2009 is coming to an end. Check out CNN’s 2009: Year in Review or Yahoo! Year in Review. If that’s not enough for you to reflect upon this past year, then check out the Time’s Best and Worst Lists.

As for me personally…

2009 will be remembered most as the year that I quit my job at IBM and started working for my own company on a full time basis, although this story will continue into 2010 and hopefully beyond…

Other highlights of my year included…

A new relationship…
Amy and I got together actually on X’mas of 2008, but that’s close enough to 2009 so I’d list it here… We just celebrated our first anniversary and are looking forward to celebrating many many more anniversaries together in the future.

A whole month back in the US…
I was back in the US for (almost) all of September. It was great being with family and just taking a break from China.

A trip to Xi’an…
Xi’an and Chengdu were two cities in China that I’d wanted to visit the most. It was good to cross one of them from my “to visit” list in 2009. Actually it was quite a disappointment because the city was not especially hospitable for a major tourist designation and the place housing the Terracotta Soldiers was set up in a way that you couldn’t sense the historical significance of it at all.

Other notables included:

• organizing social networking events,
• getting an iPhone (which even for its price was a worthwhile purchase),
• using Twitter more actively (I had registered my account back in 2007 but didn’t really use it at all),
• spending sometime in Beijing while still working in IBM,
• a trip back to Taiwan in October,
• etc. etc.

In any case, let’s say goodbye to 2009. May 2010 bring much success, prosperity, good health and happiness to everyone!