2006 - the year in review

It's that time of the year again. Yes, the last day of the year, the day when you just wanna look forward and say "screw this year, next year's gonna be way better because I will keep my resolution next year". Always happens to me. And guess what? The next year is always as sucky as the previous year for me.

So this year I'm gonna ditch the ritual of looking forwards to avoid looking backwards, this year I'm gonna look backwards to look forwards. I am gonna celebrate
what I have achieved this year and, in some cases, haven't achieved. How can you define success if you don't know what failure is?

So here goes 2006


2006 - Memorial events

Some general 2006 events first. Do you know that 2006 is supposed to be the year of birth of Motoko Kusanagi? In case you're wondering who the heck that is, she is only the main character in Ghost in the Shell, the best freaking anime series ever.

Yes, I know, that's extremely exciting. Let's get on with what actually happened this year. Well let's see, there were a few exciting moments like when the North Koreans shot those long range missiles into the sea and scare the shit out of the neighbouring countries and then they went ahead with that nuclear test. That was exciting for a while and then as suddenly as it started, it ended. I was hoping the US would really put the "weapon of mass destruction" ploy into actually use this time. There's no need for intelligence of any kind to tell that North Korea has "weapon of massive destruction" (it's not "mass" anymore, it has to be massive, you can't recycle reasons to go to war). Let me just spell this out in case somebody still insists on not enough "intelligence": NUCLEAR WEAPONS KILL MORE PEOPLE THAN NORMAL WEAPON. Maybe a picture's gonna bring the point home?


Not that I'm condoning war or anything, it just doesn't make sense. The US went to war in Iraq without any kind of hard evidence that there actually were "weapons of mass destruction". Actually they went to war because the Bush administration claimed to have intelligence that there were "weapons of mass destruction". Guess what? 2 years later and we haven't seen any such weapons. And now we have proofs that North Korea possesses real "weapons of mass destruction" and the US hasn't move any troops to invade NK. What's the deal with that? Oh yeah, last time I check, North Korea doesn't have as much oil as Iraq even though they're suffering under a dictator much worse than Saddam Hussein. As we're talking about Saddam Hussein I think this is the moment to bring up the topic of his execution. I don't know about you but the moment he was caught back in whenever in that hole in the ground I thought "this guy is dead meat". I don't think any kind of trial can have the outcome of Saddam missing the death penalty.

Other memorable events
Pope Benedict XVI quotes a criticism of the Islam faith, sparking mass protest.
John Kerry accidentally insulted the intelligence of George W. Bush.
The death of Steve Irwin
Beaconsfield
FIFA World Cup
Agassi's retirement
Google bought Youtube and began deleting pirated videos
Xbox 360, PS3, Wii

The North Korean hiatus isn't as bad as the renewed violence between Lebanon and Israel. That was ugly. Has it stopped yet? I know that's terrible of me but it just went on and on and on forever and I kinda lost interest after 2 weeks of bloodbaths. Let's just hope the 2006 Miss Universe Zuleyka Rivera will bring world peace at last.

It's not all bad news however, on November 7 the Democrats kicked the Republicans' collective asses and won control of both houses. Hopefully, something good's gonna come out of this.

Let's get on with the tragedy that's closer to home (ie. Australia) shall we? On March 18 tropical cyclone Larry hit Queensland and since then banana prices has gone ... um bananas in Australia. It's a real tragedy let me tell you, not only for those farmers who lost their livelihood but also for us poor consumers since now we have to put up with the extortion that is banana prices. Not such a tragedy for me though. I don't like bananas and I avoid them especially since fundies can use bananas to prove that God exists.

The most interesting thing from the political front in Australia this year is the near cat-fight between John Howard and Peter Costello. The outcome? Looks like Johnny's running for another election. At least we've got a new Opposition leader that doesn't look like a big bully.

2006 - personal events
Ok, this should be short. Let's see in January I got the uni offer and the scholarship. As it turned out, the scholarship was a heap of headache and worries. I reckon I wouldn't be as stressed out at around exam periods if I don't have the scholarship. However, it does help with never having to borrow HECS so I guess it's a good thing. What I need in the future is better planning so that I won't have to be stressed.
One year of uni has made me realised that uni sucks. Not as much as high school but it sucks. I like how you can pretty much do what you feel like in uni but seriously it just encourages me to slack off. Hence the crazy cramming sessions when exams come calling.
I started this year with 2 simple targets in mind:
- Keep the scholarship
- Read 200 fiction books
And I'm proud to say, I've achieved all 2 of my targets, yay! Actually, I overachieved a bit. I read 229 books this year. Most of them are crap and I think I'm having a kind of reading block right now. I can't concentrate on any books and I can't read anything but blogs and internet boards now. Maybe I read a bit too much this year. One thing is for sure though, no more crazy reading frenzy next year.


2006 - a year of blog posts

Blog statistics
Number of posts: 183 (including this one)
Number of visitors: 3000+

It's really strange but out of my 183 posts, the most popular one is this one all because of the "how to be positive" tag. The most searched phrase that leads to my blog is also "how to be positive". Looks like all those poor people being drowned by their own negativity didn't find much help from me. However, I'm researching on the subject. Really I'm actually finding books on the subject and maybe I'm gonna share my journey to positivity one in the very near future.

My blog's got some really strange links from searched terms. Here're some of them: "hairy cate winslet", "ziggy switkowski profile", "blogs with czech childrens pictures and bio" (wtf?), "straight sex videos", "www.do santa have a daughter?.com". See, these terms are just stranger than strange. How the heck does "czech childrens" have anything to do with my blog?

I suppose this is the best time to thank my readers for... um reading my blog. My dear readers, you know who I'm talking about. I can't possibly list all your names coz I don't know it. However, here're the names of some regular comment leavers in no particular order: Nhan, Bert, Bob, several-anonymous-persons-which-I-assumed-to-be-one-person, thanks for taking your time to read my little blog I know this is weird but I feel I should thank Chuck too. He's providing some traffic for the blog anyway.