End of 2008
Now that I have a personal blog as well as this one, I wondered about moving my “end of year” post there, but now it’s the 3rd, it seems traditional to have it here too, so I’m cross-posting. For previous years, see end of 2006 and end of 2007.
January
Tim and I started the year at Woodford festival, camping in a rented non-waterproof tent in the rain!
February
For Valentines day, we had dinner at Green Palace, a vegetarian Thai restaurant in Newtown.
On the 18th, my grandad died at the age of 88 years.
March
I had planned to be at Wikia’s offices in San Mateo for two weeks in March. Pop’s funeral was scheduled the same time. So, after a week in California, I did a day trip to England and got back to the US on Tuesday for the rest of the week’s meetings.
Back in Sydney, Tim proposed to me on the 22nd, the day before Easter.
April
Tim and I were back in England at the start of April as I’d been invited to give a keynote at the JISC conference in Birmingham. I also gave a short talk at The Webby 5 & People’s Voice Voting party in London and we celebrated our engagement with family and friends in England.
We went back to Australia for Tim’s family reunion in Bellingen.
May
We chose our wedding cake this month. After withdrawing my previous visa application for “de-facto spouse”, I started health checks for a new application for a “prospective marriage” visa.
June
In June, Tim and I flew off in different directions. I spent a few days in Korea for the International Conference on Information Culture, and Tim went to San Francisco for a staff meeting.
Back in Australia, we had our 2nd engagement party – this time a barbecue with Tim’s family.
I also bought my wedding dress this month.
July
In July we went to Egypt for Wikimedia’s annual conference, Wikimania. We spent a few days as tourists in Cairo before getting a bus to Alexandria for the conference. Unfortunately I contracted what was probably E. coli from a dodgy salad at the Novotel at Cairo airport and spend most of the time in Alexandria extremely ill. We headed home via Abu Dhabi where we stopped for one night.
August
For the past few years, my birthday has been during Wikimania, but as that was early this year, I was able to properly celebrate and we has dinner at Rise, a Japanese restaurant in Sydney.
September
In September, we headed to New Zealand for a few days so that my visa could be granted (which had to happen out of the country). We flew into Christchurch because it was by far the cheapest flight from Sydney, and then went to the embassy in Auckland where my visa was approved.
Back in Australia we attended Tim’s 10 year school reunion.
October
Just a month to go before the wedding, but instead of working on that, Tim and I went to San Francisco. It was the first time we’d been there together! I spent the week at Wikia’s new office in San Francisco and Tim was just around the corner for more Wikimedia staff meetings.
November
We got back to Sydney just in time for Wiki Wednesday which I spoke at. A few days later my family arrived in Australia for the first time. We managed to fit in some touristy thing alongside making last minute plans for the wedding on the 23rd.
And finally a chance to relax! We had a wonderful honeymoon on Hamilton Island, part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Cruising, sailing, snorkelling, great food, and lots of relaxing!
December
Of course I made up for it in December by spending a busy month catching up before celebrating Christmas with Tim’s family in Bilgola.
My plans for next year include speaking at Linux Conference in Tasmania, attending Wikimania in Buenos Aires, making the final transition to Australia (my parents are still looking after all my junk and receiving lots of post for me!), buying a house, and doing all I can to make Wikia profitable for the first time!
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