Albeit late, but here you go, the many greatest things that happened to me:

1. Found the rental apartment that fits in our budget after months of searching for properties, both for sell and rent. It’s been a rollercoaster ride. Ya, finding rental also gave such a headache, what’s more purchasing property. *Nightmare* We almost had an impulsive house purchase at a bad location and got ourselves in debt for the next 30 years. We found a two-floor terrace house for rent, slightly out of our budget, agreed with the landlord but he didn’t keep his promise and rent out to other instead. After many turn down, we finally found a place to call HOME for the two of us, where we began our cooking adventure, DIY home stuff, etc.
2. Managed to handle all the household chores while also work from home. Five years ago I’d be screaming for a domestic helper. Hehe. Funny how people changes!
3. Went to the concert of my teen idol. Woohoo, Dream comes true! Not long after the concert, they announced their breaking-up news after farewell tour on 2012. Oh well..
4. Still get to travel despite declaring 2011 as non-travel year. Started with Bandung on January to attend WordCamp (WordPress event), hometowns’ trip in between, 4-5 hours road trip to Cherating beach, family vacation to Singapore, year end vacation to Langkawi island – the haven for chocolate, liquor and tobacco + cigar auction . I think I’m parting away from big city/shopping trip and prefer a relaxing beach getaway. Hmm..
5. Got a Dribbble invite, yay! It’s one thing that I’ve been wanting for in 2010, but when I got it I sort of lost the excitement. Haven’t posted the screenshot of my work in progress for quite some time. Gotta pick up!
6. Stirring the direction of SWP to Freemium model. We jumped in joy when we got the first sales. It works! So glad that we walked with faith and pushed our fear aside.
7. Finally took the first step to start my long awaited personal project. It’s near completion now. Pushing my learning curve a lot.

Lesson of the year:

1. Do it now! Don’t wait for the right time because right time will never come. It’s like starting diet, we always give excuse to start it tomorrow. No time? Make time for it. In my case, I kept telling myself that this few months are the busy months (with clients’ projects) so I’ll wait til another few months to start my own project. Boohoo, that right time never comes!
2. Pay attention to details but don’t be over perfectionist, you’ll end up waste time polishing details that aren’t important.
3. Don’t judge a thing too fast before we witness/experience it.
4. It’s OK to be away from the laptop, internet and social media. Life goes on!
5. When there is too much going on and don’t know how to start/make decision, PAUSE + take a deep breath + empty mind, then lay everything out in mind and analyze from there.
6. When in doubt, have FAITH and PRAY! From finding road direction to making decision in life.

For 2012

1. Main thing is to live minimalist. Inspired by this, this, this and many other going-minimalist posts. Have the wake-up call when helping a friend in moving house. Seeing how many ‘junks’ that we can collect over the years scared me. With being minimalist, I’m hoping to spend less time in cleaning (more time to do things I love doing), spend less, and not emotionally attached to the things so I can leave/sold them away incase we have the guts to pack our luggage and move to other cities/countries.
2. Get an oven, so we can baked pizza (a friend refers to it as an expensive bread, haha) instead of PHD delivery, turkey for Thanksgiving, and cake for birthday with baking recipe from MPL.
3. Since we haven’t found a permanent house (as in buy) that we can play with; can’t do much with the apt rental and don’t have the budget to do huge decor project, so I’m thinking of starting a doll house project, inspired by this. A miniature of our dream house, diy-ing it will be much more affordable and possible.
4. Launch my long awaited project and venture into a different field. We have brainstormed several ideas, so it’s the year to release our own projects! I call it the year of planting the seed.
5. Balancing online and offline life.
6. Travel (whatelse, duh) and see the destination from different perspective, in terms of living, design, culture, foods, etc. Not just travel for shopping or going to touristy place.
7. Gain back the snap-and-shot mojo.

Dear 14 yo me,

I bet you didn’t see this coming. Drum roll please, cause I’m delivering a big news, bigger than getting the ipod nano 8g, it is… 11 years later you’ll get to attend your fave boyband’s concert! No kidding! Hah, I know you can’t wait to be in your mid twenty now.

Onto the details. You’ll go to the concert with your other half, instead of your friends. But no worry, many bring their other half as well, some going with friends, some with their family.

The atmosphere at the stadium is so awesome and fans are crazily enthusiasts. Your fave member, Mark, is getting chubbier but his vocal is still as great as before. Shane, Kian, Nicky are equally awesome too. The only down side, the concert started late by 35 minutes from the scheduled time.

