∆

Spiked headband - Topshop, necklaces - Claire's and China, crop top - H&M, rainbow shorts - Motel Rocks, shoes - Docs, denim shirt - vintage

I know what you are thinking: "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN REBECCA!"

I apologise for my unprecedented hiatus from the blogosphere; I have just not been motivated to write. However, fear not! Once every blue moon, I am in a strange essay writing mood and today is one of those occasions. Today I am going utilise this rare phenomenon which comes upon me to talk to you guys about this band I have been enjoying: alt-J! I usually keep these longer posts on my second blog (PeaaBrained), but I have a few things I want to tell you guys, so unlucky you!

Alt-J
The title of this post refers to a band that I've been digging. Known as "alt-J"or "∆", this band is really having a huge impact on the music industry as of lately, since they are being loved by a plethora of musical taste makers everywhere.

The name of their band refers to the delta sign that is created when you press alt-J on your keyboard. The delta sign (little triangle) is also a mathematical sign that symbolises change, which appealed to the band as the new name came at a turning point of their lives. I think this is awfully clever and it very much appeals to my nerdy tendencies, thus I automatically had a penchant for this band, even before I even heard their music.

As for their album "An Awesome Wave", I think it is a work of art. I have listened to their entire album during the duration of putting together this post and really reminds me to the album "XX" by "The XX" in 2009 (can you believe that it was that long ago? I know I can't!). My favourite parts of the album are actually the interludes and the nostalgic samples used. The hip-hop break beats, xylophone solos, falsetto harmonies and folky melodies are also a killer combination. As you can probably tell, I am truly terrible at describing music, so I encourage you to listen to the entire album below. If you are new to them, I recommend their lead single "Tessellate", but my personal favourite songs are "Dissolve" and "Interlude II".
I reckon that they are the most "indie"/"hipster" band in the history of ever, especially with lyrics such as "triangles are my favourite shapes" - even the name of the band is a triangle! With that being said, I hope that they have similar, commercial success as the moody emos that make up the XX. It's always fun to witness the irony when their elitist, hipster bubble is popped by the enticing lure of wealthy broadcasting companies and transnational car companies wanting their music for advertisements.

Now I've just gone off on a tangent and I think it is time to end this spiel as it's gone way off topic!

Ciao!

P.S. My brain is turning into mush after watching the entire series of "Revenge" in two days... It's just so good! Anyone else watch it? I love Nolan!
P.P.S. You may notice something different about my blog header and my YouTube background. My super cool friend Jack from "Desirous Designs" made it for me. Please check out his YouTube for more of his design portfolio. He's great at doing 3D graphics, backgrounds and making YouTube introductions, so if you are interested, just message him and tell him I sent you! :)
P.P.P.S Apparently on my last post, the video link somehow seemed to miraculously disappear, so I've fixed that problem! Here is an amended link to my "What's In My Bag" video.
P.P.P.P.S. The awesome Riley from had a great give away which I was very lucky to win! Check out her blog here.
P.P.P.P.P.S. This has been a weird post - apologies for the verbal vomit. I really am out of practise when it comes to blogging. I will post a more coherent post ASAP!

April round-up, the future of this blog and Grimes

*Feel free to skip to the end if you aren't bothered about me rambling on*

A little long side note to start...I have been writing on this blog for 4 months now (a third of a year, gasp!) and I feel like now is a turning point in my blogging life. From the outset, I did have in mind of making it slightly more fashion based, but it had been something that I logistically couldn't do, but now I can. I love doing the fashion posts, but I feel like that outfit posts don't really reflect the person behind the lens. You don't get to know their personality, what tickles their fancy or what floats their boat - in my case it is cheesy idioms - hence why I am doing these types of posts too.

I know I have a lot of new followers to my blog, so I am a bit apprehensive if I should publicise my personal life to stranger, simply because I doubt many people who don't know me personally would be interested in my measly life. The last thing I wish to do is to discourage people from following my blog! However, this blog is for own personal space where I can write whatever I want, and I am going to write whatever I want, regardless of what the expectations are for a "fashion" based blog. In the end, I am blogging for my personal enjoyment, rather than to see if I can get the most views/followers (even though of course that is fantastic too). This blog is going to be for my satisfaction rather than to please others - yes, I am selfish.

