I'm Back*!!

The title is kind of a misnomer since it's suggesting that I will be resuming my blogging activities as before the announced hiatus. The truth is, half and half. While I will be resuming blogging every now and then, the topics will be more personal. In many ways, this blog will function as a personal diary of sorts -- to track my current activities like reading materials and traveling destinations.

To be completely honest, I realized as of late that, despite the demand on time it places, blogging can be very beneficial. Informing your viewers/readers aside, it also helps improve your writing as well as provide a sense of accomplishment. As someone who can be labeled as "driven" and "goal-oriented", I like to go to sleep each night knowing that I accomplished something (even if it's a self-created illusion). The fact that I find myself idle at work more often than not helps too...

Kicking things off, I just came back from the local library with an exciting haul of reading material. I like to read (evident by the posts as book reviews) and I try to borrow a myriad of books on a wide range of subjects to sustain this habit. The books from this haul are as follows:

• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See -- this is supposedly a famous novel and it's a culture-specific fiction, which I like to read. Fiction adds variety to the rest of (non-fiction) below.
• Using Microsoft Access 2010, by Alison Balter -- realized I need to learn Microsoft Access.
• Oracle SQL: Essential Reference, by David Kreines -- same as above, my work involves using Oracle and so knowing SQL would help tremendously.
• Learning MySQL, by Hugh Williams -- same as above
• Drive: the Surprising Truth..., by Daniel Pink -- this is another widely-acclaimed book. I just finished "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely.
• The Art Instinct, by Denis Dutton -- heard about this from a TED talk and thought it sounded very interesting.

The goal is to post some sort of review (maybe not on the SQL and Access books). But I'm behind already on book reviews so, I'd advise not to bet on it...