Oh, on a side note, someone proposed to his gf on the stage! The highlight is, Westlife congrats them and give a hug on her. Everyone is screaming and wish to be at her place! Then Westlife continues with “My Love”.

A wonderful experience

Dream comes true is… when I found out that my teen idol is going to hold a concert in the city where I live! And, instead of a poor high school student or a freshgrad looking for Veterinary Services Jobs, I am now a working adult that can afford the concert’s ticket.

It’s an Omaigawd-I-can’t-believe-this moment. When they held a concert in Jakarta on late 90s and early 2000, I was sitting at my home back in Medan, wishing I could be there. I surely not gonna miss it this time around, or else I’ll carry the regret of the 15-years-old-me.

But one awkward thing, instead of going to the concert with my friends, am going to bring my husband. Har har..

I am thinking if I were to change my mobile phone, not like I’m going to change my phone soon but a girl can dream and it somewhat pumps me to work harder , what phone should I go for? Or maybe an ipod nano, oops, side-tracked.

I’m in between the sweetie pink LG Lollipop and the geeky HTC Android (or maybe Blackberry). Tough decision, cause it’s equally important to satisfy the girlie side and geeky side of me.

Honestly speaking, I still miss my pink LG ice cream although it’s been one year that I lost it. *can’t accept the fact that it’s gone* LG Lollipop is less sweet but still pretty enough if compare to other phones in the market. So the reason LG Lollipop is in my mind is because of the outlook – sweet pink and kawaii look, also cause it’s a flip phone. Not much on the functionality, some more previous experience with LG ice cream tells that the phone has a slow responsive especially in typing message.

As for HTC Android (not sure which type yet, most probably “Desire”), it’s definitely because of the functionality. Wifi, GPS, apps are to die for. Blackberry will do too, me love qwerty keyboard and the bbm functionality. But I hate the black color and hate the idea of using casing.

Can I have the best of both world; girlie and geeky at the same time? Kawaii, flip, fast respond keypad, pink, GPS, wifi, apps, you know.. beautiful design plus killer functionality. Hm..

Ah.. still can’t believe that another decade has just passed by and we are in 2011 now. Whew.. Time keeps ticking and never wait for us. Anyway, here’s my new year list – I don’t feel like calling it resolution:

• Make time to do things

Not unimportant things but things that I need & want to do. Hah, sounds tricky eh? One of those things is, last year we moved back to KL with one of the purpose in mind, to socialize with fellow designer/developer/web peers or whoever new people. But we ended up kept on saying that we didn’t have time cause work took most of our time blablabla. All excuse!

The meet-up with Ollie in Jakarta made me realize that if we want it badly enough, eventually we will spare time for that thing no matter how busy we are. Now this could also means: stop making excuse.

• Live healthily

Ah, everyone wishes for a healthy life, no? You know how annoying it is when you get sick and can’t enjoy the moment in life, how expensive medical treatment is nowadays, so better prevent than cure. I mentioned about going jogging on April last year. We did it for a few weeks and stop. Boo! Needs to pick it up now or the ‘spare tyre’ around our tummy will getting bigger as we sit all day in front of computer.

Hubby is on his way to cut down smoking and use electronic cigarette more. The risk of passive smoker is not less dangerous than active smoker. We are talking about health now, I don’t want him to quit because “Oh my wife doesn’t like/want me to smoke.” but more to knowing about the consequences in the future.

• Do things differently

I still remember this term from 95% Academy “If you do what you always do, you will get what you always get.” Time to pick it up now. It could be: try to wear bright color shirt as I always wear white, grey, black. I’m modifying the term to not only do things differently, but start doing things that I never do, such as picnic – imagine green grass and bright blue sky, beautiful!

• Have at least another start-up

We started simplyWP in July 2008, registered company Zhng Design Studio at the end of 2009, have tonnes of start-up ideas in head in 2010 but again, the excuse of no-time comes in and that we are not that good as others (scare). But hey, we weren’t good in WordPress when we started back then and picked up the knowledge all by ourselves. So yea, we are going to realize those ideas this year, at least one and have it grows nicely by the end of this year.

• Be more patient

I was baptized at the last quarter of 2009, not entirely my wish. Amazingly I grew my faith in 2010, all thanks to a book that hubby bought. I hope to grow my patient in this year.

That’s all. Let’s do it!