Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last week, I helped some of my friends from sixth form, do a litter picking of the school grounds. Some of you might already know this but for those of you who don't, one of my friends started an environmental awareness group as part of a group CAS project that included me and some of my other friends. In this group, we endeavour to look after our planet and our local environment by spreading information on things like climate change and wildlife destruction, as well as the initiatives that different groups of people have created to help the environment, in order to spread the message of change in a positive way. As I've mentioned before, I'm a firm believer in changing your own actions and educating yourself, before preaching activism to others, and what better way to do that than to do a litter picking of the school grounds? The very fact that we had to do litter picking meant that not enough people were choosing to ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Today, I wanted to publish another one of my journal entries for TOK. I thought I would make this a fairly regular occurrence since this is something that I have to write every 2 weeks so I might as well share a couple with you. I won't share everything I do since it is all my own work and I would prefer it to stay that way but I figured that I might as well do this since it is kind of fun to post. Here I'm talking about the ivory trade and the unethical practices that go on in many countries across the world and Asia in particular. I talk about how we can change the knowledge and cultural understanding of the next generation of young people so that they consume less into this illegal industry. I hope you enjoy reading it and find it interesting.  - A topic that's always been of particular concern to me is the trade of elephant ivory, amongst other animal products that are considered valuable, to many people across dif...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, As I've briefly talked about recently, I have been considering going on this amazing trip with my school to Northern Tanzania in the summer of 2022 and I've just spent 2 weeks consolidating my decision. Well, long story short, I've decided to take the plunge and go for it since there's probably not going to be many other opportunities like this in the future. This trip will count towards, hopefully, many parts of my CAS experience (school enrichment programme) so it's an important part of my education and my overall IB qualification. I was a little bit unsure as to whether or not I should do this trip because it is such a big commitment. The preparation for this trip is a lot of work as you have to attend weekly meetings, organise fundraising, and probably work to earn some money but after attending one of the virtual meetings on Microsoft to find out more about this trip, I realised that there was a lot to gain...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Recently, I watched a video made by the YouTuber, Niomi Smart, on how she felt the internet has changed over the years. If you don't know the background of Niomi Smart, then she is basically a well-known and well-established YouTuber, who has been making videos about healthy eating, veganism, charity work, and ethical living for around 8 or 9 years now. She graduated from university with a law degree but she initially started a blog to voice her thoughts on fashion and to share her popular lifestyle content with her viewers and she then grew into a successful internet sensation. She was a part of the labelled "Brit Crew" group along with Zoe Sugg, Alfie Deyes, Joe Sugg, Tanya Burr, Jim Chapman, Louise Pentland, and Marcus Butler. She also released her book, Eat Smart, in 2016 and continues to co-run her healthy food box, Sourced Box, with Marcus Butler. With over 1.5 million subscribers on her channel, she continues t...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Over the years, I have become a big fan of Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild documentary, where he visits people who have given up the usual rat race of life, to start living in the wild pretty much self-sufficiently. If you don't know who Ben Fogle is, he is an adventurer turned TV-show host who, before he began filming his New Lives in the Wild documentary, did many crazy explorations across the world. One of his famous explorations was where he sailed the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean alongside his partner, James Cracknell. I remember reading about this scary adventure during an English exam where we were given an extract of Ben's documented story. I found it crazy how his boat capsized many times and he still managed to cross the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean. Despite failing his A-level exams, Ben has managed to accomplish this as well as reaching the top of Mount Everest in 2018. He is a true inspirat...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I watched Steve Backshall's Blue Planet Live, with my family on Monday evening. I wasn't sure what the documentary would be about but I found it quite interesting because in this episode of the series, Steve was talking a lot about Sharks and why we should respect them. Respect means that we shouldn't fear sharks even if they're a top predator in the ocean and it also means that we should protect their population and the habitat that they live in. Since some of my family are Japanese, I understand some of the traditions there are with eating sharks in countries like Japan and China and it does sadden me a lot. Sharks are a vital part of our coral reefs because without them, there would be no balance of species below them and no diversity of species would be maintained as there would also be nothing to balance out the competition. These apex predators are also vital to us because they are indicators of healthy ree...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Mass production, fossil fuels, greenhouse gases, climate change. These are all things that reign in on our conscience in the media. If we think about where we get our food, the first place our minds seem to go to are the shops. We don't ever think about the factories or the farms or the fields and the millions and millions of trees, acres and acres of land that all get consumed by our need meat, vegetables, grain, wheat, and fruit. When we think of fossil fuels and our greenhouse gas emissions, we pity our daily use of our cars to go to work and school, as well as the simple heating that protects us from the bitter cold or the switch of a light that brightens up the darkness. We don't ever think about how dependent we are on our cars, gas, and electricity. We don't question what's perhaps causing this dependency on food and transport. Because, whilst we're dealing with these problems as separate issues we...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Obviously, as I'm sure you've heard a million times already, it's 2020 and it's a new decade. Already, from the last decade, we've moved on and our culture has evolved and expanded it's horizons. As we're moving on in technology and intelligence, whilst many people who already live comfortable and happy lives, doing the things that they want to be doing, will continue to expand their cultural horizons, there will also be a lot of other people left behind.  Quite recently, about two days ago, I watched a documentary with my family, about the Inuits in Greenland. It actually came out during the Christmas holiday period but we were late in watching it so we decided to watch it on the Monday evening. It had no British narrator to go with the film, it just had the Inuit male talking about his experiences in this changing world, with subtitles underneath it so you could understand. It was very raw and it ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, We are fast becoming the age where blame is a common occurrence. We blame each other because when we face up to the actual problem, it seems like a big mountain that we have to climb. A prime example of this is when we blame others for their acts on allegedly doing nothing for the environment. When the general public looks at the fast-growing fossil fuel industry, the first thing most people think about is how bad it is for the environment. When people look at the pressures that face the meat and dairy industry, they think about how terrible it is for the environment. When people think about the growth of capitalism, they think how bad it is that they're are supporting something that destroys the environment. I can go on and on about these things where the environment is talked about but we'd probably be here a long time. The basic fact of the matter is, we've been putting blame on others since the 50s, when people st...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Around a year and a bit ago, we saw a deer coming into our garden. Living in the Fens and having our garden next to a field, often means that we get a lot of deeds coming into our garden. We even had a rabbit come and eat our vegetables, which my parents obviously weren't too happy about. We suspected it was a pet or something as we get a lot of hares in the field but not rabbits and none of them really come into our garden anyways. However, when we saw the deer that day, unlike any other deer this one was injured. It was injured quite severely on the leg as it was bleeding and it also had lost part of it. It looked really bad so initially, I thought it would be a good idea to perhaps ring a firm, to see if there would be a possibility that they would be able to do something. However, after closer consideration, we decided to just leave it. These muntjac deers must injure themselves all the time because they're wild anima...