So, it’s time for the annual obligatory blog post which summarises the year and brings us forth into the new one with new challenges/goals.  Here we go…

The year of 2011.  Where should I start… Probably at the beginning…

Japan

If you scroll down this blog you’ll find that earlier this year I went to Japan.  They say that travelling with others is one of the greatest tests for friendships (not in so many words but something like that).  Unfortunately for the group I travelled with this test proved to be too difficult.  Even though I’m still friends with all of them, there is a void that’s drifted between some of them and it makes me sad to think it didn’t have to be like that…

I only mention this because it happened and I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t.  They also say time heals all, I only hope that this is true and that the differences that have developed can be resolved…

Full-Time Work

After Japan I came home to a completely different part of my life: Full time work and to a whole new group of people.  Graduates of Westpac it’s been a fun year filled with faces and giant squids.  I joined the Westpac program because of it’s grad community, and I’m glad to say it was the right choice, not because of the work (which was OK) but because of the people, in less than a year I’ve gained more than just colleagues, I’ve gained some good friends.  Funnily enough it was the first time I’d had any interaction with my neighbour of ten years… LOL.

Graduation

Our Graduation ceremony was held in March, a truly surreal moment, BIT’s ftw! (and ISM’s =P):

Basketball

No more uni work to do at home meant more time for me to do other stuff.  A lot of my time this year was devoted to Basketball, it’s been a great fun year with the Tuesday night crowd at Pyrmont as well as the lunch time comps on Wednesday/Thursday.  I’ve also met a whole heap of new people through this extra curricular activity and I now spend a lot of my time thinking about how to become a better player/troller on the court.  I spent a whole bunch of money on new Basketball equipment, 2 new pairs of shoes, a new basketball and you could even count the backyard ring I bought early on in the year.

Career Decision

I’ve managed to make a big decision regarding my career, you can read about it here: http://blog.zephor.org/?p=201.  If you cbb, I’ve finally decided to be a developer and to focus less on the BA/PM aspects of the industry.  I’ve finally torn the fence I was sitting on down.   Now for world domination…

Two Years

December 11th 2011 marked our two years anniversary.  It has been a very quick and very happy two years, I didn’t think I’d be in a position to say that any time soon but there you go, I guess time does go quicker when you’re enjoying it =)  Happy two years!

Resolutions

Ok so time to see if I actually achieved my goals from the beginning of the year.  Lets see what I had as resolutions:

Resolutions 2011:

1. Lose the Belly (cliche) – Done, I lost 5 kgs and a lot of the excess belly fat =)
2. Learn Guitar (cliche) – Nope (started many times but didn’t stick with it)
3. Finish the year a debt-free credit card – Done, Credit card balance stands at 0!
4. Save for a Car – Nope, I don’t have enough for a car, but I also won’t be needing it anymore…
5. Start Game – Done, technically.  I started it but decided it wasn’t worth the work.

I’d like to have a little rant about something that’s ALWAYS bugged me.  The eternal struggle that is Mac vs PC and why it’s absolute crap.  This post was prompted by a little discussion I had last week with a co-worker surrounding the benefits of Mac’s and PC’s.  It went something like this:

” Macs suck!”

“why?”

“they’re over priced for the hardware they give you!”

“but that doesn’t mean the mac itself sucks”

“OSX sucks!”

“Why?

“Well what does OSX have over windows?”

Disclaimer: This is how the conversation went in my mind (not verbatim).  Also the discussion was quite a bit more involved than that, but this summary servers to illustrate my point.

What you see here is a classic case of the windows community hate for the MacOSX for, as far I can see, no real reason.  And it’s not just the windows users.  Mac fan’s will always fail to come up with proper reasons that a windows system is any worse than a Mac system.  Both sides of the war have fans that are equally as blind, tunnel vision for what they know and love, completely closed off to all other things.  Lets explore some of the arguments that we’ve all no doubt heard before:

Mac fans will say:

• Windows is slow
• Viruses galore on windows
• It’s much easier to use MacOSX
• Mac machines are built with better quality
• Steve Jobs told us they’re awesome

This post will be quite a large one, for those who feel less inclined to read my ramblings I advise you leave now.

This post is about what I consider to be a very large decision in my life, it may seem inconsequential to some, but for me it’s quite a big step, one I’ve put off for many years through variety of different means.