Cut things short as I have been rambling for sometime and I bet I'm boring you to death, I was going to start another blog solely for fashion related posts, but then I realised that I have barely anytime to tenderly care for one blog, let alone two. Therefore, I'm going to keep all my posts on this blog. If you are only here for outfits, you can press the little x in the corner, read no further and I am truly sorry for wasting space on your dashboard. But if you want to carry on reading, please do so!

Anyway, back to the actual post...
I'm sorry guys! I am a total of 4 days late for my monthly summary, simply because I have been so busy with work towards/revision for my GCSEs. Better late than never eh?
Click here for my March round-up.

In April I have:

• Had an awesome trip to Paris with my parents. Click here for my Parisian daily diary. Oh how I wish was I was still chilling in the streets of Paris, rather than drowning under the vast amount of revision I need to do.
• Went to London for MK's birthday for ice skating and a Vietnamese dinner :).
• Started fashion blogging and have finally got more followers than my age! Yipee.
• Finished my resistant materials GCSE. Yipee. 

Okay, it seems like I haven't much this month, but I spent half of it in France and half of it working my behind off.

Goals for May:

• Get some darn good GCSEs. Okay, now that we are pretty much on the home stretch, the last push will really make the difference between As and A*s so it's time to knuckle down and stop writing pointless blogposts like this and start to do some intense revision. 
• Revise
• Revise some more
• Revise even more
• Succeed in my exams - I have a total of 14 of them. 
• Get some decent quality outfit posts up. 

Carrying on from my last goal, I have finally sorted out my camera issues. My genius father made this really, really long extension chord with some wire, attached a switch and thus made  a remote for his Nikon camera, so I can actually be in focus in my images!  I have also digged out a tripod, so fingers crossed, the quality of my blog posts will improve drastically. Exams also mean study leave, which means that I will not be going into school everyday, which means, I will not have to wear uniform everyday, which means MORE OUTFIT POSTS OF BETTER QUALITY.

Current obsession: Grimes
Okay, I realise this doesn't quite fit in with this post, but since it is pretty much all higglety pigglety already, I thought I may as well add in someone that I have really been getting into after an spellbinding performance on Later.. Live with Jools Holland, one of my favourite television shows. She's called Grimes and I saw her mentioned in the ASOS magazine being described as "two-parts forest pixie, one-part Lykke Li". If you didn't know, I absolutely love Lykke Li, so I was keen to search her up. The fact that she had green hair with a totoro on her shoulder also drew me in to find out more about her.

It turns out Grimes is nothing like Lykke Li - the only similarity I can find is the fact that they both have high pitched voices and are really hot. The closest comparison I can make is to Blood Orange, but less R&B influenced and almost Oriental sounding with her use of the pentatonic scale on the synths, and obviously with a girl on the vocals. She creates a electro, atmospheric, entrancing sound that is topped off with her baby-sounding vocals. I'm not sure why, but I reckon a really low female voice would also go well juxtaposed with her synth-ey sound, but her high pitched wails do the trick. Her image is just weird enough to be alternative and edgy without being weird freaky - I love it.

 If you have made it through this marathon of a post, I congratulate you.

Rebecca x


P.S. I decided to change up the tabs under my header and also added a "FAQ" and "About" page. The fact there is one pixel between the header and tabs randomly is really pissing me off! Any wizzes at HTML know how to get rid of it?
P.P.S Outfit post tomorrow!

Coffee Obsession

How do you start a day? For many, it is with a cup of coffee - each morning commences with the routine ritual cup. Whether you prefer it dark, white, a latte or a mocha, coffee is far more than just a warming beverage - it is has a crucial role in today's society. Even in a country where it has been historically classified as more of a tea-drinking nation, the prevalence of coffee is still widespread and deeply felt. The whole persona of being a swanky, high-earning business man with an overpriced bitter coffee match suit their personality, in one hand, and the "Financial Times" in the other, is very much glamourised and stereotyped by the media. In many restaurants, a meal is never complete without a cup of it. Look around your hometown, and I bet there are more coffee shops than you can count on one hand. 

