Belated Happy New Year
This site has been on silent running for the last few weeks. I hope you don’t mind. I was concentrating all my energy and time into doing some serious relaxing. I believe it was John Lennon who asked "so this is Christmas and what have you done?" to which my reply is a resounding "bugger all!".
Christmas in Ireland was fun. We even had a white Christmas in Cobh, a very rare occurrence. There was no snow before Christmas day and there was no snow after but on the day itself meteorology delivered the goods.
Christmas is a time for doing things you wouldn’t normally do at other times of the year: giving and receiving presents, eating Christmas pudding, watching daytime television, etc. All in all, I had a thoroughly enjoyable winter festival.
Mind you, it was somewhat shocking to wake up on St. Stephen’s Day to the shocking news of the Asian Tsunami. If I were superstitious, I’d label comet Machholz a portent of doom.
The international community has mobilised, charitable donations are flooding in and Andy has even created Blog Aid to allow bloggers to pledge money from their affiliate schemes towards helping the relief effort. I don’t have any money-making affiliate schemes so I’ll have to donate by more traditional means. Apple has a list of charitable organisations that, for a while, replaced the front page of their site. You can even donate straight from iTunes.
If the Asian disaster is last in a long line of 2004’s craptacular events, let’s hope that the generosity and sympathy shown in its wake is indicative of a new spirit in 2005.