But before I dive into what the decision is I’d also like to tell the story of how I reached it and why it seems like such a big step.

It begins like most things do, in the beginning.  Funny that.

But in this story the beginning is high school.  Fortunately not the beginning of high school, that is an altogether different (and much longer) tale.  This story begins at the end of high school and all the uncertainties that it brings.  The end of a sheltered existence where you were protected from the external forces of life by the walls of your school and the identity afforded to you by your uniform, the end of a place where you could experiment without any true commitment.  With all that safety coming to an end there was only two things on everybody’s mind:

1. How do I get that 99 UAI? (University Admissions Index for those who don’t know)

2. WTF am I going to study at uni?

Up until that point I knew my passion lay within the realm of technology.  4 years of computing studies and SDD (Software Development and Design) had told me that I at least enjoyed writing code and years surrounded by computers and games at home had told me that technology was where I was destined (even more affirmed when I sat the UMAT exam for medicine and got nowhere)  But what’s this? there’s no jobs in IT you say?  Well that sucks… How can I do IT when there are no jobs waiting for me at the end of the road?  And so the doubt began.

A few weeks later after much procrastinating and still no direction I decided to investigate the possibility of scholarships.  Who would want to pay me to study? But they told us to apply anyway because a small chance is still larger than no chance, or more simply put: 1 > 0.

So I applied.  And it seemed like fate that a few months later I was accepted into the BIT Co-op program.  What’s that? IT you say? but it’s so hard to find a job!  Never fear, gaining entry into the co-op program increase your employment opportunities!  So there I was in uni, still uncertain that the world of IT was a good one to step into but safe for another 4 years while I decided my fate.

Immediately after joining BIT it became clear that there were two sides to the coin, two divergent paths that ultimately lead to different careers.  It was the constant battle between developer (technical) and BA (non-technical).  For some it was clear what the path would be, those less technically inclined were able to choose straight away that the BA/PM role was far more appropriate.  Those who knew and enjoyed coding stepped down the path of the developer.  And then there was me, little confused me too proud to admit that I had no idea what I wanted.  I sat on the fence for 4 years with a a constant feeling of indecisiveness not wanting to pick a side for fear of rejection.  What if I didn’t like BA work and I stepped down that path?  What if I’m a shit developer and I can’t get a job?  These are the questions that plagued me for 4 years.  My placements as part of the co-op program allowed me to explore the different sides of the war without too much commitment and so once again I found myself in a place of exploration.  A place of safety where I still did not have to commit.

Four years was later I found myself saying “Ahh FUCK.. I still don’t know what to do…”  Sure, I’d had a great time at Atlassian writing lovely front-end code and sure I hadn’t minded the test analyst work at Accenture or the support work at CCA but my original questions were still unanswered.  What do I want?  You have to admit the image of a code monkey is not a pleasant one.

So I embarked on another journey of self-discovery.  I left Atlassian to join a graduate program that offered rotations.  2 Years of rotational bliss where I could explore till my heart’s content, my decision had yet again been postponed.  At this point I knew as a developer I would enjoy myself, but what of my degree which (as much as we like to believe is flexible) was tailored more towards a BA type role?  I still didn’t know if I had what it takes to work in the developers world.  I’m already behind having done 4 years of systems analysis and design with about 10% programming.  What if I enjoyed BA/PM work? I’d yet to experience these roles first (or second) hand.

Now, after a year in this program I’m finally glad to say I’ve made my decision.  Exposure to this side of the world has triggered a sudden realisation that writing requirements documents, powerpoint presentations and drawing system diagram whilst mildly enjoyable is not as stimulating or satisfying as the joy of solving a problem with the right code.

And so that’s it.  Almost 5 years of uncertainty and indecision comes down to this:

I AM DEVELOPER AND I SHALL CODE.

What’s next?  Now that I know what I want I can tailor my rotations for my final year in this program to that purpose.  After that, who knows?  The sky’s the limit.

Oh and I will do all coding in a suit. Because I can.

It’s been about a month since I started my new Graduate job at Westpac and little more than that since I left Japan.  I wasn’t liking my old blog theme much so with my newly f ound time after work (no more uni work to worry about! yay!) I mocked up and coded a new design.  This is yet another attempt to keep things simple,  I think this theme will be one of the few that I actually iterate over and improve as I go.

