I tend to have very ambitious plans and even realizing this I never regret because I believe that the higher you mark the higher you are going to reach. Of course there is some frustration and dissatisfaction when it is time for a review. If it is the case for you just neglect all bad and continue looking forward. Life is too short to spoil it with negative emotions. I visited so many places in the past year I wouldn’t believe if you told me this year before. Great and deep feelings of pleasant moments travelling somewhere in Europe together with my wife is the best thing taken from passed year. I hardly remember last piece of code I worked on, but I clearly see golden sun smoothly going down on the beach of Falassarna.

Overview of 2012

At the beginning of 2012 my life was about to change much once again. I changed my job, but this time it also meant change of a country. While we were finishing relocation paper work I tried to enjoy last month of being unemployed. I went skiing many times and slept well. Besides I released my e-book on design patterns.

Suddenly we appeared in Austria. Here is picture of me in front of my company’s logo at first day of our arrival:

Finding an apartment was a first challenge. After overcoming it and few others we almost stopped worrying. Starting in a completely different country and company with different mindset was extremely interesting and exciting.

After some acclimatization me and wife started to travel. Leveraging Schengen Area we really travelled a lot, I even did not expect that much. You will find complete list later on.

My professional life though did not thrive much in the past year. For sure I’ve improved my skills in many areas. For example my English has improved and a lot of new working experience was gained. I also learned some new to me approaches of delivering software and understood a lot about new company setup and its product available and used by millions. Additionally I introduced myself to few programming languages and did some pet programming.

Year ended with long vacation back in Ukraine together with my parents, friends and relatives. I wish I could be in many places at the same time.

Plan completeness

Now lets look at each of the items I planned year ago in my 2012 “Where do you want to be in a Year?”.

– Buy a car in Europe (some used German car)

Car is a whole separate topic. Turns out that keeping car in Europe is quite expensive. Just mandatory insurance costs close to 100 Euro each month. Of course it depends on car size and your driving experience and can be much decreased if you willing to drive Matiz while having 9 years driving background.

I didn’t buy a car in 2012 for myself, but I bought people carrier for my father. It was first time I really leveraged from duty fee. 20% of taxes were returned when I brought back confirmation of exporting car out of EU. Well registering car in Ukraine is tough task and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with it.

In addition I now hold Austrian driving license and proud to state that I passed an exam with my first try. It might sound ridiculous, but many friends I know here didn’t pass exam immediately, even they had some experience from Ukraine. Even 3 other fellows who tried to pass exam same day with me have failed. One try costs 130, printed license costs 90 and medical check 35. Total 225 euro just to get license if you already hold one from other country. If you want to pass it from scratch it would cost around 1,3K.

If you do the math, renting car is by far more cheaper and preferable over owning one if you only have some weekend trips time-to-time. Unfortunately I cannot drive to Ukraine by hired car. This year I drove Hyundai i40, Hyundai Accent, Opel Corsa, Opel Astra. As of not rented I drove Hyundai i20, Fiat Scudo carrying twice as many people as in normal car and finally I had a chance to drive my Chevrolet before I sold it. I think I like driving.

– Travel though major cities in Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, Linz, Graz, Innsbruck, Bregenz, Eisenstadt, Klagenfurt)

It would be a titanic work to write about all places we visited with my wife during passed 2012 year, but thanks to her there is report on each of our travel. Below is list in chronological order with links to her blog.

• Dubno–Rivne–Luts’k (still Ukraine)
• Vienna (dozen of posts on our life in this beautiful city here)
• Baden (Austria)
• Graz (Austria)
• Alps
• Linz (Austria)
• Venice (Italy)
• Berlin (Germany)
• Whole week of Greece: start with Athens and continue to Kreta island beaches and adventures.
• Bratislava (Slovakia)
• More of awesome Alps, including ice cave and astonishing Hallstatt and Liechtensteinklamm
• Amsterdam (Holland)
• Brussels and Brugge (Belgium)
• Paris (France)

I won’t start commenting on those above, because it would take ages. If you can read Ukrainian you have all stories there, otherwise just see some pictures.

