So as another year ends and a new one begins, I reckon it’s time for the obligatory end of year review that graces almost every bloggers webpage.

I’m not usually the type to make new year resolutions, since I’ve never been particularly ambitious and since after about 2 weeks I’ve all but forgotten and given up on keeping said resolutions. However, that said, 2009 is my last year as a student which means decisions to be made and the start of my career. And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

To this end, I’ve put together a list of my 5 favourite things from last year, and a list of 5 things I want to achieve by the end of this year. Not so much a ‘resolution’, but more of a goal or target. So here goes.

My top 5 moments of 2008

1. Hawai’i

Right at the start of the year, last January I spent a far-too-short 4 days in Honolulu with 2 of my favourite people. I has wanted to go to Hawai’i for years and finally got the chance to do everything I wanted - surfing, snorkelling with turtles (no jokes, please) and meeting Hawai’ian people. My time was way too short, so I’ll definitely be returning to see the North Shore and the other islands.

2. Big Summer Trip Across the US

My last 3 weeks in America were spent travelling, with one week in San Diego with Valerie, one week in Chicago, and a few days in Washington DC, Boston and Philidelphia. It was fantastic and the perfect way to end the perfect year.

3. River Rafting in Gold Country

I got a great deal on whitewater rafting through my work, so myself and 4 friends headed up to Coloma at the crack of dawn for 21 miles of rafting fun. The weather was roasting, I actually got a little burned despite slapping on the suncream like it was going out of fashion. I then went to the site of the first gold nugget found, sparking the California Gold Rush. This is probably one of my favourite days ever.

4. Santa Barbara Road Trip

Myself and Valerie rented a car and spent three days on the road driving almost as far as LA, stopping at Santa Barbara, Monterey, Big Sur and a ton of other places. It was great fun and I got to see Hearst Castle which is definitely not to be missed if you ever get the chance.

5. Yosemite

I spent two days with Valerie and my two friends from NI in Yosemite National Park where we did a lot of hiking and sightseeing. It was absolutely beautiful and I really wish we had longer to see it.

There were loads of other great things - Paris, Snowboarding, Reno, Santa Cruz and the Google party to name a few but I think the ones above top the list.

So here’s the tricky part.

Top 5 things to accomplish this year.

1. Live away from home again

I’ve done for the best part of a year and a half. Even being in Belfast is not living at home. Having done if for a while and seeing what’s out there I think I’ll do it again. Given the competition for jobs and the current state of the global economy it’s obvious that the best jobs are not going to land on your doorstep. I’m thinking either the US or Canada.

2. Set up an online venture

I’ve got this blog going but it’s mainly for my own personal use, so I want to either set up a blog of some description, or at least run a successful website on something else. If it makes money, then that’s a bonus. With my final year project, this one stands a good chance of being done.

3. Visit a new country

I have a mental list of places I really want to visit. Depending on where I end up working, I might not get to see all of them. But if I can stoke one off the list, then it’s a success. I’d really like to visit my sister in South Africa, or drive across the US.

4. Get a job that I like

I’ll admit that my placement wasn’t my ideal job, so this time I want to find somewhere that I really feel comfortable in. Actually finding a job at all will be tough though.

5. Get into shape

Ok, so this one is a typical new year resolution, but I’d like to make a point of it. I’d like to get into better physical shape and go out and do something to challenge myself, like a marathon or something. I’m halfway there already as I’ve been at the gym quite regularly all year so it’s just a matter of sorting out my calorie intake!

So there you have it. I’ll check back in one year and see what I’ve achieved.

I haven’t had much to write here for the last while, and with good reason as I really don’t want to bore everyone with complaints on how boring university is going. I’m sure most of you have been in that situation, or currently are there at the moment so it’s hardly news.

With that in mind, Valerie went back to Paris for the festive season last Wednesday and at the last minute we decided that it’d be good for me to take a trip there myself.

Pictures of it all can be found on my Flickr.

Day One

The first day was a quiet one. Plane arrived in Charles de Gaulle airport and had to wait in a queue for ages to pass passport control. Met the parents at the end of it all and pushed our way onto the lift to the car park, confirming the rudeness of French people! To be fair, though, a lot of them weren’t French and just foreign people without much respect for other people. Was definitely a change to Belfast though.

In the evening we had dinner at home with Valerie’s sister and her fiancé. Food was good and tried quite hard to impress with my French, with limited success.

Went to bed quite early as everyone was tired and Day Two was going to be busy, so retired to bed around 10pm. Didn’t sleep very well at all though.

Day Two

Valerie and I took the metro around Paris and checked out all the famous sights - Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, Eiffel Tower, Moulin Rouge… was really nice. Lots of walking and photos.

