Being busy over the holiday season is probably a normal thing. So I don’t feel so bad about little updates on my blog. I was a bit amazed that people are ready to start new projects and ideas over this season. Well, if anyone out there still need web project to be done - just write a comment and I will contact you.

This year was amazing for me and our company. I would be lying if I say it was easy. Honestly - I have never worried about so much things than this year. Recession has made my life more stressful and uncertain. This is why I look forward to New Year with big hopes. This years promise is that I gonna spend more time on my family than our business. And usual those kind of things really work out when you put a thought in them.

Happy New Year! Let all our New Years resolutions come true!

***Note: If you are wandering about events posts I do monthly check out the new page dedicated just for that. I decided not to spam my blog monthly with events posts.

Photo is from our companies 2y anniversary newsletter - I just love this cupcake

Lately I haven’t been writing much into my blog as I was working on our company website. I know the basics around social media marketing, but its just coming all together now in my head. I’m writing new content for our new homepage (its not released yet), creating twitter account, facebook page for company. Filling that with content and contacts… and that’s just start of all it. I still have to write some blog posts (as we will have blog in new website) and create LinkedIn page (and I get error all the time and support doesn’t support me). I went through different web development companies websites, got some ideas of keywords, descriptions and titles of pages. And then this weekend I have meeting with designer, who has his unique ideas about our website (and he is best designer I know, no offense). This is why I’m sorry for slacking on my own blog. I know that it’s about time to release new event list and I will do that… just give me some time.

p.s. if anyone is free enough to help me with some English texts, I would really appreciate it!

Even thought I didn’t get to any presentations (and everyone said they were great) and even if I had to stay by my stand for whole day to tell about our company, I quite enjoyed epicenter. As everything that I haven’t tried before. I’m getting more and more better at all this “sales” thing.

Vodofone presented new application store in conference (similar to iPhone app store). And a very nice thing happened - I won phone with Vodofone app store. My current phone battery ends after 2h, I was just desperate to get new one (I’m so lucky!). I will be receiving it today and might as well take some photo and put it up on my blog.

I have been very busy whole last month, delivering projects, stressing and preparing marketing materials. And I missed summer sun this year too. Maybe I gonna go for vacation in winter?

Here is some photos from epicenter. I wanted to put up more, but all other were blurry (I should win new camera too).

I’m starting to meet more and more people in networking events that I have seen before on some other. And I have received quite a few questions like “how do I manage to do so much networking?” and “do I have my personal life as well?”.

So I decided to put on one post just to answer those few questions. Firstly - I don’t go to all events I advertise in my blog. Maximum I can make is 3 events per week and after that I’m really tired. I found that I better do 1 networking event per week properly than do more and feel sick after.

Secondly I’m actually introvert person when it comes to talking with new people. I don’t enjoy it, but I’m starting to like it. I meet 5-15 people over each networking event. And for each of them you have to understand what they are doing, tell them about your company and think of opportunities for both of you together.

It takes few hours per week to follow them up (do research, send e-mails, call them or setup meeting). Networking is part of my job, part of generating new leads and opportunities. It is as important as doing other things in my company.

How it overlies with my personal life? Not all of the events are happening on the evening. And if they are, my family don’t mind if I’m away for one day. And on few of the events I receive things like USB-cards, t-shirts, stickers and other fun things that I’m starting to collect.

33 countries were presented today in Oatlands Primary School my daugher is attending. I find it very great way to learn more about different cultures and people. It was my first time participating in such event so my stand about Latvia was rather small.

Haven’t written in a while because have to get my project to the 1st milestone. Not an easy thing to do.

So as my blog won’t be updated often check out workout videos I enjoy (20min per day) - Free Workout Routines

I love this site, because it has everything from free videos, diets till where to buy gym mat or dumbbells.

This Sunday we went to visit chocolate warehouse to see Easter Bunny and get personalised egg. Warning - if you decide to go there, don’t forget to eat before. Decorations and chocolate all around made me feel very, very hungry. Event is free for adults, but you probably will buy a lot of chocolate eggs. I recommend this for all chocoholics (like me).

