12.31.04

Reflections of 2004

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:28 pm by GaZ

Another year has come and (nearly) gone and for once i’m actually going to sit down and record what’s been going on in my life this year. Note that this is just a selfish view and i’m ignoring everything that has happened in the world at large (because it’s not as important as me).

Ups

The highlight of the year, personally, has to be that I earned my BSc. (with honours ;-)) and, while I may do some futher education in the future (such as an MSc), those care-free student days are gone. But at least i’ve got the memories, from the early days of living in halls, of getting a little too drunk a little too often, of minor run-ins with the po-po, and of way too much stress towards the end of it all… at least until senelity sets in.

Another big moment was getting my first ever full-time job, working for Perceptive Informatics! Working the 9 - 5 for “the man” isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be… the work is fun and stimulating, the co-workers are a good laugh, and the pay isn’t bad either. Now to initiate my plan for global domination

Downs

All in all this has been a good year, however one of my biggest regrets is that i’m now worse than ever at writing e-mails… I wish more people would write blogs as I always read those and I believe them to be a great form of communication (sure, it’s mostly one-way communication, but that just makes it easier to speak your mind and censor anyone who rebukes!), but I can understand how some people just don’t have the urge to publish the monotonous everyday happenings of their life. I wear my anorak with pride!

Arounds

I’ve done a fair bit of travelling this year, starting off 2004 in China with Hanne, Dave and my parents. Then, after my half-term exams I went to visit Hanne and do a bit of cross-country skiing. During the summer I first went back to Norway, then a cycling holiday in southern France.

After the summer, once Hanne had moved over to England, we moved to Birmingham. This was my third house-move of the summer… well, to an apartment, if you want to be pedantic (which some people always are ;-)). Hanne and I got our place in Birmingham city centre, which is brilliant! Unfortunately it could be a LITTLE better for Hanne since she now has to commute 30 miles to and from work every day, but i’m proud of her for doing it!

This was also the first year that I didn’t spend Christmas with my family… in the end it turned out to be quite a seperated holiday season, with mum in Wales with my grandparents, uncle and Tequila, my dad and brother on the island of Borneo (which was, thankfully, spared from the recent catastrophe), and myself and Hanne in Norway.

Well, I think that’s the year, in a nutshell. Roll on 2005! We’ll be spending New Years Eve with Hanne’s friends, before heading over to a party in Oslo. What’s everyone else doing?

Going off on a tangent… I was sitting down looking through some norwegian gossip magazines while Hanne was getting her hair cut, and who whould be featured in the magazine but none other than Philippe Starck (yes, that was a bit of an Internet faux-pas, linking directly to the images on his site, but I think the man can afford the bandwidth)! The man is everywhere! This time he’s been redesigning the Baccarat Crystal Room in gay Paris. Mr Starck has also recently designeda stylish new mouse, but I have yet to try it out.

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