2013: A Year In Review

Disclaimer: This post was actually written up in 2016, some three years after the events of 2013 and as such, relies on online archived records (from Facebook and Twitter) to help reconstruct this annual review.

2013 commenced with my studying “Summer Semester” subjects as part of my ongoing MBA studies at Melbourne Business School. With Term 1 commencing in late January, classes competed over the first fortnight with the Australian Open. Fortunately, I was able to attendi the 5-set semi-final epic where Andy Murray defeated Roger Federer was undoubtedly an highlight, which is also now preserved as one of my earliest ventures into the world of YouTube. My 2013 Australian Open experience saw me attend at least two finals matches, and being live at the semi-finals was a huge thrill. These moments of relaxation helped to sustain me although the two subjects selected for Term 1 were highly enjoyable learning experiences anyway – Marketing Communication and Marketing Strategy. The two subjects selected were weekend-mode subjects and as such, the following was my semester timetable, which was initially confusing to try and map out, but ended up working out really well:

  • Friday 1 February: Marketing Strategy #1
  • Sunday 3 February: Marketing Strategy #2
  • Saturday 23 February: Marketing Strategy #3
  • Sunday 24 February: Marketing Communication #1
  • Sunday 3 March: Marketing Communication #2
  • Saturday 9 March: Marketing Communication #3
  • Friday 15 March: Marketing Strategy #4
  • Saturday 16 March: Marketing Communication #4
  • Sunday 17 March: Marketing Strategy #5
  • Sunday 24 March: Marketing Communication #5

February saw the celebration of Chinese New Year where I joined friends from work in supporting our colleague who was involved with the main lion dance performance. When I say involved, this guy plays the role of the lion head, and given his light-weight stature, is very athletic and nimble; able to stand and jump on his team mate’s shoulders to present a fully-upright standing lion. My Christian music listening experience was very much focus on the then-released album of Burning Lights by Chris Tomlin. References to his music and various tracks peppers this period of 2013. The family celebrated Chinese New Year with a traditional steamboat dinner hosted at home on the CNY Eve – Saturday 9 February.

One of the funny things that is funny now in 2016 is the fact that on February 8, I commented via Twitter that I had set up Office 2013 on my work laptop as part of a pilot program for Office365. As it turns out, I would revert to Office 2010 at some point in the next two years before migrating once again to Office 2013 in 2015! Further, it was just last week here at work that an official email was distributed to announce the final arrival of Office 365 here at work! It would appear that the pilot program ran for a very long period over 2013+.

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Over the first week of March family came to visit from Malaysia, including my cousin who had already travelled from the UK to Malaysia to stay with her parents. This family visit included my cousin’s four-year-old son, and we arranged to borrow the appropriate car-seat equipment so that we could easily provide transportation for our visitors. The timing was reasonable given I only had one class over that week-long visit, and the final day when the family departed was our Labour Day public holiday. The sole Facebook activity for this month was the Good Friday Appeal. Having assisted in my then third annual Good Friday Appeal, I was again part of the Phone Room team taking donations over the phone as part of the record tally of $16,405,534.65.

In early April, the two marketing subject exams were held. For Marketing Communication, the case was released under exam conditions with this being the trigger for the exam deadline countdown. The written submission had to be submitted online and we had a set number of hours to complete the task. In this way, the Marketing Communication exam was a take-home paper and held off-site, unlike all other exams I have been accustom to. April also saw the transition between terms and the timing of exams actually overlapped such that my first Consumer Behaviour class began immediately after my Marketing Strategy exam.

Both Consumer Behaviour and Investments were scheduled for five Saturday’s each – morning and afternoon sessions over April – May:

  • Consumer Behaviour:
    • Saturday 6 April
    • Saturday 13 April
    • Saturday 20 April
    • Saturday 27 April
    • Saturday 4 May
  • Investments:
    • Saturday 18 May
    • Saturday 25 May
    • Saturday 1 June
    • Saturday 8 June
    • Saturday 15 June

In this way, my term was evenly loaded over the 10 weeks, with one weekend break in between each subject. That period of early May enabled me to attend a nice dinner get-together was organised with old church friends at their inner-city apartment. The following week, at the conclusion of my mini break, another two catch-ups with friends were scheduled.

At the of May, XBOP was rebuilt and launched via WordPress: Welcome. Throughout June much content was written up and new website sections were added. The next five iterations of content and website versions all were released in quick succession throughout June – August, and can now be tracked via the Website History page.

