February 11 – Arab Spring: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns after widespread protests calling for his departure, leaving control of Egypt in the hands of the military until a general election can be held.
March 11 – A 9.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the east of Japan, killing 15,840
April 29 – An estimated two billion people watch the wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton
May 1 – U.S. President Barack Obama announces that Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of the militant group Al-Qaeda, has been killed during an American military operation in Pakistan.
June 4 – Chile's Puyehue volcano erupts, causing air traffic cancellations across South America, New Zealand, Australia and forcing over 3,000 people to evacuate.
July 22 – 76 people are killed in twin terrorist attacks in Norway after a bombing in the Regjeringskvartalet
August 20–28 – Arab Spring and the Libyan civil war: In the Battle of Tripoli, Libyan rebels took control the nation's capital effectively overthrowing the government of Muammar Gaddafi
September 5 – India and Bangladesh sign a pact to end their 40-year border demarcation dispute
October 20 Arab Spring and the Libyan civil war: Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is killed in Sirte
November 26 – The Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, the most elaborate Martian exploration vehicle to date, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center. It is slated to land on Mars on August 5, 2012
December 15 – The United States formally declares an end to the Iraq War
It's been a busy old year.
My updates have been few and far between these days, things have been busy in the smaller world too. It's almost Christmas and I am scheduled to make the journey down South to visit what remains of my kin.
I am not replacing them as quickly as they are vanishing.
My wife Alison and my son Samael will be joining me as we endure the journey. Thankfully there is no snow yet, so at least one of the perils we would face looks likely to be out of the way. The other, of course, is assholes. Asshole drivers are always out there, waiting to turn Christmas into a funeral for someone, and I feel a deep dread at the prospect of having to travel from one end of this little island nation to the other constantly on the lookout for the maniac who got his or her driving licence out of last years Christmas cracker.
Wicket will be spending the festive season in kennels, I admit to feeling some guilt about leaving her behind as she is most definately another child..perhaps not first born, but first adopted and I would have liked her to be around to sit with us and channel hop from one absolutely rubbish programme to another on Christmas day...and Boxing day...and possibly right up until the new year when the regular rubbish programming returns.
Sam now has two teeth, both at the bottom and has moved on to rusks and baby rice. I have no idea how I have produced such a smiley happy child given the effect the last 40 odd years have had on my general demeanour but he posesses a smile that could melt the polar ice caps. No matter how bloody awful the rest of the year may have been..his arrival has definately taken the edge off it.
The financil chaos that the world is apparently in has not had any real impact on me or mine..or anyone I know, and if it wasn't for the news constantly telling me how bad things are, I'd probably have been completely unaware of it. I do not pretend to understand any of it. I also do not pretend to care.
Whilst the greater planet has been exploding, flooding, burning and killing with gay abandon..the rest of us have been getting on with the routine of every day life. It's almost like there are two worlds..the one I live in, and the one on the TV. I would worry about the sort of world Sam is going to grow up in, but so long as the two stay apart from eachother I doubt he'll have to worry about much.
Lots of 'Bad' people are dead now that the year is drawing it's last breaths, but I am not sure that the removal of said bad people will not just lead to the installment of new bad people. In all honesty, given the power of the media..I am not even absolutely sure who the bad people really are these days. We only get one side of the story. Our troops come home in body bags as heroes and we bury them with full military honours and the required respect. I wonder if this happens over there in the places where the 'Bad people' live. Do they not have heroes? Are we truly fighting on the side of right for the right reasons? or am I just being spoon fed whatever it is I am meant to believe?
That's perhaps a little deep for the usual post, so i'm gona leave it there. Christmas is here, and none of my familly got shot or blown up or bombed or placed in Guantanamo bay or anything. None of them were taken by a tsunami or a volcanic erruption. In my world the people I love just grow old and eventually stop being there.
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