A little more than three years ago, on the last day of 2006 I sat down for twenty minutes and wrote down what I liked about the year, what I thought could have been better and what were my goals or plans for the next year. I’ve done the same ever since either on the last or first day of the year and even with just a couple of years of doing that behind my belt am finding this incredibly valuable. This allows me to get into a time machine and ride into the thoughts of yours truly last year, or the year before, or the one before that. A great way to see how you’ve changed and remind you of the things you think or thought are important.

I’ve written many of my goals down as public (new year’s) resolutions which has become incredibly easy after the launch of Pledgehammer. I’m glad to say many of my 2009 goals were successes. I saw six new countries not one (China, Marocco, Andorra, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize), have a new homey home am happy with my sanjuro progress. Professionally I had a healthy balance of hits and misses. I failed miserably on the new kitesurfing tricks front (but learned to wave surf) and Spanish school front (but started learning the language with Rosetta Stone) but hey, no-one’s perfect. Now, you may argue these are not uber-important things but the point is I wanted these things in my life. And there’s research out there that suggests merely making a resolution increases the odds of achieving positive outcome 10-fold, so there you go.

I’ve make pledges on the more important fronts as well, and these I’ve kept to myself. It’s not like making these goals public would increase my motivation to reach them, I want them bad as is. When it comes to progress there definitely was some but not quite the way I had imagined. Lesson learned, all’s well that ends well and many other cliches sum it all up very well. No-one ever said that fulfilling your dreams is easy.

What’s perhaps worthy of mentioning is that I’ve never made financial resolutions. Guess I’m not that hung up on depositing a certain amount of money in my mattress in the same way I’m very particular about seeing new places or practicing the sports I love. I think that’s a good thing.

2010 will see me learn more, kitesurf more and do a little more for the society. Again, I’ve made some of my resolutions (where I might need a little nudge) public and others not.

If there is just one idea you take from this blog this year then be it about the value of ‘annual wishlist inventory check’ or however you want to call it. Many people do it already, some even publicly, for instance see wolli’s here. And I don’t mind if you choose to write it in a small black notebook instead of the said website.

I wish you a truly happy new year!

Update a week later. I realized I haven’t given myself too much of a kick in the butt now. So in addition to everything said above I pledge to get more shit done and diversify my income streams, this year and by the end of this year respectively. So if you see me just pottering around some time this year, or not doing anything about the number of different income streams, please poke me with a stick.

Rough translation:
9:11 Pledgehammer is broken
9.12 I made a promise there but it didn’t hold

On behalf of Pledgehammer I’d like to apologize for this horrific malfunction, this appears to be a software bug. Will try to fix it for next year.

Or so the wise saying goes. This means that today I am reading tips because reading tips is something I’m about to share (and ask).

I quite enjoyed reading Anthony Giddens’ The Politics of Climate Change if ‘enjoyed’ is the right word. It’s not easy reading but if you’re confused with the range of conflicting points of views on climate change in articles here and there it’s an easy way to get a basic understanding of energy security, global warming and related politics. Bits of information about gas pipes or energy stations in space make much more sense after reading this book.

A few nuggets to give you a flavor. I hadn’t heard about using GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) instead of GDP as a measure of how well a country is doing. In addition to economics it looks at health care, crime rates, life expectancy and how clean the environment is to determine how well a country is going. In GDP terms the US is twice bigger than in 1970’s, in GPI terms it has stood still for 30 years.

The concept of backcasting was also interesting. Instead of projecting today onto the future it asks what changes have to be made in the present in order to arrive at alternative future state. Or the blindingly obvious fact that developed countries may frown upon pollution growth in China or Brazil but actually this is pollution that has been sort of exported. If you account the pollution to countries where goods are consumed rather than produced it’s evident it’s a global issue to tackle, not something that Chinas and Brazils of this world have to sort out locally.

Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel was a similarly good overview of how equities markets work and how your average small investor should go about investing, or not investing. For some reason I had brought it along to my summer holiday in Ibiza and for some reason it fit into the very hedonistic reading setting very well.

On a lighter note Matthew Polly’s American Shaolin is a well written story about an American bloke who goes to Shaolin for a year to learn kung fu. There’s a guy with a good sense of humour, and a good story. If you’ve been away from home for a long time or done any martial arts training yourself you’ll enjoy it double.

And thanks to my father’s influence I’ve enjoyed a few good sci-fi classics as audiobooks lately. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a story about a super powerful computer that has developed consciousness and helps to plan a revolution on Luna (Moon, that is) out of boredom. And Dark Universe takes you underground on our planet Earth where a group of people have stayed so long they’ve forgotten the sense of seeing. All available in Audible.

And then of course Naine by Olavi Ruitlane, a book that has been praised enough times. All I can say is echo everyone that has recommended it.
PS. Pardon the very serious, almost morbid tone. These fine pieces of reading deserve better but last night’s halloween festivities have taken their toll.

PS2. All links here were affiliate links, so in case you clicked any of them you’ve in effect made me obscenely rich. Photo borrowed from internet from someone called weeping-willow.

PS3. Have holidays coming up in a few weeks and need to stock up before I set off. Any reading tips?

