2009

Hello 2009

It seemed just a few years ago that we were standing by for the event of the millenium; the collapse of everything technological in the Y2K turn of the century. It turned out to be a dud, didn't it ?

But, in the intervening years, things changed at a remarkable pace. Desktop PCs almost disappeared giving way to notebooks which now seem to be giving way to netbooks, that can almost fit into your handbag. Handphones grew smaller and became as almost as good as computers. Radios and TV are disappearing; home theaters in boxes, MP3 players that fit your pocket and LCD TVs are all the rage.

It seems that if the last 100 years was the era of transportation, the next one may very well be the era of information and communications. We shall see, but these are indeed interesting times.

At the turn of the century, on that last night of December in the last millenium, all of us made resolutions; promises to ourselves to be better, to do better and to strive for some beyond the ordinary. It was made because it was a special time, the end of a millenium, and the start of a new one. It was made because no matter how assured we were of our preparedness to face the Y2K problem, we still worried about it a little bit. It was made because all of us wanted something better for ourselves, our loved ones, our country in the new millenium. The end of the last millenium was watchful, but hopeful.

Now, the decade has almost passed. In just one more year, we would again be facing the turn of the decade again. True, it is not the same as the turn of the century or even the turn of the millenium. But still it is 10 years. For many of us, it may very well be the last 10 years of our lives.

So I think we should look back to that day in December 1999, look at the hopes we had for the new millenium, at the resolutions we made and at the progress, if any, that we have made. We surely must know that we have progressed from then, but maybe not in the direction we wanted, nor in the pace that we needed, or with the results that we had hoped for. Let us look at it now again, when we still have a year to spare before the next decade sweeps in. Let us do NOW what needs to be done. Let us work at it while it is yet day. And maybe we can look forward to the new decade with that similar hope that was there at the start of the millenium.

Let us make the best of this last year, of the first decade of the millenium.