The Year in Retrospect - 2011

Long ago, I once told an old friend of mine that tradition is an inconvenience. At that time we were talking about the chronology of a Tamil wedding, which I believe inconveniences the bride big time. Right now, I'm beginning to feel that this tradition of recapping the end of the year before the year ends is a big inconvenience, because part of me is just too lazy too do it, and yet another part of me insists that I should do it, just for the sake of making sure that 2012 is all fresh and new. Weird? Yeah.

2011 must have been one of the shortest years ever - if that's even possible. On the very first day of the year, I sat down and wrote a story called "The Torch of Time" which describes how the years sprint and how they do that on purpose to make us feel as though our lives just fly past us without a pause. I wrote and edited the 800 words under 4 hours and duly submitted it. One and a half months later, the editor of the paper e-mailed me and told me that the story had been published. First cool thing of the year, I got a story published in a local paper. 

Other personal things that happened in 2011 worth mentioning:

1. The first ever family trip out of the country to Sri Lanka (will be blogged about - soon, I hope)

2. I fractured a bone (the very first bone in the history of my existence)

3. Had a two week long vacation (without much objection from the bosses, oh wow) to New Zealand and Australia (also needs to be blogged about - at least I took notes here)

4. Had the worst haircut ever 

5. This blog (with the old url) got discovered by people that shouldn't have any business discovering it, leading to panic and I almost deleted it.

6.  One grey hair - safely removed now, so all is good.

7.  Didn't have any disastrous incidents of falling sick (thanks to hand sanitizers, no doubt)

8. The laptop is probably dying, but instead of getting a new laptop, I got myself a tablet. The laptop can wait. Meanwhile, I'm transferring my stuff to an external hard drive.

9. Made friends with my sisters friends (3 of them who are all 5 years younger than me)

10. Did one 'bucket list' must dos

11. Got my second story published in the same paper. Either they like what I write or there aren't enough contributors (Personally, I'd like to say the former, but I believe by the time the second story got published, it was due to the latter)

12. Still book crazy. 

13. Some deaths of people I know

(Not too bad if judged by the list, but I guess, just like every year, we have the highs and lows. I know for a fact that I have been overworked since September, with a brief return of the dreaded insomnia, and I know I disliked July, but all these were work related)

The World

On the whole, while my list above does seem to indicate that 2011 has been a rather nice year to me, it wasn't so for the world in general. The world, as we see it has been shocked by earthquakes, tsunamis and storms, and floods, and somehow, it seems even worse this year, although most people still remember the horrors of the boxing day tsunami of 2006. 

This was also a shocking year for the economy and politics. We had countries declared bankrupt, and even in the local front, the country's debt is significant enough to make us worried of a similar fate. America, the country *we all secretly admired for their solidness in any given situation seems to be not as solid as we thought they were. The Arab spring happened, old, famous leaders were ousted and went into hiding and got killed. Osama Laden (the reason behind a war I personally find pointless) died.

On the local front

In July, some Malaysians took to the streets to demand fair and free elections and were met with water cannons and tear gas canisters instead. One man died in this. A solitary elderly lady (known as Annie) marched on her own, in her water cannoned wet t-shirt, and was looked upon as an exemplary citizen who knew when  it was time to stand for their rights. Corruption type scandals were all over the news, contributing to a few creative headlines.

The country also probably faced one of the most 'race and religious intolerant' years ever, what with the newspapers giving face to a certain man named **IbraahimmAlliTheFrog who spews the biggest amount of racist rubbish a man ever can. It's entertaining, nevertheless. Then there was the issue with the Malay Language Bible, the raid during a dinner because there were rumours of proselytisation, etc. 

We also saw a massive heatwave in July, followed by crazy rains, flash floods and non-flash floods involving people to be put in flood relief centres. 

So, that's it, a short review of the year that was -2011. In terms of personal stuff, it seems like a pretty good year, and for personal reasons, I'd give the year a 7/10.

* Just a personal opinion.

**Name purposely disguised to prevent people who stupidly search for him ending up on this blog