My excuse is that if I don’t then I’m going to forget, but the unfortunate side effect is that these tasks in my head all cry out for attention, which makes me wonder sometimes whether this is what schizophrenia feels like. It has also all but killed my attention span, meaning every time I have to wait for a Web page to load, or a program to open, I switch over to the next window and start working on something else instead.

I’m sure this isn’t healthy.

For one thing, when I’m at home with no urgent chores or other pressing agenda I’ll almost always end up playing videogames because that’s the first thing that comes to mind to do. It might even be revealing that I tend to prefer genres that involve quests and achievements – i.e. role playing, real-time strategy, platform and adventure games. Do this! Go there! Fetch that! It’s an endless stream of tasks that make me feel… occupied.

Then I remember that it’s been several weeks since I last published a post on any of my blogs, and I realise something that is endemic to my behavioural situation: I rarely finish anything because I’m constantly being distracted by something else. I never find the time to sit down with an idea long enough to nurture it past conception, but then find myself being constantly frustrated that my labour bears no fruit. I’m not just talking about tasks, but also relationships as well – most of my relationships are conducted online – I only make time for people who are on Facebook. God forbid you should try and meet me for a coffee or something, ‘coz there could be 300 other people whose tweets, status posts or IMs I’m missing out on while you’re selfishly consuming my time.

So here’s the deal. I realise it’s kinda late for resolutions, but for the rest of this year I resolve to:

• Make more time for people. I don’t mean being more personable, but actually taking the effort to connect with people, both the ones who have actually been actively trying to reach out to me, as well as those who I’ve lost contact with as a result of my aggressive negligence.
• Go deeper. I’m gonna stop wondering why my half-assed ideas aren’t getting anywhere, and actually do something about it. One key change I need to make is to stop being my own biggest critic, and spend less time trying to be awesome. So what if things end up failing or resulting in a dead end?
• Break free of limitations. Over the last few months we went through a bit of a lean period financially. Don’t get the wrong idea though; this was a “rich man’s problem” which deserves no pity, but I digress. Instead of focusing on what I stand to lose, I must make a conscious effort to take bigger risks – to think of it not as loss but sacrifice, even if it is nothing more than fuel for the great hamster wheel that life can be sometimes.

There may be more, but that’s a start.

Reflecting upon the stats from Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, it seems that the thing I do best is choosing and tagging images. My blogs rank consistently high in image-related searches, and visits are almost entirely from people looking for various pictures. If image clicks paid like pay-per-click ads, I’d probably be turning a buck from my efforts.

Notable (blogging) achievements from last year include the redesign, which I’m pretty happy with. I’m greatly indebted to my friend Jan for the logo execution – I’ll get around to putting it on a t-shirt one day, mate – as well as Rodrigo Galindez for the theme, and also for popping by to leave a comment. I’m very happy with the result, and glad to have moved on from the dull grey/black theme that I was previously using.

One other thing that I’m proud is my post rate. If blog posts were heartbeats then you could say that my blogs were barely alive in 2009. Hopefully this year I’ll be able to turn that into a pulse. A fitting analogy, since Jenny always encourages me to post more from my heart than from my mind. Har har.

At any rate (ah! I crack myself up), I hope you’ve been enjoying my various ramblings and look forward to more, because the words, they are a-flowing :-)

Dunno whether it was just being away from home, and all the stress that is here, or the hardcore retail therapy and excellent food, or the safety of being “parented” by my awesome mum and dad while we were there, but Jenny’s blues also took a holiday.

We also went on a tour of Seoul, but joined a really crappy tour, so I’d say that I’ve experienced Korea only very barely. The other Honkies on the tour decided that they were more interested in shopping, so at every non-shopping destination we arrived at, they’d take the obligatory photo and get straight back on the bus, leaving us to always be the stragglers. The “Korean” tour guide was also an idiot, constantly taking pot-shots at Jenny being an ex-pat despite the fact that she herself was from Hong Kong and had only lived in Seoul for 6 years, making outrageous claims about how she was more Korean than my wife. Grr… I’ll stop there before I get even more angry. Suffice to say, she was full of bull, and spent more time talking about herself than the country.

