Search PubMed and Get PDF Right Away!

I blogged about Pubget pros and cons a while ago. Pubget launched a new feature yesterday: Pubget PaperPlane. With this new feature, you search PubMed and get PDF full text right away. Watch this short video from Pubget:

BOLTs--Brief Online Learning Tutorials

After almost 3 years of hard work, two LISTEN modules and online tutorials (BOLTs) are finally up and running and open to the world.

What can you do with the stuff we created?

Use BOLTs to show students how to research quality information. BOLTs are short and sweet snippets especially geared for student nurses and workforce nurses to learn seeking information and technology for evidence-based nursing practice. However, you will find them also useful and helpful for others who are interested in learning information seeking and technology.

Encourage your nursing students or workforce nurses to participate in LISTEN project. There are three ways to do this: face-to-face workshop, online scenario, and online tutorials (BOLTs). The online scenario includes two MedSurg modules (See image). To participate and get CEU credits, visit LISTEN project website.

What librarians said about BOLTs?

• I just did a quick listen to the How do you .....Database to Use module and it is awesome.
• The page looks great--nice graphics. And, the content is quite extensive. Very ice job.
• Great job! Very informative.
• Wow! The BOLTs are great. Nicely done!
• This is great! Congratulations to you and your colleagues, and many thanks for sharing with the rest of us. We will happily credit your project as we make use of what you've done.

You are welcome to send in your comments and feedback to the LISTEN team.

Going to Woods Hole, MA

I'm extremely grateful to be awarded BML/NLM fellowship to study biomedical informatics in Woods Hole, MA from September 20-26. When I was informed I was put in the waiting list, I already had a plan to send in my application again for next year. I think I'm just that lucky! Someone canceled the trip and here I'm getting ready to go!

I have been co-instructor in Informatics for Healthcare since 2006 and got involved in teaching library sessions in Dental Informatics course this year, but I still feel nervous as to limited knowledge about what it is and what I'm going to do there. Looking at the course schedule and the required reading list for each day, I feel the intensity and challenge I'm going to face.

Despite the feeling of uncertainty, one thing I'm pretty sure is that I'm going to enjoy the training and learning experience. There are 30 participants from 30 different institutions across the country. The experience will enrich my knowledge as a medical librarian, but may look at informatics from a different perspective.

I've got words from my director that when I return from this one-week intensive course, I would be our library's biomedical informatics professional and liaison to the campus for this initiative.

Pubget: Pros and Cons

I have been testing Pubget for some time and finally came up with this summary. Since quite a lot of good things and excitement were covered about Pubget, my point of view might be a bit different in that I approached the service from the point of end users, and yet they are only my opinions.

Pubget was added our proxy server for some time. With the Pubget proxy URL, patrons will be asked to log in if they are off campus. If log in successfully, remote access to the library is granted and articles in PDF formats are retrieved, which is the beauty and unique feature of Pubget.

Pubget was tested on Mac and PC using Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari both on campus and off campus. Here are some pros and cons based on my experience:

Pros

1. Save time and provide quick access to PDF articles the library has subscribed to. Pubget searches retrieve PDF documents instantly. On campus access works well in getting PDF files.
   
2. Share information. Patrons are able to email PDF files to anyone specified. This is good for group projects and journal clubs. One article can be sent to multiple emails at the same time and it can also be sent to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
   
3. Manage and organize information. References in Pubget can be exported to EndNote and RefWork. Tags can be assigned to individual reference.
   
4. Stay current. Patrons can create email alerts or RSS feed on their topic of interest to get update articles. They can also browse latest issues of their favorite journals from Pubget. The favorite journal list can be customized to show on their Pubget home page.
   
5. Save information. PDF files retrieved from Pubget can be saved/kept in Pubget server. Patrons can use their gmail account to log in Pubget if they don't want to create a separate account with Pubget.
   
6. Revisit search history. Search history kept in Pubget's personal account can be marked as favorite searches and optionally can be used to get up-to-date articles without setting up email alerts or RSS feed.

Cons

1. Using MeSH to search Pubget is not working unless exact MeSH terms are entered to run the search.
   
2. PDFs are loaded and displayed inconsistently. Sometimes Pubget searches didn't display PDF files even the library owns the journal, which happens more often via off-campus access.
   
3. The Keepers (saved references) within Pubget are kept in one pot. Users can not create separate folders to organize their saved articles.
   
