The star ferry making its way towards Hong Kong Island under a muggy sunset

Along the way I got to know Hong Kong a little better, made a short film, moved house four times (never again), paid my second visit to the US, my sixth to South Korea, built three apps, met some cute pandas, and worked more hours than I care to remember.

The year of the rabbit was one of the best to date.

When was the last time you drew all over your hotel rooms wall?!

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

The fears, uncertainties, and doubts that come with embracing change are never easy to handle but every time I worry about the impact of doing or not doing something I make myself read the above. Life is short.

The River Chet in Norfolk (UK) nearby where I spent Christmas

Because of my new job I didn’t blog or travel quite as much as I have done in previous years but in 2012 I hope to make better use of my holidays (15 days a year if you can believe it) and already have my eye on trips to Southeast Asia and back to Japan. I still feel my photographic skills have a long way to go so will try and step out of automatic mode a little more often.

The Gardens of Hampton Court Palace in Greater London

Randomwire was viewed about 700,000 times in 2011 (around 8x the capacity of the London Olympic Stadium!) and if you were one of them a big thank you. You’ll notice that the site has a fresh lick of paint for the new year courtesy of the fabulous Duet theme by The Theme Foundry which allows me to display my photos in a far larger format and is fully responsive across desktop, tablet and mobile devices (try resizing your browser window to see what I mean).

It’s a little late to say Happy New Year but I hope you have a good one

“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” – Marshall McLuhan

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1. Stereo Future
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3. Cheung Chau Island

Below is some footage that comes from a 1995 interview conducted by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, in which Jobs succinctly outlines his vision of life and how to broaden your horizons. I wish they taught this in school, the world would be far more interesting if more people thought a little differently.

“When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

[via Brain Pickings]

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1. I Want My Life Back
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“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Related posts you might like:

1. Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Life

After spending a month in London, three at Hong Kong airport, and one more in Tin Hau I’ve moved somewhere more permanent near Tai Koo MTR station on the east side of HK island. While it may not be the life-and-soul of the city it’s only 20 minutes from Central and a short walk to work down a hill which should keep me fit!

The place I’ve rented is newly refurbished inside so it’s pretty nice but I’ll save any pics until I’ve had a chance to finish furnishing – it at the moment it looks like an art gallery without any art.

Being Hong Kong you can’t escape the myriad of tall buildings which dominate the horizon in every direction. While a friend of mine compared it to living in a battery farm I actually find the effect pretty spectacular, especially at night. I took the shot above from my bedroom window on the 20th floor – there are around 40,000 people living in those apartment blocks alone. It might not be Victoria Peak (top) but I’m not complaining.

The view reminded me of the music video from World of Fantasy, the upcoming album by Japanese electronica duo Capsule, slated to be released on May 25. Interestingly the album was originally titled Killer Wave, but clearly after the deadly tsunami in March that wouldn’t have been appropriate. Aside from a rather creepy looking Toshiko Koshijima (こしじま としこ) the mirrored cityscape of Tokyo looks equally mesmerizing.

All-in-all I’m really enjoying my new job, which involves some extremely cool stuff around designing mobile apps, and am looking forward to the rest of the year ahead. My time is going to be a lot more limited than before but I’ll try to post on Randomwire at least once a week.

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Above is cute little video made to celebrate the occasion - apologies to viewers in China who wont be able to see it, but as you know there are always ways around these little problems. Happy New Year everyone

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Try combining moving house with travelling to and from China in a week (13 hours each way, 8 hours time difference) and you’ll know how I felt. For a few days my body and mind felt decidedly separate and my memory is a bit of a blur which is a shame because I hadn’t planned on ending my time in Shenzhen in such a hurry. I’m definitely going to miss a lot of people and my nice little apartment there.

On a positive note I managed to see nearly all my good friends before leaving and am enjoying being back in the UK for a while (even if everything is horrendously expensive and the weather dismal). Coming home after such a long time away requires a certain degree of reacclimatisation to get back into the rhythm of life here and I feel like a bit of a nomad now.