King Coffee

The most obvious reason of why it is one of the most beverage in the world is because of it's stimulating effect on humans due to caffeine content. Moderate caffeine consumption equates to increased attention, memory and physical performance. Many people find themselves reliant on the drink to combat the hardships of modern every day life.

Ye Olde Days of Coffee 
However, its energising effects have been documented ever since the 15th Century and even lead Johann Sebastian Bach to pen the miniature comic opera: "Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht" meaning "Be still, stop chattering" and is commonly known as the "The Coffee Cantata". the cantata amusingly tells of an addiction to coffee, a pressing social problem in eighteenth century Leipzig, where this work was premiered - and it appears not much has changed since then! It features lines such as "If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat" - a problem I am sure many people can empathise with. Moreover, in East Africa and Yemen it was previous used for religious ceremonies, but it appears that nowadays, it is drunk religiously ever day.

Why is it so precious?
Perhaps it is because I haven't reached the age to fully appreciate the wonders of caffeine, but I personally think that coffee bought from coffee shops is beyond extortionate and do not comprehend how so many people can justify regularly buying coffee which costs £4 a pop. However, something I am beginning to understand is many people do not go to cafes simply to buy a coffee and leave, but instead see it as a place where you can socialise, work on laptops or tablets or simply relax for a few minutes or even hours for some whilst slowly sipping the calories and listening to the terrible mood music that they play. The worse offender in the market is most obviously Starbucks.

The Power of Starbucks 
Coffee is the world's second most traded commodity behind oil, with 7 million metric tons traded annually. A kilogramme bag of coffee beans sells from the farmer for $0.23, but in a Starbucks coffee shop, it would be worth a staggering $230. Of course there are various middlemen involved, but the profits that are made in that one cup is absolutely humongous, and considering the sheer quantity of coffee sold by the chain - they have a total of 19,435 stores in 58 countries. Some may say the amount of profit made is unjust to the extent of being exploitative, but there is no denying the founders are entrepreneurial geniuses. Last year during my holiday to China I experienced how social power that a mega brand such as Starbucks can have.

China and Coffee
China and tea go hand in hand, like salt and pepper. Tea drinking is deeply routed in Chinese culture, as it has been part of it since 3000BC. It is considered one of the seven necessities of Chinese life, along with firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar. Yet this is all being shaken up by globalisation and in particular, the growing increase of coffee houses. The young Chinese (especially in the cities) are seeing the Westerners drinking their coffee, and of course, are trying to emulate this as drinking coffee is "cool", "modern" and "fashionable", when drinking tea is only for the old generation. Starbucks (or 星巴克- pronounced xinbake) cafes are spreading like some sort of pandemic disease, but this time the government can't simply isolate it away in a quarantine.

Here is a Starbucks in Kuan-zhai Lane, Chengdu that I walked past last year on holiday. Kuan-zhai lane is a conservation of old architectural buildings, which has been converted to tourist hotspot with the housing being converted into restaurants, pubs, tea houses, coffee shops, stores selling souvenirs and crafts, etc. Of course, there is the obligatory Starbucks, which I think sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the Qing Dynasty architecture.

 What I found the most surprisingly though was that in the UK I think Starbucks is expensive, but in China - even though retail prices are soon catching up with the Western world - a standard beverage from Starbucks is in some cases, more than 10x more expensive than anything else sold in any similar calibre Chinese cafes. Yet, many young people are willing to waste away their money, spending large amounts of money at Starbucks when, then could have the same thing for far less, simply because they see being able to drink at 星巴克 as almost a status symbol. If you are seen sipping a drink from Starbucks, you must be cool, young, on trend and rich. This can be seen similar to the Chinese obsession with  Burberry and Nike- the young and incredibly wealthy generation that has grown up in newly industrialised China have no idea how to spend such vast amounts of money, so they simply do what they see portrayed in the media to the extent of becoming almost obsessive over branding and consumerism - one of the many problems of modern day China.

Of course, when something like Starbucks comes to China, there will always be a counterfeit version of it. In this case, when we passed a "Teabucks" it certainly made me chuckle. Lots of Chinese business fusing the relaxing and socialising atmosphere with the traditional tea house, to create a hybrid store which combines both aspects of coffee and tea houses with some harmless plagiarism - true Chinese style.