4. There is no way for patrons to select more than one articles or select a list of articles. Consequently, patrons have to choose one article at a time if they want to share, email, export, or save articles . This is especially inconvenient when they want to share a list of articles with people. "Shared all your keepers" link did not show as promised.
   
5. An article sent from Pubget produces a link to the article not sending the actual article. Consequently, if the article is not freely available on the Internet, the recipient will not be able to download the article.
6. When exporting references from Pubget to EndNote, only authors and titles are imported. Neither PDF full-text nor URLs are imported into EndNote.

Pubget is only one of the 3rd party life science search engines that tries to create shortcut to search PubMed. If you are a serious researcher, my advise is using the 3rd party search engines with caution or as a pre-search. Getting comfortable and familiar using PubMed itself is your goal. If you need assistance using PubMed, contact your medical librarians.

My Library Day : July 31, 2009

This was really an interesting project! I have been enjoying reading a day in the life of librarians. Mine is routine mostly, but with challenges every single day.

Here was my day, Friday, July 31, 2009. I found it quite difficult to record exact time frame for things I did during the 8-hour for work plus 1 hour for lunch.

• Woke up at 5:30 am, spent 20 minutes preparing breakfast and lunch for my son and husband, and headed for gym. It is my daily routine to workout in gym for one hour before going to work. During the one-hour workout I watched TV feeding my brain with national and local headlines or news.
  
• Work started at 8 am when staffed the Reference Desk for one hour. It was quiet this morning. I quickly checked Ask a Librarian email account and my work email to see if there were things that needed immediate responses.
  
• Posted a library tip to the library blog for our scientific editor, who once in a while sent out Library Tips to the campus via email. Whenever he posts a tip, I would repeat the tip in the library's blog.
• Logged in the library's Twitter account to view followers' tweets and posted tweets to the library's Twitter account.
• Answered two email questions from Ask a Librarian email account. One requested research help and the other was about off-campus log-in problem.
  
• At 9 am, telephone meeting with LISTEN project coordinator and my supervisor about BOLT (Brief Online Learning Tutorials) we developed for LISTEN modules. 10% of my time devotes to this grant project since July 2007.
• Right after the BOLT meeting, two nursing students came for help with their group project. I spent 40 minutes with them searching PubMed and showing them how to limit searches and retrieved full text articles.
• During my one-hour lunch break (11-12 pm), I stepped out the library and took a nice 20-minute walk. After the heavy rain and tornado sweeping through some areas of the city last nigh, it turned out to be a beautiful day.
• My second shift at the Reference Desk was from 12 - 1pm. I was able to use this hour preparing budget report for the SC/MLA '09 Local Arrangement Committee meeting as I am the conference treasurer. The meeting was held from 2-3:30 pm.
  
• I spent 30 minutes going through my RSS feeds briefly and bookmarked interesting information to my delicious page, and saved some favorite articles to my EverNote site.
  
• Spent one hour on my social web profile to maintain a professional appearance on the social Web. Two people subscribed to my FriendFeed, three people requested to follow me on Twitter, one person added me as a contact in slideshare.net, one Facebook friend made two comments on my wall.
• At 5 pm, I finished my 3rd shift at the Desk and went home.
  

What I enjoy most is everyday is not the same.

Google Voice SMS -- Libraries

I've been playing with Google Voice since I received the invitation to pick my GV number.



Awesome things I like about GV:

1. Use GV SMS. When people text me back, I can receive their text messages either from my cell phone or my GV interface.
2. Forward my home phone to my GV number and choose to listen to voice messages or view them in my email right from my computer.
3. Transcribe voice messages left at my home phone to text messages and email messages and deliver them either to my cellphone or GV interface.
   

I still consider myself a beginner of using GV and there are more GV features for further exploration and experience.

While I was testing GV SMS, one thought came to my mind: can libraries use this feature to provide SMS reference service? We can call it Text a Librarian. Thinking about this I immediately sent a request to get a GV number for the library.

I can almost see how Text a Librarian comes live:

Patrons send text messages to the library's GV number from their cellphone, desktop, and laptops. Librarians login libraries' Google Voice account and answer questions using GV interface like the way they were using Instant Message.

Note that pick a GV number carefully. If you want to change your GV number later, you will be charged $10 for the change fee.

