I'm bored.

To think, my birthday is in three days. I believe everything is in order now...

Hmm.

Oh, a new Borderlands DLC came out yesterday, it will be bought...

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about character design. I've noticed that it's one of the key elements in most of my favourite books, films and games etc. Don't confuse that with character development, which is the focus on many, many books and films, less with games. For example, these narratives often lay out a series of fighters, in the form of a league or something. In order for each of these fights to feel new and fresh, the characters need to be as diverse as possible. That's a good thing, a great thing, even. Far too often are games full of many, many enemies who look exactly the same, when I'm perfectly content fighting 10 completely different enemies. It's because of the character design.

I think I want to try something like that.

New beginnings

Damaris left for university this morning. She was the last to go, everyone's gone now. That's Daisy, Rajiv, Aaron, Nicole and Damaris, virtually everyone I've become friends with over the past year. Obviously I'm going to see them again in the future, I don't doubt that at all, but I still feel that I should mark this as a new beginning. After all, they're all having their own new beginnings in Canterbury, Norwich, Bath, Nottingham and Coventry. Good luck to them all!

Anyway, back to me, I'm 18 in six days! It seems like the ideal thing to start the next chapter of my life, so I'm going to bombard you with every detail of it I can think of!

My schedule looks a little like this:

Friday 1st: Surf n' Turf with Eleanor and company (evening).
Saturday 2nd: My house all day and then Toby Carvery with Karolina in evening.
Sunday 3rd: Eurogamer in London! (more about this another time).

Yes, I know I've just named a meal on Friday, because I really don't mind where I have it, I just love surf n' turf.

Here's my list (as always, click to enlarge):

Just to clarify, this isn't a blog stunt, I actually did this. It shows off my amazing thought process while also making me look like I'm in primary school. Also, all items on the list have already been accounted for and apparently I'm still well under my birthday budget...I guess the rest of the cash will have to sit in my bank account until Karolina inevitably finds a way to drain it again.

I have nothing else to say that would fit in here, so have a summary!

Summary:

• People are going to University. They will all be missed and I look forward to seeing them again.
• It's my birthday in 6 days. That's 6 days. Six. Seis. Sei. Sechs. Sześć. Шесть. 六. That's 6 days, in case you missed it.
  

From Australia to The Moon

Guess
who
finally
got
in
to
a
college!

The 19th time's the charm!

To be fair, I actually started on Thursday, I've just been working on life (playing zombie games). It's fine though, the plus side to my late blog post is that I've met all of my teachers now, so I know all the basics. One of my maths teachers is really old fashioned, she says a lot of phrases I've never heard before, like the title of this post (which was referring to co-ordinate geometry).

I'm really enjoying it so far, I've met a fair amount of people (enough for all my lessons) and I know where it's at in town (subway), which is a 5 minute walk from the college. It's all cool in the world of Adam...It's ironic really, it was only a few months ago I was talking about not going to Harrow for nearly a decade, now I go to college there.

What else have I been doing (other than playing Dead Rising)? I wrote myself a reading list. I've decided that since I'm not an english lit student anymore, I should push myself to read. It genuinely improves writing and vocab skills without applying any effort, which is genius. Here's my current list:

The handmaid's tale - Margret Atwood
The turn of the screw - Henry James
The bourne identity - Robert Ludlum
The girl with the dragon tattoo - Steig Larsson
The spy who came in from the cold - John le Carré
The hunger games - Suzanne Collins
Skullduggery pleasant: Mortal Coil - Derek Landy
City of ashes - Cassandra Clare
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Note to self: If I ever write a book, don't start the title with the word "The"

I also need to read "how to win friends and influence people" since I never actually finished it. Most of these are from recommendation, from friends, teachers or people I follow on the internet. Others result from my own personal intrigue, because I'm pro. I should be getting hold of The handmaid's tale tomorrow.

I feel like I should be saying more words...

Oh, I saw Karolina on Friday, she dragged me everywhere to buy hooker boots and a detective coat and then bought me a coffee thing for not complaining (much). Then we went to a Polish shop and she decided it was creepy because she didn't like the shop assistant, while I didn't know what anything actually was. We bought cheese, fact.

Truth be told, the fact that I have to take a train to college still hasn't sunk in yet. After all, today was only my third day. I'm only facing prospective stability, not stable stability.

Entertainment Mathematics:

Spies>School kids
Spooks>Imbetweeners

and NEVER should
Spies=School kids
it isn't as cool as either or the two.

Got it? Good. Now go watch Spooks, it has Richard Armitage in it.

Now you know about my lovely life! And it's only 12 days until I'm 18 <---IMPORTANT FACT.

Also

Please watch Grandma's house on the BBC iPlayer for me, because Simon Amstell is one of my favourite people. You don't have to like it, just like him.

Seriously, go watch it now. I'm not joking, go away, I'm trying to watch Tarantino movies.

One of them life updates.

I've had a lot of demands saying "update your blog!" lately, admittedly most of them have been from the same person, but oh well. It's hard, because I don't really want to write a post which basically says "failing at life LOL", but fine, here we go.

I got my results about three weeks ago, since then I've been looking for a new place of education. In that time, I've been rejected by 17 places of learning. Seventeen. Friday was pretty much it, I went to enroll in the college which was somehow made to be a place of dreams, where anyone and everyone gets accepted. Apparently that was wrong.

