2011 New Year Special

This year, I found myself living through the meshing of 2010-2011 at Banff’s Time Square in Mountain Standard Time (Toronto is 2 hours ahead in time and Malaysia, 13). New year's days have always felt surreal to me. "What do you mean that this year is over?" "Who on earth invented the calendar system?"
Oh yeah, the Romans did.

Today, this temporal length of surrealism was spent with Jae Yong and In Sung among a group of hyper-enthusiastic people from every here and there around the planet, fuelled by booze and the burning desire to explode their gutts out with fun despite the extreme weather at -29 degree Celsius.

At about 8 minutes to 12am, a group of Australians banzai-ed to the name of their motherland, 'AUS-TRAY-LEE-A!' This was shortly ensued by a group of young punks catching on with 'SASS-KA-TOON!' attempting to out-banzai the Ausies. Out of no where, people started whipping out bottles booze from their bags, pockets and coats, taking the pub, bar and club to the streets (Whoot! Whoot!). One lady in particular flipped out a bottle of champaign from her purse and shook it real hard. By the time she was done shaking, the crowd had already distant themselves from her, leaving her and her friends standing in the middle of a 3-4 meters radius circle while she pulled a semi-successful champaign shower.

3 minutes to midnight, the fireworks show started, which made me wonder if the clock tower at Time Square was 3 minutes behind or if someone had lit the explosives prematurely. Then, somewhere among the crowd, folks started singing Wonderwall, the new Aud Lang Syne of the modern/post-modern global society.

The countdown was not honoured.

It felt like this year hasn't begun.

I had fun though :)