EBM Survey Results

Last year, we surveyed practicing medical librarians related to their roles in supporting and enhancing evidence-based medicine (EBM) practice and here are the preliminary results on the 11 multiple choice questions. We got a total of 596 valid responses to the survey questions with 51 % coming from hospital libraries, 42% from academic libraries, and 7% from special libraries. Some survey result highlights:

• The most frequently reported role is to provide EBM research to users, followed by teaching EBM, and contributing to EBM initiatives in their institutions.
• Hospital librarians are most active in providing EBM research.
• Academic librarians are most active in teaching EBM.
• Attending journal clubs, morning reports, and medical rounds is not a popular responsibility among medical librarians.

The survey results were presented at the Canadian Association of Information Science (CAIS) 2009 Conference and published in the conference proceedings. Here is the presentation:

Exploring the Real World: Medical Librarians' Involvement in Supporting EBM Practice

View more Microsoft Word documents from lwu5.

Our next step will be looking into librarians' comments to get some idea about what they really thought about their EBM roles.

Hawaii Notes and Pictures

Going to MLA Annual Conferences has been part of my professional activities since 2004. This year like previous years, MLA sparkled lots of excitement and ideas. Most important of all, I gave a presentation entitled "Infusing Information Literacy Skills by Researching 'Never Events' at the conference. Without the financial support from the LISTEN project, I might not have been in the conference.

Infusing Information Literacy Skills by Researching 'Never Events'

View more Microsoft Word documents from lwu5.

As you know, I always have lots of pictures from the Conference and pictures about Hawaii.

The best and the outstanding among us

The very exciting thing to do in Hawaii was to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.

Swimming with fishes

The most touching event was to watch the Lantern Floating Hawaii on the Memorial Day at the AlA Moana Beach Park.

Lantern Floating Hawaii 2009

My first time inside a submarine and saw up-close magic of Hawaii's undersea world.

Undersea world

Hawaii features in ABC Stores that are more than churches.

ABC Store for tourists

The Big Island Tour took us to the Black Sand Beach.

Black sand --"Chicken of the Sea"

Monkey pod trees are everywhere in Hawaii. I've never seen so magnificent banyan trees there.

Over 100 year-old banyan tree

Monkey pod tree

Walking and swimming along Waikiki Beach felt like in paradise.

By the beach

I really enjoyed shooting sunset pictures along the beaches.

Sunset at sea

This is a place worth visiting again! I know I will have a waterproof camera case when I revisit Hawaii some day.

The Joy of Stress

I like reading articles that provide food for thought such as this one "The joy of stress" by Cath Jones from BMJ Careers. The article talks about the stress in medical profession and how some health care professionals interpreted work stress.

Is there a profession stress free? Is there anyone working in a profession free of stress? Most likely no if you want to do a better job and advance your career. The attitude and interpretation of stress really makes a difference in career advancement. Take library instruction as an example. More and more librarians are required to teach especially in academic libraries. It is not unusual librarians resist in teaching and many don't like teaching at all or maybe afraid of teaching. True. What teaching involves can stress you out such as developing curriculum, writing class notes, preparing class materials/handouts, creating subject related exercises, practicing how to deliver the class effectively, and modifying class content constantly based on students' level. Worse of all, you have to overcome the fear of speaking in public. No doubt, the whole procedure can be really stressful and sweating. I had the experience of butterfly in my stomach and palm sweat. Even though I teach once every month, I still feel stressful and nervous before each class.

Is it a good thing feeling stressed? I would use quotations from the article to tell how I love and look at stress.

“To live without stress would be to live in a vegetative state.”

“Pressure is good. It keeps me motivated.”

“Yes, it is a pressurised environment but if you have the right mindset it is enjoyable. It’s about seeing situations as a challenge, searching your own knowledge and looking inside yourself to overcome the problems you face. I find that if I want to perform well I need to have the stick rather than the carrot and that’s why I’ve been attracted to this particular role.”

What is your take?

When Enough information is Enough?

Either doing literature reviews, creating presentation slides, or working on projects, students and faculty constantly struggle with not finding enough information or retrieving too much information. A while ago, I was asked when enough information is enough? Honestly, I also have this question in mind just that it didn't occur to me to summarize it. My answer is simple: it depends on what you need.

Say, you are writing an article or working on your PhD dissertation and you need to do a literature review to see what had been published on this area and if anyone has done similar research. Information can never be enough until you've exhausted all the resources. This has to be a thorough search to get everything relevant out into your plate.

Say, you are writing a grant proposal, you've got a few good articles. You were wondering whether you still need to spend more time looking for more articles. You might stop here if the information you got can provide adequate justification for your proposal.