So I’m going to skip the previous few days because its all been a pretty big blur.  The day after USJ we caught an overnight bus at 12:30am that took us to Tokyo, this was a 7 hour bus ride during which I slept for most of it, although after getting off the bus it still felt like the same day.  After a long confusing walk to our apartment and settling in I accompanied Rick to get Janna and Nick settled in to their hotel in preparation for the snows after which I was exhausted, so I somehow managed to find my way back to the apartment and at 3pm I conked out until 11pm after which I went out, had dinner and then went to sleep again.

The next day I was slightly refreshed after a total of 16 hours of sleep and this was the day that Prue and Laura arrived in Tokyo.  I left the apartment at 2:30 and walked and shopped until about 9 where we were all supposed to meet for dinner this didn’t happen however and Nick, Janna, Jason, jess and I killed time until 11pm at which point we had becoming to hungry to wait for the others to arrive, we went and had our own dinner somewhere in Shinjuku.  Minutes after we’d ordered we received a message saying Rick was waiting with two people’s luggage.  That was all we heard until we finished eating dinner, after no response from Rick we walked back to the original meeting spot to find… noone.  However at this point Rick called to notify us that he was on the way with the two other girls, so we stood patiently inside the station next the the WALL MADE OF PAPER CRANES until they arrived, and finally the entire Japan group was together.

This was in fact the only time we would all be together since Janna would be leaving for exchange so of course we had to have dinner as a group.  Off we went to have what for me was a second dinner.  We had sake and celebrated the joyous occasion.  By the time we got home (Jason, Jess, Rick and I to the apartment and the others to the hotel) it was 5am and the others were departing the next morning for the snows at 8:00am, which meant Rick had to get up at 6 to make sure they knew the way.  I also went to see them off seeing as it would be my last time seeing Janna for 6 months.  This meant no sleep, I managed to squeeze in a 20 minute nap before Rick came in and told me to get up because it was time to go.  By the time I got back into bed it was 9:30am today.  I woke up at about 12pm so that I could send stuff back home to free up space in my luggage.  First I went out to buy a mass of chocolate from the convenience store to send back, then I sat at home getting everything grouped properly and eating my brunch (yes at like 3pm)  Then I headed out at 4 to send my stuff, about a 5 minute walk to the post office I must admit it was a pleasant experience; the guy saw me struggling with the straps for my box and came to help me.  Anyway I finished that and got back to the apartment by 5, showered and just chilled at home with Rick and his friends who came around.  Now I’m exhausted again, I feel like my sleeping cycle is going to be majorly screwed when I get home, I’m just looking forward to STUDIO GHIBLI!!!

NB: There are no photos because I’ve either been to exhausted to take any or my camera was out of battery =(

So.. UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN. This place was epic, I mean the minute you walk in you hear loud epic music playing, it makes you feel like a superhero, it really does.  Even before you walk in you see a giant epic revolving Universal Studios thing with steam/fog coming from the bottom (of course with epic music).  This is right before you buy tickets.

We went on a total of 4 attractions, well I went on 3, the others went on the Hollywood Dream (rollercoaster) which I wasn’t game to go on.  First one I went on was the 4d Shrek experience, quite cool although it was in Japanese so I couldn’t understand it but was still interesting how the seats moved and how there were tiny water droplets.

The next ride was Space Fantasy, not really a roller coaster but not a slow ride either, no photos from inside because I was too busy enjoying it, but it was quite dark and we were moving quite fast.

The next ride was… SPIDERMAN, possibly the most awesome ride ever.  Its a cart on tracks that moves and swivels and bumps, but to add to the effect are the 4d glasses that make the animations on the giant screen look as though they are actually real.  At one point there the screen project spiderman jumping onto the front of our cart, it looked real AND the cart bumped a little.  At some point I started shielding myself when the villains started pointing guns in our faces, it was THAT real.

We tried to go on the Jaws ride but decided it was too late in the day (it was already 5 and the park closes at 6).  So instead we split up to do some souvenir shopping and photograph taking.

After USJ we head home and ourselves some CURRY onomnomnom.

