NYE 2012
Having a night in.
Just noticed my new year’s resolutions from two years ago — given I’m not really in the mood to write a new set, let’s review these old ones, shall we?
- Teach my kids chess — I did have one go at this, but didn’t push it. Should try again.
- Try to declutter the house — This is an ongoing project. I really couldn’t say if I’ve made a huge amount of progress in the past two years.
- Get Jeremy into his own bedroom — we finally got this done about a month ago.
- Get all of us more exercise — yep; sometime back then I instituted a nightly walk after dinner, and except when it’s pouring with rain, we do it every night.
- Write a computer game (even a simple one) to get more enthused again about programming — Nup, though work has had me doing more coding in the last 18 months.
- Replace the TV with something shiny, flat, and digital — DONE! (I got this done back then, two years ago)
- Have a more regular bedtime — kinda sorta, could do better.
- Plan a Proper Holiday — got two in: Brisbane in 2011, Perth in 2012
- Not let any gift vouchers expire — pretty sure I’ve achieved this since 2010
- Have a birthday party to make up for my lack of a 40th — had a bunch of people for drinks and dinner at a pub; twas a good night
If I can’t think of new resolutions, perhaps in the next year I’ll keep going through this list.
For our family, 2012 brought both joy and sadness. Hope your 2013 brings more of the former than the latter. Happy New Year.
How many people watched the fireworks in different cities?
Happy new year. This was the view last night from Footscray, looking along the Maribyrnong towards the City. By the time they’d finished, there was something of a smoke haze. (From where we were, we couldn’t see the spire fire.)
I was curious how many people turn out to watch fireworks for New Year’s Eve in different cities around the world. Here’s some figures I found looking around on Google News, and watching SBS News.
(I’ve tried to stick to post-event figures, not expected attendances, and have only used cities where an actual hard estimate was given, not a vague one like “hundreds of thousands”. Got a cite for other figures? Let me know.)
Obviously in the northern hemisphere it’s winter, and cold weather would put people off. But watching the footage and reading the articles, it’s clear that these events are major drawcards for tourists as well as locals.
In many cities NYE is obviously a major event — including in Melbourne — and takes a lot of organising of fireworks, street closures, emergency services and transport.
It’s funny to think that just twenty years ago, there was no official marking of New Year’s Eve in Melbourne. I remember going into the city for the countdown in about 1993, waiting for midnight (no fireworks that I recall) then hurriedly catching the last tram home at about 12:05am.
1999 into 2000 was the first time I recall it being a major event, with all-night trams and trains (for the first time?). Then it seemed to get some momentum in terms of crowd numbers, with more and more each year, but the organisation fell short, with no all-night transport except Nightrider until the now infamous 2003-04 debacle.
Since then things have been a lot more organised, and as the city has grown, people have also responded to the event, with about double the crowd last night compared to 2003-04.
Someone made some comments the other day about New Year’s Eve bringing people together, a shared experience that strangers can enjoy together. That might be misty-eyed, but I like the sentiments. Certainly I wished some strangers a happy new year last night.