When I think about how this all began three years ago it all seems a little hard to believe. That’s not to say it’s over by any means but I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to have experiences so much over this time and enormously thankful to all the people who have helped me along the way. As a small reminder the 5 min video above shows all my photos from when I moved to Shenzhen in September 2008 to just before Christmas in 2010 (phew).

Shenzhen was not and still wouldn’t be my first choice for where to live in China due to its relative lack of history and culture but it’s definitely a convenient gateway to the rest of the country and the world via Hong Kong airport. Due to its modernity the city is also quite comfortable to live in but unless you’re a consummate materialist you’ll soon tire of the endless shopping malls and KTV bars. In time I’m sure this will change and there are already signs of a cultural awakening in the city.

Whist I may only have scratched the surface I feel that my perceptions of China as a country have also changed and perhaps matured. I’m still no closer to understanding where it’s all going but, as country developing at a rate and in ways unseen in history before, it’s an exciting time to be there. It will be fascinating to watch how the interplay of political and social conflicts which constantly simmer beneath the surface of everyday life play out in coming years.

As for where I’m going next personally this still very much depends on which direction the wind blows. For certain I’ll be in London for the next few weeks and then in Hong Kong till late April but after that I’m still not sure. I still have a hankering to go and try my hand at something completely different but only time will tell. I hope you’ll join me for the ride!

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1. 2 Minutes in Beijing
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2010 goals in review:

• Stick to a schedule for language learning and fitness – partial success (language no, fitness yes)
• Start a business of some sort and see it through – failed (despite making some headway)
• Improve writing skills and user participation in blog – partial success
• Create more video content and how-to guides – partial success
• Visit Japan – something I’d wanted to do for many years – success
• Learn how to cope with stress better (and sleep more!) – failed

I think last years goals were probably a bit over-ambitious hence the partial success but am satisfied with how things went overall. For 2011 I have decided to take a left out of someone else’s book:

In 2011 I will “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

I will focus on doing more of the things I enjoy (travel, photography, writing) and less of the things I dislike (dealing with politics, time wasters, distractions). To start me down this path, the big news for the beginning of 2011 is that I have resigned my former job in Shenzhen and will be moving to Hong Kong to start something new next week. This decision has been a long time coming and not something I have taken lightly, however a change of scene is badly needed. More on this in a few days time.

Randomwire has had another good year with traffic more than doubling again and some interesting connections made with readers both online and in the real world. A huge thank you to everyone who reads the blog and if you’ve never got in touch before do feel free to say hello, I love all the comments!

Finally, I hope you’ve had a good holiday and have a very Happy New Year

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As a result I was waking very early in the mornings and so it seemed like a good opportunity to go out for a spot of dawn photography. The village my parents live in is surrounded by farm land and a river making it quite picturesque - especially in the winter with ice and frost covering everything.

On a freezing-cold boxing day morning I wrapped up in my thickest clothes and headed out for a walk around the nearby marsh with my LX3 in tow.

An orange-pink glow appeared on the horizon interrupting the cool blue sky as the sun began to rise, creating some brilliant silhouettes across the ghostly marsh.

The frost covered reeds provided a nice foreground to the snow-covered fields behind. It there had been more cloud cover the sky would have been even more vibrant.

Down by the river the water was perfectly still with all the boats being moored up for the winter.

I love the shot above of the frost covered jetty extending into the deep blue waters beyond. By this point my hands had started to go numb even though I was wearing gloves!

My parents keep a boat here during the summer but since it’s over 100 years old and wooden it needs to be kept indoors during the winter for maintenance and to prevent the hull rotting.

During the summer months it’s an idyllic spot for a sail and many folk visit the surrounding Broads (a network of navigable rivers and lakes) for their holidays.

The Broads look like a part of the natural landscape today but they were actually artificially created by the Romans who first exploited the rich peat beds of the area for fuel. The large excavations left behind then flooded with water.

Along the rivers are many pubs like Coldham Hall above which cater for locals as well as those travelling on the water.

