7 Months of 2012 Review

2012 has been one of the more interesting years in my almost decade of life as a 20-something. I have done somewhat a very poor job of keeping a couple of my very close friends that I used to speak to on a regular basis, up to date on everything. I keep promising to do it and making mental notes, but it just kept getting procrastinated. I've finally managed to sit down and do a review of the first 7 months of 2012 with the assistance of my Facebook, Twitter, and (work) Outlook calendar.

January
The highlight of the 1st month this year was without a doubt my trip with Alex to Malaysia. It was our first trip to Asia since 2010 and we definitely made the most of it. From Kuala Lumpur to the island of Lankawi to Penang, we enjoyed every minute of it. This trip was booked because two of Alex's close friends were getting married in Kuala Lumpur, so we made a vacation out of it and extended the trip to a couple of other locations as mentioned. From what I heard, it was a glorious wedding because the bride was actually somewhat of a celebrity and very well connected in her hometown. Here's an article/blog that was written about the whole event, and Alex was in several of the pictures alongside a lot of the models and former beauty pageant participants that were bridesmaids in that wedding party (it's not hard to figure out which one is Alex - he's the only white guy, lol). The rest of our trip in Malaysia was well documented and photographed by me on a couple of my Facebook photo albums. Click here for the album of everything that I did and saw during the trip. Click here for the album of everything that I ate/drank :)

And as the 2011/2012 NFL season came to an end, I'd like to also briefly mention that I won my fantasy football league. I had an unprecedented season as I took my team Vick In A Box to the championships with an overall 14-1 record. I demolished my 12-team league, and let me tell you - this is no regular league. The guys in here know their shit, and you'd be lucky to find anyone good on the waiver wire and free agent pool. I bought myself a nice trophy to commemorate this accomplishment. This league had a $100 buy in, and top finisher (yours truly) took home the $600 pot + our weekly $20 side pots which were given out to the team that scored the highest number of points. I didn't fair so well in the other league (also a 12-team, $100 buy-in, keeper league) as I finished 8th. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Not long after I had returned from my vacation, I was hit with some surprising news from my manager. He was leaving his position (as the leader of my technical marketing team) and going to a different role within the company. This was a bummer and I was disappointed as he and I had become good friends and I had a manager that I really respected + looked up to. He really helped guide me when I first came on the team and was a great teacher. Our whole team (4 of us) ended up rolling up to the director of product managers.

February

Around the middle of February there was an annual show called the Digital Signage Expo that our business unit participates in, and it was held in Las Vegas. There was a lot of preparation as it was our largest convention and show that our team helps run. It was great to hang out with our entire sales team and demonstrate to customers at the show what our products can do, and very eye opening to see what else is out there in the industry. I also got a chance to meet some of my customers that use our products very exclusively and hang out with partners (implementors) that I had exchanged dozens of e-mails with. And as in typical Cisco fashion, there were some very nice (expensive) dinners, and I spent a week in a nice suite at the Palazzo hotel which is right next to the Venetian. We were out late most of the nights, entertaining customers and just having a good time (picture is from the 65th floor atop Mandalay Bay at the Mix Nightclub).

February is of course, the month of Valentine's Day. At this point, I still wasn't sure what exactly to do or what my feelings were towards a particular girl that I knew from work. It was a complicated situation from the perspective that you don't want to "fish off the company pier" and end up with some HR issue. But more than that - she was already in a relationship, albeit a long distance once. But on Valentine's Day, I made one last effort to do something before just completely abandoning my pursuit. Yellow roses were selected for the occasion and I delivered them to the lobby receptionist of the building that she works in, and had the lady call the girl to come down to the front desk. I told the receptionist to not reveal who I was, and on the bouquet I had left a small note in Chinese that said "From: Mr. Sun". I knew she would eventually be able to figure it out, whether on her own (somewhat limited Chinese reading proficiency) or with her Mom's help. Turns out she got it on her own, and she left me a voicemail (I had turned my phone off due to work) thanking me for the sweet gesture. Well, that was about it. Nothing came of it, I don't know if her boyfriend did anything for her on that day, but it allowed me to use the outcome as "closure" and whatever interest I had in her dissipated in the ensuing weeks.

