Hohoho. It’s Christmas. Plus, it’s also almost the end of 2008. This is traditionally the time to reflect on whatever that’s gone on in the previous year, and then say “yeah, we screwed up here, and it’s time to improve”. Or something like that. In-between we might exchange gifts and go to parties.

Because I will be spending the entire Christmas day in an aeroplane (yep, 24 hours of watching horrible movies and eating airline peanuts), my family has decided to celebrate – bah. Ok, before I continue, perhaps I should straighten out the definitions here. By celebrate, it should technically mean “observe”. The spirit of Christmas is only continued here to respect the traditions from my father’s side of the family. Though there is some “hey, here’s something you might like”, it isn’t really major. No parties, no trees or decorations, and no getting out of the way to do something out of the ordinary. To be honest, any celebration is simply because some person decided to divide our year up, then say every 365 days we’re going to pretend it has some significance, so we’re going to use that as an excuse to skive our jobs. If we had 200 day cycles, we’d celebrate more often. Ok, where was I? Yes, my family decided to celebrate a bit earlier. We met up with my brother in Manchester, and we gave him a bolster (seriously, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to whack somebody with a bolster repeatedly whilst going down an escalator in a train station – in public) – to his delight, nobody there uses bolsters – and his guitar. I, on the other hand, received a wonderful, trendy, and ultimately geeky binary watch. They don’t have gadget stores in Malaysia, so I am quite pleased with his choice – I didn’t have a watch before, and now I can train my mental arithmetic. It was fun, lots of laughter, story-sharing, looking at his lifestyle and that pigsty of a room he maintains (yeah, right).

How did the year go? Well, actually, it’s still going, I’ve somehow managed to schedule some activities to begin within the last few days of the year. (Yes, Chris F., I’m looking at you) However, how much did I achieve in the past year? Lots lots lots. How much was related to “Achieving Self-Actualisation Since 1992″? About 80%. Can I explain what’s been going on in a blog post? No.

Hidden knowledge is powerful knowledge. I sometimes believe it’ll be hard for me to live in todays society without keeping secrets. Secrets are amazing things. Things the allow you to snuggle up when you make what seems like an uninformed decision. Things that you can cast a knowing smile at to strangers. They are the glowing shine that gives you that edge when you speak, when you introduce yourself, and when you look straight in their eyes. Some secrets go so deep you’ve never shared them with anybody, not even inanimate objects. Why don’t we share them? Is it because people don’t comprehend? Is it possible they will hurt somebody’s feelings? Can they cause confusion or mistrust? Or is it simply because it is not beneficial? There are some secrets that are kept because we ourselves do not fully understand them, like when we try to describe ourself, sometimes we find ourselves at a loss for words. Some secrets need to be nutured, slowly brought about in our subconcious until they can be expressed in words when the time is right. This past year was full of a single untold secret. A secret so complex it isn’t a single event or slip of knowledge. It is the cumulative effect of a combination of feelings throughout many years that I do not dare to say any clearer. Because of this secret I learned so much. I learned how to control more than the scenario around me.

I might have a lot to learn still in terms of being around people. I might not know to say “chi fan” to one’s grandmother before they eat, nor might I know the ways to apologise properly. I know my way of speaking needs improvement, I know I am quick to distract. However, what else I do know is my secret. My secret which says “I know how to change”. I don’t care much for the past except to learn from it, and I learn quick. The only thing that delays the public announcement “I have learned” is the habitual application of what I learn. Right now, it is the time to look to the future, and to do that, I need to look at what I’m doing now, because what I’m doing now changes the future. The next year could potentially be full of a huge collection of creative work being finished, or it could be spent as an investment, something I wished I could spend a lot more time doing. Over the past year, I want to thank a lot of people for helping me learn. As I won’t talk about what I learned, at least I can publicly thank you all here, and even if you don’t notice this page, I’ll have gotten it off my conscience to thank you. Because I don’t like mentioning your names, I’ll just put your first letter. I’ll sort it alphabetically too just to see how many /26 I get and also to eliminate bias ;)

B. C. C. D. E. F. H. J. L. M. R. T. Z.

12/26. I wanted to be vague on who these people are, because I chose them very carefully, and for detailed reasons. Therefore, a lot of people who think they might be on there, actually aren’t. If your “name” obviously isn’t there, then sorry, but you have to realise this isn’t one of those not well thought out shout-outs trendy teenagers post on their blogs. If your name might be there, think again, because then again, it might not. If it makes your feel better to believe you’re on there, then whatever floats your boat. If anybody can get all the names right on the first go, I’ll give you a hundred bucks (because I know you won’t).

Alright. I do believe it’s time to enjoy Manchester again. I’ll continue updating Twitter, in case you’re lacking your thinkMoult. It’s time for me to have a lenghty conversation with my pillow.

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