Welcoming 2009
This is another end-of-year + new-year post, which means that it’s been a year past the last post of mine with the same topic. Well, years were never the same, hence, this post should exist.
The year 2008 left so many memories for me: valuable experiences, new places, encounters with many sort of people, a few competitions, lots of tasks, but it was great. Here is my summary of 2008 :
- I visited Korea (transit only), Canada (ACM ICPC World Finals), and Sydney (Google Code Jam APAC onsites). I also visited my hometown, Pontianak, after 9 years which didn’t feel like so long. Those journeys are done in 12 flights, around a bit more than 20.000 miles in total.
- My cash-equivalent assets shrunk by around 25%, due to the considerable loss in stocks and extra expenses (including the purchase of my Lenovo Thinkpad T61). Extra income from competitions come in a strong sum, I think a bit better than 2007, which helps keeping the shrinking minimal. In comparison, the Jakarta Composite Index fell about nearly 50%.
- I’ve almost finished my studies, with satisfactory grades. I’ve also been appointed as a teaching assistant handling one lab class.
- Relationship matters are mostly still unclear, but is getting better.
- I’ve increased my weight by around 10kg, such that now I have a more or less ideal weight.
- I’m now more outgoing, I believe that now I deal with other people better than before.
- My productivity in completing tasks are not really improving, such that a big chunk of the year are wasted in games, pointless browsing, etc. Maybe I’m just tired with everything, and need a significant change in life (such that moving overseas). Task backlog never clears up throughout the year, which adds to the laziness.
- I got a job offer from Google Sydney, and have decided to go there after finishing my studies. Not lost anymore, which is good.
Many of the interesting stories from 2008 can be seen in the previous post in this blog as well as my main blog. Now I think we shall continue to my outlook of 2009:
- I’ll be finishing my studies, and am targetting an A for my thesis. If everything goes well, I’ll graduate with a GPA of 3.90 and a Summa Cum Laude. Hopefully…
- I’ll be moving to Sydney, hopefully there’ll be no problem with the visa and others. This will be my first time living abroad, hopefully I’ll be completely independent soon.
- Because I’ll be employed and earn my own salary, I’m targetting a steep 300% asset growth. Hopefully the world’s economy recovers, so there’ll be interesting investment opportunities arising by the end of the year.
- I’m expecting to visit two new countries this year, or, one at minimum.
- I’m planning to upgrade my DSLR camera. It’s nearly 5 years old already and I think now I have a higher expectation out of a camera (which is becoming possible and affordable now). Maybe switching to Canon too? or maybe not.
- I’m expecting to learn more about people and their behaviors, hopefully increasing my skill in managing people (which is not so good at the moment).
- I may need to find and tune my long term life plan, because somehow I’m seeing my dreams started to fade, which is not good.
Many more to be written actually, but I suspect you’ve got bored up till this part, so I’ll end it here. I would like to wish everyone the best in 2009!
Cheers,
-Kurniady
P.S.: having a similar thought? or don’t agree with some of those ideas? whatever you think, let me know by posting in the comments. Thanks.