Decade from hell

Phew!!! It's over, isn't it? So where were we ten years ago? We stepped into the new millennium fearing that the notorious Y2K bug would bring in a digital apocalypse: computers that run trains, planes, hospitals, satellites, banks etc, would collectively commit suicide.

Computer wizards donned the role of astrologers; disaster would strike at midnight if you didn't upgrade your network, they predicted.

But 01-01-2000 came and went without a glitch. The jury is still out on what prevented the so-called millennium bug from wreaking havoc.

Our infatuation with everything digital did not end with the bug.The age of dotcom peak and bust saw paupers becoming gazillionaires, only to quickly lose it all in the Silicon Valley madness.

At the start of this decade, the 9/11 incident that shook the world was still several months away and Osama Bin Laden existed only in the CIA files. In the September of 2001, the collapse of the Twin Towers left a 16-acre hole in Manhattan and drove a wedge between the followers of the world's two biggest religions - Christianity and Islam.

Around that time, deep in the belly of Mother Earth, the biggest natural disaster in centuries was taking shape. And no one had any inkling about it.

It struck at a time when the world was grappling with the dotcom bust and 9/11-Gulf War aftermath. As we prepared to bid adieu to 2004, the tsunami in Sumatra unleashed a devastation that this generation had never seen or imagined before. Horrified people worldwide watched live images of the mini apocalypse unfolding in 11 countries.

According to the United Nations, a total of 3,770 natural disasters were reported worldwide this decade.

No wonder that Time magazine named the 00's as the Decade From Hell: America under attack, war on terror, numerous natural disasters, avian flu, H1N1 - and its mammalian twin H5N1 - and the financial ruin, all in the last 10 years.

Thankfully, all this is behind us. Or is it?

An Australian web contest to coin a name for the next decade threw up 3,500 entries. After six weeks of deliberations, the judges zeroed in on the winning entry for 2010: ONE-DERS, a decade of hope and possible breakthroughs in science and environment.

Humanity trudges on, hoping the next year will be better.

We endured the Decade From Hell and we will pull through the next one.

Here is my wish list for the next decade:

World treaty on emission cuts

Alternative to fossil fuel

Complete global freeze on forest culling

Death or arrest of Osama Bin Laden

Dismantling of Al Qaida and Taliban

Democratic and corruption-free governments in Baghdad and Kabul

Withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan

Lasting truce in South Asia

Phased elimination of nukes

Democracy in China and the Arab world

Do you agree with this list or would like to add something? Write to us at editor@alnisrmedia.com

On the personal front, I have a modest resolution for the next year: stop smoking and fit myself into a pair of 30-inch Diesel denims. Now, is that a tall order?

 - The author is the News Editor of XPRESS