I am one of those people who don’t really see the significance or appreciate certain dates. So new year day is just another day for me. But I think I can understand that it’s a good thing to be able to mark a day for a fresh start and reflection and new year day is a good candidate for it (it could’ve been any other day of the year, also it doesn’t have to be in yearly interval).

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.

Went to visit a physiotherapist today, her diagnose was: I have an Achilles Tendonitis. I thought the visit would only last for half an hour, but I ended up staying there for about an hour.

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 will have a week off this week. I am quite looking forward to it, I hope I can spend more time with Lina and to lesser extent with Jet.

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.

It used to be a simple task for me, but now it’s getting more complicated to the point that I have to enlist the help of accountant to do it properly.

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 noticed starting the last year or so, my physical recovery time has been getting longer. Sunday sport has taken more toll on me than before, I think my reaction has been tad slower as well. 

I am quite happy with my current form, I have been able to be more consistent with the weights. I think I’ve got a routine that works for me, although I am thinking of re-orientating my workout to include more core exercises which focus on stability and balance rather than strength/muscle building, but I don’t know how to do that yet, got to read up.

One sign of getting older is this annoying pain on my right ankle area since few months ago. I am not sure what’s causing it,I’ve got a feeling the one Sydney basketball meetup that I went to few months ago, might have something to do with it, but it could also due to other things like incorrect running technique. The pain has prevented me from running too long on treadmill, which is quite disappointing as running is definitely THE aerobic exercise for me. I have been doing elliptical instead, but it’s just not as satisfying.

I think a visit to physio is long overdue.