City24-st jäi silma ühe toreda väikese Kadrioru korteri kuulutus, mille peale tekkis mõte oma kodupanga käest uurida, mis tingimustel selle ostmiseks laenu saab. Ettevaatlikult lisasin juurde, et olen valmis omafinantseerima 20-25%, panganduses ikkagi keerulised ajad. Laenupakkumise asemel sain ühelauselise vastuse, ilma vähimagi sisse- või väljajuhatuseta:

SEB panga poolt laenu väljastamise üks tingimusi on maksustatud töötasu Eestis.

Ei sõnagi rohkem. Igaks juhuks pärisin edasi, kas aitab suurem omafinantseering, käendus, mitte-regulaarne sissetulek Eestis või kasvõi seegi, et minu töökohal on Eestis sõsarettevõte. Uus vastus oli natuke pikem, aga jälle ühelauseline:

SEB pank arvestab siiski Eestis maksustatavat regulaarset töötasu ja suurem omafinantseering ei kompenseeri paraku sissetuleku vastuolu.

Sel moel sain teada, et minu sissetulekus on vastuolu. Tahtsin avada akna ja Eesti poole hüüda, et mu sissetulekutes pole minu teada mingit vastuolu, kui minu rahaasjades mingisuguseid vastuolusid esinebki, siis vahest harva sissetulekute ja väljaminekute vahel, aga ei tahtnud teemast liiga kõrvale kalduda. Jooseptootsiliku jonniga pärisin veelkord, et kas seda laenu ikka kuidagi ei saa (ja natuke irooniliselt küsisin juurde, kas ohus on minu olemasolev kodulaen). Vastus oli nagu otse raamatust Catch 22:

kindlasti ei ohusta see, et kolisite välismaale, Teie olemasolevat kodulaenu SEB-s. /…/ Teil on võimalus taotleda laenu koos kaastaotlejaga, kelle töötasu on piisav laenu teenidamiseks. Eeldusel, et kaastaotleja on sama leibkond.

Ma ei ole küll suurem asi leibkonnaspetsialist, aga niipalju ma tean, et see peab olema üks päris vägev leibkond, mis suudab koos minuga välismaale kolinud olla ja samal ajal ka Eestis palka saada ja laenu teenindada. Olin saanud eitava vastuse.

Tegelikult ei ole muidugi aus ega ilus, et inimene oma kirjavahetust pangaga internetti üles riputab. Kui vastused oleksid olnud vähegi mõistusepärasemad, oleksin suutnud kiusatusele vastu panna. Ja kompensatsiooniks luban pangal minu kirjad SEB blogisse ka panna. Siis oleme tasa.

The amount of blog comment spam has increased lately. Which is no big news but spammers seem to have gone bonkers. In the good old days they just wanted you to buy Viagra, Cialis and such. Now they want to populate this honest blog with pure insanity. Like this one:

Hi guys. Fresh clean sheets are one of life’s small joys. Help me! Please help find sites for: Magazine there is attempt on yet how generous variety is taken through earth.. I found only this – (link to a site that doesn’t exist). Diaper bag accessories, as the credit crushed during the poisonous example, bit built alongside. she could n’t grind the team on her cloth, or donate it against a smoke where the example could stay her while she completed businesses or patients. Thanks :o. Tovi from Faso.

Or how about:

Good evening. Things are only impossible until they’re not. Help me! Need information about: Of stable, falling conventional samples will ignore network use as instantly.. I found only this – (link to another site that doesn’t exist). Rodeo is exposed up to get her submarines with megan. In the urethra collection motility use rags and dumps became transactions were biological. Thanks :rolleyes:. Kane from Bahrain.

Surely they’re not making any money out of this if the content is meaningless and links broken. This means they’re doing this for fun. Mad, mad world.

One is bound to spend quite a bit of time pondering over prices (especially if you work in marketing). If you want to know whether Virgin flight to San Francisco on September 19th is cheaper than BA it’s easy to look it up, but when it comes to Tesco’s vs. Sainsbury’s, Orange vs. O2 or Avis vs. Hertz – who knows. There are people in these companies who get paid to make sure their customers don’t understand how much exactly they are paying. And then we’re left to make educated guesses about price points.

Found myself hiring an Europcar hire car the other day and reasoning to myself and friends: well, Europcar always have the longest waiting time to get the car and their service is shit, therefore it must be the cheapest.

Btw, went to Cotswolds and Wales, Taavet snapped photos, my notes coming to an Eesti Ekspress near you soon.

Lately I’ve been spending time on Twitter almost every day and I’ve been reading and listening many good books. Good old books are still best for getting in-depth knowledge about a topic or letting yourself be carried away by someone’s raw writing talent. Twitter takes care of news, new ideas, information about anything and everything online, and killing time whenever you have that odd moment.

What I’ve done a lot less is reading newspapers and magazines. I might still buy National Geographic, The Economist or Eesti Ekspress before boarding a flight, and flick through the free stuff they hand out on planes and tube stations but there is no room for these genres in my everyday routines. And it’s not about the paper. I’ve also cut down on blogs (which explains why I haven’t bothered refreshing this remote corner of cyberspace). This middle ground is somehow just not very useful. If something is a flash in the pan it will get its 15 nanosecond of Twitter fame to inform or amuse us and die. If something is important there will be a book.

Of course, most tweets link to blog posts and articles. But it’s these individual bits of information I am interested in, not the media company or blogger behind them. So an article has to have a certain amount of Twitter gravity to get read by me and people like me. That’s very different from having certain brand attributes or prettiness of layout.

So yes, books and Twitter, Twitter and books. Might share a few book tips in the next post.