Happy New Year!

I’d like to take this moment and wish everyone a Happy New Year.  Let the new year bring more good to your life and take away the pains and troubles.  Be happy, healthy, wealthy, and have tonnes of fun!

Maybe it’s also a good time to take a brief look back at the year 2008, as well as examine some expectations for the year 2009.

2008 was a difficult year.  Difficult in both good and bad ways. There were some losses in the family, with my mother-in-law losing her fight with cancer, Olga’s grandmother passing away, and my uncle unexpectedly dieing recently.  Also a few friends of the family were lossed.   These were the difficult times, difficult in such a way that I wish nobody has to experience.

The good difficulties were related mostly with my job changes.   I changed the company, and then outgrew the initial position and initial project.  I’ve learned a lot about financial industry, managing an IT department, managing a group of developers, coordinating several projects at once, and more.  I’ve worked more this year than any other year in my life – more hours, more work done, more stress managed, more achieved, and that’s a lot.

Talking about my new job I can’t avoid mentioning the good people that I met this year.  Quite a few!  Interestingly, I’ve also got acquanted with some other languages and cultures.  And it was amazing to find out that people so different can understand each other so good.

I have to say that 2008 was as good as I expected it to be, or at least most of it was.  I was hoping to travel more, which I didn’t.  I only went for a few days to Amsterdam, Netherlands, but even that was an eye opening experience.  Now that my finances are getting back in order, hopefully this year will be the one to bring more travels.

As for the expectations towards 2009, here is what I have to say:

  • I’m sure there is plenty more to learn and do work-wise.  Now that the team is almost fully assembled, and most of the initial clean-ups are taken care of, we can start working on some really interesting things.
  • Technology will continue getting cheaper and more mainstream.  Web is entering daily lives of more people everywhere and that brings up a lot of interesting opportunities.  Mobile devices are getting better by the day, and hopefully this is the year when Android-based devices and overall smarter smartphones will gain in their presence.
  • I want to get back into gaming.  These few days that I have PlayStation 3 at home proved to me that I like gaming and that there is plenty to discover.  I should be wasting more of my time with controller in hands.
  • Travelling should be mentioned again.  I expect to travel more this year.  At a minimum, I want to go back to my home town for a few days, and then also visit at least one country that I haven’t been to before.
  • Paperwork.  This is something dragging from the previous years, but I expect that I will at least finish the citizenship paperwork for my wife and kid.
  • And I also expect hope that this year I won’t hear so many bad news.  I really hope that everyone that I know will survive this year, and in good health and memory.

With that, once again I wish you a very Happy New Year!  Let me know how your year went, what you expect of the new one, and how did you celebrations go.  Let the fireworks begin!

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