My extended New Year celebration is over and I’m supposed to return to normally today. But I don’t want to. The past week has been one nearly free of television and newspapers, which meant it became easier to ignore the topics I usually discuss in this journal. The few times I read or watched the news, I learned about more casualties in Gaza and Israel. While waiting for the plane home, I heard a BBC voice saying about 600 people have died in the war so far. And all this pain and suffering because Hamas refuses to negotiate a new peace deal with Israel! Is the rocket rain over southern Israel really worth the price? I know the question only makes sense to secular people who value humanity more than divinity—but still! Can’t someone slap some sense into the Gaza leadership?

Well, a new year has begun and I will continue to share my thoughts with whoever wants to read them. Aqurette.com has been my online home for nine years this coming April, and the saved archives goes back to 2005. I looked through it the other day, and I must admit that when reading some of the stuff I wrote a couple of years ago, I was a tiny bit embarrassed. But I think long-time blogging does that to all writers. It’s not unlike the traditional diary. Certain ideas that seemed so clever a few years ago appear infantile and stupid now. People you admired are suddenly bores nearly forgotten. But this is what my life has been like the past few years, and this journal reflects that. My ambition is to let it do so for at least another year.

By the way, I will always remember New Year’s Eve 2008 as the day I discovered the Manic Street Preachers. Twenty years after everyone else did, but better late than never.

Who would have thought a song about the Spanish Civil War could be so catchy?