2007: Looking back

For me, 2007 began where 2006 left off. I gave the bulk of my public presentations in the first half of 2007, speaking to the HP Alumni and Raffles Girls, then at an Internet course. More recently I spoke at SMU on the topic of Persuasion.
In March I made my pilgrimage to Austin, Texas to attend SXSW, and met the Dell team. Right after that, I met the (former) CTO of Second Life, then made many new friends at Nexus. In July, I attended Singapore’s first PodCamp. I got a press pass (as a blogger) to the State of Play conference, and interviewed the CEO of There.com, a virtual world.
Some of us met up with Kevin, and he videoed me reviewing my HTC Touch. I hit the 200 mark for subscriptions to this blog’s feed. Kevin also formed the Media Socialists group, of which I am honoured to be a member. In case you’re wondering, it’s not as political as it sounds – we deal with Social Media.
Music-wise, it was sluggish (as it’s been since I graduated from University, frankly) but at least I had a concert in June with a spanking new fusion jazz band. It got me to finally complete a smooth jazz piece I had started a couple years ago. Inspired by the John Legend concert, I wrote a review and got Tomorrowed, then posted my own rendition of Ordinary People. I capped off the year by playing at a church carol fundraiser.
In September, we went on a lovely Mediterranean cruise. In October, I headed to Tuscany for Jeanne’s wedding and sang in the choir. I helped arrange some music for the violin and harp, and it was a wonderful feeling hearing Italian musicians playing the score I wrote. It’s like witnessing your own creation come into life.
16 March is now a special date to me – this year, two dear friends, Queenie and Kristen, gave birth to their first children, both sons and by Aussie husbands. A pity I was flying back from the US to Singapore at the time, and only heard the news later. [Correction – Kristen’s son was born 17 March. OK, so now there are two special dates for me!]
December was Mac disaster month, as I upgraded to Leopard and a subsequent update (Keychain?) cut off my Airport internet connection, made my MIDI card unable to relay data back to my KORG keyboards (drivers for Leopard unavailable yet), prevented me from syncing my Windows Mobile phone. Then my second hard drive crashed. Also, my blog’s server crashed, leading to a series of errors, all of which have hopefully been fixed by now.
Spiritually, this has been possibly the emptiest year for me since I became a Christian. I didn’t attend a bible study group, and stayed back at work so late that I didn’t commit as a helper for church courses. In October redesigned my church website and realised it was much harder as we had to grapple with the Joomla CMS. I realised I was no longer as interested in coding and at one point in the project, was feeling so low I didn’t want to go to church anymore. God has not spoken to me with His voice this year, but has prompted me to do certain things which have worked out, so I know He’s still with me but I better put my coal back into the fire soon.
If you asked me, I prefer my 2006 to 2007 for various reasons. Maybe I’ve just outgrown some things. What’s still constant is my love for generating ideas, working informally with people across ranks and divisions, sharing information openly and acting on things spontaneously. I’m a dotcommer at heart, not a bureaucrat. We shall see where 2008 will take me.
In late 2007/2008 we will also bid goodbye to some good people. That will be a separate post when the time is appropriate.
Stay tuned to my next post on New Year Resolutions…