jaywalking

2008 was great.

I worked and lived overseas, I got a glimpse into the television industry, I climbed the Great Wall of China and rode through the mountains of Mongolia.

2009 is going to be awesome. Bring it on!!

When I began this blog I unofficially decided that every post should have an image of some kind. So here we go… A sketch. Everything else I’m doing is work in progress, confidential or junky experiments too embarrassing to show.

All my time has been spent learning Actionscript, or buying books on AS on Amazon. Or reading tutorials online. As someone coming from a art background and no coding experience, I knew it would be tough, but I had no idea how much it would utterly consume me.

So here are some reminders to help me deal with the learning curve.

1. Don’t just focus on one problem - There were so many times where I found myself stuck on a certain concept. Instead of spending hours on it, investigating something else that intrigued me about the program and coming back to the frustrating one later made me see things with fresh eyes.

2. Take time to reflect - even if it’s a few minutes at the end of the day, just spend some time to get a big picture view of what you’ve just read.

3. Have a small manageable project (so you can apply knowledge immediately in context) and an epic dream project. It may not be feasible with your current skill, but at least find something about the technology that excites you and makes you want to improve.

4. Keep an eye on laziness - It’s so easy to whittle away a day doing jack all.

On that note, I better get back to it.

After Mongolia, I took a flight back to Beijing and spent a few days there packing up my friends apartment. It was nice having that time to reflect on the end of it all, despite all the madness being the week before the Olympics was to begin.

Some of the things I did in those last few days:
1. Met up with a local and had some interesting conversation exchanges.
2. Sat in the back of a removal van with some rural (I think) roughneck guys.
3. Found my way to the Great Wall despite my limited Mandarin.

Anyway, moving along, after 4 days, my last day was upon me. I was excited to fly out of there -

It’d been almost 6 months since being home. Only now reminiscing do I get that intense feeling of nostalgia, to the point where I almost miss it.

But my flight wasn’t heading straight home. I headed back to Singapore, arrived at 10pm and had to wait until 7am the next morning for my final flight back home. I didn’t have a place to stay that night so I met up with some friends.

We ate… So good.

Then we went to Orchard road for even more eating.

And finally back to Changi… For yes. Eating. At 5am in the morning. Two guys sitting in the airport foodcourt chatting away. Notice the egg shells in the foreground, I love how you can order boiled eggs there. It’s awesome, almost as good as iced milo, which is a permanent fixture at fast food outlets much like coke or pepsi.

Thanks for everything guys. I met them on a tour in Taiwan back in 2004 and even now years later, it seems like nothing has changed. My trip wouldn’t have been the same without them.

So we said our goodbyes and with that, I was on my way.