Year In Review
I’ll try to keep this short. It’s been a good year personally and a very interesting and tumultuous one in terms of world events. After kicking off 2004 with an enjoyable summer holiday in South-East Asia and Melbourne, it was time to knuckle down to a pretty full on year. I suppose my number one goal was to get a decent clerkship in a step towards securing employment for when I graduate next year, and also to try out “the corporate law thing”. I am really happy about the outcome of the process, which took a good 2-3 months and resulted in a clerkship that I’m finding positive. The downside of this is that the social side of life has been fairly quiet for me this year, replaced by interview stress and trying to bolster my average at the last minute. Winter holidays were cut short by having to do two subjects. This summer is no better, and there’s the clerkship on top of that. But this pain is all for a delayed payoff, and although 2005 will still be busy, the difference is that it should be relatively stress free and fun. And of course, because I should finish uni in July, I look forward to doing some travelling!
I got broadband in April, and still haven’t gotten over it.
Hear Ye! turns seven next month. I’ve been intending to do a redesign, separating out the design from the content with CSS, adding an XML-RPC posting interface and tweaking a few more things, but really haven’t been able to find the time. Maybe next year.
I’ve watched about 34 movies at the cinemas this year. It’s been a decent year for movies. The era of good, Braveheart-scale historical epics seems to be over though, with Troy and King Arthur disappointing. It was a good year for comedy and sequels. Added to the mix were a couple documentaries (Super-size Me and Fahrenheit 9/11).
World affairs have been off the scale this year, with the US and Australian federal elections, a boatload full of Iraq related news, a few corporate scandals, Google floating, and most recently, the tsunami tragedy in Asia. Wikipedia does a far better job of remembering the news events of 2004.
I don’t play computer games as much anymore, due to a geriatric video card, but it was a big year for game releases. There was, of course, the triumvirate of Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and World of Warcraft.
My money this year went almost all to food and other going-out expenses. I spent very little on anything tangible and for once bought virtually nothing computer-related (apart from a DVD burner I got last month). Broadband has alleviated some of the money I would otherwise have spent on DVDs, movies and CDs. It’s all been saved up for travel, although funnily enough, this was never a conscious decision, it just sort of worked out that way.
I’m heading out to the harbour tonight to catch the fireworks and welcome in the New Year. Here’s to 2005!