“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

It’s again the start of a new year, a great time to plan our goals for this year and reflect on what we have achieved in the last year.

As for me, 2015 has been a great year both for my career and travel life. Our schistosomiasis project has been funded by the Global Health Innovative Transfer Fund, a public-private funding group supported by  a number of Japanese pharmacy corporations and the Gates Foundation. This is also the year that I have published a paper in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

As a wanderer, I have traveled for conferences in Tokyo, Manila, Philadelphia, and Basel; for weddings in Bangkok and San Francisco. I did sightseeings around Japan: Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara, North Tohoku area, Okinawa and of course Tokyo and around Hokkaido; around Philippines: Cebu and Banaue; Bangkok and Sara Buri in Thailand; Kuala Lumpur and Penang in Malaysia; Singapore; San Francisco, Reno, Philadelphia and Seattle in USA; Seoul in South Korea; Frankfurt in Germany; Basel, Bern and Geneva in Switzerland. These trips therefore upgrade my Japan Airlines membership from Crystal to Sapphire (yey!!!).

I have met new friends, and reunited with old friends. And most importantly, I started this blog.

2015 is definitely a year to beat. So I hope this year can top that.