Friday 21 December 2018

End of 2018

The end of 2018 is on the horizon now. Joining with many other in the world, this is the best time of the year to reflect and make a resolution for the year to come.

Reflecting my life in 2018

At the beginning of the year, I was promoted to a Senior Developer role within my company after a successful internal interview process. The process pretty much the same as if you are going to be interviewed by an external company, which comprised of corporate value interview, behavior interview, and technical skills interview.

The first two interviews were using STAR model (Situation, Task, Activity, Result) approach, while technical skills interview include take-home application development, presentation, and interview. The take-home application was weather API application development. I only have less than one week to prepare, so I focus on the backend side of the application and only a slight touch on the front end. The complete code can be seen in the my gitHub repo here . The overall process going pretty smooth for me.

This year I also learned how to look after what I eat daily. Diet is important, and become very important after 40-an. Initially, I opt-in for low carbohydrate diet, my gradually add some carbohydrate back to my diet. I end up with DASH diet, which comprises half vegetables and fruit, a quarter of protein and quarter of carbohydrate. I also exercise regularly by running to/from work which takes about 30 minutes one leg of the journey.  Having done it for two months, my blood pressure gradually dropped to the borderline of normal range 120/80.

During this time, I also realized that a healthy lifestyle is VERY important, I do a lot of research about healthy lifestyle and become more aware of it, and became my first priority during this time. I put a list about healthy food I can consume daily, and I also start to avoid certain food. There are still many things to do on my list to acquire a healthy lifestyle, which  I am going to make a resolution for next year.

The other thing that happened to me this year was I got my residence permit in the UK in November. So no more visa application to stay and live in the UK, and free to work anywhere if I so wish. I applied at the same time as my wife at the PEO (Premium Service Center) in Liverpool and got approval on the same day. We overjoyed and spent the rest of the day sightseeing in the city.

At the end of the year, we are getting a family visit from my wife side and we will travel around the UK.