I joined a dodgeball league in February as well. I wanted to continue to play organized sports as I deeply missed my volleyball days in St. Louis and the volleyball league/team that I had played on campus at work was very disorganized. I had played dodgeball in college, and figured this would be a great way to meet new people. I signed up as a "free agent" and was supposed to be placed on a team along with others who had also enrolled on their own, but I ended up getting added to a team that needed 1 or 2 more people to complete their roster. The result? I was on a great (skill wise) that knew how to play the game. The down side was that they all knew each other already and I felt like the odd person out more often than not. In retrospect, while I enjoy winning, I'd almost have rather been put on a bad team but made new friends instead of what happened. The league went on for about 10 weeks, and we made the playoffs. I definitely held my own and was an above average player if I do say so myself. We won the 1st round, but got knocked out in the semi-finals. Overall we finished 4th out of 12 teams. I believe the team signed up for the next session, but I wasn't asked to return - not that I had too much of an interest in coming back.

March
There was another work related convention that I attended in March and this time it was held in Orlando, Florida. I had never been to Florida before, so I was looking forward to it. As it turned out, I didn't get a chance to do anything other than do my booth duty at the show, return to my hotel room exhausted, and do additional work (e-mails) before going to bed to make sure I recharged my batteries for the next day. In fact, I ended up leaving a day early because there was enough people to cover the booth for the last day and I had things to do back in California (work related).

St. Patrick's day weekend, my college friend Joe got married. He had the wedding about half an hour north of where we went to college in San Luis Obispo, and a handful of us old roommates got a chance to get back together. SLO is about a 3 hour drive for me from San Jose. I hadn't seen James since graduation (5 years) or Chris for several years. Andrew and Joe I had both seen recently, but it was great to get together that weekend. We met up the day before the wedding and had dinner at one of the best tri-tip places in town, and then had beers to celebrate St. Patty's. On Sunday we first went back to Cal Poly (first time for me, Andrew, and James since graduation) and walked around campus. It was incredibly nostalgic and amazing to see how much the campus has transformed, while at the same time remembering all the things that brought back clear memories of our college days. We then drove to Cambria for Joe's wedding, where it was held at a lodge. Got to see some a few more college friends at the reception, and it was just a wonderful reunion of us guys who have all known each other since freshman year on the 3rd floor of the Trinity dorm building - which turned into roommates at Cerro Vista during sophomore year, and then the two-story Johnson house during year 3, and finally they moved to the house on Marsh the last two years.

April
On a very similar topic, I had been hanging out a lot with my dear friend Michelle who I've known since freshman year in the dorms. She's been living in the bay area for some time, and it was great to have someone to spend time with and do different things with such as going to Sharks hockey games or Giants baseball games. She was also the person who went with me on the to the pet store where I met Apollo for the first time. She has my spare key, and I had hers. She has a cat, Zoe, and we help take care of each other's pets from time to time. More so her coming by and watching Apollo for me during the times when I'm out of town than me going by to feed her cat, but she's been great in helping out. We've become really close, but never in that boyfriend/girlfriend dynamic. Not 100% sure why, but neither of us really saw each other that way? We refer to each other as "brother" or "sister" if that helps paint a better picture.

I purchased something called a "skatecycle" which is basically 2 wheels that has a small platform where you place your feet, and you use your own momentum to propel yourself forward. It's really hard to describe exactly how it works, so I've added a video for you to see what it looks like when someone's riding it. I tweeted my progress throughout the month of April as I was attempting to learn the thing, which was NOT at all easy. Do you remember how long it took you to learn how to ride a bike and the challenges you faced? Well, the learning process was exactly the same. You don't just "get it". You stumble, fumble, fall, get back up, over and over. I definitely injured myself several times as I ate shit on the flat concrete areas in front of my apartment building where I practiced. But right about the end of the month, I was a good skatecycle-ist and can now get around freely and it feels second nature. It was a very rewarding experience as I forced myself to not give up through the difficult times, the pain of my hips/legs/arms from learning, and kept going outside to practice without caring if other people were watching me fall or look goofy. It made me feel somewhat like a kid again - and getting fresh air can never be a bad thing :)

