Another year is about to pass us by. And here is the obligatory end-of-year blog entry.

But before I forget, let me wish you dear readers a belated Merry Christmas. It had been a quiet Christmas for me this year since I didn’t go out to have fun with Leon. Both of us were busy trying to finish off our theses before the due date (that’s tomorrow) so we weren’t exactly in a celebratory mood. In fact, I didn’t even send out any cards this year.

STRESSED OUT: 2013 has been a very eventful year to me. First of all, I was (still am!) a full-time graduate student and thus the whole year has been spent working on my thesis. I admit that I am not very good with time-management and I procrastinate a lot, which led me to having problems with the thesis. I am able to finish it on time but it definitely means a rushed job, and everyone knows rushed jobs rarely yield good results, unless if you’re extremely lucky. So here’s a lesson: Never ever put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

ENJOYABLE VACATION TO SOUTH KOREA: In my last post I blogged about my potential vacation to South Korea. I said potential because at that time I wasn’t sure whether I would be going or not (given the status of my then-unfinished thesis) but in the end I did go on the trip and I had one of the most amazing times in my life, mainly because I finally got to see snow with my own eyes. The country also has a lot of interesting places to visit though I was only able to go and see a number of them since I was only there for a week. I promised to blog all about the trip and I’ll do it in a few days.

SHOP UNTIL YOU DROP: 2013 is also the year I was introduced to Taobao (the Chinese online marketplace akin to Ebay) and the Japanese clothing brand LIZ LISA. Taobao has great selection of all sorts of items you can think of but the drawback is that you can’t buy it directly unless if you have Chinese credit cards and/or if you live in China so to get the goods you would need to engage a shopping service.
And for the past several months I cannot stop drooling over the cutesy LIZ LISA items but I had to be careful not to buy everything off the store because of the insane price tags (though they have frequent discount sales – at least once a month).

LOSING A FAMILY MEMBER: Last November my aunt-in-law passed away due to cancer and even though I was never close to her, her passing was hard to accept because it happened so suddenly. She was diagnosed with the disease only at the final stage and it only took a few days before the cancer claimed her life.

NEW BEGINNING FOR NEKONETTE: This year, Nekonette has moved to a new host. After being hosted for close to 3 years by CBD Hosting, the inevitable move was made. CBD Hosting was facing a severe server downtime and all attempts to get it fixed was of no avail (including my desperate attempt to get hold of Hostgator to look into the matter). If it was any possible, I would rather not move, since Jade (CBD Hosting owner) had been such a wonderful host and was very easy to talk to. Moreover, transferring files are such a huge pain in the butt so moving host was very much the last option. Since there was nothing to be done, plus most of my files including the backups (2 years worth) are gone so I had little choice but to move. So now Nekonette is under a new host, Iceglow Hosting owned by Moni and I have nothing but positive experience with the service so far. Moni has been very understanding of my plight and had offered to assist me with the move.
Another lesson learnt: Backup your files regularly and save them in the computer.