A slightly belated Happy New Year

I woke up on January the first as usual. Casually I walked around the house, picking up the newspaper to read leisurely as is my daily routine. Needless to say, my sister and parents were already all dressed up and watching television. I think.

Is the New Year a very important festivity? The ones debating for the topic claim it represents the blossoming of a completely pristine, hopefully joyous, set of 12 months or 52 weeks or any such numerically acceptable time period. The opposition rebuke that 1^st January is as good or bad as any other of the 365 alternatives and that it need not be entitled to any special status. It represents a time to make resolutions? Resolutions made on Feb 23^rd are as good as those made on New Years. To the best of my knowledge it has no planetary basis and is, much like how the birthday of Jesus, Christmas was chosen to best fit the people’s interests to further the propagation of the religion, celebrated on an universally convenient date.

Clearly, I don’t deem it as all that significant. To me, it is yet another gimmick for the greeting card companies and the cable channels to advertise with. Greeting card and the cable channels? I must pardon myself. It is now a publicity stunt for every commercial enterprise under the sun. New Year sales! Selling junk overmarked by 10% at a discount of 5%! Woohoo! Go ye philistines, go and splurge, it’s a discount! Bah, humbug.

Nevertheless, it is a day on which humanity treats its brethren with a little more respect. Jovial faces, cheerful conversations, courteous greetings. A day spent visiting family and friends and even, calling on old acquaintances and making new ones. After all, what better day than New Year to talk to that grumpy rude friend of yours with whom you’ve had no contact in 5 years. New Years is also most appropriate to walk up to that girl with the mysterious captivating black eyes sitting alone on the table next to yours. Or so I’ve heard.

2006. I suppose the greatest change that it instigates is that my dates change from x/x/05 to x/x/06. Lame. The Gregorian year seems to have caught on with an unfathomably large percentage of the world’s population. I find the Chinese calendar much cooler, what with its animals and all. Wouldn’t it be awesome if our dates were something like 04/02/Dragon? Stupid Pope Gregory XIII… :P

Perhaps under the influence of the high spirits that entail the New Year celebrations, umm pun-intended, IIM decided to announce their results. Which was good, except for the time when I thought BlackI meant someone’s dog. Oh the humiliation, the humiliation. Sometimes even when you know the ineffectiveness and futility in some things, you seek to gain from it. I hate competitiveness. But then that’s like hating your ego. Why do you fight something when you should perhaps learn to live and perhaps even strive to thrive from it. Crap, the rhyming kills the serious tone.

The CAT excluded, yet another vile gargantuan beast was tamed yesterday. King Kong – Peter Jackson. Entertaining to the core. Anyone who has the fortitude to sit through three and a quarter hours will agree. Amazing graphics. Amazing yes, but perhaps a little overdone. Some of those enlarged insects, the horribly huge cockroaches and their ilk were, quite frankly, extremely gross. But, then this sublime blend of Jurassic Park’s graphics, subtle yet funny Jack Blackesque humour, the almost realistic human sentiments of the Big Ape as in previous movies of the same name – excellent.

Ending on a rather sad note, the protagonist of this wonderful blog injured his foot. Just a small sprain. Nothing a couple of days of self medicated bed rest and lots of sleep can’t heal. But unbeknownst to most who curiously take an interest, he is actually slightly happy. This was inevitable. The rubberband had to snap. (Wink Wink)