hospitals amongst the ancient ruins that provide an apparently astonishing reminder of the region's remarkably rich history.

I'll be sure to capture a couple of pictures of the beach sports and river tours apparently on offer, and won't be missing out on the Lycian tombs carved into the cliffs!

Interrailing Adventure

Anyone fortunate enough to know me in person or to have already checked out this nifty little blog of mine will be extremely well informed on just how much I am looking forward to scouring the European landscape alongside one of the most hilariously dopey and relaxed people to ever grace this earth, James Rothney https://www.facebook.com/james.rothney?fref=ts.

Tickets are booked to fly to Zagreb in Croatia, and fly back from Mykonos in Greece two and a half weeks later, with an Interrail train pass allowing us free train and ferry transport throughout Europe, affording us to visit an incredible variety of cultural hotspots, backpacker havens, party paradises, and just beautiful places in general in the short time we will be there.  A ridiculous amount of sun, sea, and adventure has been planned to occupy the time.

Images to illustrate the adventure that is planned to take place during our much anticipated eighteen day excursion:

Watersports on the beaches of Split, Croatia

Sampling the famously vibrant nightlife and cultural backbone than runs through the Serbian capital of Belgrade

Residents of the X Hostel in Bucharest, Romania, out and about in town! Staying in a sixteen man dormitary here costs just £4.44 a night, and apparently nice and clean too, although I won't get my hopes up!

Revellers at the Far Out Beach Club on the Greek Island of Ios. £13 a night will treat us to  this

 "Far Out Camping is definitely the most idyllic spot to enjoy your holiday in sunny Greece.
Wake up with in the morning with the peaceful Mylopotas Beach right in front of you and go for a swim, no need to sleep next to a noisy night club.
With pool competitions, table tennis, tennis, volley & basketball, 5x5 football, cinema and cybercafé there are plenty of things to do in the hours between beach and going out at night."

"The Far Out Beach Club is a party zone for backpackers "

Beautiful, expansive landscapes to treat the eyes to on day and night trains throughout Europe.

Reading Festival
Just to top it all off, I'm off to my first festival this summer! Some fantastic artists are hitting the stage this year, and I can't wait to share this experience with a large group of good mates. Here's the line up as of present!



In essence, such an incredible summer gameplan is making all of the hard work seem entirely worth it.  I'm starting to learn that you get out of life what you put in, and this kind of reward package is spurring me on to put a lot in, not only now but for the future as a whole.

Hope you've enjoyed reading. Be sure to keep updated!

The Great Escape

It may seem farfetched, ridiculous even.
But I have a masterplan which I am completely prepared to make a reality.

So here I am, in the current, present bubble that is reality. Sitting here, comfortable in bed, yet somehow still bitterly cold from the increasingly ridiculous entity that is British weather.


A more grounded part of me loves my life here in England. I've grown up in a familiar and supportive family that happily provide me everything a person could ask for to live comfortably. I also have some fantastic characters for friends, and thoroughly enjoy embarking on the inconceivable kind of misadventures with them that you do when you're an A Level student sparring with a formidable workload.

This book captures everything that I aspire to be.

Yet somehow, my life has steadily become more and more focused on the beautiful and buzzing universe that exists outside the UK. Less interested in participating in the expected lifelong grind to get a high paying job, spend my whole life working at something I'm not entirely sure I enjoy. All in an industrialized, upper class, and restricted nation. Here, opportunities for adventure and cultural enlightenment are present, but already seeming minimal. Seventeen years here, chipping and grinding away at the school system as a product of society seem quite enough. Call me foolish and misguided, but I'm ready to move on.

I first caught the travel bug at a very early age, when my parents decided to return to Asia (after having lived and travelled there for five years) with my brother and I to visit Vietnam. I was 11 years old and remember vividly every moment of that trip, because it was such a sensory adventure, and so different to anything I had ever experienced before. Soaking in the bustling sense of vibrancy in Saigon made life itself seem so much more engaging and purposeful.

Not to boast, but I was a fortunate child. In later years, family holidays spanned Thailand, India, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Greece, Romania and the USA. I felt like the world was at my feet the whole time we were away.

More recently, I had the oppurtunity last summer to fulfill a driving ambition of doing charity work abroad by being part of a five-man school expedition to Tanzania in order to teach at a school and work at a disabled crafts workshop called Neema Crafts. Travelling so far without my family into such an unknown world was a phenomenal experience, and one during which my masterplan was created. I loved the experience of working with people in a fresh new setting so much that I decided that this was definately what I wanted to do as a job.

I will never forget the rabble of Saigon motorbikes that whole families occasionally piled onto, obeying no  discernible laws of the road. Accidents galore. Being among it is as terrifying as it is a thrill ride.

Team Tanzania at Mikumi National Park. Honestly such an incredible day!

I plan to complete my A Levels, take a journalism course at university and usher my way into work experience at a forward thinking media company, after which I hope to become a travel journalist.

As I said.

It may seem farfetched, ridiculous even.
But I have a masterplan which I am completely prepared to make a reality.