A new beginning with nostalgia

I've been keeping a journal of good habits I'm trying to follow for two years now.

I didn't realise it had been that long until I checked my other blogs - the last post I made about this change was back in Dec 2010. Since then, I haven't talked about it online. I didn't see the need to, for I developed these habits in conjunction with some very personal goals, and I don't think that I've reached some of these yet. I still need more time before I can really say that I've achieved these goals.

The smaller things however I think are getting there. One of the things was to keep in touch with my close friends. I think I've managed to do that. I also exercise more than I used to, and even though my weight hasn't dropped I apparently grew a bit.

I'm also going for further studies at the end of the year. I have a fuller post that I want to write on that, about reconciling uprooting myself with travelling, but the point is that I managed to complete a huge undertaking by using my daily journal of habits. This journal keeping has been really useful.

So far, I've been making weekly lists that I make score marks again, and leave a lot of space for writing reflections. This week, however, I have changed my journal style to focus more on daily lists than reflections. I did that because I wanted to get back into the habit of studying, and I knew that if I didn't put in on a daily list, I might not be able to make myself study.

When written on a daily basis however, it really seems like there is a lot to do! Every day I fill up a page, and sometimes I don't think I do as much as I used to do. Or maybe it seems that way because I can see exactly what I do on a page, whereas previously I tracked by how many times I changed to a new item? I don't know. I do know that I am doing a great variety of items, because I can see what I have been repeating from day to day. Even writing this blog post was a specific item I put in to break up the monotony. =)

So this is a note to tell myself that I have changed my written journal style on this day. It's not been a week yet so I can't tell how successful the new list has been, but I can safely say that I studied every day for the last 3 days. Will I be able to met my other goals? Only time can tell! Maybe I will do more reflections in this blog to tell you about it.

Chinese New Year means new things

Happy Chinese New Year!

I would have posted earlier, but I was having too much fun. Too much fun due to the holidays being too close today - one month to prepare for Chinese New Year is no joke! Especially after the Christmas and New Year Holidays, which are always a double whammy. However, after this the next holiday is very far away. =PPP Hopefully I can take leave despite disappearing in April.

There was also excitment - Lynn nearly couldn't go for the Japan trip, but arrangements have been made! *v-signs*  However, Tracy is now busy preparing for exams and can't exactly do much research, so I've taken on the research for Tokyo. It's a lot more troublesome than I expected, especially since a lot of my research material is in Chinese.

However, more importantly I've been thinking about an online trip planner. Something that already has all the information I wanted in one place while putting it in a functional aspect of churning out a schedule. I'd been fantasising about it since the US trip, and doing research for the Japan trip just cemented that.

So I went to check out some existing online trip planners. I settled on two that seemed to fit my needs - TripIt and Yahoo!Travel.  After using them, I'm starting to think the two should get married and have babies, or form a chimera with Google Calendar.  Why?  I'll see if listing the pros and cons help.

Pros of TripIt

1. Logical way of presenting a lot of info in an easy to read manner
2. Forces you to think about what details you need for travel through forms
3. Can automatically pull details from confirmation emails
4. More leeway on adding personal details for various locations
5. Portable to calendar or mobile devices

Cons of TripIt

1. Has annoying blanks if you don't have all the info on hand - best to use when everything is more or less confirmed
2. Emphasis is on the travel aspect - not so much on what you see when you get there
3. Calendar view SUCKS because you can't specific start and end times for notes, which are usually used for adding places of interest, and Google calendar automatically schedules one hour BEFORE your note - no sensemaking is this.
4. Map view only shows one location at each time - no way of specifying where places of interest are in relation to each other, or places of interest within one location (e.g. places of interest within Georgetown, Washington DC).
5. Directions are only available for cars, despite tapping on Google maps which has walking, public transport and driving options.

And on the flip-side, Yahoo!Travel

Pros of Yahoo!Travel

1. Lots of info contributed by travel sites and other users
2. Allows for selection from a drop down menu on locations so you don't have to type the info over and over and over again
3. Lets you see at a glance what is popular and what's not with ratings, no of trips with the same location added etc.
4. Lets you specify start and end times for each activity
5. Lets you keep a corresponding trip journal

Cons of Yahoo!Travel

1. Info and ratings from users is kind of outdated, since it seems to have dipped in popularity round about 2007 o_O
2. Locations in drop down menu seem to be added with no particular logic. In addition, adding new locations requires you to know everything about the place - might not be feasible
3. No calendar view I can find
4. While the map view does aggregate all places of interest into one map, Yahoo!Maps has such little info as to make this endeavour laughable - I'd rather do my own in Google Maps kthnx.
5. Sometimes doesn't have all the info needed in an easy to see manner

Given that I'd embarked on this wanting a schedule (with enough details to navigate) both of them don't really give me what I need. But I'd say TripIt edges out Yahoo!Travel slightly for telling me what I need to get. Still, if they only merged or something... *wink*