A final look at 2011

It's been a really good couple of weeks to finish of 2011 for me. Not that the year was that bad – on the contrary, in retrospect it was pretty fabulous. I did a job I loved, published a half-dozen articles in newspapers, and was lead author on an article in an international publication. Okay, the peer-reviewed stuff hasn't made it out yet, but that should change this year; it looks like I'll be able to stay in the job for a full second year, which is great.

Between the articles, tweeting, and stirring up Andrew Bolt's readership I've also built a bit of a profile for myself, to the extent that people have recognised me from those things. That's been unexpected, but nice.

My football season was reasonably good, and I'm looking forward to the next one now that I know the guys a bit better. I'm really enjoying my self-defence (Krav Maga) classes at the moment, and will try and keep them doing as long as I can before football takes over again. My dancing has just sort of cruised along this year, though I did improve my Balboa a little and my Blues a lot. (I think. I find it difficult to judge my blues dancing, but it's felt good and I've had plenty of positive feedback, so yay!)

Physical activity generally, I keep finding, is just something I love doing; bouncing from rock to rock in Malaysia after rapelling down a waterfall is a fond memory, as is cavorting underwater on the Great Barrier Reef in the week before Christmas. (This was the first of the excellent final weeks.)

After CEEM's annual conference on Dec. 16th – which went very well, despite a very late replacement of the keynote speaker – I flew up to Far North Queensland for a week. An ex-colleague of mine from SAP in Germany was travelling through Australia, so I asked him to book everything in the week before Christmas for two and just gave him the money; it was the least organising I've had to do for a holiday in years!

Perhaps I'll do a longer post on it later, once I've colour-corrected all the under-water photographs, but here are a dozen choice shots of my adventures to stoke your jealousy:

The airport. Yep, this is how you leave Hamilton Island.

Terrible weather conditions

Maxi-yacht sailing trip to Hook Island

Whitehaven Beach, from Tongue Point

Tongue Point, looking toward Whitehaven

A headstand of sorts...

Wheeee!

The ex-racing yacht we sailed on., Broomstick

The view at Airlie Beach lagoon

Scuba-diving with a Santa hat

One of many photographs of coral (and fish)

Snorkelling

I celebrated my birthday in a giant bar in Cairns, with a group of backpackers we'd met on the sailing trip. We danced until 2am, then I had a shower and caught a bus to the airport for a 5am flight down to Melbourne. This was thus the first birthday I've celebrated in different timezones.

Christmas (Eve, Day, and Boxing Day) was wonderful, from the delicious birthday food to the hailstorms and floods to seeing my cousin David's house for the first time and engaging in the now-traditional exchange of fighting techniques (aka roughousing).

A nascent tradition the Jones family is nuturing is going to the Boxing Day Test – cricket, for those those playing outside Australia –, so we did that on Day 2 (the 27th). Then I went again on the 28th with some high-school friends. Good fun; saw both teams bat and bowl, including beautiful innings from Tendulkar, Ponting, and Hussey. Sure beats last year's Ashes series...

Went dancing two nights in a row, and experienced the awesomeness of the Melbourne swing scene in miniature (no, not you, Nat). Saw The Bamboos live for the first time, and discovered a guy I went to high school with is their current drummer (Graeme Pogson). Found that incredibly exciting, and caught up with him for a drink after the gig. Saw a number of other high school compatriots in these last few weeks, too, more or less by luck: Jim B. & Verity C. were at a pub down the road in Sydney the night before I flew to FNQ; Kim F. was at Leigh O.'s bar when I dropped in on the way home after NYE; and I bumped into Brent Crockford at a servo just a few hours ago. It was cool, but he's no Graeme Pogson :-P

New Year's Eve was pretty swell, too: I saw Wes and Lily for the first time in ages, as well as Fran and Owen, then was lucky enough to turn over the year in a small group of close friends at Evan and Tara's.

Many of these names won't mean much to you, dear reader – in fact, I'd be incredibly surprised if you knew all of them –, but basically I managed to spend time with many people I hadn't seen in a long time or as often as I'd like to, and that was delightful. I rounded all this off with a New Year's Day barbecue at Thorfi and Carla's, where we talked a whooole lot of rubbish about colours and how to live-stream one's wedding. (Future wife: consider this a heads-up.)

2011 – you had a nice backside. Front up, 2012!