Another end-of-the-year meme

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
   
   • Used a DSLR to take photos.
     
   • Burst into uncontrollable sobs at an airport.
   • Ate a grasshopper.
   • Spent an obscene amount of money to fly to another country just to watch a concert.
   • Went on a week and a half trip by myself.
     
2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
   Not really. NY's resolutions are increasingly getting old and pointless (like pre-planned disappointments, as someone said).
   
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
   I can't think of anyone at the moment, but some friends are expecting and will give birth later this year.
   
4. Did anyone close to you die?
   My uncle passed away in September.
   
5. What countries did you visit?
   Singapore, Thailand (twice in a span of four months) and Malaysia. Also spent Holy Week in Melbourne.
   
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
   Some sense of direction would be very much appreciated.
   
7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory?
   July 28.
   
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
   Finishing two masters degrees.
   
9. What was your biggest failure?
   My inability to land a job after graduation, but then again, this is a question of terminology. I view 'failures' as 'challenges' now (or maybe I am just deluding myself about this fake paradigm shift...poser much? LOL).
   
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    Nothing major, except the time I nursed an almost two-week flu (caught the infamous Thai super strain virus when I was in Chiang Mai).
    
11. What was the best thing you bought?
    A new laptop, Ipod docking station and DSLR.
    
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
    Mine?!
    
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
    This question is not worth my time. Negative vibes are so last season.
    
14. Where did most of your money go?
    Travelling. Gadgets. Rent, food and booze (during the first half of the year when I was still living in Sydney).
    
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    
    • Travelling
      
    • The prospect of a new career (alas, plans went under. But I'm still keeping my fingers crossed this year.)
      
16. What song/album will always remind you of 2008?
    Off the top of my head I would say MGMT's album. And those r&b songs that get played everywhere but whose titles I don't even know.
    
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    
    1. happier or sadder? I was happy this time of the year last year. I am still more or less as happy now.
       
    2. thinner or fatter? Fatter! I am now a walking tub of lard.
       
    3. richer or poorer? POORER. I have come dangerously close to living in abject poverty.
       
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
    Reading. Walking outdoors. Attending conferences. Hanging out with mates. Listening to more new music. Watching more films. Saving more money. Travelling in SEA!!!
    
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
    Aimless web surfing. Procrastinating. Over-indulging in food, alcohol and self-pity. Spending a king's ransom on unnecessary things. Wasting time on men who seemed like the shit then, but in actual fact are real pricks (funny how you only realise this once your blinders come off).
    
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
    In KL with the family.
    
21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
    I rarely talked on the phone. Most of the time I either chatted online or sent SMS.
    
22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
    No, just idiotic infatuations.
    
23. How many one night stands in this last year?
    None.
    
24. What was your favourite TV programme?
    Flight of the Conchords. The Office. BBC News.
    
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
    No. I am too old to be harbouring hatred.
    
26. What was the best book(s) you read?
    Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. William Boyd's Any Human Heart. Half of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.
    
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
    The Whitest Boy Alive.
    
28. What did you want and get?
    Graduating from grad school with okay marks. Two jobs at uni during the first half of the year. A conference scholarship.
    
29. What did you want and not get?
    A job after graduation (cue in The Smiths' Please Please Let Me Get What I Want).
    
30. What were your favourite films of this year?
    I wasn't as active in movie-watching in '08 compared to '07, but I still managed to see a couple of good films -- Juno, No Country for Old Men, Darjeeling Limited, Once, Lars and the Real Girl, Lives of Others, Be Kind Rewind, Persepolis, Into the Wild.
    
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
    I turned 26. Had a wii and videoke party with heaps of beer and good company.
    
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
    Getting a job after graduation.
    
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
    Lazy. Comfort over style. Deceptive (to hide the figure defects).
    
34. What kept you sane?
    Friends and family. The Internet. Movies and music -> truly the balm that soothes the aching soul.
    
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
    Rob Pattinson from Twilight (hahahaha embarrassed much?). Jim Sturgess.
    
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
    The Russia-Georgia conflict. The global financial crisis. US elections. Ongoing hostilities in the Gaza Strip.
    
37. Who did you miss?
    My roommate and all of my family and friends in Sydney. I miss them to pieces still, every single day.
    
38. Who was the best new person you met?
    Too many to list. Made quite a few friends last year from all over --Sydney, Singapore, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Jakarta.
    
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
    Life plans, friends and passions are not stuff that are cast in stone. Things change and people change; permanence is really a fiction. Learning to deal with change is one of the things '08 taught me. Also, '08 dispensed golden apples of wisdom on other things like the virtue of patience and the value of friends.
    
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year?
    Not a song, but the immortal opening lines of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.