Final Thoughts

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And life goes on.</div> <div> Never mind any apocalyptic second-coming cults who, until recently, have been living like there's no Two Thousand.  And that electronic bogeyman which everyone has referred to as the 'Y2K bug' didn't end the world as we knew it either; any sort of glitches were far and few between, and almost negligible.</div> <div> This past weekend marked a three-day global celebration in which the whole world told itself: ' Don't worry, be happy! '</div> <div> Millions of people who can count up to ten and back to zero flocked to major cities all over the globe for that obsessive once-in-forty-generations moment, when all four digits of a universal calendar year change.  They put on the biggest collective show of fireworks in the world and there was hardly one reported incident of any terrorist prank or bomb explosion.</div> <div> In America about 72% of the public stayed home, with or without a Y2K surplus of food, water and supplies large enough to aid a Third World country.  56% watched the coming of 2000 on television, generally in the form of a ball dropping in New York's Times Square.  Some of us may have tuned in as early as 06:00 Eastern Standard Time on 31 December 31 to witness the earth shedding its virtual 1999 skin, timezone after timezone, as covered by various TV stations. Now we have to live with years starting with 2 and followed by a 0. Also, for the first time, Roman numeral copyright dates are reduced to no less than two letters, beginning with MM.</div> <bR> <div> Which now brings us to the question of three decimal words we've been dwelling on these past few years: decade, century, millennium.</div> <div> When it comes to man-made religious calendar systems, at which end of the time scale does a year ending with zero <I>really</I> belong to?  Does 2000 belong, as decreed by a loud majority, in the 21st Century and in the Third Millennium?  Or is it actually the last year of the last (tenth) decade of the last century of the Second Millennium?</div> <div> To say that a full two thousand years have now passed in this calendar would technically depend on the hypothetical existence of a year marked '0' between 1 BC and 1 AD.  But early Christians would have established their calendar years with Roman numerals, centuries before Arabic numerals were introduced to the West.  And no Roman numerical counterpart of zero existed, either as a symbol or in concept.  So any contemporary purist would argue that the official beginning of the Third Millennium / 21st Century begins on Monday, January 1st, 2001: still another 366 days away from this last New Year's Day.</div> <div> Yet as this calendar was originally meant to stand for the birth anniversary of a revered human being, no one can truly say it was <I>ever</I> perfectly accurate to begin with.  It might have helped if the dates of Christmas and New Year's Day were one and the same.  Whoever calibrated this calendar in the first place was probably off by four years based on current thinking, making Jesus Christ two thousand years old in December 1996.  2000 has therefore become nothing more than just a number in an artificial, arbitrary sequence: a mere representation of the age of Christ.</div> <bR> <div> And given the choice between 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 as the midnight hour to mark the turn of all three units of time in this calendar, the world just couldn't wait one more year.  The notion of two, three or all four digits advancing is, simply put, more attractive, more fascinating and exciting.</div> <div> Consequently, all years ending with 9 become automatically labelled as the 'last' of some period divisible by 10.  In particular, 1999 has been the year in which each digit of 9 overshadows the next, the last 9 being almost lost in this retrospective 'millenniamania'.</div> <div> But new millennium or not, all we wanted to do was have some fun, and so we put on the best damn expensive party anyone has ever seen one.  Hundreds of millions of people participated directly, and hundreds of millions more did so vicariously, while others still were merely in charge of management, organisation, presentation, leadership and security.</div> <div> The rest of us on this planet spent the night like they would have any other night, despite all the hype, missing out on the full enjoyment of this phenomenon, either by choice or by unfavourable circumstance.  There were some people in situations so unpredictable, like being stabbed within centimetres of their life by a bedroom intruder, or being held hostage on a hijacked commercial airline flight in Afghanistan.  Some made surprise choices in life, such as resigning a presidency to a chosen successor. Some were determined to make plans for the eve of the true millennial year, while others just got on with their lives.</div> <div> Some of us, who were around just before or during this transitional period, are no longer with us today, dying immediately following the event.  A few of us are old enough to have lived and remembered life as it was at least a century ago while other newer faces just started to breathe air for the first time around the stroke of midnight.</div> <bR> <div> And then it's time to return to work.  Time to check up on the Y2K bug, which has turned out to be more of a firecracker than an atomic explosion on the world of computers.  Time to make sense of life in a new period of a thousand years, after three zeroes have failed for the second time to produce any prophesised final battle between good and evil. Time to make resolutions not just for a new year, but a new decade, a new century, even a new millennium. Time for the world to sober up and remember that there is still hunger, war, hate, environmental destruction and maybe an asteroid with our name on it.  Time to return to normal life as we know it.</div> <bR> <div> But almost everyone will remember having globally observed, in one way or another, the most famous midnight hour in human history to circumnavigate the world.</div> <div> So welcome to the year 2000 AD.  Let's enjoy it while it lasts.</div> <div> And in advance, as the case may be, welcome to the 21st Century and the Third Millennium. "</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>