{"id":3108,"date":"2013-01-01T21:51:29","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T21:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/?p=3108"},"modified":"2013-01-02T08:51:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T08:51:55","slug":"wrapping-up-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2013\/01\/wrapping-up-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrapping up 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>2012 turned out to be a pretty good year. Travel remained as a big part of it, as well as the theme of taking care of my health a bit more. In terms of travel, I managed to hit New York, Munich, Rome where it snowed (it apparently very rarely happens), Chicago, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/04\/holidaying-in-san-francisco\/\" title=\"San Francisco\">San Francisco<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/06\/summer-in-malmo\/\" title=\"Malmo\">Malmo<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/06\/short-break-to-prague\/\" title=\"Prague\">Prague<\/a>, Cologne, Dallas, Berlin, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/10\/chinas-modern-city-shanghai\/\" title=\"Shanghai\">Shanghai<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/10\/from-traditional-to-old-xian\/\" title=\"Xian\">Xian<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/10\/the-natural-beauty-of-china-guilin\/\" title=\"Guilin\">Guilin<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/10\/wild-china-in-chengdu\/\" title=\"Chengdu\">Chengdu<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/10\/visiting-beijing\/\" title=\"Beijing\">Beijing<\/a>, Aarhus, Turin and Funchal (Portugal) for the Christmas period.<\/p>\n<p>The year of being healthy meant I kept to two days of eating fully vegetarian food, and having a fairly regular schedule at the gym meant that I could have a pretty good routine for most of the year when I wasn&#8217;t travelling. A work colleague of mine got me addicted to body pump that got me down to my lowest body fat percentage ever (6.7% according to the machine at the gym) and put back on the weight that I lost when running a lot last year but with leaner muscle. This means that I&#8217;ve been able to keep my 30&#8243; waist which basically is better health. I ran a 10k to support my sister but held back on any more half-marathons because my knees are pretty knackered now. I have still kept my general routine of a 10k run every week if I wasn&#8217;t flying in on a Sunday getting up at 6:10am for the hour run. <\/p>\n<p>Other significant things that happened include becoming a <a href=\"http:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2012\/03\/im-british\/\" title=\"British\">British citizen<\/a> and self-publishing my first book, <a href=\"http:\/\/leanpub.com\/the-retrospective-handbook\" title=\"The Retrospective Handbook\">The Retrospective Handbook<\/a>. I&#8217;m even quite glad that I&#8217;ve managed to break even. <\/p>\n<p>I also had some wonderful culinary experiences including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekua.com\/doesfood\/2012\/01\/eleven-madison-park-round-2\/\" title=\"Eleven Madison Park\">Eleven Madison Park<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekua.com\/doesfood\/2012\/04\/the-french-laundry\/\" title=\"The French Laundry\">The French Laundry<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekua.com\/doesfood\/2012\/02\/launceston-place\/\" title=\"Launceston Place\">Launceston Place<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekua.com\/doesfood\/2012\/04\/rick-bayless-frontera-grill\/\" title=\"Frontera Grill\">Frontera Grill<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekua.com\/doesfood\/2012\/12\/christmas-meal-at-galvin-at-windows\/\" title=\"Galvin at Windows\">Galvin at Windows<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekua.com\/doesfood\/2012\/11\/ultraviolet-by-paul-pairet\/\" title=\"Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet\">Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2012 turned out to be a pretty good year. Travel remained as a big part of it, as well as the theme of taking care of my health a bit more. In terms of travel, I managed to hit New York, Munich, Rome where it snowed (it apparently very rarely happens), Chicago, San Francisco, Malmo, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","category-uk-life"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Wrapping up 2012 - thekua.com@rest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thekua.com\/rant\/2013\/01\/wrapping-up-2012\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wrapping up 2012 - thekua.com@rest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"2012 turned out to be a pretty good year. 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