We did manage to get some time away from the tour to visit Jenny’s relatives, and they cooked us up a super Korean feast! Beat the heck out of the crappy food we were getting from the stupid tourist restaurants that the tour took us to.

Back in Hong Kong, we did some more last minute shopping, and finally managed to get across to the Hong Kong side, having only explored Kowloon up to that point! 2 weeks definitely wasn’t enough, and like how I’d dearly love to revisit Japan, Jenny now wants to make Hong Kong her home away from home!

A few pics below. More over at Flickr.

We have a tall, skinny one which has all of our shoes and shoeboxes, a few Ikea jobs for DVD’s, CD’s and games, and a half-height one that a previous landlord kindly gave me acting as a chest of drawers for my clothes.

Then there’s the big looming black things in the dining area that we’re borrowing from the owners of our current place, which are supposed to be display cabinet-type things, but they’re really nothing more than bookshelves with glass doors (and it’s where I keep our cookbooks anyway).

Now to find somewhere to put all the books…

Me, I wasn’t able to find the motivation to do even that. Most of my friends and family received a cold, unfriendly silence in lieu of a card (virtual or otherwise), or even a generic mass e-mail. Now I have this guilty feeling for not making the effort to keep in touch with people, so I suppose you could consider this blog post as a weak attempt at restitution – a cyber-repentance of sorts.

So an extremely belated merry Christmas, and a happy new year! Keep in touch. Feel free to send me a card to let me know how you’re doing :-)

In past years, the gifts that I’ve received have usually been good, but unsatisfactory by the above “standard”. I’m sure this is in no small part due to the fact that I live in Australia, and Ars Technica is a US-based website.

This year, however, my expectations were not only met, but greatly exceeded. My secret santa bought for me the entire first season of the game Sam & Max, plus a poster signed by Steve Purcell, the creator of the comic. I photoshopped the dialogue from a Sam & Max comic to express my gratitude, which you can see by clicking on the thumbnail picture above (my forum username is zzyss and my santa’s is westyx). Unfortunately, despite my santa’s attempts to conceal his identity, which included registering a purpose-specific gmail account, the games store accidentally provided his details in an e-mail informing that the poster was out of stock and will be shipping as soon as it becomes available.

I loved the original Lucasarts game Sam & Max Hit the Road, and I’m definitely looking forward to getting reacquainted with the characters and their quirky humour in this new series.

On a side note, this game also represents a new trend in gaming, where instead of releasing a story-based game all in one go, the narrative is broken up into discrete chunks and presented episodically, similar to a TV series. See also: Half Life 2 goes episodic on Gamespot.

Fortunately, they were nice enough about it, and humoured me while I asked them various questions so that I might have a chance at finding who has my details and why they are telling people to contact me for TV servicing. They did mention that they bought the TV from Betta Electrical, and a glimmer of memory presented itself.

About 4 years ago, when I first moved to Sydney, I bought an “open box” TV. That is, it was only used for a couple of days at a conference or something, then put back into the box and sold. There was an ad in the newspaper which I responded to. Not sure why after all these years they’ve “promoted” me to TV guy. Maybe it’s a sign that I should change careers…

This, friends, is the fruit of my labours. Towards the end of last year, I started shopping around for a diamond. Being a child of the information era, my search started and ended on the Internet. The rock itself came from the Diamond Exchange, recommended by Dillon, and was selected by me based on a very stringent set of criteria. Being a total geek (and a man), size didn’t matter as much as the specifications. For those not in the know, diamonds can generally be categorized by the four C’s (Carat, Colour, Clarity and Cut) After some lengthy deliberations, I settled on the following:

Carat: 0.52 ct
Colour: E
Clarity: VVS1
Cut: Ideal+ Hearts and Arrows

“Hearts and Arrows” just means that the diamond is perfectly symmetrical. There are a whole bunch of other specs that apply for Cut, like pavilion depth, table width, etc. etc. but suffice to say that the one I chose was a good cut. At the end of the day, it just means that the diamond will look “brighter”.