At work, one of my largest customers that I supported was Ford Motors. I was assigned to the account and a dedicated resource from within our business unit since they had a large implementation of our product. I already met some of the Ford team at DSE back in February, and I met them again when I traveled to Dearborn, Michigan in mid-April to help kick off a new project we were doing with them. I was only there for a few days , but I had never been to Michigan before but know about a half dozen people who are from the state. In the following months and even up to this week, I'm still working on a regular basis with their team in their overall deployment. I've enjoyed it very much and we've been very successful in accomplishing a lot over this span of time - in fact I got an award/bonus from my director for the great effort that I had put in with the Ford team and represented our group very positively.

May
Not too much happened in May, it was just a miscellaneous collection of different things as my traveling slowed down a bit. I did continue to go to baseball games and specifically caught the Cardinals when they were in San Francisco. I also got a chance to go to my first A's game with my college buddy Dan, who caught a foul ball near the end of the game - it was very exciting! Being back in California I was getting to see my family roughly once a month and I go home from time to time. On one weekend we (my 2 younger brothers) with my mom and we all went to the nearby park - yes Apollo came too. My brother William was on a bike, I was on my skatecycle, and Leo was on a longboard. We came up with this (at the time creative) idea to daisy-chain ourselves as Leo grabbed onto the back of William's bike, and I held onto Leo's hand. We traveled for about 200 feet and then Leo got this magnificent idea of launching/sling-shotting me forward. I started going so fast that I caught up to William on his bike but I wasn't able to stay balanced at that speed, and I ended up crashing and rolling on the pavement. I barely got hurt (small scrape on my elbow) and my my skatecycle flew about 20 feet but we all ended up laughing so hard at what happened it hurt our stomachs. Good times with the family :)

June

The biggest event that occurred in June was Cisco's annual show called "Cisco Live!" or "Networks" which was held in San Diego this year. It is a HUGE show and people from all over North America travel to attend this Cisco sponsored show, listen to our executives discuss different topics, attend training sessions, see the newest products/solutions, and also host their customers/partners at the event. I actually flew down to San Diego a few days early on the weekend before the week-long show to hang out with my college friends Andrew and Brian. It was good to catch up with those guys that I've known since freshman year and were both EE majors that had lots of classes we were in together.

Then the week long event took place, and perhaps the best thing about the event was that tons of Cisco field sales people attend - which meant that I saw a bunch of my friends from the CSAP training program that I went through during my 1st year with the company. It was great to hang out with everyone and go out at night to party, but I definitely felt the ill-effects the following morning when I had to wake up and prepare to do my booth duty shifts. One of the first nights I got completely wasted and Alex had to help walk me back to my hotel room where I promptly threw up in the bathroom and then blacked out on my bed. But that's not important, haha. The key take-away was that I was surrounded by friends and it was so awesome to get to see everyone, even if it was only once a year. The customer appreciation event was held on the last night (Thursday) at the San Diego Padres baseball stadium, where they served tons of food and alcohol. They had a bunch of entertainment as well, and a live concert by Weezer.

I've been trying to keep/stay in shape ever since I got back to California because I no longer have nearly as many opportunities to play sports like I did in St. Louis. I've had a membership to Cisco's gym for some time and I've been routinely going to a weekly 1-hour cardio kickboxing class on Fridays. Since this spring, I've also added to my weekly schedule a second class called "flex fusion" which is a bunch of weight lifting with quick/cardio movements thrown into it. I enjoy both classes a ton, as I've been able to see a noticeable improvement in my body as well as feeling like I'm in better shape overall. I want to keep it up, maybe add yet another day to my workout routine, and start eating much better/healthier (which is a battle I'm slowly but surely fighting).

