A Glimpse in the 2010 for 2011

The age of 40 has a significant meaning or change for a lot of people. Some observed that their body energy and brain productivity start to degrade (a better word then “deteriorate”) from this age. It also mean to some as have half of the life is gone (assuming the life expectancy is of age 80) and everything start to countdown from the age of 40. I remember quite well that the moment into the age of 40 in Sept 2010, I have to stop telling people I am still thirty something and feel a little bit awkward to tell the age. This is the year I observed myself would fall into asleep at the sofa after watching TV for more than an hour.

Regardless, I would still like to summarize the passed events in 2010 in the first day of 2011. As contrary to the slow economic recovery in many of the developed nations, the recovery in the emerging markets in 2009 is robust and outstanding. The equity & real-estate markets were red-hot and the returns generated are lucrative for a lot of investors in these markets. My personal net-worth target for 2010 was met in the final month of the year thanks to the good returns of some of investments made. While exciting with the gains, it remain cautious for me as these are just paper gains for now until they are liquidated and realized.

The travel plans made in the beginning of the year were only half met. The trip to the Sichuan Province and Xi’an China realized in the month of Apr 2010. The entire trip took us 3 weeks with our footsteps left in many lovely places. The most interesting one is the picturesque JiuZhaiGou valley, a nature reserve in the north of Sichuan is well-known for its many multi-level waterfalls and colorful lakes, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.

JiuZhaiGou Valley - Panda Lake (熊猫海)

The trip to Xi'an city and the Shaan’xi province was just as brilliant as well. The museum of Terracotta Army is a must-go destination in Xi'an as it was coined as "Eighth Wonder of the World". The city tour in the historic Xi’an city was just as amazing with the wonderful collection in the Shaan'xi History Museum and the well preserved Ming City Wall in the middle of the city.

Xi'an-The Museum of Terracotta Army

The ChengDu stopover was also interesting with the fascinating trip to Mount Emei, one of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains in China. The Mt Emei scenic area, including Leshan Giant Buddha have been listed as World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996. The weekend trip to the Shunan Bamboo Sea was also worth mentioning with the huge bamboo forest covering an area of 120sqkm.

Regrettably the trip to Shanghai for the Shanghai Expo was not materialized as I was too occupied with the project work in the office. In 2011, I hope to continue my excursion in China for the 3rd conservative year with at least 2 weeks of stay at the Yunnan Province.

The company layoff exercise in the beginning of the year has caused a lot of us in the office feeling a little bit insecure and uncomfortable. This was also of the reason that has triggered many of the colleagues worked extremely hard in 2010 to acquire different professional certifications to prepare for the uncertainty in the working environment. As for me personally, I have opted for PMP certification to support myself for the project management profession. The 3 months of effort worked out quite well and I have acquired the professional certification in July 2010. As for the 2011, I have aimed for another non-IT professional certification, in addition to the CFP obtained couple of years ago.

Some of the new year resolutions made for 2010 did not turn out that well such as reading in average 2 books per month. I failed to achieve this in 2010 with the results of less than a book a month. Well, I did not blame this to the extremely high workload in the second half of the year and I personally think it was due to the lack of discipline at home. Let’s hope in 2011, I would be able to achieve this.