A few weeks ago I ordered a Chinese takeaway meal. The best and favourite restaurant of mine, Jasmine Garden, always delivers very quickly, and most importantly, with complimentary fortune cookies. You have probably seen one of the fortunes in a photo of mine.

Well, the last one read this: The time is right to follow your dreams. Normally I don't take fortune cookies seriously but this one had me covered in goosebumps. Not in the least because it's spring and I usually tend to make significant changes in my life in spring. But mostly because this spring I'm finally taking some big steps towards discovering who I am and what it's like to live my life the way I want to.

I've thus come up with a few goals for the nearest future. The biggest one is going away to Japan for three months next year. Most people pull a face when they hear about it. Japan? Why the hell Japan of all places? Well, I've been obsessed with Japan my whole life. I've always been fascinated with the culture and the language, the people and the traditions, and I've always wanted to see what it's like to be Japanese. Obviously I will never know the whole truth but I want to get at least a glimpse. Of course it's intimidating, and I don't know the language, and so I'd always put that idea away as something I'd never do in this life. But then one day, when talking to a friend of mine, who happens to be married to a Japanese girl, I thought - why the hell not? I don't have to go for a year as I've originally wanted to, three months will be enough. And I'm sure there are English-speaking courses available, so that I don't have to do nothing except sight-seeing for those three months. After doing a bit of research I realised my dream has all the potential to come true. And so, I'm now saving up for this trip which I hope will take place next summer, in 2010.

The other dream, more near-future oriented, is collecting the whole range of the lenses I might need as a photographer. Of course, I can't collect every single one that I *might* ever need, but I've come up with a list. Actually I saw such a list somewhere on the internet once, although it wasn't exactly like mine, but it was what gave me the idea. I have the basics already - a universal, a telephoto, a prime (although a crappy one), a wide-angle. The ones I want to get are a macro and a fisheye. I've also ordered (and still awaiting delivery of) a super-universal one, a 28-300mm 3.5L, which covers most areas from wide-angle to telephoto (which means that if I'm happy with it, I might sell the telephoto lens I have at the moment - 70-200mm 4.0L). I figured that although it is worth a lot of money, it is worth not having to change lenses a lot when traveling, as it annoys me a lot. I also spoiled myself by getting a super prime, a 135mm 2.0L, which I didn't exactly *need* but which was an excellent buy anyway since it produces the most amazing flower photos, and flowers are something I've decided to specialize in.

So here I am now, feeling quite proud of myself, and happy I've got things to look and work forward to. It's hard sometimes to find inspiration, but I'm glad I have.