In June I helped to convert yet another of my regular clients from PC to Mac. With the Investments exam scheduled for 22 June, my birthday once again shrouded in the theme of studies. As the financial year came to a close, a number of other clients also contacted me with jobs. Fortunately, Consumer Behaviour only had a take-home exam which gave me more flexibility and freedom with completing the assessment.

My final semester of part-time MBA studies saw me undertake Channels of Distribution and Product Management. In many ways, the final subject of Product Management was a very well planned conclusion to the entire three-year journey since it echoed the format of being a week-long subject of study. When I first began the MBA we all spent one week in classes for the World of Management, and now, to conclude the educational journey I was spending another week for Product Management. I had also held out throughout the last 12-months for this one subject, which had become quite rare and limited in availability to study. Also, in a throwback to the standard part-time study format, Channels of Distribution was a two evening class format and I returned to MBS after work on a Tuesday and Thursday for the period of July – August. The final dates of classes was thus:

  • Channels of Distribution
    • Tuesday 2 / Thursday 4 July
    • Tuesday 9 / Thursday 11 July
    • Tuesday 16 / Thursday 18 July
    • Tuesday 23 / Thursday 25 July
    • Tuesday 30 July / Thursday 1 August
  • Product Management
    • Monday 5 August
    • Tuesday 6 August
    • Wednesday 7 August
    • Thursday 8 August
    • Friday 9 August

In this way, my three-year MBA experience was almost three years in duration exactly since Week/Day #1 was in the final week of August 2010 whereas the last week was the first week of August 2013. When I reflect on the entire MBA study experience, I think my favourite subject was Marketing Strategy because of the StratSim (Strategy simulation game) where our syndicate groups role played five competing firms – it helps that my team won the competition and therefore were awarded the best marks. Learning by putting theory into action and seeing the way all our decisions influenced each other, emulating in a very accurate way, the challenges of a real-world business, was very rewarding. Technically, my final day of study was Saturday 17 August when I finally submitted my take-home Product Management exam, and thus my studies came to an end with the click of a button.

The later part of the 2013 in the immediate wake of completing my MBA saw me return to a more active social life. Family dinners and social occasions were resumed with a number of celebrations taking place in late August – September, including family birthdays and Father’s Day. With the Federal Election scheduled, I took the opportunity to cast an early vote instead of joining the mass queues of Election Day. The main reason why I voted early was because my graduation ceremony was also scheduled for the same election day. Some interesting technology milestones were achieved, and with the iPhone 5S launched successfully, I took the opportunity to film the running of the Apple staff at the Chadstone store as part of the launch event:

The Grand Final parade for 2013 was the second last occurrence of this annual event where us office workers could enjoy the premium views from the relative proximity of 35 Collins St given the parade route concluded at the steps to Parliament House at the top end of Collins St, half-a-block away from our office location. The amount of work increased over the period for October with a number of 12-hour+ days becoming a regularity for October where Telstra work saw me contribute to a joint business case for two inter-dependent projects within the consumer mobility domain of Telstra.

The 2013 season for Operation Christmas Child saw me raise the bar for my personal effort in completing 25 shoe-boxes. I also returned to the kitchen front and found the time to relax over the stove by cooking dinner meals for family. In the social causes front, Christians 20/30 surfaced as a new opportunity which helped me reinvigorate my Christian social networking. At the end of October, tragedy struck in the loss of a dear Church aunt who had previously survived three other life-threatening illnesses to demonstrate God’s grace.

A number of visits to the 1000 Steps was timely since I had acquired a new Fitbit. Whilst the group I went with were fairly good and disciplined, we did stray once by going for yum-cha lunch afterwards… Based on my activity and posting on Facebook for late 2013, the theme of being a foodie resurfaced with countless eating occasions that invariably wrapped around various celebrations. Another Facebook theme was the number of music videos that I was posting and making reference to – whilst the strong association with Hillsong Worship was obvious, Elevation Church was also starting to gain prominence in the world of Christian worship music.

November saw the life-group rally around the beach-based baptism of one sister, which turned into a whole day affair, complete with lunch and dinner celebrations. The Night Noodle Market concept was birthed in late November to take advantage of both the improved warmer weather and daylight savings. The Christmas/summer season saw silly season emerge with a visit to Jells Park to enjoy the community carols. Christmas was not blogged in any detail and a holiday hiatus saw my December blogging end somewhat prematurely.

Christmas celebrations included the end-of-year parties at work as well as via the various church ministries. Christmas itself was not as intense, but I did feature in the church Christmas choir and single-handedly prepared the big Christmas dinner complete with turkey and ham.