Alright, now that we have come to the last day of 2008, I suppose, it is a good time for me to do a summary of what happened in my life in the last 365 days.

00) Kicking off 2008 was none other than the purchase of my first dSLR, Canon EOS 40D during the mid December of 2007. While I do know that this particular “event” didn’t happen in year 2008, I feel that it is only appropriate to mention it in my post as this piece of gadget that I acquired has changed my life in many ways. Not only I have better pictures for my blog and work, I also found another thing that I enjoy doing up till a level. Read more…

01) I started year 2008 with a bang, with my two most important gadgets, Nokia N70 mobile phone and HP Pavilion HP DV2201tx being stolen due to my carelessness.Read more…

02) Thanks to a couple of friends and my mum, I managed to buy myself a Sony Ericsson P1i and a Dell Vostro 1500. Read more…

03) An event that doesn’t hurt as badly as before but still haunts me. Read more…

04) I received my first cheque worth RM830.14 from Asia’s first blog advertising community, Nuffnang. Read more…

05) I was loaned a Samsung SGH-i550 by Samsung Mobile for us to test drive for a month and then write our reviews on it. A first, as a blogger. Read more…

06) My winning entry in The Star’s Thumbnails. Read more…

07) One of the most terrifying photo shoot outing that I ever took part in, which made me wet from head to toe, even my underwear. Read more…

08) A Canon Speedlite 580 EX II was added to my photo equipment arsenal, which later proved itself as a wise and worthy investment. Read more…

09) The first gathering after my ex-house mates graduated and parted ways. It was one of the best outings that I had in a long long time. Read more…

10) My mug shot appeared on the front page of The Star, something big as I don’t cover political news or crime news as much as my other colleagues. Read more…

11) For the first time, I was invited, as a blogger, to a food tasting at California Pizza Kitchen, KLCC. Read more…

12) I had the honour to be one of the few early birds to use Maybank2u 2.0 and was put into Impiana KLCC Spa And Hotel, all for free. Read more…

13) After fiddling around with the idea for sometime, I started my very own photo blog, J.Photo. Read more…

14) Together with my brother, Ah Yong, sister, Jamie and a friend, Yoon Onn, I backpacked (with style) and traveled to almost all major cities and touristy place in Taiwan within 16 days. It was the best holiday and experience that I ever had. Although it landed me in a bigger debt, it was all worth the trouble. Read more…

15) Jason Mumbles is 4 year old! Read more…

16) For the first time, I, as a blogger, was invited to be one of the four guest speakers to share our experience and personal thoughts on blogging in a forum held during Bloggers Buff 2008 at PWTC. Read more…

16) I can start counting down the number of subjects I have to take and pass before I can graduate. A very significant milestone in my journey to graduation since I entered MMU years ago. Read more…

17) Nuffnang invited me to Singapore for their Nuffnang-vPost Christmas Party and then put us into Singapore Marriott Hotel at Orchard Road, all expenses paid. Not only that, I had the opportunity to meet the many top Malaysian bloggers for the first time. Read more…

Apart from the events mentioned above, this blog has been improving steadily in terms of visitors.

144 posts in 12 months.
48 posts categorized under “Eating…”.

Approximately 154,000 unique visitors this year.
Started off with 9,300 unique visitors on January 2008.
Ending with 17,600 unique visitors on December 2008.

Top searched query is “Jogoya” with 11,500 searches.
“Jason Mumbles” was next, with 1,200 searches.
“Ole Ole Bali” was third most search query, with 1,100 searches.

I supposed that’s about it, my year 2008. From the looks of it, I didn’t achieve much in this particular year but I feel that I have done quite a lot of things at the same time. It’s contradicting, but what the heck. The year started with a “bang” that pretty much screwed me up financially, it ended peacefully still and I am grateful for that.

Thanks to everyone who made my life much more interesting and also helped me one way or another.

Happy New Year and a good year ahead!

After feeding me with an exclusive news during her last visit to Malacca, she’s back for another fashion show.

Let me clarify first, this picture wasn’t taken by me but another photographer named Eugene. Don’t look at where you aren’t supposed to look at.

Since she was back in Malacca, I got her to sign my first front page picture on The Star news!

The Star, do I get paid for doing this? LOL.

This was the front page of The Star on July 23.

Can you see what I saw that made me decided to blog about it?

How about me cropping the picture so that you get the very visible hint?

Yes, the “Amber’s Autobiography” news is mine and appeared on the national section, but that’s not the important point because I have a number of news that appeared in national section before.

What made it so special was that, technically speaking, my picture was used on the front page of The Star!

The story was published on page N19.

Considering the fact that I don’t write for the news / crimes desk and am not a photographer for crimes / news, this is the closest front page picture I will ever get. Haha! So, yes, I am proud and I can now strike off another to-do item on my list.

Hmm, I wonder when I can see my byline on the front page… That’s a little far fetched, if you ask me. Haha!

P/S : By the way, can vote for April Yim at here?