Perception

I guess my first post of the new year should be about resolutions, although I haven’t really stuck to mine in the past few years. It wouldn’t hurt trying again this year, especially since I managed to attain the goals that I set for myself for the holidays in December.

Looking back on the past month, it was interesting to see that I achieved both my aims in each half of the break respectively. I spent the first three weeks learning PHP and MySQL while bemoaning the boredom of having nothing else to do, and then in the subsequent weeks found myself fully immersed in work and an internship applying all web development knowledge that I possess.

Back to resolutions, anyway. I’ve decided that this year’s objectives should be feasible and reasonable, to increase the likelihood of me achieving any of them. Ambitious thoughts are nice, but they should stay that way, as thoughts. 2009 is a full school year for me, and a lot more of my time will be devoted to my studies. Anyhow, I’ve come up with a few resolutions for this year, and here they are in no order of importance.

Learn a new language
Picking up a foreign language would be nice, but in this context I’m actually referring to a new programming language. I’ve set my sights on Python, and the Django framework, as these would definitely give a more technical depth to my web development skill set. I won’t be starting on this soon though, and I’ll probably wait until the coming semester is over first.

Get better at the languages I already know
This applies to all languages that I know, verbal, written or programming. I’ve been continuously trying to improve my English and Mandarin, although getting better at the latter has been a lot tougher. In the case of programming languages, I’ll be spending a lot more time with Java once school starts, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be free enough to practice and improve my PHP and MySQL.

Start reading (again)
I used to read a lot of fiction when I was younger, but I lost the habit when I enlisted into the army. I mainly read articles and news online now, but I’d love to get back to some old-fashioned book-reading. I just bought The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss to get me started, and there a few other titles I would like to cover over the course of this year.

Exercise, exercise and more exercise
This is probably one of the tougher yet regular resolutions that I make, and this year looks to be no different. My Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT) window is closing late in the year, which would hopefully give me ample time to build up my physical fitness. This critical test would also give me the opportunity to silence any critics of the unsightly flab around my waist.

Maintain, if not improve on, my grades
My grades for the first semester were not too bad, and for this semester I aim to put in more effort to try to do better. The modules I’ll most likely be doing this time round are just as diverse as the past term, although the core modules seem a lot more challenging. 2009 will also see the first half of my second year of studies, but I guess I’ll only be able to talk about that a few months down the road.

And that’s about it for my resolutions. They don’t seem overly ambitious nor ridiculous to me, so I guess I won’t have any excuse if I don’t accomplish them all come December 31st. It’s a lot easier to set do-resolutions than don’t-resolutions too, as I can’t break any of my resolutions before the end of the year this way.