Say, you are a student trying to research on a topic for your course assignment. You don't have to do a comprehensive search. A few good articles might help you get the work done beautifully.

Say, you are doing a research and you need to look for side effects or adverse reactions of a certain drug used on human beings. It is critical to search the literature comprehensively and properly to ensure you won't miss a single published report of side effects or adverse reactions related to the drug.

My points are:

• Focus on what you are doing. If you don't know what you are doing, you will never know when information is enough.
  
• Understand what you need. If you don't understand what you need, you will never know when information is enough.

Communications: Campus vs Library

My library just joined Twitter, a step forward to get into the loop of social media. This is not one person’s initiative or one person's passion at the library, it is a decision from the library's Reference and Outreach Service Department. The first idea was to publicize library's resources and services and the second idea was to explore possible channel to deliver library services. To make this communication channel effective and helpful, it would be interested to know and look around how UTHSC campus communicates with faculty and students. Thanks for Brian Mattews' post that sparked my idea to look around. I especially like this and would like to share with my blog readers:

"Stop thinking about just the library for a moment and consider how others on campus communicate with students as well. How can you work together with them?"

Let's compare:

http://www.twitter.com/uthsc --- Yes. The library just opened a Twitter account.
http://www.youtube.com/uthsc --- No.
http://www.utmem.edu/facebook --- No.
http://www.delicious.com/uthsc --- Yes. The library has a delicious a account.
http://www.utmem.edu/wikipedia --- No.

How can/should the library communicate with campus?

Creating Context for Technology...

Love this article! It's a news piece published in the most recent [57(2), March-April 2009, 116-118] Nursing Outllook written by Dr. Kathy Malloch, "Creating context for technology: new realities for structure, media, space, and time." In the article, Dr. Malloch states:

"The very nature of health care and the ways in which health care services are organized, packaged, delivered, and evaluated have been forever changed by the technology advances in clinical care, teaching, documentation, and data storage. Specifically, changes have occurred in four areas: the availability and sharing of information; the media used for knowledge transfer; the range and types of relationships between and among providers, educators, students, and patients; and the time required to transfer and share information. These changes are driving the creation of new structures to support this evolving work."

Reading the article and pondering what medical libraries and librarians can take to meet the needs from the health care changes?

What Faculty Members Need of a Librarian?

As a library faculty and library liaison to the College of Nursing (CON) and the College of Pharmacy (COP), I've been looking for ways to bring library services and resources to support the educational and research needs of the colleges served. Recently I conducted a two-minute survey with the intend to get to know what faculty members need of a librarian and to bring library liaison services to another level. Only in three days since the survey was distributed, 29 CON and COP faculty members answered the questions. I'm hoping to get more in the next few days. Here is a brief overview of the survey results, which already provided some food for thought.

When asked whether they wanted to receive information or tips about library resources and services, 66% says yes and 86% prefers using email. I'm not surprised only 34% of the faculty are interested in bringing a librarian into their courses to deliver a 20-minute session about using library resources effectively for their students. I think partly because they don't really know what a librarian can do for them. I'm delighted to know 48% of the faculty expressed interests in attending the library workshop, Staying Current for which I'm the instructor. 31% of them already have their own way of keeping up to date. Four (14%) faculty members would like to have one-on-one sessions to learn about tools and resources for staying current on their research topics.

The survey asks "What would you like your librarian to do for you?" and it yielded some interesting responses:

"Assist with complex literature searches. (Which I already get and am very grateful for)."
"Help with student literature searches (when I refer a student to the librarian)."
"An one-on-one session for new tools and methods."
"Reference Manager or Endnote instruction."
"It would be nice to have the librarian present an update on material at one of our Department faculty meetings."
"Searches. Obtain difficult to find articles."
"Assist with a literature search in preparation for NIH grant."
"Come into classes (DNP and PhD) as part of a workshop at the start of the term to help students learn how to conduct literature searches."
"I am wondering if a presentation to our professional staff regarding clinical resources available through the Library? I don't think staff are completely aware of what is available."
"Our graduate students take courses online and many do not live in or near Memphis, so they are limited to online library access. With that in mind, could you set up a repository of on-demand online tutorials and tools designated specifically for students so that they do not have to wade through the scheduled, on-campus, and/or faculty resources in order to find what they need quickly and efficiently? Could you make the workshops available for on-demand online viewing?"

