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The Highlights of My 2011
2011 has been a bittersweet year for me. As I struggled to look for work, I was suddenly faced with something I had never had this much of before: time! Time to do many things I had been putting off doing but was always too busy to do before. Although the opportunities of the “paid” variety were lacking, I was also given opportunities to do other things that just may one day lead to a more fulfilling life.
And so, as another year draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on some of the things and events that have impacted me in whatever capacity. Many have been happy but some, not so much. So here we go…
Retiring Swans Co-captain Craig Bolton takes a lap of honour around the SCG
Footy Season
The year in AFL has been a mixed one. My team, the Sydney Swans, spent most of their home games in Sydney playing in wet conditions, which means I spent a lot of time trying to stay dry in the stands. With the well-respected Paul Roos now retired after a very successful 8 years in the senior coach’s position, the reigns were handed down to his former assistant, John “Horse” Longmire. It had been six years since the Swans won a Premiership and with many of its Premiership players retired or retiring, many critics did not give the youngsters on the 2011 playlist much chance to make the finals series. As usual, the Swans showed their “Bloods” spirit and proved the naysayers wrong and we made it as far as the second week of the finals, finishing sixth on the ladder. Not a bad effort at all. Go Swans!
Happy Bloggerversary!
Twelve months ago this week, I dared to annoy and bore my friends and family by starting a blog and then making them read it. It all began because I had always wanted to write and, quite frankly, I was not about to be outdone by my then-seven-year-old nephew who had started his own blog, Kids’ Movie Guide. This is now my 44th post on this site, not counting the two travelogues I wrote for my photo blog Thursday Has A View which I created in March 2011.
It has been a long time since I read my earlier posts but when I look back at the titles of the earliest writings, there is no doubt they were all about how I could put a funny and positive spin on my work life which was pretty much making me miserable. A friend of mine said she liked that my posts were always so positive. The reality was that by writing, I was forcing myself to focus on the positives rather than the negative things that were motivating me to vent in public.
Happy Twitterversary
It was exactly two years ago, on March 18, 2009, that I joined the Twitterverse. I know exactly why I joined and what I was doing when I signed up. I was watching the Ellen DeGeneres Show. She had been talking about Twitter a few times and I finally got curious about it. Other people had mentioned it before as well. I already had a Facebook account but at the time was barely using it. But I decided to try Twitter anyway. I signed up but I had no followers (sounds a little cult-ish, doesn’t it?) and I didn’t know what to do. I assume everyone started out searching for celebrities to follow. I know I did. Then somehow I learnt a few other things like using hashtags (#), how to send public messages to people (@) and private/direct messages (D). In the beginning, I didn’t tweet much. I hardly even logged in.
My Tweet Stats
So what changed in February 2010 to cause me to start tweeting madly (well, to me, at that time it seemed like I was tweeting madly at 154 tweets for the month!)? The answer is quite simple: I discovered White Collar. To my now-dedicated and loyal group of friends/followers, you will understand exactly what this means. To those who aren’t, I won’t judge you but you are missing out! 
Now, you may say “but the show started in October 2009! What were you doing all this time?” Well, it didn’t air in Australia till a couple of months after the US so I did catch on a little later but once I caught the bug, I caught it BIG…viral proportions! As they say, better late than never! Read the rest of this entry
Why Do We Care?
My regular readers and Twitter followers know that sometimes when I get obsessed with something, I can get too carried away, regardless of what that something might be. There is no denying that my obsession for the last 12 months has been a TV show called White Collar, its stars and writers. I tweet about them, blog about them, and of course, talk about them. Incessantly. My opinions on all things WC-related are often so strong that when someone says something negative about them, I feel the need to publicly defend them. At the same time, if there was something I did not like, such as one of the episodes that aired a couple of weeks ago, I did not shy away from going into lengthy discussions with my fellow Collars, detailing every plot hole we could identify (quite frankly, because we know the show so well that we were able to spot the plot holes from a mile away) and offering possible explanations for what went wrong.
So, this particular obsessive (and possibly very shallow) behaviour aside, it brought to mind the question of why we care so much about some things and so little about others? As I write, the major news items around the world involve the Christchurch earthquake (as discussed in my blog “When Tragedy Strikes We Pull Together“) and the continuing turmoil in Libya.