– Sport activities (have two-three summer hikes into the Alps & ski in the Alps)

I don’t have a bike. But you can ride one completely free of charge here in Vienna. You just register with your credit card and whenever you use bike less than 1 hour you are not charged. Me and wife used this to spend many summer days with joy and benefit for health. We also had one hike in Alps Reichenau an der Rax. So far I went skiing only once and not in so distant Alps. Want to ski in some “real” Alps.

Generally I’m not completely satisfied with completeness of this point. But environment in Austria is more suitable for active life. People ride, run, walk really lot in dozen of parks.

– Learn German for at A2 level (which is elementary)

Ich glaube meine Deutsch ist noch zu schlecht. I attended one intensive course and also joined language courses offered by my company. Placement test reckons me for A2 level. I doubt it being even close to truth, but I will continue with German in 2013.

– Improve English and rich C1 level (which is advanced)

Probably C1 is pre-advance. For sure I’ve improved my English. Online estimation gives me 7.7K known words versus 4.9K in the beginning of the year. But dictionary is very small portion of what can be considered as proficiency in a language. Fluency in speech is very important. Everyday work in English-speaking environment is a great advantage.

I have extensive blog post on languages I use here in Austria, called “Існує die Frage of Language. Или нет?”.

– Show kick-ass performance at work

For sure I performed really well. Many of my skills were noticed and acknowledged, especially technical ones. On the other hand I’m still lacking in self-confidence and communication skills and maybe some other soft skills. There is already one conference I’m going to visit to improve some of those. But I also doubt that I’m so bad in such things, as I have already been in role of tech lead and it was quite smooth. I think I need more time and motivation which is melting in new company.

– Get promotion (or get clear idea on career opportunities, if not possible)

I think I now have much better idea on career opportunities and raises. It is completely out of synch with what I expected when I just started. Have you seen films in which guys work years to get any promotion meanwhile fighting with others to be pick number one. Of course it is not that severe as in movies, but there are many factors which make it closer to movies than to Ukrainian IT reality.

– In Vienna find local .net community (user group, whatsoever) and join

As per me .NET user group here is marketing driven and besides is held in German so not something I can join easily, at least not for first years. Overall IT market is rather small here.

– Visit TechEd Europe or NDC2012 (if possible because of budged considerations)

I’m too greedy to spend almost 2K euro on conference while videos can be downloaded later. It is exactly what I did. Watched dozen of those. Though I visited small conference kindly offered by company.

– Have new friends in Austria, who share same opinions

Many new friends, but I wouldn’t say that I have any Austrian as my real friend. Also by “same opinions” I largely meant interest in technical topics. It is even worse with that. I tried code and beer session and it didn’t go well. I hope it is just matter of time.

– Write couple of WP7 applications and post them to marketplace

Nothing in marketplace. Played a bit with couple of ideas, but gave up. Not sure I still want to do this. I wrote couple of Win8Metro applications for fun and also gave up. It would be not fair to say that I competed this point.

– Release “Design Patterns” Book – I have 1 month to do so

I’m happy to know that I didn’t leave Ukrainian IT without any of my contribution.

Book has been released and is available on its web site.

– Read 15 books (see my LinkedIn reading list)

I read 7 books and have way too many in progress. Us usual there are Book Reviews on my blog.

– Learn programming language(s). I will start with “7 languages in 7 weeks” and then pick up one for deeper insight (not compulsory from book)

This year I tried many programming languages. Here are my posts on each of the languages from the book:

• Haskell
• Scala
• Erlang
• Clojure
• Io
• Prolog
• Ruby

– Discipline myself to get up at some certain time

We have daily standup meeting at 10:30 so it forces me to be up at latest at 10AM. I cannot say that I failed with this, but also not completely what I wanted.

– Have more public visibility and community impact

This year I had drastically much less public visibility than year before.

More to come

I’m planning to have blog post on working experience here in Austria in general and in comparison with Ukraine as it could be very interesting for many of you.

Next year is promising to be life changing once again!

