Busy, Hectic, Etc.

I've been so busy recently. Went out on the weekend and saw my friends Sinead and Danielle for the first time in such a long time. We went shopping and spent ages in the bubble tea place and I had such a lovely day!

Bubble Tea is so cute!

My computer is now finally built and up and running, I'm just waiting on a blu-ray drive and an SSD drive. GTA V needs to come out PC soon too, I just wanna be able to chill and see how great it is running such an amazing game.

A job well done, looks pretty good if I do say myself!

Since the weekend finished I've had such a hectic week, and it's only Tuesday! Monday I was in University all day, had a mock negotiation during the morning, and we did really well, but things got shifted by the afternoon so we weren't in as such a great mood as we were after the initial verdict. Had a two hour lecture in the evening and then basically got home and fell asleep on the sofa because I was unable to move and had no energy, being so tired just shows how much I've not been used to having long days in a while.

Today, has been a bit of a mixture. I set off for University as usual this morning, however on my way up towards Derby I was forced over on country lanes to let a fire engine past. There are so many potholes appearing in Derbyshire, and I happened to hit one which gave me a sharp jolt. I pulled over after noticing the steering on my car was really light, there didn't seem to be anything wrong, so I continued on for about 300 yards... at this point I noticed that my dashboard was on a complete slant, and that the passenger side was much lower than the driver side. I was unable to pull over at this point, and to my horror when I checked the passenger side tyres the one on the passenger side was completely gone! 

Amazing how much damage a simple pothole can do...

To make this even worse I was in an area with NO SERVICE whatsoever, and having never had a flat before I was stranded in the middle of the countryside. Numerous vehicles just drove right past me and some were going so fast that the wind caused by one car actually knocked me off my feet, it's amazing how many people simply don't care enough to help someone out when they're in trouble. My faith in humanity was restored however when two lovely gentlemen in a white van noticed me stranded and replaced my flat with the spare tyre in my boot, which safely got me to the Ford garage in Burton-upon-Trent.

Since then I've had my phone looked at by Apple, since my screen was worryingly loose, and I'm very pleased once again with their amazing customer service and left the Apple Store with a brand new iPhone 5S to ensure that the problem would not happen again.

I'm going to make another attempt on silver shampooing my hair tonight to try and get it to a nicer tone, and then I have family coming round to see me tomorrow before my birthday next Saturday. Then I have university the rest of the week before having a chilled out weekend in Birmingham this Saturday.

Life has its ups and downs; but I guess this is what makes things interesting for all of us.

Productivity, Imitation & Socialisation

I thought this week would be rather stressful from the foresight, but it's now Thursday and I've actually and such a good week!

Monday and Tuesday consisted of nothing but revision and exams, which was tough, but I always put myself through a lot of stress when it comes to my studies, and after sitting both my European Law exam and my Criminal Law exam I'm confident that I've successfully passed these modules and I'm well on track to earning my LLB Degree.

The relief of having exams gone and done is amazing, so to celebrate I had a really lovely day with one of my best ever friends, Tasha. We went for a lovely Chinese buffet and literally stuffed our faces with all the fab food, and then we went to the cinema to watch the new Paranormal Activity. I absolutely adore days like this, it makes me feel so happy spending time with people who mean so much to me, and since I've been stuck inside revising for weeks and not had much chance to see people it's put me in such an amazing mood!

Bizarrely, on Monday, someone brought to my attention the fact I seemed to have a fake profile of myself on Facebook. This isn't the first time I've had people use my pictures on Facebook, but this time it was really weird as they had literally completely imitated me; they included my previous work, they included Derby as my location, even included pictures from my Facebook of my Beyoncé tickets and parts of the house... It's really scary, and also really annoying, since they used my pre-surgery photos and set a status about considering cosmetic surgery.  I think this annoys me greatly because the pictures are obviously of me, and using something I was really sensitive about on a fake profile is just pathetic. I suffered from Body Dysmorphia Disorder, which is a anxiety disorder where the sufferer see certain characteristics of their appearance as a serious flaw, so last year after a while of being hesitant I finally made an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon and underwent a rhinoplasty, which has completely changed my life since and has made me feel like I'm living to the full for the first time.

