Anyway, enough rambling, year 2008 is now behind, reflecting on what has happened last year:

• Finally graduated from my master degree - what a huge relief!
• Graduated from PTC (unexpectedly)
• Moving to another company (yet again!)
• Managed to finished reading at least 17 books.
• Welcoming Matthew to the clan.
• Credit crunch, financial crisis made me significantly poorer, but in comparison with lots of people in the world, I am still very2 blessed, I still can afford more than basic necessities of life.

I wonder how will 2009 look like for us.  I haven’t really thinking of setting goals etc2, so far I only have a rough idea what I want to do in terms of family, ministry and work. I am not sure I am game enough to publish them online after all I don’t want to be apologizing to myself by the end of the year for not accomplishing them.

This is the 17th book finished, I am half way through reading the last one, Kingdom Come, except that I can’t find the book now, perhaps it was left behind at the airport today when I picked up my aunt.

I have a mix feeling reading this novel, while it’s quite engaging and quite touching as well (especially if you are a Christian, you cannot help but being stirred in emotion), but I am afraid Christians can mistake this novel as authoritative as the Bible itself (just like the Da Vinci Code does to the non believers). Well it is not a bible commentary, it is just a novel, read your bible and read the novel.

I was prompted to pray while reading this novel which is always a good thing, I guess.

10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

This is the message that was preached during Dan and Fayette’s wedding last month. A very appropriate passage around Christmas.

Why would anyone want to die for me or for you? Humans are such a wreck, totally crippled by sins, I hope you have received or will receive His love. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Seperti Hidup Kembali - Andra & the Backbone

But I am glad that this year, Wes Carr has won the Australian Idol 2008. Having been watching the this year’s idol I think he deservedly won it. What a rock star and what a performer he is, quite humble too. Although I like Luke’s single better.

I was asked to do some exercise and stretches, she also did a little massage on the heel.

She noted that my calves muscles are really tense and that’s due to my laziness in stretching. I used to incorporate stretch in my exercise, but I haven’t done much this year, since I have to switch my gym sessions to early morning and in a very limited time: 6am - 7am.

The other thing that she noted was my lack of balance. So she asked me to stand on this equipment that shaped like a see saw and I basically have to keep standing without falling down. It’s very hard. Also I doubt I can do this at home since I don’t have the apparatus.

Interesting quote from the link above (emphasis mine):

Achilles tendonitis is a common overuse injury that tends to occur in middle-age recreational athletes.

Middle age!!! Argh, so it’s true I am getting older!

I must restrain myself from doing too much thinking, reading (got few books on design patterns that I would really love to read), architecting and coding during this week, I actually planned to take my SCJP exam during this break, but since there has been some development in my work situation, I think this exam can wait.

Some of things that I plan to do:

• Go to see a physio and have my right foot looked at. DONE
• Have a Chinese massage DONE
• Perhaps buy parts for my new PC DONE
• Go to La Perouse DONE
• Convert Why Not series to MP3s
• Make blog posts or articles of some sort, out of Why Not series, perhaps in Indo so that I can send them to my family
• Try out that 85 derajat cafe. DONE
• Do lots of cleaning up and throwing out/giving away things. Sort of DONE.

I think this is the most comprehensive and useful book in job hunting that I have ever read. Given that fact, please bear in mind that my reflection upon my first reading below will not do the justice to the book. It’s an excellent book let me start by stating that, you owe it to yourselves to at least have a quick read through it as I have.

In the early chapters, the author contrasts ways that job hunter’s preferred ways to find jobs and employers’  preferred ways to hunt for employees. Richard shows that often job hunters think that mass sending their resumes is the effective way to hunt for jobs, however employers’ most preferred ways of hiring is through hiring from within and/or through colleagues or contacts.

I said earlier that I sort of finished the book, but I cheated, because I didn’t really do the exercise in the book. The exercises are to determine:

1. What skills you enjoy most using?
2. Where do you want to use your skills?
3. How do you find the person who will hire you for the job that you are looking for?