1. Buy a car in Europe (some used German car)
2. Travel though major cities in Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, Linz, Graz, Innsbruck, Bregenz, Eisenstadt, Klagenfurt)
3. Sport activities (have two-three summer hikes into the Alps & ski in the Alps)
4. Learn German for at A2 level (which is elementary)
5. Improve English and rich C1 level (which is advanced)
6. Show kick-ass performance at work
7. Get promotion (or get clear idea on career opportunities, if not possible)
8. In Vienna find local .net community (user group, whatsoever) and join
9. Visit TechEd Europe or NDC2012 (if possible because of budged considerations)
10. Have new friends in Austria, who share same opinions
11. Write couple of WP7 applications and post them to marketplace
12. Write couple of Win8Metro applications for fun
13. Release “Design Patterns” Book – I have 1 month to do so
14. Read 15 books (see my LinkedIn reading list)
15. Learn programming language(s). I will start with “7 languages in 7 weeks” and then pick up one for deeper insight (not compulsory from book)
16. Discipline myself to get up at some certain time
17. Have more public visibility and community impact – my way to MVP

So time for new year resolution has came.
I created similar list last year and wrote why I really think that having list of things you want to do during the year is very important. I listened to many of time management books, especially I like those recommendations that includes all aspects of the life.
Accordingly that their point of view life consists with following set of aspects: health, relations, finances, emotions, work. If at least one of this aspects lame you wouldn’t enjoy your life entirely since other aspects will suffer. I found that in recent time I neglected my health. Yeah, I’m young so I do not feel myself completely crappy, but anyway I don’t like situation in which I’m now. That is why I’m planning to have some activities in list that should help me with my health. In this country you have to work half of your life to get apartments to live in… wtf? yeah, that’s truth, so there have to be some better ways to earn more money, not only sweatshoping work. To enjoy my life it would be perfect to travel abroad with middle-low budget.
Here below is my resolution list for 2011 

1. Release awesome free Design Patterns book in Ukrainian (somewhen in Spring)
2. Enterprise certification (finishing with 565 exam, very likely till the end of Winter)
3. Learn to ski & swim well (I can both, but I want to be good at that)
4. Show kick-ass performance at work (just MUST do this, I see this as key for moving forward)
5. Learn WP7 and Silverlight
6. Start working on some “real” book (just collecting ideas on book)
7. Read 24 books (this year I will definitely hit this score)
8. Travel abroad (I’m planning for Europe tourist tour)
9. Marriage (yeah, this really is in the list “OMG” I’m saying to myself…)
10. Learn one more programming language (probably everyone heard about learning one language per year, why not?)
11. Frequent dev meetings (this is hard, because preparing takes lot of time for me)
12. Karpaty alpinism (again health stuff, want to do this with my girlfriend)
13. Became known presenter (couple of outside the company presentations)
14. English (watch films, find guys to talk in English)
15. Start coffee-and-code in Lviv
16. Write couple of personal-small programming projects / contribute to open-source
17. Visit one of the solid conferences
18. Get money machine / some ideas / investments / whatever
19. Start some business even small and crappy – but have it to learn
20. Became better-and-better in planning and achieving, continue growing, etc, etc…

(list above is not ordered in any way…)
Do you have your plan for this year? If you don’t better think about it, because “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
Ok list looks large but fair enough to achieve this in year term. Thank you for reading my resolutions and please share yours!

Right now is the first time in this year when I opened google reader and found one interesting post Where Do You Want to Be In a Year? by Tim Barcz. When I read it I realized that I had read book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People also.

In general all books on Success says that you need to “Begin with the end in mind“, this means that you must have your plan.

At first you need to find out you goal for whole life. That is your target and main thing you need to get. Then you need to do breakdown of tasks you need to accomplish in your life, having them in few levels of term scope like 10 years term, 5 years term and 1 year term… and so on. So question:

My answer: 

By the end of 2010 I want:

1. Get Microsoft Certification:
  * MCTS (Exams: 70-536 and 70-505)
  * MCPD 70-563 and 70-565 (this one is big fish, but I need such!)
2. Read at least 24 books.
3. Become known employee in my company, sharing knowledge and doing presentations, so will have much more authority among co-workers.
4. Familiarize with Java and contribute research and development work to Kohonen Maps world.
5. to be Senior Developer and continue growing…
6. Improve my English skills to have at least upper-intermediate strong level (according to my company graduating)
7. Gather good capital and looking for investments of money.

Write down your answer in comments or give me link to your blog!