When I came back here from Japan about 2 years ago, I missed a lot of things. While usually I don’t fuss over food, I really miss Japanese healthy meals, products and lunchboxes (bento).

It didn’t took me long to find Asian market in George Street (there are few Asian shops around too), Asian supermarket on the other side of Jervis shopping center and place where to buy sushi rice not so far away from my house at Roy Fox in Donnybrook. I’m getting another 10kg rice pack today. I will use it over few months.

After half year of me being in Dublin, my daughter started school. She needed lunchbox everyday and it made me in real pain. First thing - I couldn’t find any good lunchboxes and second thing Irish don’t eat much hot food during lunch, but mostly sandwiches. I don’t think it’s healthy in any way. It’s hard to understand why main meal is in the evening at 6pm? It’s hard to sleep afterward!

So in search of perfect lunchbox I came across J-List site. I can spend hours on that site just looking at items. We ordered lunchbox with Hello Kitty. It was first late 3 weeks, but after a call they send it in next day. So I would say they don’t have too bad service. I gonna order from this site soon again, so if you want to order something as well, let me know.

Lunchbox is only start of my healthy lunches mission. I found yet another site Just Bento - which is completely great! All those recipes just wait for me to make them and I made few already.

But I still struggle with Irish healthy food policy. If everybody in school takes sandwitches, my kid feels left out as she has something different. So my next order from J-List will be with decorating things. For example, my daughter loves rice balls (onigiri), but I need some decorative set to make it cute. Cutness will win over the non-sandwich food. At least I hope so. Wish me luck with this!

Today I decided to start using Technorati more serious. While I have created account like few months ago I wasn’t using it at all. So I decided to go through all the people I’m following on twitter (and most of them are IT persons based in Ireland) and add their blogs to the favorites in technorati. And believe me or not, it didn’t took me a lot of time. However I was surprised that less than half people on twitter has blogs. I rember survey going around about month ago on twitter for all non-bloggers using twitter. And I thought it was nonsense to put it on twitter as everybody probably have blogs…

So why twitter but no blogs?

1) Person don’t use twitter much and don’t care about social media. There is a lot of twitter accounts that haven’t been used for months. I wander - is twitter gonna delete them at some point? Because even if it is only few rows of text, a lot of users like that might take space on their server.

2) Person twitter profile link leads to their company website. I do have problem with that - unless it is companies twitter account, I can’t get more info on person twittering.

3) The blog is hidden somewhere on their website and can’t be found right away. What the point writting blogs if nobody can find them?

After I added all those blogs on the technorati, another problem came up - there is too much of them now! And I still haven’t found button “remove from favorites”.

Reason I started all this is because I’m still newbie to blogging. I love to write. I have always written diaries, short stories and some ideas. But blogging is something more challenging. What would people find interesting? What would make people write comments? Why would they blog about me or put link to me? And how do I get more popularity and traffic to my blog? Kinda challenging, but fun.

First things first - Happy New Year to everyone who haven’t received greetings from me yet.

While going through a lot of other blogs, I decided that I should write small post about my 2008 year.

I fell in love… with my company. It was very neutral at first. I didn’t thought the company will need me that much. I left my job in AIB on April and started our relationship.

It has it’s bad sides - pile of papers when you want to free your desk or a lot of reports, when you just want to rest. I should tell big thanks to people who helped me through and showed me the way to be what I am.

It has some good sides too and money is not the biggest of it. I got passion to go forward and to achieve things I always wanted to. People I meet is so interesting and doing business with them is fun. I’m boss to myself now. It gives freedom and constraints. I can do what I want and there is a lot of things I can do. And then there is so much thing that should have been done, but I don’t know about them. Learning about them is the most important thing I have achieved.

I should say that I was too optimistic at start. I never thought about how hard it is just to tell people, what I’m doing. And how it is to rewrite business plan again and again. An introvert person like me going and talking to other people I don’t know? How to get over “I hate calling people”?

I believe that next year will be better because there is less things I don’t know. And thought there is economic crisis, try and stop our company from growing! \(^^)/