A year has ended and it is time to me to review what I have achieved in the year.

Last year’s resolution

Here is a direct quote of last year’s post:

• Buy myself a home.
• To complete a swimming marathon (10 km) within 3:40 (pro-rata for longer races).
• To swim the English Channel in a relay team composed of solely Hongkongers living in the UK.
• To lose weight until I sink naturally in the sea without a force exhalation (i.e. FRC in diving terms).

Among these 4 items, I have done only one of them, the English Channel relay swim.

I pulled out from my home purchase after finding a flat because there was an unresolvable issue on the ground rent from the mortgage provider, and I lost my job while in the process of it. I have got a new job in a start up resulting in a change of my circumstances, so I no longer want to buy a home.

I didn’t make my target time of my swimming marathon but I got close, I plan to do it again this year and hope that I will make it.

I also didn’t lose weight / fat last year and still float on the sea easily. I can only sink in the sea if I exhale fully, which isn’t a comfortable experience if I want to stay down. I’m jealous of those who can sink and stay down easily in the sea. In freshwater, I sink fast naturally but I can still float after inhalation, while some slim guys don’t float at all even with lungs full, which means I am still too fat to my liking.

Other achievements

Career

I have made a huge breakthrough in my career despite my job loss in August.

My proposal to formalise the ability to add ad-hoc trips and replace individual trips finally has been accepted after an initial setback from Google due to compatibility concerns, which has solved a decade-old problem for GTFS adoption by some railway agencies as they need to run unplanned trains and divert trains during disruptions.

I have also been accepted as a team member of the OpenTripPlanner developer team and can review pull requests, after I made significant effort to improve the GTFS-RT real time module for the above proposal, and also on OpenStreetMap processing for higher quality street routing as well.

Since August, I have been working in Aubin MaaS Limited in-house, the company who owns Aubin, as the lead developer. However I have been working on the product for more than two years with my previous employer who went bust in August. Aubin has been released to production and is now the most powerful public transport journey planner in Great Britain, supporting a wide variety of preferences and multi-modal routing for everyone’s needs, although there are still errors and omissions in the data which we are trying hard to resolve.

Sports

I qualified and swam in the Swim England National Open Water Championships again through the London regionals, although I still didn’t get a good result in the nationals as in last year.

I also swam the Bristol Channel from Penarth to Clevedon, which is the second channel I have swum in the UK.

I planned to race an 500 m ice swim in the Netherlands but unfortunately it was too warm to count. As my qualification is expiring soon I’ll have to return to 250 m.

I am still doing orienteering regularly but I haven’t got any breakthrough in my rankings.

I have also restarted playing bridge after a few years of absence, and now playing at Young Chelsea regularly.

My plan for 2026

I don’t have much expectations for myself this year as I don’t even know what the future of my career will look like, after my previous employer failed. In the short term of course I’ll continue to work on Aubin until it is good enough to totally replace other third party, big name journey planners, and to expand it to other markets where a suitable backend is available, but after I have done that I would like to work in an official capacity where OpenTripPlanner powers an official app, and have more say in developing transport data standards.

This year is my 5th year living in the UK, and I’ll soon complete 5 years on my visa to settlement. I’ll apply for settlement on completion of the requirements and make the UK my home for the near future.

I still want to improve my swimming however I will need a supportive competitive club. I plan to move to Croydon and now my work and activities are all based in South London, and afterwards I’ll find a club. I no longer want to buy a home.

I also want to continue my weight loss goal as my weight has affected my running performance, and I also want to enjoy the feeling underwater like many years ago when I sank in the sea without much effort.