Image above: Walking through Planty park, surrounding the Old Town of Krakow, beautifully blanketed by the falling snow. [Sunday 03 January]
Getting back from Krakow on Sunday and going straight to work on Monday it’s been non-stop so taking a moment to fire off my first post of 2010 and to wish everyone a great year ahead!
Looking back over 2009 here are some stats of what happened:
Travel
- Explored 14 countries: 6 new (India, Nepal, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Cambodia, and Poland) and 8 existing: (Holland, Germany, Spain, South Korea, USA, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong & Macau)
- Pinned 218 cities in 36 countries on my travel map so far
Photography
- Shot more than 18961 photos
- Published 117 photosets containing 1933 photos … well, so far as I’ve still got 20 photosets to complete
Blog
- Published 198 posts and had my home page viewed 3,179 times
- Top 3 popular posts were: 1) A Weekend of Coincidences; 2) Gourmet Weekend: Tapas Brindisa; and 3) Learning 한굴 (Hangul)
- Tweeted 1,515 times averaging 4.15 a day
- Top 3 @replies were to: 1) @rainaraina [248]; 2) @continuum [142]; and 3) @bluntpencil [128]
Other Highlights
Outside of the above, some of the other highlights (in no particular order) were:
- Having Lynn, Brian, Caroline, Irene visit me in London
- Meeting Justine for the first time after 10 years of an online friendship
- Celebrating Lynn, Ana Maria, Shgufta, and Wing-Yu all giving birth to beautiful babies
- Attending Sylvia’s marriage to Nestor in London, Annie’s marriage to Bill in Los Angeles, and Justine’s marriage to Donald in Perth
- Travelling for a month and being able to visit and hug friends that I’ve not seen for 10+ years
- Getting an insider’s tour of the Houses of Parliament courtesy of an American friend!
- Doing an intensive Korean language class and making three good friends from it … the language I’ll have to work on!
- Seeing Snow Patrol live in concert twice including at the awesome Royal Albert Hall with See Yun
- Eating extremely well with excellent friends all around the world
2010 and beyond …
Writing all that out, it’s re-iterated how lucky I am to be able to do all of the above and for the friendships that I have. Am definitely thankful for all of that.
But what now? Looking back, there are still so many things that I didn’t do, didn’t want to do but should have, couldn’t do, or should have done differently. Quoting from a post that a friend wrote for the end of 2009:
“Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.” Aldous Huxley
A great call to action so I’ve got a swirl of plans, ideas, mantras, and changes circling in my head at the moment. But rather than write them out in exquisite detail I’ll end this post with with the words of the great Elvis Presley: a little less conversation, a little more action please …
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