Where the hell did a year go? The general consensus I’ve established from people close to me and others not so close to me is that this year has been a bit of a mixed bag in terms of whether I would consider it a classic year or one to put to bed and try and forget as soon as humanly possible.
Work
2008 started on a bit of a high professionally. I was coming off my largest project (and probably my favourite project) but the future looked equally fun and challenging. What I considered a complete dream team of engineers started work on a pretty prestigious project in early January. Unfortunately the project didn’t continue. As they say when one door closes another opens. I had my fair share of these this year. One lead me to Dubai, another lead me to Abu Dhabi, others kept me in London.
Ultimately however my absolute biggest achievement was finally getting chartered (which funnily enough had a lot to do with that project at the start of the year). The whole process took me around 8 months to get done and another 2 months to get a certificate from the Engineering Council. So a tip to all your prospective chartered engineers out there, it takes the better part of at least half a year to get this stuff sorted out.
Inbetween all of this I was able to actually continue teaching (and learning from) the younger generation of engineer working up through the ranks, which is something I’ve always enjoyed, especially with those that I can see the changes happen.
Pop Culture
The year can only be described as the year of the 1hour drama, or more accurately, it is the year I discovered HBO and everything was right with the world. For the first time in a really long while, I can probably count the number of movies I was genuinely excited about watching in the Cinema. Obviously the ‘Dark Knight’, ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Iron Man’ come high on this list, but in addition you had a Lebanese movie ‘Caramel’ and the excellent ‘Persepolis’. I found ‘Juno’ incredibly well put together and enjoyed it immensely. In terms of anime, there really wasn’t much new going on for me to get excited about. And of course my surprise movie of the year, SuperBad. It should be just that, super shit, but it ended up being extremely good fun to watch. The only anime movie I watched this year was ‘Origin’, but that movie doesn’t come close to ‘Paprika’ from last year.
However what I wasn’t ready for was this attack of truly inspired 1hour dramas from HBO. To kick it all off I started watching ‘The Wire’ The problem with starting on ths series is that everything else doesn’t come close to it’s perfection, it’s character development and it’s overall 5 year story. I could go on and on about the Wire but it would take too long. Shortly after that I followed it with ‘The Sopranos’. Now this was a series that I had started watching when it first came out, but the Greek television networks fucked it up and I lost interest. Finished this series as well and while most got annoyed by the ending, i thought it was masterful.
Following on from ‘The Sopranos’ was ‘Entourage’ and ‘Oz’. I’d never seen any of these series before, and they all blew me completely away.
The writer’s strike did one thing, and that’s give me the chance to actually discover previous gems from HBO. In my search to fill the void that Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Prison Break, Heroes had left I discovered the best television series ever made.
Speaking of Battlestar Galactica, only a couple of weeks to go before the start of the new series, and that is something I’m seriously looking forward to for the start of 2009…thankfully not a moment too soon, because I think I’ve run out of good HBO series to watch.
Sports
This year saw me quit basketball. This was a tough decision to make and I actually went back in September only to remember the reason why I quit in the first place. It’s about the people now not only the sport. I have to make a great deal of effort to play (compared to Greece or Uni) and the problem is I can’t bring myself to keep going in week after week for a sloppy game with stupid egos and arguments. Maybe (like a Phoenix) I’ll grab some games this year, but I’m not very hopeful.
Family
I was meant to go down to Lebanon for my cousin’s wedding. However due to complications with the groom’s health the timing never came about and I didn’t end up going, which is a shame. However in a weird way I was able to see several of my cousins that i hadn’t seen in years (some bordering on 10 years). I also lost a grandfather figure in my life and my grandmother suffered from a stroke. Thankfully I didn’t have too many health issues, except my ongoing saga with my teeth, which I should be sorting out in the new year when I get my wisdom teeth taken out.
Internet
Without a doubt this has been the worst year for the ‘Kode. For some reason I couldn’t get around sorting out a design for the bloody place and that had a serious effect on the place in general. I had a huge amount of work done on Habari in the opening months of this year, and then I moved on to other things as I continued work on the ‘script’ (more on that in a while). I don’t intend to increase my exposure on the net, but rather i intend to consolidate all my efforts for the past 5 years. I want to make sure
Artwork - Sadly this was probably the one area of my life that really took a serious hit this year. I don’t actually know if I actually got around to drawing anything significant in 2008. A couple of sketches here and there, but nothing of any significance - easily the most disappointing aspect of the year for me. Here’s hoping 2009 can be completely different.
Story
There is a threshold. For me to write anything, I really need to disassociate myself completely from my daily life for me to create. My brain just cannot handle the onslaught of information. I need to time. This year I had the opportunity to do this in Greece a couple of times, however the first script is not done yet but at least some decent progress has been made from the year before and the general building blocks are apparent.
So was it a classic year? From a creative, productive pov, no it wasn’t. This was the year that I burnt out, or at least felt like I was close to burning out. I think I achieved some goals professionally that I’ve been working towards for the past 6 years, which I feel great about, and getting citizenship will change my life completely.
I view 2009 as a year for regrouping and a year for consolidating my thoughts, efforts and creativity into one goal, and I view it as a year for focus.