When I left Yahoo! back in February I listed three things that I wanted to do while I took some time off. As I get ready to return to the U.S., and reality, it seems prudent to reflect on these things.

The three items were (in no particular order):

1. read more
2. travel
3. hack

Soon after leaving California I moved to Malaysia where spent much of my time going back and forth between Kuala Lumpur and Penang. When not on the road I was able to do a decent amount of reading. Most of the books I read related to political theory (e.g., Fanon, Humphreys, Fukayama) or Middle Eastern history. Considering that I was about to move to Egypt for 8 months my reading list was quite relevant and without having this time off, chances are I never would have read these books. So I will check reading off my list as an accomplishment.

Traveling sort of goes hand in hand with moving to Malaysia and Egypt, so right off the bat we can probably put a check nex to travel. Malaysia is rich in culture and has a lot of amazing places to visit. During my time there I added Taman Negara, Lumut and pretty much every site in Penang and Kuala Lumpur that I hadn't already seen to my "been there don that" list. Since arriving in Egypt in April I have seen much of the country, including upper Egypt and Sinai and had a chance to visit Israel/Palestine as well.

Taking Arabic classes in Cairo took some time away from my 3 goals, but towards the end of summer I was finally able to invest some hours in my 3rd goal, hacking. Hacking is a bit of a general term, my true objective was to practice web development as a means of keeping in touch with the latest trends in the industry while overseas. Over the last month or so I created and launched a web based board game called sniff yur enemy. This allowed me to both apply and build on my PHP and MySQL skills while also giving me the chance to utilize Javascript and some DHTML elements. Overall, its been both a lot of work and a lot of fun and something I most definitely couldn't have done while juggling a full time job.

With a little less than 1 month left before I return home it looks like my goals in taking a break have been achieved. Not a bad way to finish off the year.