When people make fun of this, like it's a joke, they don't understand how much of a serious issue it truly is, and I would recommend nobody to ever insult people based on their appearance or use genuine recognised medical conditions to make out that a person is 'attention seeking' or 'stuck up'. Unless you suffer from something, you have no idea what it is like to suffer from it. I would never ever make comment over someone's mental or physical conditions, as it just show pure ignorance.

That's my annoyance over that dealt with though, and that's pretty much my week so far. Today I have spent the majority of the day upgrading my computer, after building up the courage to even start handling the components of course! Now that I have mostly swapped out the old components I'm amazed by how simple building a computer and upgrading a computer is. Currently the computer is sitting on my workbench, because I neglected to realise that my current CPU cooler would not correctly fit onto the new chipset. So I've got one of those on for order tomorrow, at which point I can then finally complete the build.

My Gaming Baby - currently missing it's cooler and main components

Once this system is set up I will be able to pass my components on to my best friend, and once she has got a system case and a few other components I will build her a gaming rig that will be able to play games with really good frame rates on high settings. It makes me really happy that she is interested in having a powerful computer, since the old components would sadly likely just sit within my house and gather dust which is an awful shame considering how much power and potential they have. My family is going out for a nice meal tomorrow evening to celebrate this week and the completion of my exams, we'll likely go to Frankie & Benny's and have a really nice Italian. My diet has definitely suffered this week!

Me, Myself & I

A lot of people are making blogs this year, and I decide to do the same, so I have a place to get things off my chest, and share things about my hectic life and what goes on.

My name is Alex Sykes, and I guess you could say I'm a rather unique individual. I'm not your typical teenager/young adult, and I'm proud of who I am. I'm living proof that you should never stereotype people or judge a book by it's cover, this is what I've grown to live by and I think it's made me a much better person. I'm a law student, and yet I have a rather eccentric style compared to other law students. I love classical music, but yet without knowing me you wouldn't have thought it. It's things like these that make me unique.

I have a lot of interests, and I appreciate a lot of the beautiful things in life. I love technology, gaming, food, photography, fashion, and music, just to name a few things. I guess you could say I'm a guy of all things.

Socialising is very important to me, I don't have anywhere near as many friends as I had once upon a time, but I've never been happier than I am with the ones I still have today, and I wouldn't change them for the world.

This is me, I'm happy with the person I've become. My hair is blonde/ginger currently, but I don't know whether I like it or not so I just used that photo because my hair was like that for a few months and it was my favourite out of my recent colours.

I haven't had an easy past, I've been diagnosed with depression and anxiety multiple times, and it has taken me a few years to get to where I am today; where I'm finally starting to feel more optimistic than ever, and feel like I'm actually living my life to the full.

I've accomplished quite a lot already in my short life; I've completed my GCSEs with high grades, gained 4 A Levels A-C, been accepted into University on an LLB, and I passed my driving license just 5 months after my 17th birthday.

2014 is going to be a good year for me, 2013 was when my life changed so much, mostly for the better, but in 2013 I was diagnosed with depression back in April, this was a really hard time for me, and it was a constant struggle for months. The end of the year I admitted myself into rehab because of social problems and mental concerns, I came out a new person, and I have a clear action plan to improve things. One of my notes was to write a blog and use it to get things off my chest, since the build up over the year of keeping things in is what lead to needing professional help.

Anyway, this has probably been quite morbid, but that's an introduction, and I am feeling wonderful nowadays, so a majority of my subsequent posts should be happy and positive. I'll update my blog with pretty much everything that has some relevance to me, and then I can look over this in the future and reminisce what is hopefully going to be an amazing year. So I'll leave it at that for now, ciao!