At this time of morning the only visitors were a flotilla of ducks who were busily trying to paddle around the chunks of ice which floated on the edges of the river bank.

Back inland the sun’s reflection on the ice-covered marshland created an almost otherworldly landscape.

During the winter in the UK the sun sets quite early in the afternoon (around 4pm) with equally surreal views to be had.

When the frost is gone the water reed shows it’s true golden colours. Reed is used as thatching on the roofs of traditional buildings like the tavern nearby. It’s a traditional craft that has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years.

Standing here it was a bit hard to believe that just two days earlier I was in one of the worlds most populated cities where moments of calm are rare but the norm here. The contrast couldn’t be more stark.

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They have a pretty cool site and in the future I may be writing a few guest posts for them

Holidays

Around fourteen years ago as a boy I used to spend a few weeks each summer staying with both sets of grandparents in Southend-on-Sea (Essex) and Bromley (Kent) respectively. I think a lot of my interests today can be traced back to those long summer holidays – one of my grandfathers was an avid photographer and worked with the very first ICL computers while the other was a Chemistry lecturer at UCL and a skilled carpenter. Their generation grew up during the latter stages of World War II and so were full of interesting stories.

One of my fondest memories of those holidays was restoring an old clinker-built Tideway sailing boat with my grandfather in Southend. It had been rotting in their garden for decades and over the course of three or four summers we completely stripped it back to the bare wood, made repairs and got it to the point where it was seaworthy again. Most of the work was done using the traditional hand tools in my grandfathers workshop and what I learnt from his attention to detail and craftsmanship greatly inspired my interest in design.

Exams

In June 2002 I nervously waited outside my school to receive my A-Level exam results – the outcome of which would determine whether I went to university and which one. I needed at minimum ABB grades to go to Durham (my first choice) and BBC for Kent (my distant second choice). Clearly the examiners weren’t ready for my take on the “Philosophy & Ethics” paper and what I got was ABD. Ouch.

In an instant visions of having to go through clearing or retake the year flooded through my mind. I wasn’t in the mood to talk with anyone and rather rudely brushed off my anxious parents (sorry mum!). An hour later I got myself together and called up the university. I explained the situation and was told they’d get back to me. Shortly afterwards I got a call from the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Brendan Hodgson, who told me that they were still prepared to accept me. Relief.

Horror

In my second year of university I discovered scary Japanese movies and out of interest enrolled in Japanese language classes. It turns out that I am not very good at learning languages but it did give me the opportunity to make friends with some Chinese foreign students in the same class which sparked of a new interest in China. After graduation I moved to London to begin my first full-time job with dreams of travelling to Asia one day in the back of my mind.

In January 2007 my dreams came true when my company sent me to Beijing for three months to work on a project there. It was an amazing experience and one which left me wanting more. A year and a bit after returning to London I quit my job and with a lot of searching and a little luck found a new one in Shenzhen. The location wasn’t ideal but it was the perfect way to get a foot in the door of this amazing country undergoing such rapid transformation.

Present

Through these events and many more I find myself working in China in the IT outsourcing industry as a project manager / designer of sorts. In the context of these stories it feels a bit unreal and I am pleased to be on a less well trodden path but deep down I long to be doing something a bit more creative and perhaps in a different industry altogether.

Last June I visited Jeonju, in South Korea, and immediately fell in love with the beautiful Hanok Village and the superb craftsmanship of the traditional buildings there. As crazy as it might sound I would love to do an internship with a local carpenter or take a course to learn about how Hanok’s are built and do something physical for a change. This maybe a little far-fetched considering my limited language skills (I studied Korean for a year and only know the basics) but not necessarily outside the realm of possibility – If you happen to know of anyone with connections to this field I’d love to hear from you!

“Never let your memories be greater than your dreams.”

The quote above is one of the most important things I try to keep in mind to motivate myself. Letting ourselves get too comfortable in life is a sure way to waste away our precious days on this earth and if that’s not enough to scare you into action then I’m not sure what is!

If you have any dreams or stories you’d like to share feel free to leave a comment below – perhaps another good way to hold yourself accountable