30 Mar 2016, 23:32

Most interesting/inspiring people I met this year:
- Torsten Förtsch - Software developer and DBA from Germany. He tought me how to think about IT infra as architect. Several quotes from him: “if you want to be a good DBA you should think in sets” and “Me: Do you belive in power of TDD? Torsten: I believe in properly built architecture.”
- Mahdi Sadrnezhaad - He shows me how much one person can learn. And He tought me that reading books can be fun. so I’m reading books again! :)
- Sze Siong - He shows me how motivated and productive should be mature DevOps engineer. Also I learnt a lot about TCP/IP networks from him.
people that change my way to thinking this year:
- Torsten Förtsch
  - I got more comprehensive view of IT infrastructure systems because of things that Torsten shows me.
  - I saw what it means to be life-long engineer, and I would like to follow this path.
- Jean-Yves Sireau
  - I learnt from him how important for business is to make fast decision and make fast progress. What did it change in my way of thinking? I understand that I should become faster. Problem should be resolved fast. And solutions that brings fast results are better in general.
Two new hobbies this year:
- Reading books
- Hiking
Two might-have-been dream in this year:
- make my eyesight better than last year.
- visit Kota Kinabalu.

What did not go well

made a big mistake and apply for elance job in addition to working full-time. It was an old client and she asked to finish some simple thing. Thing appears to be not really simple, and I screwed that elance project completely. what I learnt - I will avoid applying for job that requires more than 8 hours of works per day at all costs.
I’m still strugling to have good regime and sleep enough and it hinders my productivity and efficiency.

What went well

have better finances than last year.
travel a lot, each months we went to a new place, Fraser’s hills, Melaca, Port Dickson, Cameron Highlands, Langkawi, Thailand - Krabi, Singapore etc.
I become much more reslient in bureaucracy battles, proccess a lot of documents that could be useful for further travelling.

I want to buy and learn to drive more powerful motorcycle, 50+ h.p.: After I moved to Malaysia motorcycle would be a bad purchase. so I didn’t do that.
I want to start programming RoR and/or javascript for money: About JS. After a lot of experimentation with javascript I understand that I really enjoy writing backend, not frontend. So I decided to concentrate on learning DevOps, backend development and DBA skills. About RoR, I think that API+javascript frontend app model has better perspective than dynamically generated pages.
I want to have stable 50$ per hour rates: Was sacrifised in favour of faster learning. I agree for lesser rates if I’m learning fast and have a lot of smart people around. Learning is the best investment for me.
I want to start speaking on a new language: It appears to be hard to learn to speak on some language in a year if you don’t spend all your time on that. I learnt Malay this year, and I learnt around 800 words and 50 phrases. But I cannot really speak with this vocabulary of course.
I want to visit 3 new foreign countries: I visited one new country - Singapore. Could be more, but I concentrated on travelling inside Malaysia.
I want to start rock climbing again: Was too lazy to do that.
I want to make my eyesight better than this year.: It didn’t happen. I have some idea about how to do that, but need more money. That goal is moved to next year.

I want to: