In Loving Memory, 2003-2006

To celebrate the coming of a new year, we had take-out thin-crust pizza at my place to start. Then at 9:30pm, after watching a Jackie Chan movie at home, we took a short walk from the apartment to a Starbucks near our intended point for the Taipei 101 fireworks. With the other 500,000 people.

It was there, standing in the middle of the intersection of 信義路 (HsinYi Road) and 基隆路 (Keelung Road) -- which by then wasclosed off to vehicle traffic -- that we stood ground with our Smirnoff Ices and watched 188 seconds of fireworks spewing off the (current) world's tallest building. Of course, we hadn't considered that the wind that evening was coming at us, so some of the later bursts were obscured from our view by the smoke. Plus, little bits of ash and fireworks paper snowing upon us afterwards.

But not everyone made it into 2007. My faithful companion of 3.5 years, who's travelled with me to three continents and countless events, finally refused to wake up from her afternoon nap that day. Try as I might, I couldn't get my S400 to work again.

Happy New Year to ya.