The weather was quite cold, and raining slightly so it spoiled it a little, but was still a great city to see around. Got our portrait drawn by a cliche French artist in Montmartre which was nice, and had an amazing pain au chocolat near the Sacre Coeur.

In the evening, we met up with some of Valerie’s family and went for dinner at the Champs-Élysées, which was great. Got back home and had another bad night of sleep, as I had a bit of a chest pain.

Day Three

Disneyland!

Got up very early, around 7.30am (ok, so it’s not that early but I haven’t seen that time on a clock since I was working!). Had breakfast and set off for Disneyland Paris. It’s not too far from where Valerie lives, but with traffic it took us a good hour and 15 minutes to get there.

Checked into our hotel for the night, the fantastic Hotel New York, themed with everything from the Big Apple. Had great facilities - swimming pool, sauna and steam room, gym, ice skating rink… and very nice rooms with huge beds.

Went almost immediately into the Disneyland park, and headed for Big Thunder Mountain first, which was awesome.

More rides continued throughout the day, most of them familiar to me as I went on holiday to Walt Disney World in Florida several years ago. The resort in Paris is essentially a summary of it, but some of the rides are better.

We had lunch with the Disney characters, and then did the rest of the rides in the afternoon. Space Mountain was a highlight.

In the evening, we went to the pool and relaxed for a few hours before heading out to the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, where we were treated to a huge helping of tex-mex food and a great show with cowboys and indians. Loved it!

Got back to the hotel afterwards, quite tired and watched the final moments of the Star Academy final, the French X Factor equivalent.

Day Four

Again, up early and a big breakfast at the hotel. Was excellent. Checked out and headed to Walt Disney Studios park, just beside the main Disneyland one.

As it was Saturday, the crowds were much worse and we had to wait in line much more than the day before. We did the Aerosmith Rock n Rollercoaster and the Tower of Terror, as well as a few others. Unfortunately we had to skip the Finding Nemo ride as the queue was 4 hours, which way waaaay to long!

In the end we headed back home in the late afternoon and went out for dinner again with Valerie’s sister. Food was great and Santa showed up to give us all a present, and when we got home there were a few presents under the tree for me.

The next day was just travelling home, so not much excitement. The whole trip was great and just what I needed to clear my head from all the uni crap piling up. Valerie gets back on the 7th of January so I’ll look forward to that. Her parents were really kind to me the whole time so I’d like to say thank you to them for everything. That’s about it for now, happy Christmas!

Saturday

I was typing something up late on Saturday night when my computer froze. Usually, it’s just an application causing the stall but this time I had to turn the whole laptop off, and upon restarting it I came across this image:

I also heard the noise of the hard drive having difficulty, a clicking followed by a zap sound. Very unsettling.

I put the Mac OS X Leopard installation disc back in and took a look at Disk Utility, only to confirm what I thought - the hard drive was unreadable. All my stuff, now gone. Annoying to say the least, expensive too.

The Cause

I came across an article which shed some light on what caused the hard drive to fail. Unfortunately, I’ve since lost the link. It stated that when a MacBook is put to sleep, rather than continue running with a small amount of battery like a Windows machine would, it write your current status to the hard drive and then goes to sleep. But it needs between 10 and 30 seconds to do this, so it’s recommended that you leave the laptop to do it’s thing before moving it. That’s probably what I did wrong.

Time Machine

All is not lost though. Since upgrading to Leopard about a month and a half ago, the first thing I did was bought an external hard drive to link with Time Machine, Apple’s new backup software.

I regularly work with my laptop hooked up to a monitor in my bedroom, so I usually have it plugged into my Time Machine device too. Everyone knows they should back their stuff up, but honestly it’s a pain in the arse to do. Time Machine performs a smart backup of my whole hard drive every hour.

A quick trip to Mplex this afternoon, £40 down for a new hard drive and a quick click of ‘Restore from Time Machine backup’ and I was back in business about 2 hours later. All my programs installed, desktop exactly the same and all I lost was what I did between Friday and Saturday night. I’ve essentially got my computer back to what I was like on Friday. Can’t tell you how reassuring it is to know that if anything goes wrong again, all it’s going to cost is a new drive. I won’t loss anything.

I’m not one to complain (ok, not true), but Translink is one company I have a strong opinion against. I resisted the urge to call this post “Translink Pt II”, as two-parters seem to be the trend now, instead opting for creating an entire category called Translink, for ease of use in venting my rage in days to come. Here’s my latest pickle:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/nir-plan-to-cut-sunday-trains-14017813.html

In a nutshell, it’s been proposed that Translink cut it’s Sunday train services due to “high fuel prices”. How ridiculous is that? May I remind you people that in a small country such as ours, it make logical sense to have a single public transport provider (i.e. Translink), which means that if Translink stop running on Sundays there will only be a bus service available. And we all know how well the buses over here run.