So yes, that was my long rambly post about coffee; it slightly segwayed into a few of my views on modern day China, but oh well. I was going to write a gripping and enthralling ending to this blog, but I'm tired now so...

Goodbye and drink good coffee,


Rebecca x
P.S. So glad to have finally have completed this post - it has taken me a long, long time. 
P.P.S. I like to listen to classical music whilst watching "University Challenge" to kid myself that I am well cultured and sophisticated. Here is some coffee related music:

Arkwright Scholarship Failure and GCSEs

Recently, I have been feeling quite down about life and just where I am heading towards. I have been a slight emotional wreck the past few days, and since haven't done a really personal post in quite a while, so I thought might as well write one now. Please note that this post is not to evoke sympathy for myself, and I also know that this post is probably going to be completely meaningless and boring for an outsider to read (and probably include many lexicon and syntax errors as my brain works faster than my fingers!) , but it is quite therapeutic to just let your thoughts spontaneously flow and just get out all of your emotions by filling up a blank word with absolutely everything that is bothering you, rather than let them manifest in the human psyche and let them affect what is truly important at the moment.

GCSE Results

I am sure that most of you are aware of the fact that yesterday, the nation's 14-18 year olds have received their results from the January unit exams. As for myself, I got back the results from my 3 science units: biology unit 2, physics unit 2, and chemistry unit 2 and I suppose I did alright. I know I may annoy many by me saying this, but I am not jumping off the roof top in ecstasy, proclaiming it to the world for a variety of reasons.

•  Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, so to one person a B may be absolutely fantastic, but to others, it may equate to failure. So long as you have done your personal best, it shouldn't matter what your friends around have achieved as we are all individuals. 

Don't compare yourself to others! 

• These are my best subjects, so for myself, this is what I honestly had expected, as I had done lots of past papers and managed to achieve similar results. I personally feel like science exams are not challenging to any degree, simply because I revise from the specification points. Every exam board publishes this to the public, so if you learn every single point on this list, you have covered absolutely everything that could ever come up. Don't believe me? Well, the exam boards HAVE TO to produce exam papers that comply to their specifications and they are checked vigorously many times to make sure that they meet the guidelines. There are also various independent groups (such as Ofqual) that are paid to do tediously monotonous jobs to ensure that regulations are met. Some may argue that the B2 exam this year did stray away from the syllabus, and I do agree to  certain extent. There was a question on protein synthesis, which is not expected to be known in extent at this level, but many people became got really stuck on it, when in fact I think that, yes, it was a poorly worded question, but I reckon that too many people were overcomplicating it. With the sciences, there is always either a right or wrong answer and is purely factual, unlike languages and arts which is more opinion based. This means that if you can memorise the entire specification back to front, you will technically be able to answer every question possible. Obviously, this is easier said than done and exam technique is a huge contributing factor in exams, but I feel like this is something I managed to succeed with this for unit 2, thus ended up with some good results. 

Don't rely on revision guides!

Arkwright Scholarship 

So yes, yesterday was going pretty well until I found out the news that I have not made it through to the next stage of the application process - i.e. the interviews. Here is a diagram outlining my roller coaster of emotions regarding it. I made it an actual roller coaster/graph thingy as I am a nerd.

a) This is was the time between doing the aptitude paper and finding out the results, with the tension building.
b) Here is when I found out the I hadn't gotten a place - pretty much a downwards drop.
c) Due to the shock of finding out I was not successful, I went into this weird hysterical mood where I was in denial and thinking, "Wait, was I just dreaming that I didn't get it?" and "Perhaps they accidentally wrote down the wrong names?!".
d) This is when I was I was an emotional wreck: one minute I was feeling alright, next I would burst into tears. Darn emotions/hormones.
e) This is the stage that I am at: I have accepted that I have not got through, and have now moved on.

