What are your resolutions?

It's that time of the year again. You eat at restaurants that make you pay double the normal price and still put you on the waiting list until the last minute, you drink every possible kind of concoction you can think of and get unbelievably smashed, and you hear the word "Resolutions". Yup. New year, new beginning. What are your new year's resolutions? How many people make resolutions that they actually take seriously?

My BFFs and I have this annual ritual where we write our resolutions on tiny pieces of paper, staple or seal them up in envelopes and commission a "trustee" to hang on to them until a similar gathering the following year to open them up and see if any of them have been achieved. We then proceed to do the same thing for the next year. One year they were kept on the Xmas tree of the BFF whose birthday we were celebrating. Another year it was kept by the one whose flat we went to get blitzed. I don't know who gets to keep them this year or where it's going to be done coz I don't get to participate. This year I'm celebrating New Year's alone here in China. So, it's just me and my trusted apple-green Dell notebook.

Out of habit, I typed up a list anyway. My resolutions are generally the same every year, because they almost always only get half-achieved (I've only paid up and cancelled half of my ridiculous collection of credit cards, and no amount of sleep is ever enough for me anyway, who am I kidding?). This year, however, I've added what I'd like to believe to be a more interesting (and more achievable) one. I read 12 books last year, which averages to about 1 a month. This year I resolve to read 18. Why this comes to be on the list will be mentioned in another post at a later time.

What I'd really like to know is, do people still make resolutions at the beginning of the new year? How many of you out there really set out to achieve these resolutions? Are they the same every year? If you have an interesting or extraordinary one (it may be something simple but extraordinary by your standards), pray share.

A second first in China

Sunday the 21st was the Winter Solstice, which, according to Wikipedia, "is the instant when the sun's position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observer's hemisphere". It was also the shortest day of the year (or the longest night, whichever you want to call it). Although I recall studying this in Geography some 15 odd years ago, I'm still rather clueless about the whole mechanics of it, what with me not being very bright about things like these and all. The one thing that there is no mistaking, however, is how bitterly cold it can get. When I stepped into the office this morning, the first thing my colleague told me was that it was the official start of the winter. My eyes nearly popped out. I'd been piling on the layers and wrapping myself up in scarfs and gloves for over a month now.. all this while, all the cold, and it wasn't even winter yet? You have got to be kidding me!

A mere 5 minute walk from my flat to the school just across the street this morning left my ear stingingly numb (ha! an oxymoron, but is that really a word?) from being nipped by the frosty air. In the evening, while I was paying for my purchases at the supermarket, at the check out counter, which was near the entrance/exit but still within the building, my fingers turned red and started to swell and within minutes, I could barely feel them. I don't remember ever having to subject my poor almost frostbitten fingers to such torment, not even when I was in Tasmania during winter which, according to a friend, was the coldest part of Australia. Man.. this is the real thing.. real cold hard winter. It really bites! This ... is my first winter in China. It's just started and already I can't wait for it to be over.

My previous blog in Friendster's

Here's the link to my previous blog in Friendster's. The blog was abandoned after I created the one which failed, right before this one here in Blogger.

http://www.germio.blog.friendster.com

Finally.. my first blog.. from China.

I'd started off highly-motivated and very ambitious. I'd just gotten a teaching job in China, my first overseas assignment, and as I had a 5-year travelling (and teaching) plan in place, I thought I'd maintain 2 blogs -- one, a teaching a blog (to be filled with the anecdotes of teaching) and the other, a travelogue. I'd spent a long time working on choosing the best layout and template, writing the description, the whole works. And then, when I finally got to China, I discovered that they had a firewall that blocked out most blogs. Needless to say, I couldn't even read my blogs, let alone update them. My friend, on being bugged by my exasperation, gave me a list of proxies to try. It worked for a while, but just for a while. And then, even before I could post my first interesting entry from China, it was back to square 1. I couldn't load the pages anymore. After that, I just gave up and totally abandoned the whole blogging idea.

I'm into my 10th month here in China. A while back, I chanced upon information that there was one blogging site whose blogs weren't blocked by the great firewall of China, and so.. here I am!

Initially, I'd had the same big ideas about categorising my blogs, one for teaching, one for my travels, one about books (I'm currently in a reading frenzy), and one about writing (something I'd always wanted to do, but wasn't able to devote much time to), but then I thought about it long and hard and decided to be practical. Let's face it, teaching isn't exactly a leisure job, not if you want to do it well. Sometimes it gets so crazy there's hardly any time to sleep, let alone blog. So, I decided to keep just one blog. After all, I don't even know if I'd really blog diligently and frequently anyway, so keeping it simple would be a good enough start. I figured I could always break it into categories later if it got too messy.

And so.. here's my first blog from China. Hopefully, there'll be many more to come.