July
It's not because this month is the most fresh in my memory, but it was really the most eventful month so far this year. SO much happened. To kick things off, I bought new tires for my car. That set me back about $500 bucks.

Apollo turned 8-years old on the 21st. I still can't believe how quickly the years have flown by. But I have consciously been thinking about what it will be like when he's not around anymore, and it always makes me sad. I've tried very hard this year to spend extra time with him and take a lot more photos of my dear pup while he's still got great energy and not really close to being called "old" yet. He's still going strong, playful, energetic for the most part, and very happy with next to zero health issues. His teeth are pretty dirty and that causes some extremely bad breath, but we'll work on that and he gets annual dental cleanings. On a related note, I went to the dentist and got my teeth cleaned too this month.

Apollo's birthday weekend was also my 10-year high school reunion. It was originally supposed to be held at a museum in Sacramento but not enough people (from my approx 400 student graduating class) bought tickets so they had to give up the venue. They ended up changing the event to some cheap bar downtown in my hometown Vacaville, which I was very disappointed and unhappy about. I literally decided 2 days before the reunion to even drive home (1.5-2 hours depending on traffic) to attend, but it was because of 2 of my best friends who were flying home from Alabama and Chicago that I gave in and drove back for the reunion. The 5 of us met on Saturday at one of their parents' house and caught up for a few hours. It was really good to get to see those guys especially since some of them I hadn't seen for YEARS. We were all best friends (the 5 of us) from junior high through high school. We then headed off to a restaurant to try to get some food and drinks before the reunion and bumped into a group of girls from our high school there as well. One of the girls in the group was perhaps the only person I had really wanted to see out of everyone at the entire reunion. She had been (and always will be) the one. I've had a crush on her since 7th grade but all throughout the years she had always had a boyfriend and I never got my chance. Still to this day, I almost always compare every girl to her. The only picture that I took with my phone the entire weekend was of her and I. The reunion itself was actually better than I had expected. A lot of people were there (but at the same time a lot of people weren't) but it was still a good time - even though it felt a bit juvenile and ghetto at this local dive bar.

(side note: I just wrote this entire section below but when I went to hit the backspace key, it did this thing where it went to the previous page and erased the entire section, so I'm pissed I have to write it again)

The Monday right after the reunion weekend something happened at work. I'm going to avoid using specifics or go into detail too much in case this blog gets found and I get in trouble - so please excuse the generalizations and vagueness. The writing had been on the wall for a while and our entire group knew that something was bound to happen but no one could have predicted what actually happened that day. In short and there's not a better way to put this, our entire group (around 100 people, including myself) got let go. This was our global team and realistically speaking we had some time left. Our group had already committed to some projects and so the "lights will stay on" through the end of October. But don't get me wrong, we were all handed paperwork that included some time that we would be given to find another job within the company and also our severance package if/when we decide to leave the company. Many people were shocked and surprised (including myself) but believe it or not I came to terms with it very quickly. I've also told this story so many times over the last weeks that I'm numb to it, but it is what it is. I'm actually quite excited about the possibilities that are open to me right now and the idea of taking my career in a slightly different direction intrigues me. While it is a bit unsettling (as it should be) to not know if you're going to have a permanent/stable job, I'm actually going to have income for the next 6-8 months. So I'm not worried about that, as a matter of fact - like I said earlier - I'm quite excited at the potential and possibility of taking some time off. Change is not necessarily always bad, and I feel weird that I just wrote that because here's a guy, who doesn't even like to change the route he takes to get to/from work because he's got it down to a science. There must be something going on if I'm okay with getting laid off - and I see a ton of positives from this situation. One of those positives is the increased amount of free time I've been having lately. Instead of working 50-60 hour weeks, I'm now able to have a more relaxed and normal work week to do some of the things I like and want to do (like go to the gym, or write this blog).

I have absolutely no idea what the rest of 2012 will bring, but if it's anything like what's happened so far this year... it's going to be a wild and crazy ride (and I didn't even reveal everything that's happened, I've hidden 1 very big incident/event).