Goodbye to the Noughties, and goodbye to 2009
. . . .
I'm not going to blow off the [20]00's, as Paul Krugman did, by calling it The Big Zero. His country fared far worse than mine, or my wife's, during these years. Australia seem to have avoided major recession, and the nearest Việt Nam came to it is a measly 4% growth. Better than the soup kitchens and the 18% unofficial unemployment and the medical bankruptcies and the general malaise over there.
But my feelings are mixed for the Noughties. I gained a wife, who is lovely indeed, and also a nephew. But I lost a dad, and I also lost a cat (my sister's actually, but I did look after it for a while). While I seem to have wandered off any sort of orthodox IT career path, at least I learned another profession when tripping overseas. I got to see a little more of the world. I lost contact of a few friends, but regained contact of most of them when I came back. As I said, my feelings are mixed.
But I'm going to blow off 2009. Nothing bad happened, except for nearly one year of total unemployment, which I don't recommend to anyone. I wasn't starving, and I was able to pay all my bills on time. But that was due to the personal support of An, and the impersonal support of Centrelink, and a little bit of savings that I had on me. And giving up smoking - let's not forget about that.
Fortunately, the English teaching has come to the rescue. I though I'd left the biz behind when I returned to Australia in 2007, but I'm now getting a little bit of money from it! And it could be worse. But still...
May everyone's 2010 be better than their 2009.
Comments
Leave a comment.
To comment, please enter a name (which will be displayed) and an email address (which is kept secret). Both fields are mandatory.
If you wish to link your comment to a website, you can add its address to the (optional) URL field below.
The comment box accepts plain text. Any HTML tags will be automatically escaped. Please visit Gravatar if you want a nice icon next to your comment.
1 Johnston Thach
At 10:49 a.m. on Sunday 21 February 2010.
Yeah, I agree with yah, goodbye to 2009 and I hope this year is going to get better. :)