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| Wednesday December 31 |
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[12:11 pm] 2008: In Review
[Retrospect: 2007: In Review / 2006: In Review / 2005: In Review]
2008 has been a most eventful and great year for me, with so MANY great things that took place in the year, most often filled with so many parties (more parties that any other year before!), and when I look back at it, and all the great times we had and shared, the tough times we went through together, I don't really know how and where to start. And the best part of it, I had my friends along with me for the whole time, and I don't know what I'd do without them.
2008 has been a continued year of fun, I tried several more new things this year like wall climbing, white water rafting, 10km marathon and many, many more! And also it was a year of great travelling! From Bali to Langkawi, Genting to Muar, Singapore to Penang again (I went to Penang three times in the span of one year!), we rake up more pics than I can imagine. I already have close to 2400 tagged pics of myself on Facebook!
Career
I started the brand new year with a brand new job at Siemens Malaysia as the Sales Support Engineer under Security Solutions, Building Technologies. My role was basically quite similar to my previous job, and was mostly involved in the preparation of paperwork and documentation (for our internal processes), as well as both commercial and technical submissions for tenders and projects as well.
It has been a "learning" curve here for me here, but I guess I'm handling ok. Sometimes it gets really challenging with the highly "pressurized" environment here, but so far, managed to overcome it despite at times it was freaking impossible to do so, single handedly. Oh well, what doesn't break you will only make you stronger!
My department didn't do well during the last financial year, so, am hoping that with the seeds we sow last year, some fruits will start to bear soon... We have secured one job (verbally), while we stand a good chance in another project as well, currently in negotiation stage. Wish me luck, hopefully with that, we are able to sustain profitability with a large bonus end the end of this year. Yay!
Family
Things are great at home to begin with. I've been able to spend a little more time at home lately (especially on Sundays), taking them out for dinner, and going out when my bro is back for the weekend. Mum is ok, but Dad is suffering from a bout of nasty pain caused by the degradation of the neck vertebrae, which is infringing on his nerves, causing muscle spasms of the shoulder.
He complains that he can't sleep at night, but lately, he seems to be ok, and I guess I have to thank my visiting relatives from Canada and Singapore for this slight improvement.
Maybe I'm gonna plan for a long vacation with them this year, perhaps to somewhere overseas, so let's see how things goes when Dad gets better.
Bro is doing good too, and I've been seeing him at least once every 3-4 weeks. He's always back for some meeting or conference, or for the long weekend. I enjoy hanging out with him, or juz lazing at home watching the telly or just hanging out at his hotel room. Haha.
Also, hoping to see more of my Sg cousins this coming year too! We are supposed to plan our Family Vacation together! :D
And also, I wanna improve my communication with my parents as well.
Physical
I'm happy to say that there are some overall improvements in my physical appearance this year (Colin v2.1!), well thanks in whole to the BodyPump class that I've been doing lately during the last of 2008. I try to attend at least one Pump class a week, and if I can, two - one on Tuesday and the other on Friday. But due to the year end festivities, I've been missing out on my Friday Pump for weeks already!
My greatest challenge this year was to maintain the weight that I lost during the weeks leading up the Miracle 2008 Finale (read more bout it later), and boy, it was really challenging. At my "fittest" I was 70kg (YAY!), and weeks after that I'm around 73kg, and now, at last weight last night I'm still at 73kgs. I aim to lose a couple more kgs, while trying to be more toned and defined. Ooops. Too ambitious ka? :P
Food wise, have been keeping to simple light dinners at night (but the year end parties are NOT helping!) so hopefully, with the right regime and diet, I'll be able to reach my target by my Bangkok trip (in mid Feb) or by my Phuket trip (in mid July). Haha.
But judging from the wrist pain I have now, I still have some techniques in Pump to improve... Hehe.
Personal
Oh wow. This will be a rather lengthy section. I'm not sure how to divide it, but let's see how this entry flows.
First of all, the year was a bang! I think I've attended more parties this year than any year before! One after another... The numerous birthday parties, gatherings and festivities (CNY/Chap Goh Mei, Mooncake, Raya, Christmas!)... I think there are simply to many to recall or mention! Even my orange-themed Birthday party was fantastic! I will NEVER forget the shape of the cake for as long as I live! :P
Ok, I'll talk about the more significant events that took place this year...
Early this year, as mentioned previously, I went wall climbing with a couple of my friends. During our climb, as we progressed towards more challenging slopes, there was a particular difficult wall to climb (read the link above for more details with accompanying graphics) but with "someone's" encouragement I managed to do it. Sadly, when I visited this particular shopping mall a couple of months back, the wall climbing gym is already closed. Oh well. I looked at the wall I manage to scale, or rather how high it was, I'm quite surprised at myself. IT WAS HIGH!
It would be misleading if I didn't write bout this, as this was one of my more defining moments of 2008. It took me great courage to do what I did, to express my feelings (thanks guys for your encouragements) in a 6 pages handwritten letter. In the end I got the answer that I was seeking, although it wasn't in my favour.
That fueled me to be a better person, as I strive to improve myself although I believed that I somewhat changed a bit, some part negatively more than before, so in the next coming year, I'll strive to remedy that. I realise that my patience is wearing thin nowadays, so gotta be more patient. Haha. GA has pointed this out to me, so yeah, that is something I wanna improve on this coming year.
(But for the record, I still have no patience for ignorant peeps :P)
I think this year have not only been a tough year for me, but also for some friends around me as well. But I guess with the support from one another, we managed to weather through the storm. It wasn't easy, tears flowed, hearts were broken, but I guess we're a bunch of supportive friends and that's the greatest gift anyone can ever have. Really. This is the highlight of my year!
The support of our closest friends proved invaluable when Jason, KK, Simon, Nat and myself a.k.a. The RATTs decided to join the Fitness First Miracle 2008 event this year to raise funds in aid of the China Earthquake Relief Efforts under Mercy Malaysia and Kirtarsh Home. Although we didn't emerge as overall winners of the competition, I guess all of us took much more from it - spiritually, and while having fun, we raised over RM 20,000! That's the WHOLE amount from the previous year! Special thanks to all of our dearest friends who took time out to help us out - together we made a difference! And look at all the new friendships we've gained!
Summary
There are many more things that happened in 2008, too many to recall in such a short time span, to mention about in this entry. Overall, if 2007 was a great year for me, 2008 was a by far a FANTASTIC year for me. Pictures alone speaks a thousand words, and the the thousands of pics alone paints a beautiful and fun-filled year that was 2008.
I'm not too sure what 2009 has in store for us, but I hope it will be one fantastic year for all of you, in the way that 2008 has been for me.
Have a great 2009 ahead peeps. Happy New Year!
Colin @ yw[ :) ]
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| Janvier: Happy New Year Colin! |
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| (Posted on 12-31-08 at 12:18 pm) |
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Jason Siah: Trust me.. It's gonna be another fantastic year!.. =)
Thanks to u for being the greatest friend of all in year 2008..
~J~
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| (Posted on 01-01-09 at 4:13 pm) |
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Gene: Let's continue the one word in 2009 --> Supafantabulicious.
:-p |
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| (Posted on 01-04-09 at 12:47 pm) |
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