Sounds familiar? For librarians who have liaison responsibilities to CON or COP, the mini survey results might offer some helpful insight and thoughts on what faculty members need of a librarian. Based on the 29 responses, faculty members expect librarians:

• To provide expert literature searches to support research and educational programs
  
• To offer instructional sessions or workshops to their students on literature searching
• To be the information messenger between the college and the library
• To be flexible in offering library workshops considering the needs of distance learning community
  

The faculty members' responses implied that they are aware of librarians' expertise in information retrieval and information management. Their responses also presented a lot of opportunities for librarians to take. I would further summarize the survey results and plan my liaison services in another post. Suggestions and comments are welcome!

Manage Information Manage your Career

Since my last presentation in January for a group of DNP students about how to use My NCBI to manage information, I had several individual literature searching consultation sessions with nursing PhD students. There is no doubt, all students are keen to learn how to conduct an effective literature search using scholarly resources. Set aside literature searches, one thing struck me the most was how to organize information once they were retrieved from either Internet sites or databases. It is like a product assembly-line process. The product won't be a finished product until you carry it out through to the finish line. Again I feel strongly for my saying managing information, managing your career. The ability and knowledge of managing information is critical in conducting research and even leading to career success.

Based on my own experience on using social bookmarking sites to organize information, I found the following sites serve me well for different purposes. I hope my experience can be of help in making decisions. There are many good tools out there that you might find them useful, too. So many choices! What to choose? The key is to get start seriously and devote some time getting to know the tools and stick to those met your needs.

• Del.icio.us -- Collect general Web sites or Internet resources. It is a generic social bookmarking site that can bookmark almost everything from the Internet. I use this site to bookmark my favorite sites. Descriptions can be added to each bookmark.
  
• 2collab -- Manage journal articles especially those from Science Direct and Scopus. Unique features include pre-assigned research fields providing a way to browse and organize bookmarks in a broader subject than an individual tag, the ability to select bookmarks to create a new list, and the ability to create RSS feeds for any list filtered by groups or research fields. I use this site to collect journal articles and assign them to different groups. I also use this site to keep track of my published articles.
  
• CiteUlike -- Manage journal articles. Unique features include the capability of uploading PDF files associate with the bookmarks so that they can be accessed from any computers. I use this site to collect and store PDF articles for future reading or for group projects. Another feature I like about CiteUlike is the article reviews written by site users. You can also write reviews about an article and share with others.
  

Other tools I use to organize information are services directly from database publishers.

• My NCBI -- Organize references, create folders, and save searches while searching PubMed/Medline. My NCBI does several things for me: set up automatically email alerts or subscribe to RSS Feeds on topics I need to get updates on a regular basis, collect references and group them into topics and folders, save PubMed searches, and create my bibliographies.
  
• My EBSCOhost -- Manage references, create collections, and save searches while searching CINAHL@EBSCOhost. I use My EBSCOhost to save CINAHL searches and assign references into different folders. I can also share the folders with my peers. My EBSCOhost is especially helpful when I can't use social bookmarking sites to bookmark an EBSCOhost article due to access issues.
  

Here came another question: "I have collected my references in several places. How am I going to pull them into one central location for my paper?" The solution is to log in each of these sites and export your references to reference manage software like EndNote and RefWorks.

I always believe finding the right tools to mange information can save time and boost productivity.

Cool Tools for Physicians and More

There is a saying managing your credit, managing your life. My saying is managing information, managing your career. In today's information explosion era the ability to manage information effectively and efficiently is critical. I believe anyone who wants to be professional in their field needs to stay current and keep themselves up to date. To do so, a bag of cool tools is essential. I'm trilled after reading the Internet Cool Tools for Physicians by Melissa Rethlefsen, David Rothman, and Daniel Mojon. I would say those cool tools are not only put together for physicians, but for anyone who wants to be professional in their field. I found them useful, relevant, and interesting for my career as a medical librarian.

Earlier in March 2008, MLA host an eight-week online CE course Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools to MLA members. Currently MLA Social Networking Software Task Force is offering CE opportunities entitled Dig Deeper with Social Media: short courses on emerging online tools for MLA members. The Southeastern Atlantic and Greater Midwest regions of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine also offered an online CE course, Geeks Bearing Gifts in both regions. What does all this for? It's a call for medical librarians to explore, experience, test, and discuss Web 2.0 technologies and Internet tools and its potential uses in medical libraries. Internet Cool Tools for Physicians takes a deep look at these cool and neat tools that are useful not just for physicians. I would suggest reading and even owing this book if you have these questions or if you are asked these questions:

1. Where to find comprehensive tips in searching Google from basics to Scholar?
2. How to use RSS feeds to keep current?
3. How to create a RSS feed for the information that doesn't offer it?
4. How to export Google Reader subscriptions to another aggregator?
5. How to combine multiple feeds into one single feed?
   
