The noughties are almost gone for ever. But what a decade it's been. It began on 1st January 2000 which was supposed to be the day of the Millennium Bug which in turn was believed to cause the end of the world, a nuclear catastrophe or, at the very least, a malfunction of electronic devices.
As we now know, there was no Armageddon and apart from some cases of computers showing the wrong date or machines ceasing to work correctly, nothing else happened.
A big scare that turned out nothing more than this.
Over the next ten years we have seen a huge progress in computers, mobile phones, digital cameras, TV equipment and so on. I remember my first mobile I bought in the early 2000s and I must say by today's standards it would only make you smile. It was called Alcatel One Tough Easy DB :)
No one in 2000 could predict all the things that would happen in the course of the next ten years. And quite a lot has happened in the first decade of the 21st century:
- Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube dominated the internet
- mobile phones, MP3 players and digital cameras became commonplace
- Windows Me (2000), XP (2001), Vista (2007) and 7 (2009) were released
- terrorist attacks in New York (2001), Washington (2001), Bali (2002)Madrid (2004), London (2005) and a countless number of other places
- heatwave swept across Europe (2003)
- earthquakes (2008), (2009), hurricanes (2005), cyclones (2008) and tsunamis (2004)
- mad cow disease (2003), SARS (2003), avian flu (2007) and swine flu (2009)
- climate change
- Olympic Games in Sydney (2000), Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008)
- enlargement of the EU (2004), (2007)
- introduction of the euro banknotes and coins (2002) and eurozone enlargement to Slovenia(2007), Cyprus and Malta (2008) and Slovakia (2009)
- appointment of the first president of the EU (2009)
- wars in Afghanistan (2001) and in Iraq (2003) began
- pope JP2 died (2005)
- credit crunch (2007) and recession (2009)
- and many, many more
The world truly is a different place compared to what it was just ten years ago.
For me too the noughties have been a busy period; in the last ten years I have:
- attended High School and finished it
- passed my Matura
- moved away from home
- gone to university
- had two relationships
- lived in Toruń, Gloucestershire and Glasgow
- stopped believing in God
- got my first flat
- voted in elections for the first time
- bought my first laptop, digital camera, mobile phone, MP3 player
- opened a bank account
- started smoking
- flown for the first time
- started learning English
- hitchhiked
- come of age
- been sued
- got my first job
- started losing hair (unverified and hope not true!)
- visited many beautiful places
- met lots of people and made some friends
- got ten years older
More here: A portrait of the decade by the BBC
7 comments:
Oh yeah, that was one hell of a decade :) I can't believe all this happened in just 10 years! I'm thinking of Wikipedia, Google... I can't imagine my life without them :)
You've been sued?
Yeh, I have. The case is actually still ongoing so I don't want to talk about before it ends but be sure I will write a word or two about it once it's finished and I'm a free man (as opposed to a prisoner :P).
About Google and Wikipedia, I couldn't live without them either. Without these and many other things that the decade has been nice enough to give us.
Nie chce byc tutaj wiecznym malkontentem, ale wydaje mi sie ze roku 2000 nie powinno sie liczyc, bo to jeszcze wiek XX :)
Ale sam w sumie nie jestem pewien...
Mnie bardziej zainteresowal punkt: "stopped believing in God". Przeciez to jest logiczne ze On istnieje. Jak mozna w Niego nie wierzyc? :>
Opierając się na Wikipedii: The 2000s was the decade that started on January 1, 2000 and ended on December 31, 2009.
Poza tym, to chyba 1. stycznia 2000 roku świętowano początek nowego wieku i tysiąclecia, nie?.
Pamiętam, jak niektórzy się burzyli, że przecież Jezus nie urodził się w roku zerowym, tylko pierwszym, itd. ale mnie 2000 i 2010 wydają się być lepsze na pierwsze lata dziesięcioleci.
Dlatego właśnie pisałem, że nie jestem pewien co do dekady :)
Ale co do wieku jestem - wiek XV zaczyna się w roku 1401, tak samo wiek XXI zaczyna się w 2001 :)
W każdym razie - to tylko szczegóły, lepiej powiedz kiedy tu przyjedziesz zobaczyć nasze nowe mieszkanie :P
Ona. Ona istnieje ;)
Ono, ono :P
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