I finally got a bit of planning underway that I'd been putting off for weeks, or months:
- Christmas Holiday - I was thinking of going to the Gold Coast and Brisbane for a few days originally, but Perth seemed like it would be a bit more interesting, plus I'd never been before, so I settled on that. Since it was all worked out at the last minute it took all the focus away from my...
- Easter Holiday - I've settled on Cambodia and Vietnam as my first preference, if there is enough time because of my...
- Passport - I got my passport renewal submitted since it was going to expire in April 2015, it was surprisingly quick and easy to do at the flash new Melbourne GPO store, but it takes up to four weeks to be processed which may impact my next holiday plans
- Shares - I did a bit of research about getting some money invested in the share market now that I don't have a mortgage to worry about. I made a shortlist but will keep track of those shares and the overall market for a little while first. I also want to look into property as an alternative place to invest my money
It was a pretty relaxed finish to the year at work, I skipped the Christmas party again - like every other year - although I don't mind attending the less formal events like barbecues. I had to spend a whole Saturday morning doing work from home, but since I got double time off in place it essentially meant I got to take off January 2 for free and get an eleven day holiday! It almost means I have a whole three days of annual leave to take into the new year... We had a couple of minor hiccups with the software on our production servers which is a bit disappointing, but nothing too visible. I'm not really sure what 2015 brings for work, the funding for my department seems to be changing which could be a bad thing, or it could be no different at all. I'll think about that some more in my 2014 or 2015 posts, if I get to them before the end of the month...
Another big achievement for me in trying to be slightly more minimalist was to get each email inbox down to zero. I almost got there at work and it's amazing how much less stressful it is, even if in some cases it just means filing emails away with a label in GMail - now I have to do the same for all of my other email accounts. I'd like to apply the same principles to other aspects of my life, particularly trying to get rid of all of the clutter and possessions that are just taking up space - that's going to take some time too.
I had a big finish to the year with my running, about 250 kilometres in total which was the most for any month this year. I started off with some disappointing runs at full speed, but saw a little bit of improvement with subsequent attempts - I still think I'm close to reaching my limit around about 3:50 per kilometre unfortunately.
The Fantasy NFL season came to an end, I think this will be the last time I torture myself. My team went 0-4 before winning nine in a row just as I was ready to give up, and I finished in first place for the regular season. Of course I then crashed out in the two week semi finals, only to have two massive weeks in the third place playoff, which was far superior to both of the finalists. I enjoy Fantasy NBA a bit more, and I guess I'll do the Fantasy AFL again this year, although it does suffer a little bit from being judged on a single game each week like the NFL.
I attended a second NBL match for the season, this time Melbourne United vs. Sydney Kings at the new Margaret Court arena, which was a good small venue around the back of Rod Laver Arena. It was a bit of a shame that Josh Childress had picked up an injury just before the game and wasn't playing, but the Kings gave it a good shot, hitting a bunch of three pointers early, before going behind and staging a comeback in the last quarter, only to eventually lose in overtime. I also gave up waiting for an instructional email from the AFC Asian Cup people and just went to the city Ticketek office to pick up my tickets for the only Melbourne quarter final match on January 22nd. It will feature the winner of the group that contains Australia vs. South Korea - so about a 50% chance it will be Australia then.
 |
| NBL tip off. |
Obviously Christmas came and went in December. This year was a pretty quiet one as I had some family dinners on the 23rd and 24th instead - I make my own rules. On the big day I didn't do a whole lot, I got in a good 20km run during a pretty humid morning to work off all the excess eating - particularly the dinner buffet we had on the 24th. After that I had to get through some last minute planning and packing for my holiday starting the next day.
And finally I was off to Perth to finish the year, I actually got back late on the 30th, but close enough.
The quick finish:
- Books
- Cell by Stephen King
- A short story but captivating
- The survival theme was very similar to The Stand
- They are making a movie for it in 2015, should be good
- 8 out of 10
- Joyland by Stephen King
- Another short one, only took about 5 hours
- The characters and story were engaging
- 8 out of 10
- Movies
- The Maze Runner
- I'd been looking forward to watching this
- It started promising but didn't go anywhere
- The ending was confusing and uneventful
- The best part was when Effy from Skins UK showed up
- 5 out of 10
- Annabelle
- A boring prequel to The Conjuring, which wasn't that good either
- Just alright for half an hour, then I lost interest
- 4 out of 10
- Bag Of Bones
- A two part mini-series adaptation of a Stephen King book
- The acting by Pierce Brosnan was pretty terrible
- He was always thinking out loud to try to explain the story
- 4 out of 10
- Music
- Serial
- A podcast is almost music...
- The first season finished up, I never expected it would end with any big reveal
- Still it was very entertaining
- TV
- Murder In The First
- A bit of a surprise find, I didn't know anything about it
- It covers one murder trial for the whole season
- Some really nice scenery from the San Francisco area
- Looking forward to what they do with a second season
- 8 out of 10
- Glue
- I was a bit tired during the first episode, not sure if that mattered
- The characters where quite weird and confusing, with strange motives
- It almost got interesting a few times, but was way too slow
- 4 out of 10
- Survivor
- One of the rare times when there was a deserved winner - Natalie
- A very good cast this season, not many annoying or frustrating people
- 10 out of 10
- The Amazing Race
- A pretty standard season, but the winning team was alright
- 8 out of 10
- Top Of The Lake
- A rare New Zealand drama
- It was a bit slow as well, but much better than Glue
- Also some weird characters, many were unlikable
- A strange mix of Australian and New Zealand actors
- The cover of Bjork's song Joga in one episode was great
- The ending was fantastic but too sudden
- 6 out of 10
- Video Games
- PlayStation 3
- Gran Turismo 6
- Some of the races are finally more challenging later in the game
- There's hardly any prize cars which is disappointing
- I've got all the gold licenses except for the last one, haven't tried it yet
- Dave has set some great times to try to beat in the license