Then we also went clubbing at Giraffe, a club that the aussie bartender we met on Australia Day recommended to us.  It was actually quite an experience.  2000 JPY to get in but it was crowded as, there was a guy in a Santa suite on the dancefloor….  Keep in mind this was a Sunday and apparently it goes off like that EVERY night…

I’m behind on this blog but I feel this day is worth blogging because we went to the MONKEY MOUNTAIN.  We did two things today, the monkey mountain and then Sanjo for dinner and exploring, also met up with Rik’s friend Katie.

After promising us monkeys Rik took us on a 1 hr train ride to the mountain and presented us with a short walk up the mountain.  It was slightly tiring since I’m so unfit but the I the idea on the way we also spotted a few monkeys, a teaser of what was to come.  Oh and by the way it was only 500 JPY to enter the monkey park (thats about $6.20 AUD).  So once we got up there we were greeted by a lookout point with a small building for resting and buying drinks.  There were binoculars and everything.  The only difference between this lookou point and any other lookout point on a mountain is… THERE WERE MONKEYS ROAMING AROUND.  They were just walking around freely doing what monkeys do and the building was also a monkey feeding building.  It was covered with wire mesh so the monkey’s couldn’t get in and they woudld sell food inside, all you have to do is buy it (100 JPY) and then stick your hand out with the food in your palm, the monkeys would stick their hand out and grab it =D.  We also witnessed a mass monkey feeding which involved the one guy holding a bucket full of food and constantly throwing it out onto the ground while walking across the lookout point.  The effect was ALL the monkey (about 30 or so) following him, funny sight really.

awwww a monkey!

nani?! Feeding Time?! omnomnomnom

awwww <3

After taking a gazillion photos of the cute monkeys we descended the mountain and haeded to Sanjo to meet Katie and eat at Sweet Paradise!  We got there early so we killed about 1hr of time, I took some photos of the tiny stream in the middle of the city:

The stream right before sunset.

The stream after sunset =)

Sweets Paradise was a quite unhealthy dessert buffet.  Yes a buffet of all you can eat cake.  It was 1480 JPY for 70 mins of all you can eat (they also had some pasta/curry for those who don’t want only sweets)  I paid an extra 500JPY for a beer.

After our 70 mins were up we split up to explore Sanjo for about 2 hours and then headed back home, it took us about 1 1/2 hours because we didn’t have Rik’s leet train changing skills, we took one all stops train to simplify things).  Not a very eventful day but still awesome!

Ahh the 15th day of the trip, almost half over =( Today we went to Nara Park, home of the deer!!! Followed by a trip to the lake to see some waterworks that weren’t turned on =( and then dinner at Kyoto.

We got carried away at dinner and didn’t take note of the time, we ended up having to run for the last train into Osaka and back to our apartment, quite a fun experience actually.

Look a deer!

Oh hello there Mr Deer!

nom nom nom nom nom

Giant Buddha at Todaiji

View of the Lake without the waterworks

Chinese new year! Naturally we went to china town in Kobe to eat many good foods.  We were joined by Emiily and Joe after a small brunch and then we wandered around chinatown for a bit before eating delicious chinese street food.  Chinatown was amazingly clean.

After eating our food we headed towards the port for some photos of the view, we split up an lost each other twice but I managed to get some good photos =).  Finally we finished the day off with some Takosen (takoyaki with cheese inside prawn crackers) followed by food and drink at Saizeriya.

Brunch!

Exploring China Town! (Kobe)

=D

One of the views at the Harbour.

Finishing the day off with a beer! Courtesy of Joe.

Tennoji Zoo followed by dinner in Shinsekai, deep fried skewers!

I have to say I was excited by the zoo in the morning but when I actually got there I was quite disappointed.  It was actually depressing, animals in cages all looking very sad.  The cats were pacing back and forth in their cages, and one of the eagles were trying to fly away, hitting the cage each time it tried (and it tried like every 5 minutes):

An Organgutan sticking its hand out as if begging for food =(

There were some acceptable exhibits:

Polar bear in action catching fish.

A tiger, it’s drinking the water!

Kushikatsu! My dinner.

And finally, some takoyaki to end the day!

Also met up with Joe and Emily today at McDonalds, seems we’ll be seeing them a lot on this trip.  The more the merrier! (I think)

Photo Gallery from Today: