• Lose 10 pounds.  I failed on this one.  I'm lucky that I held my weight this year.  This lifestyle is not conducive to weight loss.  Three years ago, I was about 10 pounds lighter than I am now.  Failed.
• Increase our net worth by 15%.  Our net worth increased by 23%.  Goal exceeded.
• Spending more time reading for pleasure and reading what I need to read.  I read just one book this year, unless you count the Bible and Jon Stewart's "America."  Failed. 
• Improve my Korean.  Although my vocabulary digressed, I am more fluent in Korean than I was when I arrived in Korea.  Goal met. 
• Take a real vacation.  We went on a two-week trip to China and spent two weeks on vacation in the U.S. visiting family.  Although I ran my parents ragged cramming as much as I could into two weeks, it was still a vacation.  Goal met.

Happy New Year, Dear Reader!  I hope you have a wonderful and prosperous 2007.  If you make any resolutions, I wish you all the best in fulfilling them.

• I've been an aspiring author since I was eight years old.  When I was eight, I started writing my first book, a mystery.  I scanned the first page and uploaded it for you to peruse (pre-edited and with plenty of errors).  Before I graduated from high school, I wrote several books, none of which I published.  Most were either in the science fiction/fantasy or action/adventure genres.  When I was 15 years old, I entered one of my novels in a contest sponsored by Bantam Books.  The winner's submission was published as a Choose Your Own Adventure.  Although my submission, "The Two Sides of Africa," was not published, it was a finalist, and the editors at Bantam wrote me a personal commendation.  My early years of prolific novel writing have ceased, but blogging helps me keep up my writing skills.  In the future, I plan to return to writing fictional novels.  When I have time.
• I am an amateur cartographer, cartoonist, and illustrator.  When I was young, I drew maps, lots of them.  Just ask my brother and sister, who thought I was really strange for spending many hours by myself in my room alone working on fictional maps and companion stories.  I myself wonder how I ever managed to have a social life while I was a secondary school student.  I drew detailed maps of over two dozen fictional cities, states, countries, and worlds.  Some of these maps are complements to some of my stories, including the map of Northmark, a fictional land where one of my novels is set.  I uploaded samples of the different types of maps I used to draw.  I'm still working on one map, but I haven't touched it for a couple of years.  I used to drew maps freehand, but in recently I've used Microsoft's Paint program to draw them.  I have little time nowadays for cartography.  I also enjoy drawing cartoons and illustrations, particularly for my books.  In fourth and fifth grades, I won school awards for two of my illustrations.  I also developed many cartoon characters, and I drew comic strips such as "Kelvin" for my college newspaper and "Jersey," a cartoon world I created in high school.  "Jersey" was especially fun with characters such as "Greyfoot the Rabbit," a drunken rabbit who resembled Garfield the Cat, Walter W. Walterson, a geeky fellow with a receding hairline, and the "Vegging Fruitcakes," a music group with a celery stalk on guitar, a carrot bassist, and a potato drummer.  I don't have any cartoon samples, but I'll upload one if I find it.
• I was active i school programs, and I starred in four productions before I graduated.  In fourth grade, I played Ichibod Crane in our school's rendition of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  In fourth grade, I wrote and starred in a short play called "How Little Big Chief Tamed the Mountain" written for a friend of mine named Matt who has severe a speech impediment.  Matt played Big Chief, and Tracy, a girl who was my first school crush, played his daughter.  In sixth grade, I portrayed Thomas Edison in our school musical, "The Electric Sunshine Man," singing two solos.  In tenth grade, I went on to star in "Teen II," our high school musical.  I left choir after tenth grade and never performed again except for singing in church choirs.  I've thought about trying my hand at community theater, but this urge somewhere deep down in my lengthy to-do list.
• I think mean people suck.  I'm a pretty positive and cordial person, as you can probably tell from my blogging.  I am relatively intolerant of people who have an overly negative outlook on life and are obnoxiously rude, including screamers and condescenders.  We're like oil and water.  We don't mix well.  I turn them off, and I do my best to avoid them.  You can be a shameless self-promoter, a egotistic showboat, a gossip, a slacker, a know-it-all, a prankster, a whiner, quirky, dogmatic, or any variation thereof, but please, just be civil.  Leave behind your bad attitude and check your rudeness at the door when you come talk to me--I don't want to hear it.  I will be civil to you and expect you to be civil to me.  If you must be negative, so be it, but for heaven's sake, don't be rude and/or condescending.  You might get away with it for a time, but the odds are you will reap what you sow.  Nice people won't give you the time of day when you need it.  So just give in and try being nice before we turn out to be just like you and treat you rudely or look down on you.
• I have a weakness for baked goods, and I want Girl in the Rain to send me baked goods for Christmas every year from now on.  "Girl in the Rain," put me up to writing this blog entry, so she must indulge my craving by baking delicious treats and mailing them to me annually wherever I am in the world.  Girl, please send a care package to Paraguay next year!  I enjoy snickerdoodles, peanut brittle, and haystacks!

Now I have to tag five bloggers who need to tell you on their blogs about themselves.  So, take it away Doodlespace, Tortmaster, Quemino's World, Muna, and Editfish!

Name “Five Things You Don’t Know About Me,” and then tag five others. 

My wife wrote another interesting blog entry for your reading enjoyment.  She's right...things could always be worse!  They could always be better too.  Her thoughtful entry is a refreshing change from my meandering musings.

Have you noticed that weather really has an impact on our moods?  Every time I feel sorry for myself for enduring another cold winter day in Seoul, I check CNN for the temperature in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  In Ulaanbaatar, today’s high is 12F (-11C), and the low is -21F(-29C).  THAT is cold!  Some of our friends are currently serving in Ulaanbaatar for a two-year tour, and they are enduring true hardship.  The spouse is a very adaptable lady, but last time I heard, she is not having that great time there.  And that was during summertime!  My thoughts go out to her family as well as the can of Godiva Hot Cocoa that I am sending them for Christmas.

 

After Ulaanbataar, I like to check the weather in Shenyang, China.  Shenyang almost became our next post.  Had we bid it one spot higher on our list, we very well could be heading there soon.  So it’s a “could-have-been” place.  Aside from hardships such as pollution, Shenyang is also not a city best known for its weather.  Today Shenyang’s high is 25F(-4C) and low is 5F(-15C).   Still too cold to do anything outside.

 

Usually by now, my mood would improve and my complaints would subside.  In comparison, today’s high in Seoul is 38F(3C) and low 26F(-3C).  I am thankful for being in Seoul. 

 

This self-comforting technique seems to work well for me.  So next December when we are in Paraguay enduring the summer heat, I will be sure to check CNN often for Riyadh, Kuwait city, or Cairo, for their summer temperature, of source.  Any other suggestions?

Very true!  I rarely ponder the weather.  It doesn't affect my mood much, although I don't like the frigid cold or sweltering summer days.  Seoul isn't known for good weather, but it's not bad considering the weather in other Asian locales.  Of course, the weather in U.S. cities is generally better than it is in Asia, in my humble opinion.  South America is a different story.  I'm under the impression that South America generally offers wonderful weather.  Paraguay will be very hot in the summer (November - February) and warm in the winter (June - August) , and it doesn't have four seasons that I enjoy.  That's OK...we can always find comfort in our pool!  Yes, we will have a pool, one of the nice little perks of life overseas in an exotic locale.

She is quarter-Cantonese. Her grandmother was Chinese, but her mother, a dancer, was born in Edinburgh and has lived there all her life. Seven years ago, Tunstall tracked her down, after having seen Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies. "It's such an outrageously awful, brilliant film, the story of a black woman who discovers her mother is white. I watched it and thought, 'I could handle that. And if I could handle that, I could surely handle anything.'"

Her father is Irish and worked in a bar, but despite trying, she has never found him. In any case, it seemed natural to trace her mother first. "Your mother is a woman who could have had a termination and didn't," she says. "Your father could have been a one-night-stand who hasn't been seen since."

She is intrigued by the 18 days before she was adopted. "I find it fascinating to think that for two weeks I didn't have a mother. You have this short time when you have no idea what this baby's future is going to be."

Did she ever feel abandoned? "No, but there have been moments... I met her seven years ago, and that was a strange process. You go through moments of thinking, 'Actually, how does that work, and what was she feeling?' But you just have to keep asking questions. At the end of the day, you are meeting a stranger. I've known her seven years, but that's not long. I have to be slightly protective of the relationship, because we still have a long way to go."