The train service over here is dire as it is. Delays are ubiquitous, and despite buying these fancy new trains back in 2005 the train out to Jordanstown is still a bogging piece of scrap that whines louder than my iPod can cope with.

“Getting there is getting better” is Translink’s strapline, which I’m sure no one would agree with. Despite claims of huge success in recent years and a surge in customer satisfaction, this article quite clearly states that something is not going well at all.

I also heard this week that Translink are also considering cutting services after 10pm to reduce costs.

Isn’t it time that we got rid of this joke of a company and put somebody with a bit of common sense in charge? The train lines only cover half the country, and they’re talking about cutting costs. I despair.

Last Tuesday was a cool day. Earlier this year in good old SF, Valerie worked with a guy named Michael at the St Francis hotel. I got to meet him at a company barbecue at a Giants game, and he was indeed an interesting guy.

Anyway, he was over in Ireland for about a week on holidays with his friend, Jamie (both of them are originally from Boston, but Michael now lives in SF and Jamie in LA). On the final part of their holiday, Valerie and I drove down from Belfast to Dublin to spend the day with them and catch up a little bit.

That’s us at the Molly Malone statue, Michael in the middle and Jamie on the right. We spent most of the day doing touristy things - Trinity College, Dublinia, Temple Bar, St. Stephen’s Green…it was fun as I don’t visit Dublin very often. The weather wasn’t too bad, it rained a bit but was mostly clear. Was definitely colder than Belfast, though. I was freezing all day!

We had dinner together at the Westin hotel, and as Michael is an employee with Westin - we had the whole meal for half price. Unfortunately saving money wouldn’t last long.

At the end of the day, Valerie and I went back to the car park to get my car, expecting a big parking charge of around €25. To be fair, we did eventually pay the €27 fee, but turns out the car garage closed at 7pm (what sort of place is this??) so my car got locked in. Nightmare.

I phoned the number to get help, and was told it would be a €60 callout fee to release the car. We briefly considered staying overnight and picking the car up in the morning, but eventually Valerie and I concluded that we just wanted to go home. 20 minutes the guy said and somebody would come and open the gates.

1 hour later and there’s still nobody, and the directions for where to meet this guy were so vague that I was beginning to worry if I was ever going to see him. Eventually after another half hour he shows up, with the thickest Irish countryside accent I’ve ever heard (like Tom from Father Ted). Still have to pay the car park fee, then pay this swine his €60 tax, and the amount of time spent on the phone cost me another £5 at least. Expensive night, but worth the effort.

It all got a bit much for Val, she barfed just outside Newry.

I realise that this is my first post for close to three weeks, and my first post since arriving back in the motherland, so welcome home to me. I’ve started back at university, moved back up to Belfast and have settled into student life once again. In some ways it’s nice to be left the work environment, on the other hand it’s not so nice to have no income and be in final year with a ton of work to do. Anyway, that’s by the by.

Let me get to the issue in hand here. I’m in favour of public transport and I embrace it where possible. Being without a car in San Francisco for an entire year was liberating, as the cost of fuel, insurance, tax and upkeep puts a fair dent in your expense sheet. I was also rather spoiled in SF with their excellent public transport network of buses, metro, trollies and cable cars. For most destinations there were several ways of getting from A to B.

Back home here in Northern Ireland, our public transport provider - Translink - haven’t quite thought out their pricing strategy yet. You’re grand if you take the train. To take the train from Jordanstown to City Hospital just hop on at the J’town stop and tranfer at Central Station. Easy.

Then someone please explain why the policy for the buses isn’t the same? If I take the UniLink bus from Jordanstown to Queen’s University, I’m still about a 15 minute walk from home, so it makes sense to transfer to the Metro bus service which stops literally right outside my front door. But no, if I need to do that Translink will fleece me another $1.70 or something just for that short little journey. Of course, I could walk but when it’s raining heavily and I’m tired it’s not the preferable option. Like I said before, I’m going from A to B and Translink can do that for me, just not in one trip. I don’t transferring, really I don’t, but why should I have to pay because their crappy bus system doesn’t take me where I need to go in one route.

And finally, the “just buy a day pass” argument doesn’t work because a) day passes aren’t valid on Unilink, and b) even if they were I don’t see the need for a day pass as I’m not making many commutes, just one.

I’ve explained this to several people who all fail to see my point (although most are not public transport users, so their opinion is therefore superfluous). Am I on my own on this?