In the early days of the Internet (when we still called it the Information Superhighway and computers made funny sounds when the phone cable was inserted), I would occasionally send a mass email to all my friends and family (of those who had email addresses and of those, of whose email address I was in possession). Unfortunately for those friends and family, the occasional spam from Dave was replaced and overshadowed by spam from strangers, with promises of enlargements, riches from Nigerian princes, and offers of a good time, all of which I could not provide.
Spam filters notwithstanding, I offer once again, after a ~15-year hiatus, a message of hope and cheer, juxtaposed against sardonic musings and trite ruminations.
And yes, end-of-year "2023 highlights" articles from all our favorite magazines are coming out, so I thought I'd get ahead and, in exuberance over the anticipation of 2024, will simply ignore the last half of December 2023 and what amazing things could yet happen before the end of the year. Fortunately, nothing ever happens in December...
- December 1989, fall of the Berlin Wall
- December 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor
- December 1891, toilet paper was invented
- December 0800, Charlemagne (who is my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandpa - that's a true story) became emperor.
For all my friends and family (and those others I'm connected with on facebook which defy simple categorization), here is the "YEAR IN REVIEW", with some key lessons learned.
Filled with hope and promise of emerging from COVID-19, in fact, we did. "We" meaning the world, all of us mostly. And with the microchips of Bill Gates et. al. firmly implanted in us from our multiple vaccinations, we can move boldly forward as creatures of subservience to the saving graces of Big Pharma and the secret government elites that only the elite of right-wing conspiratorialists know anything at all about, but will tell us all again and again if only we'd listen.
Also noteworthy, Liza and I went camping in Pahang and met the real-life Jesse.
We also started the year with an amazing session around the golf course. Her score was 56 and mine was 58! (on the front 9 - yes to you non-golfers, those are lousy scores, and Liza won that round)
My learning for the month: Gotta work on my short game. (that's a golf term)
In February you may recall that China sent some spy balloons and UFOs (officially) into US territory to assist with US Air Force in their target practice. I believe the Chinese were paying tribute to the 40th anniversary of Nena's one-hit wonder 99 Luftballons ("99 Red Balloons" for those who can't imagine helium balloons in any other color), which is a song about a war which ensued following 99 red helium balloons being mistaken for missiles. Fortunately, the Chinese were saving money, releasing only a few balloons, falling far short of the requisite 99 necessary to start a world war.
Sensing the impending doom and the need to fend for ourselves, Liza and I expended our hydroponics array to include an aquaponics installation. You may laugh now... but when the world runs out of fresh kale, WE will have the last laugh.
Lesson of the month: Those were the days.
ChatGPT (March 14) was formally launched by OpenAI, enabling fake news and false statistics to be communicated with correct English grammar.
Lesson of the Month: Seeing how I was unable to try out ChatGPT until April due to its high volume of traffic, I learned that IT departments haven't learned anything about handling a high volume of traffic.
One more observation for a slow month: it was interesting to note that Ukranian "David" appears to be gaining some wins against Russian "Goliath." I take no personal connection to this conflict, other than to see the representative namesake of mine withstanding the onslaught of the representative namesake of my namesake's representative arch-enemy. That's all. No personal connection.
While trying unsuccessfully to create an account on ChatGPT to see what everyone else was talking about, Liza was able to snap a shot of the moon-Venus occultation.
In April, the largest Starship ever in the history of Starfleet was launched (April 20), and this record will stand until the year 2245, nearly to the day when the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) will be launched. As the SpaceX rocket blasted off and everything around it, it managed to reach a pre-1940's unprecedented height of 90 miles.
Then I got the distinct pleasure of reading comment after comment to the tune of "failure" "failure" "failure". Naysayers should be sent to a history concentration camp, where they can concentrate on learning the lessons of history, where we see again and again, every major achievement being beset by failures along the way. Among this group, the award for the biggest idiot goes to an obscure congresswoman in California, Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), in a committee hearing with the head of NASA, she said (this is a true quote), "I must say, when I saw that rocket blow up, I thought, thank God there's no people on board. Sometimes the lowest bidder is not always the best choice." Thank you Zoe, that was a test flight and SpaceX paid for it.
Liza and I hosted Malaysia's only Starship Launch Party to watch the big event. I have just one thing to say: thank God we were not on board that flight.
Lesson of the Month: Don't ride on test rockets.
On May 6, 2023, England began the long and tedious task of converting every royal reference from "Her Majesty" to "His Majesty".
Lesson Learned: TV cameras have much improved since the last coronation.
