What’s been happening.

I’ll acknowledge that it’s been a while since I last blogged. So today’s the day to fix that!

Pre-Exams⌗

My last blog was in Late april after I’d been around the City of London to take some photos. I ended up doing a few more trips around London to take some more sick photos which you can see on my portfolio here.

However, the main reason I so loved those trips was because they were a brief and merciful break from my A-Levels which, by that point, were stressing me out. For British 18 year olds doing A-Levels, most of April, May & June is spent revising. The only breaks are if you choose to take them, or if you have exams. Other than that, it’s just all revision all the time.

I ended up setting up a notion and doing more past papers than I could’ve ever thought. It was pretty damn stressful but it seems to have worked. During that time, my ReMarkable 2 thoroughly saved my bacon¹ as I could just chuck endless past papers onto it and do them without needing a printer or anything else.

Exams⌗

Then I slowly but surely got through my A-Levels. Thankfully, I had a relatively tame schedule - most weeks only had 1 or 2 exams, and the worst day I had had only 2 exams which is a far cry from the IB hell I’ve heard about from some of my friends.

Post-Exams⌗

I finished my exams, and I then went straight into 31 hours of driving lessons over the course of a week and a half. It was insane² but it clearly worked because I passed my driver’s test first try³! The UK ones are a complete PITA so I’m incredibly chuffed.

Then it was parties and fun for a few days before I left for my A-Level summer - widely regarded in the UK as a rite of passage because you’re old enough to do fun stuff, young enough to make fun mistakes, and crucially there’s no work that needs to be done so it’s stress-free.

Summer⌗

For the first part of my summer, I went interrailing through Europe!! You can get a train ticket called an interrail pass which lets you get on most of the trains around Europe for far cheaper than it would be to get individual tickets. My group did London->Brussels->Amsterdam->Berlin->Prague->Vienna->Split. There were some very fun stories that I might post at some point.

I then went with my family up to Western Canada - Calgary to Vancouver Island as a sick roadtrip. Again, stories and photos to possibly come.

Then, 8 hours after landing from Canada, my flight to my Gap Year in Bangkok took off!

Bangkok⌗

I’ve managed to get myself a gap year job in an international school in Bangkok, so that’s where I’ll be for the next year. The current plan is to spend the next month and a half stressing about university admissions v2⁴, then to have a blast.

The Future!⌗

Writing this blog has reminded me of how much fun writing this stuff is even if Cloudflare tells me that my monthly hits are near-zero, so I’d love to write some more; I’ll just maybe wait until after University Admissions are mostly finished up.

Hopefully, I can write some entries about life in Bangkok and maybe some more programming bits - you’ll just have to wait and see 😉!