Bye-bye 2007

A slow year on WavysWorld this year, though perhaps not in Wavy's world.

The first major event was obviously the birth of Ali Ashley, our son, at the beginning of February. From such a wee thing then, he's grown steadily and he's now a delightful chap, with a lovely sparkly grin. He's also almost walking, at about the same age as his sister was when she took her first steps. Aysha herself, is now running about gaily, with an absolute mop of curly brown hair. It obviously skipped a generation or two from my family since mine is, well, wavy, and Lynn's is typically Asian - long, straight and black. Two is enough, we've decided.

On the work front, I've been learning a lot, especially away from the world of messaging, and also using new versions of products I've been working with for years. Earlier this year, I and a couple of colleagues were the booth-bunnies at the company's first trade show as exhibitors. One day, I'll have to make it as a speaker. The user group sadly, has gone nowhere this year. I'm not sure whether it's going to in the next either.

On the sporting front things have been a bit up and down. West Ham started the year as cast iron certainties for relegation and yet managed, with a massive contrribution from Mr Tevez, to escape on the last day - thanks for the 6 points each, Arsenal and Man U. Now we end 2007, and begin 2008, with games against who? Man U and Arsenal. We're not going to repeat the trick this season, having already lost to Arsenal at home, but the Man U part is still on ;o)

Elsewhere in sport, it was a year of almosts: a terrible England side almost qualified for Euro2008, which would have been horrible to watch and subjected us to yet more of Maclaren's turgid football; England came from a terrible start to reach the rugby world cup final, eventually losing  to a better South Africa side, but beating Australia on the way; Lewis Hamilton came agonisingly close to winning the Formula1 title in his debut season; and Ricky Hatton finally lost, although won a lot of friends on the way. Joe Calzaghe on the other hand, just carries on.

So for 2008? Well, it will be our last full year in Malaysia, for one thing, so we have a lot of saving to do for 2009. As the children get bigger, I suspect that our apartment will start feeling more and more cramped, but I think our efforts will be better directed at getting back to the UK in early 2009. We will try to get to Java to meet that set of grandparents, and for Lynn to go home before we move back.

On the work front, I have to get some more exams, both IBM Lotus and Microsoft - I have one coming up this week. I'll also be looking to get some more consultancy work under my belt, rather than systems management which is most of my work now. I've being trying to get some initiatives off the ground internally, but it can be a slow process when it isn't directly revenue-generating.

I'll also be trying to keep in touch better with friends, and taking more photos of the kids to bore people with.

So, to both my readers, I wish you a very happy 2008.