The best thing I got out from first reading of the book is, I am reminded that I have a lot of choices in terms of careers/jobs (this is particularly true as I’m blessed enough to live in Australia, I can’t help but thinking will not be the case if I were to live in poorer countries).

One practical advice that I want to follow is: talk to the people in the company before deciding to take a job. As a job hunter, we should screen companies before we join the company not after joining. My other personal take after reading this book, when looking for a job instead of hitting the job boards like SEEK, etc2, it will be far better if you research and compiled a list of companies that you want to work for and talk to people who work there.

The bad thing about this book is in a way it promotes self centeredness, it is all about me and my happiness, it is about what job I want to do, where do I want to live etc2. The author is highly optimistic that everyone can find the career that they want by utilizing the techniques described in the book, I however don’t believe that as there are things that you just can’t control in life (for example: you might live in a poor country, you might have mental disability etc2). Also from the Christian’s perspective, it is not that awfully important for someone to have that "perfect career" in his/her life.

The author ends the book with a chapter on finding your mission in life, in which he explains the spiritual side of work. He shares how his faith in God as a Christian shapes his attitude towards work and job hunting. To be honest, I gave this chapter a cursory glance, especially as I myself am a believer so I already have some understanding how my relationship with God shapes my career or my work. Another reason why I didn’t read it in details is because I am uncomfortable with some of his conclusions. 

As mentioned earlier, this book is content heavy, I should read this again on between jobs, it would make more sense then. I definitely want this book on my bookshelf as reference.

If you are a Christian, read this book for its practicalities (again very excellent book in this matter) but not for its philosophies (although the author claims that he’s a Christian himself).

This is the 16th book I read this year.

This year’s complexity mostly caused by my purchase of AGL few years ago. Sometimes down the line AGL bought Alinta, so I then own 2 shares of AGK (the new code for AGL) and Alinta. But not long after that Alinta was sold to Babcock and Brown and in returns I’ve got another 5 different shares! What a mess! I sold them all.

Anyway, my point of this post is, there’s got to be a better way to do Tax Return. If you think about it, in Australia, you’d have to supply Tax File Number (TFN) for a lot of occasions like opening term deposits, bank account, managed funds or buying shares. So why can’t the government just gather information from the financial institutions based on this TFN? Sure, we cannot trust any automated process just like that, but wouldn’t be nice to have a centralized automated system that work out roughly how your Tax Return should look like and then you can do your own homework to double check the correctness of it. 

This manual process (and paper based) of doing Tax Return is quite annoying to be honest, I spent a lot of time keeping track of dividend payments, deductions etc2.. There’s just got to be an easier way of doing this.

I thought this book was about how to build people and contacts. But it’s actually more about Network Marketing, or more commonly known as Multi Level Marketing (MLM).

The book was written in the style similar to Rich Dad Poor Dad, whereby the author was fortunate enough to meet and then be coached by this highly successful individual, the best in the field who happens to love sharing his knowledge, this individual is aptly titled "The Greatest Networker in the World" (akin to the Rich Dad in Kiyosaki’s book).

The author’s main point seems to be: to be successful you need to change your habits of belief, replace the old and bad habits with the ones that will help you achieve what you want, for example: if you keep on believing you are fat, that you will stay that way, instead you need to change the beliefs with what will your life looks like if you are slimmer.

The author goes on great details describing the networker’s perfect life: big house, nice cars, horses, great & happy family, a Japanese house maid (who happen also to be his no 1 distributor in Japan) and how in the end the author can achieve the same thing (in the epilogue John mentioned that he bought the networker’s house). Describing extravagant success in details seem to be the norm for this sort of book and the author seems to suggest that success in life can only be measured in what one can gain materially. 

I guess it wasn’t a fruitful reading for me as I am not really into MLM much anyway although Lina was doing it a bit before. But it was short reading and an enganging one so at least I learn a little bit about writing. Would I recommend this book? Heck no, unless you are doing MLM yourselves.

And that my friend was the 15th book finished this year.