As you can probably tell, I am pretty annoyed about it for a variety of reasons:

• Why, why why?: 
•  I am extremely gutted, not because of the fact that I didn't get a place, but instead because I cannot imagine how I would've improved my application, or what I would've done better next time if I hypothetically could. I have pretty much flawless grades and I spent so much time making sure each section was filled to the brim with extra-curricular activities, volunteering and achievements (this is why I waste so much time in my life doing all this extra shizz.). As for the exam, I personally didn't feel like I did too badly regarding the designs, but of course, I don't not know how the entire cohort of the country did. 
• Statistics:  
• This may sound really bitter and like I can't take a loss with stride, but I completely perplexed as to why some people who on paper had a far weaker applications and designs than me got an interview, when I didn't. I sound really bitchy, but even my DT teacher said to me that I had the strongest application. However, then again, past statistics were going against me as :
• 28% of scholarships goes to private school students, when they in fact only educate 7% of students in the UK. I go to a state school myself.
• Only 20% of scholarships go to girls. I don't know about you, but I think these statistics are absolutely shocking even if it is a more "male-orientated" industry. They are attempting to encourage more women to work in these industries, but how are they going to achieve this if even from this early stage, there are clear inequalities. However, I do realised that I suppose I can't blame them for my failure - only myself.

• No Feedback?: 
• On the rejection letter,  they state that "With so many applications to assess, we are unable to provide specific feedback on any individual application". That I do understand, they have 1106 applications, so obviously cannot write back with a report about what they did wrong, but surely they could have at least given us a number out of 50, showing how we scored on the aptitude test. This couldn't have been that much of a hassle, and I would've felt like it would have made things so much clear as whether it was my application or my exam that let me down. However, OBVIOUSLY, they have so little time, that they can't even do that, if they can't even spell my name correctly...
•  Excuse Me?!:
• ...On my rejection letter, they also stated that my names was "Rebacca" not Rebecca. I do not understand how they could make such an idiotic mistake, I mean, it's hardly a hard name to spell and it could not have because they mis-read my hand writing as I wrote it on Microsoft Word. I am not a type of tobacco, nor am I a character from Star Wars!!! 

You may think I am a sore loser, but I suppose I am - I don't respond well to failure, especially when I have no idea why I did fail. I suppose the lesson I have learnt from this traumatic episode is that you cannot rely on anyone else for the future; if you want something to happen, you have to grasp it with your our hands and make it happen yourself. For example, in this case, the outcome of this scholarship was very much dependent on that one horrible marker. Yes, I am still distraught that this will not be something that I can add onto my CV in a few years time, but I feel like I now have a sudden epiphany - there is no point in trying to depend on these little things, and simply waiting for these opportunities to arise - and I am so grateful that I have had it at this stage, rather than have a nervous breakdown down  You should try to make them occur yourself, and let nothing be in the way of your goals or control the outcome. YES I am a control freak, but I'm proud of it.

I hope this is the last rendezvous I have with Arkwright, but time to say sayonara, move on and do something way better with my life. I hope that one day, I can look back at this moment of my life, and laugh about how worked up I got about not getting the scholarship as I am the CEO of a huge multi-million company, or future world leader. Muahaha.

~RANDOM BONUS NUGGET OF KNOWLEDGE~ 
(Because I feel like it, even though it has nothing to do with this post- sort of physics related?) 

Eureka!  
Did you know that the intejection usually associated with celebrating discovery is derived from the Ancient Greek "εὕρηκα heúrēka" meaning "I have found (it)"? This exclamation is most famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka!" when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose—he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. This relation is known as Archimedes' principle and he was so eager to share his discovery, that jumped out his bath and streaked through the streets of Syrucuse naked.

Onwards and Upwards!


Rebecca x
P.S. As you can probably tell, my academics do mean an awful lot to me, and I am extremely self-motivated to do well in life, hence why I can write so much about it, but I apologise if this has been boring.
P.S.S I know I have said that I was going to finish my Chronicle of Ombre hair series, but I thought it would be way more meaningful and easier to understand if I actually recorded/ photographed the process of me dying my hair, instead of just describing it, so I'm going to postpone that until I dye my hair again. Truly sorry to anyone who wanted to see that!
P.P.P.S I love being in my weird essay writing mood. 
P.P.P.P.S If you have managed to read to the end of this waffly post, I commend you! You're a cool bean.