6. What if I still want RSS items delivered to me via email?
   
7. How to use iGoogle as a personalized start page?
8. What can a wiki do to meet a professional need?
9. How to create a live survey using Google Docs?
10. How to take notes on the Web pages I like and share with others?

Internet Cool Tools for Physicians provides answers to all these questions and those tools can make your life a lot more easy in the Internet world. I'm guessing the 2nd edition of the book will have have a section on micro-blogging in health care. While physicians, let's expand this group to health care professionals and health care educators, are using those cool tools, what medical librarians should do and can do in terms of providing library services? Medical librarians are challenged. This is not in the future, it is happening now whether you like it or not.

I love trying new stuff and believe good information should be shared. Since my library is undergoing financial difficulty, adding a book to the collection is hardly possible. I'm thinking of donating the book to the library and let more people benefit from those cool and neat tools.

Did Google Read Me?

I didn't pay much attention to the new Google Reader layout since it came live until T. Scott's recent blog entry showed up on the right panel of my Google Reader. I don't think I had subscribed to his feed. Why did it show up in my reader? Digging deeper, I finally woke up. It was a recommendation list generated automatically by Google. According to Google, the recommendations list is automatically generated. It takes into account the feeds I've already subscribed to, as well as information from my Web History, including my location. Aggregated across many users, Google collects the information that it thinks I might be interested in. Isn't this scary? Where does Google go from here?

Personality, Interests, and Social Media

Canadian medical librarian Dean Giustini's recent post wondered why not more Canadian librarians were on Twitter. I also have the same feeling here since most of my librarian friends are not on Twitter, either. Dean's post got me to think about whether there is a link between personality and social media. What is social media? I don't quite like the definition from Wikipedia, so I came up with my own version. Social media is composed of all sorts of Web 2.0 tools (e.g., blog, micro-blog, wiki, video, online photo sharing, social networking, and social bookmarking) that people use to interact with each other on the Internet. Social media provides a platform for users to generate content, share information, and communicate with each other.

It has been more than one year since I started exploring and experimenting Web 2.0 tools. I've been a blog reader for over a year. The blogs I subscribe to including those from librarians, library associations, med students, healthcare professionals, library school faculty members, and tech geeks. I'm on Twitter for a year following different people I'm interested in. My observation and experience told me that those who are active on social media have shared some common interests and personalities. I think this connection might explain something as to why some librarians are active while others are not in using social media to interact with library patrons or their peers.

People who are active on social media:

• Love to share themselves online
  
• Enjoy writing
• Are willing to put effort and spend extra time to embrace new technologies
  
• Are literal not conservative
• Are eager to interact with people online
  
• Are not afraid of inviting people into their solitude

Those are the group of people who are more likely to use social media to communicate with others online. Another key is interests. I always believe interests can motivate people to do the impossible. No interests, no motivation, let along participation. Consequently, they would never know the benefits and the goods of those tools and they would not think about applying the tools either to their work or to their personal life. Of course, there are other factors that might be in the way such as lack of time. Again, back to motivation. Interestingly, when people have no motivation doing something, they can easily find 100 excuses not doing it. This is just my personal observation and feelings. Shot me if I'm wrong.

5 Things for 2009

It's so nice to have two weeks in a row staying home relaxing and catching up. 2008 is the Year of Rat and I'm one of the rat people. Looking back, I considered myself pretty lucky in the past year because I had worked so hard to achieve my goals. Here I am in the year of 2009. These are 5 primary things I will do or promise to do daily in the New Year.

1. Workout: 60 minutes a day and 250 miles (jogging) per week
2. Cooking and eating healthy food: 5 servings of fresh vegetables and
fruits per day
3. Writing: unlimited hours per week
4. Working on my photo gallery: 5 hours per week
5. Keeping in touch with my network: unlimited hours per week

You may wonder why I set unlimited hours for #3 and #4. Well, these two items are closely related to my career and professional development. The more I spend time on them the more I feel I'm rich. I'm happy and golden to do all these things in my daily routine. Luckiness will continue to be my friend in 2009, I believe.

Wishing everyone a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2009!