So, where now? I've worn out the possibilities of anywhere in Watford, Hemel Hempstead and now St Albans. Next up on the list are Harrow and Stevenage, lovely.

What doesn't help is the barrage of people asking how I'm coping, or how I feel. I'd love to say "I'm doing fine, 18th time lucky!", but really, it's starting to get to me, I'm not fine at all. Obviously people are worried about me, which is touching, however, I'm kind of still trying to get my life back on track, wherever that track may be. Another thing that isn't helping is that my parents are starting to talk about me getting a job. Perfect, let's just give up on what little ambition I have left and become a dish washer, why not? God, I love washing dishes...

However, all is not lost! I have a cute little anecdote for you while I lose the will to live: Back when I was little, I used to have these toy cars, where you could split them into two halves, front and back. They were in a set, you could reattach them to other kinds of car to make new kinds of cars, like having the front of a beetle with the back of a jeep. They gave me hours and hours of endless fun. I think I still have a few of them upstairs. They gave me joy.

What's the equivalent of mix 'n' match toy cars for a 17 year old?

Oh, by the way, I'm 18 in just under three weeks. Fun fun.

Too early?

I got up at 7:30 today. It hurt.

Why was I up? Education. Firstly to take my youngest brother to his first day of secondary school, secondly to hand in my application to the Verulum school (it looks really posh, it has a tower!). After these events took place, I accompanied my parents to various shopping locations to provide them with complaints about useless things.

However, none of these are really what I wanted to write about today. Check out what I found in Homebase:Do want.

An excedingly long "life" post

I haven't posted for 8 days. That feels like a long time to me, and believe me, plenty has happened.

I'm going to start with what happened BEFORE my last post: I didn't pass my AS exams well enough to carry on to A2. I know what you're saying, "You can just retake the year!", not if your school isn't offering the same subjects to the new AS year. It hit me pretty hard, but I think I needed something like that to sort me out. You see, I have a list of 16 schools in the area to call about a place in a sixth form. I need to call 12 of them again since their offices apparently wont be up and running until tomorrow. Of the four that answered, one school wants an application.

Early this afternoon, I returned to my old school to break the news that I no longer intended to be a student there, my ex head of sixth form told me that he thought I'd made the right decision, before wishing me luck and sending me on my way. Moving forward. That's what's happening in my life right now.

What else have I done? My last post was written after the first day of looking after my own house, I should probably tell you about the rest of that week. On Tuesday, Damaris came over, we ordered pizza and watched Ice Age 3. She slept on the sofa and demanded I slept on the floor because she's afraid of the dark.

Damaris has played a fairly major part in my life recently, since she was the only person I saw on the day after I got my AS results (and the day after that). She thinks I'm generally a horrible person, yet she seems to hang out with me more than any of her other friends, take from that what you will.

On Wednesday, Eleanor came to mine, I was pretty on edge, seeing as I'd discovered that I'd have to wait TWELVE HOURS until the Scott pilgrim game came out (this was about 11 hours before she arrived). When it finally came out, I bought it on my mother's credit card details and we played it for a time that registers between "I can't remember" and "I wasn't paying attention", all I can really remember is that Damaris left while we were playing the game, or I walked her to the bus stop, or something. Either way, it's an amazing game. After my gaming needs had been satisfied, Eleanor and myself headed up to London to watch Scott Pilgrim on opening night. This event will be explored more in another post. Deal with it.

Thursday was a moderately empty day after Eleanor left, although I had the best bangers and mash ready meal. I probably just played Scott Pilgrim for most of the day. Who knows.

And then Friday came (why wouldn't it?), I don't quite know why, but the outings arranged by Karolina and myself always seem to be planned months (seemingly) in advance with military precision. It's kind of cool. What was Friday's plan? To go drink coffee, do something that would probably pass as shopping, hand in some CVs and then make some brownies at mine! For the record, they were the best brownies ever.

My family arrived home later that evening to find some form of Mario Kart throwdown taking place. Obviously I won.

Obviously.

They also found a very clean kitchen, that's an important fact.

Everything I've done since then is either school related or none of your business, unless it was today, then I can tell you. Today, after my trip to my former place of learning, Damaris and I went to the cinema, we were due to meet everyone else there (5 others), but we were there at least an hour and a half before the film started, which was all cool. However, there was a disturbance in the force, as both the girl my friend says has a crush on me was there to see a generic dance film AND the cashier I'm convinced wants me was working too, I should probably choose one and go for it. Or just go for both and hope one works and one fails. Either way, the previous sentence means neither of them can ever find out about this blog. Ever.

Then nearly everyone (Aaron, Nicole, Eleanor, Eleanor's sister) turned up and we all watched Scott Pilgrim. And that's it really, I've had a good time. Thanks to Damaris and Karolina especially (others will get their thanks in the Scott Pilgrim post, so stop complaining, damnit), you're both wonderful people.

And if you didn't pay attention to any of that, here's a webcomic page for you (as always, click to enlarge).

It's from a website called Nedroid. The two characters are called Reginald (the bird), and Beartato, who is half bear, half potato. It really is an amazing webcomic, go check it out sometime.

That really is all,

Bye!

P.S. Don't ever complain that I don't write long posts again. Without these foot notes, this post is 846 words long. you know who you are.

P.P.S. More pictures would make this post 20% more cool, but personally, I can't be bothered.