After I received the diamond, it was time to get it set. Going from another recommendation by Juan and Glenda, I went to see Ron Crisp with nothing more than a couple of printouts of some solitaire engagements rings that I looked up on the Internet. The Tiffany setting was probably the nicest clawed setting I could find (bezel = NO!!!), so I went with that, and chose a custom band ‘coz I didn’t like the angular look of the Tiffany one. The “shoulder” (how it starts out as a knife edge after the setting, but smoothing down to a round edge as it goes around) was suggested by Ron and it turned out really nice.

Well firstly, there’s the matter of the ring. The current trend seems to be for the couple to go out and shop for the ring together. But nope, part of my mission would be to source the thing itself. You can read the details of how I went about it above, but in terms of trying to find out the right size, I have to admit that it was a bit of a miracle. Through some combination of techniques such as sneaking different rings onto her fingers while trinket shopping and then trying them on my own, I eventually discovered that her ring finger is a fraction smaller than my pinky finger on my right hand.

After that was settled came the matter of informing the parents. As if the task itself wasn’t daunting enough, there was also the language barriers and the fact that other people can’t be trusted to keep secrets. At first, when Jenny’s mum and step-dad were visiting from Belgium, I sneaked in a quick conversation with them, which they then promptly relayed to Jenny – much to her chagrin. Strike 1….

Next, I informed my parents of the good news that I was ready to propose to Jenny, and they reacted in a way that I was totally not prepared for. In the Chinese culture, it seems, there is no engagement period. When a couple are ready to marry, they throw a big engagement party – and my parents, having recently undergone medical treatment, were in no condition to travel, so they were immensely offended that I intended to have a party without them (as they thought we were going to do). That, and the fact that they haven’t met Jenny’s parents yet, which is another big cultural faux pas. This particular problem ended up being resolved with a long-distance teleconference between me, Jenny and my parents. Strike 2….

Lastly, I had to ask Jenny’s dad for her hand. Learning from previous experience, I specifically requested that they keep it a secret from Jenny. However, the next day, Jenny gets a call from her cousin congratulating her – they had heard the news from uncle (Jenny’s dad) that I had spoken with them. D’oh! Strike 3!!!

By now, Jenny’s expectations had been growing and growing, to the stage where she was beginning to feel immensely frustrated that all this stuff seemed to be happening, but no proposal was forthcoming.

I had to act. Having decided when I was going to do the deed, I chose to work from home on the day, allowing me some time to prepare. But wouldn’t you know it, Jenny caught Laryngitis, losing her voice, and spoiling the plans I made. Honestly!

Fast forward 2 weeks…

Finally, everything seemed to be lining up. It was a Saturday morning and Jenny was at college. I set everything up as you see in the picture. The album consisted of a few collages with pictures, photos, print outs, etc. of sentimental occasions that we shared. (I got all the photos printed out during a Harvey Norman special – 15c for up to 200 photos… I printed 189. Hahaha…)

Jenny finished up at college and came around to my place. She browsed through the album, while I hid, and at the end, I came out and popped the question. The conversation went a bit like this:

Caesar: <comes out of hiding>
Jenny: No way! You can’t be serious. Are you serious?
Caesar: …
Jenny: You’re not serious? You are serious, aren’t you?
Caesar: Jenny…
Jenny: Oh my…
Caesar: Will you marry me?
Jenny: <grins> Nah!
Caesar: <flabbergasted> That’s your answer?
Jenny: No, of course not! I was joking!
Caesar: So?
Jenny: Oh, alright.

After about 2 hours of phoning various friends and family, we went out for dinner in Chatswood, where she finally said “a million times yes” to my original question. Then we went to Darling Harbour for a bit of a walk and some dessert.