2009 at a Glance

mood : quiet =)
earfood :turn of the century, pete yorn
current location : room
currently reading : urban odyssey kl stories by janet tan & eric forbes


there were time where i'd like to say im busy - something's up, needed some sorting off, blahh , well the truth is im not. looking back made me realized something significantly ; i love(d) finding excuses for myself. as we grow up, things changed. our perception changed. we see the world the way it is more clearly and made us realized that a portion of our opinions given years ago made no sense whatsoever and yet back then, we defended it willingly. now, as mature as we think we are, we still make mistakes along the way - which is pretty much unavoidable, unless you are god but too bad you're not - but at the end of the day, the ends justifies the everything in between. that's something i'd like to think of...

looking back again, i noticed that a shitload happened this year...

january
1st . russia cut off gas to neighbour ukraine over a contract dispute but increased supplies to the customers in the rest of europe.

2nd. actor john travolta's son, jett, 16 died after having a seizure while on a family holiday in the bahamas.

18th. guns fell silent gaza after isreal announced a ceasefire and hamas called a week-long truce of its own. isreal had launched the attack on dec 27th last year.

20th. barack obama, a 47-year-old senator from illinois, took oath of the office as the 44th us president. he surprised many when he was awarded the nobel peace prize in october.

28th. president barack obama scored his first legislative victory in congress with the passage of a us$825 billion economic stimulus package.

february
7th. singer rihanna suffered facial bruises, a bloody nose, a split lip and bite marks on her arms and hands in her confrontation with her boyfriend chris brown. brown was sentenced in august to five years' probation, six months of community service and a year of domestic-violence counseling.

march
4th.  the international criminal court issues a arrest warrant for sudanese president omar hassan ahmad al-bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in darfur.

30th. the trail of former khmer rogue prison chief duch, who oversaw the murders of 15000 people at the tuol sleng torture centre in cambodia, starts.

april 
1st. swine flu or influenza a(h1n1) breaks out in mexico. the virus spread globally and the world health organization in june declares a pandemic. the global death toll at the end of november was 6260.

11th. anti thai government protesters smash their way into the 14th asean summit in pattaya, forcing prime minister abhisit vejjajiva to cancel the meeting and evacuate foreign leades by heliucopters.

11th. susan boyle stunned the audience and judges of a reality tv programme 'britain's got talent' when she appeared as a contestant, singing 'i dreamed a dream' from 'les misreables'. in november, her first album was released and debuted as the no.1 best-selling cd on charts around the globe.

may
9th. jacob zuma,leader of the african national congress, was sworn in as president of south africa.

18th. the tamil tigers admitted defeat in their quarter-century war for separate homeland in sri lanka. tiger chief velupillai prabhakaran was killed by troops.

22th. former south korean president roh moo-hyun, 62, shamed by a bribery scandal that tarnished his image as a 'clean' politician, jumped to his death while hiking in the mountains behind his rural home in bongha.

22th. manmohan singh was re-elected prime minster in india.

june
15th. iran's electoral board concluded that president mahmoud ahmadijenad won re-election, amid huge street protesters from the opposition.

25th. pop star micheal jackson, 50, died of cardiac arrest in los angeles. he had been due to stage of series of comback concerts in july

july
5th. china said 156 people were killed in rioting by muslim uighurs in the restive xinjiang region

17th. two bombs tore through a restaurant and car park in the ritz carlton and jw marriott hotel in jakarta, killing eight and wounded 40.

august
5th. pakistan taliban chief baitullah mehsud was killed with his wife and bodyguards in a us missile attack in south waziristan, pakistan.

5th. two american journalists, laura ling and euna lee, were freed by north korea after months of detention.

11th. myanmar oppositionist aung san suu kyi, 64, was found guilty of harbouring an uninvited american into her house. john yettaw had swam into her lakeside house in may. she was sentenced to imprisonment for three years with hard labour, but it was commuted to further house arrest for 18 months.

24th. scotland's justice secretary defended his decision to free lockerbie bomber abdel basset al-megrahi because he was dying of prostate cancer.

26th. us senator edward m kennedy died after battling a brain tumour. he was 77. kennedy entered the senate in 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by his brother john, who had become president.

september
11th. taiwan's ex-president chen shui-bian was sentenced to life in jail for embezzling state funds, laundering money, accepting bribes and committing forgery.

15th. muntazer al-zaidi, the iraqi protester who threw is shoes at former us president george w bush  in december last year, was released in baghdad. al-zaidi had been sentenced to three years for assaulting a head of state, but had his sentence reduced to a year on appeal.

16th. malaysian-born militant mastermind noordin mohammed top was killed in solo by indonesian security forces.

16th. a united nation fact-finding mission reported  that isreal 'punished and terrorized' civilians in its three-weeks assault on gaza earlier this year.

17th. japanese oppositon leader yukio hatoyama waas elected prime minister. his democratic party of japan defeated the long-governing liberal democratic party.

23rd. libyan leader muammar gaddafi stunned the united nations general assembly when he said, 'all terrorists in the house put your hands up!' during his 90-minute speech.

30th. a series of tsunamis smashed into the pacific island nations of america samoa and western samoa, killing more than 100 people, destroying villages and injuring hundreds.

30th. a strong earthquake of magnitude 7.9 struck off the city of padang on the west coast of sumatra, killing at least 75 and leaving thousands trapped in rubble.

october
26th. the trail of former bosnian serb leader radovan karadzic, 64, charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, started. however, his trial was adjourned to march.


november
2nd. president hamid karzai was declared the winner by default in afghansitan's fraud-marred presidential elcetion. in december, us president us barack obama said he would deploy an additional 30000 troops to afghansitan within weeks.

14th. fugitive former thai premier thaksin shinawatra left cambodia, ending a contentious four-day visit that deepened a diplomatic crisis between the neighbours. thanksin had been appointed economic adviser to the cambodian government.

16thth. australian prime minister kevin rudd issued a historic apology thousands of impoverished british children shipped to australia with the promise of a better life, only to suffer abuse and neglect.

19th. philippine president gloria arroyo stepped down as leader of the ruling party, the lakas-kampi, ahead of the eletions in may 2010.

23rd. samak sundaravej, 74, a tv cooking-show host who briefly served as thailand's prime minister died of liver cancer.

december
8th. five car bombs killed 127 people in baghdad. shattering the calm before the march polls.

13th. italian prime minister silvio berlusconi was admitted to a hospital with broken teeth, a fractured nose and a scarred face after a man with a history of mental problem threw a statuette of the milan cathedral at him as he was signing autographs after of political rally.

18th. a provisional climate-change deal struck by the major powers at the united nations summit in copenhagen fell far short of what poor countries were seeking, leaving months of tough negotiation to come.

24th. moments before celebrating christmas eve mass, pope benedict XVI was knocked to the floor after a woman lunged at him as he walked down the aisle of the main church in the vatican. as security men tried to tackle the woman, both the pope and roger etchegaray, a french cardinal, were knocked to the floor in the confusion, federico lombardi, a vatican spokesman.

source - world report

all in all, 2009 has been relatively a great year. well i did say relatively, because all good things are relative anyway...

happy new year, folks!