Goodbye 2009.

Bring on 2010. New year. Fresh start. And looking forward to an exciting year! ;-)

Holiday

2 week holidays rock.

Oahu, Hawaii was absolutely beautiful.

NYC was a nice visit, I love the new pedestrian areas they've created since my last visit.

And of course, nothing like coming home to sweet home Chicago. Unfortunately my visit was so short I didn't get to see everyone.

But overall, in the grand scheme of things, it was a "success" and the "gray clouds" have cleared.

Now if only I can post up some pictures, and have a proper workflow for the pictures I take with the DSLR...

I really should convert this into a travel blog or something to increase my post frequency. This whole "I've moved to London thing" has gone really stale and its hard to write something that is so played out and over 4 years old.

Facebook and Twitter are nice, but that limits you to a certain amount of characters, so that's lame, and twitter or facebook posts get old after a while.. I miss the days of people posting creating facebook statuses.. also, I like the fact that many people don't check this as often now so I can post whatever crap I want.

Speaking of which, I love the "block" feature of facebook... its the next best thing until they have a "Who cares!" button.. right next to the "Like" button.

4 years.

4 years have come and gone.

Its hard to believe. Its like coming in as a Freshman, then graduating as a Senior.

Lots of friends have come and gone. I'm still here.

If I had to compare London to College, or University as they call it here, it would be a "commuter" city.

Its like those colleges where no one really "stays" and "lives" on campus... they come, and they go.. I guess I'm one of the few that's living on "campus."

Why am I still here?

Its not the weather that's for sure. The weather during the summer doesn't compare to Chicago summers. (Although I've heard that the summer this year in Chi-town hasn't been that great)

I think its three things really.

1. The love of my life is here.
2. My career. I still enjoy what I'm doing.
3. Traveling in Europe. I'm a serious travel addict. (Amsterdam this weekend! 4th time since I've moved, 5th time total. Yikes.)

That said, a year from now I can apply for permanent residency, and a year after that, apply for UK Citizenship. So why leave now?

With UK Citizenship, it opens to the door, hopefully, to working anywhere in the EU.

I love America, and I miss it, but why miss the chance and opportunity to have dual citizenship. =)

If only I can stay up in the middle of the night to watch the Bears and Cubs, and sports in general. =/

Hayfever hell.

I'm officially allergic to dogs, cats, and grass/pollen. I was never allergic to anything in Chicago, but a visit to an Allergy specialist, after suffering from nasty hay fever last year and this year, revealed the true cause of my sufferings.

Not sure if anyone has had an allergy test before, but basically the doc puts small amounts of liquid on your arm, then pricks each part of your arm where he drops the liquid. Each liquid causes a release of histamine and your skin swells up if you are allergic to it. So after dropping each possible "allergy" - cat, dog, mold, dust, birch wood, pollen/grass, etc, then pricking each area so it enters my "system" I wait to see what flares up! And the winners were pollen/grass, dogs, and cats!

Damn you London.

Hopefully these steroids will help.

Anyway, off to Croatia in search of Toni Kukoc. Although, I think he's still in Illinois. =)

Where has the time gone?

Have you checked the calendar lately? Its May.

Almost halfway through the year, and thought I'd make a visit.

It looks like I've broken my streak of trying to keep this updated about once a month. It then started to make me wonder. Where did all my time go?

Inspired by HIMYM, Marshall had all these pie charts and graphs about all these statistics on certain topics.

How cool would it be if you just pressed a button on your body that told you what your "Time statistics" were.

You would have obvious categories like:

* Eating
* Sleeping
* Working

and even something like: "Toiletries" (you can go wild on this category breakdown)

And then you would have another category called, "Other" or "Free Time"

Then it would break down what the hell you do in your free time. You could have all these categories under it like:

* Family Time
* Traveling
* Watching TV or Movies
* Reading
* Video Games
* Internet Surfing (break this down to websites!)

Because seriously, sometimes I wonder where all my time goes. Why can't someone make an iPhone app for this that its so good you don't even had to log the time yourself?

As I write this, it's been over a month and a half since my last post, and I think I'd be interested in where that time has gone.

I've had a few trips outside of London, including beautiful Southern France, a recent 3 day weekend which involved me staying up till 5am for the Hatton v. Pacquiao, (what a knock out) but other than that, where has the time gone?

I think sometimes I get caught up in the "daily grind" - working long hours, getting home late, not enough sleep, and maybe, I just need to take a deep breathe and just stop. Take 10-15 minutes for myself and either just reflect, read a book or maybe even write!

Whatever my time statistics are, I definitely need more time to unwind and chill. I think my "blog posting statistics" says it all. Its pretty bad when it took me a few times to remember what my login was. Doh.