We also added more fish to the aquaponics, in case tilapia are ever hard to find.
In June, the French Open Women's Tennis saw defending champion Iga Swiatek of Poland beat Czech's Karolina Muchova, for her third French and 4th Grand Slam title. Also in June, the Denver Nuggets beat the Miami Heat to win its first ever Championship series. Denver's MVP was C Nikola Jokic.
Lesson Learned: I need to learn to pronounce Eastern European names.
For the past year or so, Liza and I rented a beach condo in Port Dickson. Closing out that stay, here was one of our last scenes:
Since COVID-19 was now a thing of the past, I decided to get out and about, meet some new people blah blah. I found a club in town which featured the word "entrepreneur" in its title. Thought it must be a French club. The weekly event is held at a Mexican restaurant. So I showed up. After looking up the meaning of the word "entrepreneur" in my online dictionary, I realized I'm nothing of the sort. They let me join anyway. It has been great fun.
Lesson of the month: It's the entrepreneurial spirit that matters.
Back to sports - for the first time in very recent history, the US women's soccer team lost a World Cup title. In angst and disgust over the World Cup result, we threw some soccer legs into the fire.
Lesson Learned: Fire is not a double-edged sword. A double-edged sword is dangerous on both sides. Fire, however, both enables (warmth, cooked food, regeneration of seeds, sterilization) and disables (kills, turns things to carbon, hurts really bad when touched).
September kicked off the Asian Games. Upon completion, China got the most medals, at 383, and Korea (the good one) getting only 190. Malaysia got some medals too, 32, which was more than 2x the next country on the list, Qatar (not an Asian country) with 14.
Country and number of medals:
China = 383
Korea = 190
Malaysia = 32
Qatar = 14
Not stopping there, I continued an analysis of medals. Of course, bigger countries would get more medals than smaller countries. What if we analyzed that on a population-adjusted basis?
Country and number of medals per million population:
Qatar = 5.2
Korea = 3.7
Malaysia = 1.0
China = 0.3
What has emerged is a kind of David and Goliath comparison, with the smallest state in the group outperforming the largest state.
This analysis was brought to you by someone who has worked in both consulting and politics, the two industries which are most well-suited for this type of numerical manipulation.
Lesson Learned: There is an Asian Games.
Around the same time as the Asian Games, Liza's mother and sister came for a visit to Malaysia. I had to tell them the Asia Games were not in Malaysia this time. We had some fun with road trips, BBQ and whatever Mothers-in-law like to do when visiting their daughter and her husband. (A shoutout to Connie: "FCPJ" - that's an inside joke, the rest of you will be left wondering. No, I'm not going to tell).
Well, I'm talking about major world events here. Another all-out war in the Middle East. David and Goliath would be a rather ironic and inappropriate comparison. October was a very bad month for the Middle East.
Lesson Learned: Nothing is being learned.
For me, however, I learned to drive all over again at an off-road driver training course.
A closeup of the result:
Big Event: There were a few days where fire slightly ceased in the Middle East.
Lesson Learned: Nothing... absolutely nothing is being learned here.
Closer to home, Liza and I enjoyed a long weekend during the Festival of Lights, during which we wished everyone peace and joy to friends and family. We also took the long weekend to enjoy the peace and serenity of the mountains of Malaysia, and another peaceful round of golf.
We also enjoyed watching the violently-failed rocket company SpaceX (the one which has sent more future space junk to space in 2023 than all the other of the world's rocket agencies combined) send their semi-successful 2nd flight of the great Starship rocket to a height which was also completely unprecedented before the 1940's.
People ask me, why do I take such a fascination with these launches? I don't know, it's just a hobby really. In salute to the previous generation who lived the historically unprecedented thrill of watching the first moon landing, I could watch every rocket launch of the year and still not achieve the satisfaction of having witnessed live on television that one event. Regardless of the historical comparison, watching 17 million pounds of thrust blasting downwards is really cool.
Here's the scene, watching the launch from our campsite on top of the mountain.
Here's a picture of our Diwali weekend getaway: me and Liza on our visit to fake Germany (or Switzerland? ...Lichtenstein? Couldn't quite put my finger on it), golfing in the mountains, and our hotel stay in the mountains.
Lesson of the Month: These are the days.
Which brings us to December.
December is shaping up to be an interesting month. My brother in law and his partner added a new boy to the world just a couple days ago, congratulations Nino and Spencer!
One last camping trip for the year...
Liza and I hanging out with senior golf pros in the Philippines...
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and to those who do and to all the rest, Happy New Year!
