Auld Lang Syne

My summer holidays. That was the boring subject of the writing assignment we’d get on September upon going back to school. And with it, the inevitable writer’s block. Well, that’s how I am feeling today. Ironically, because New Year’s Eve provides with plenty of subjects, memories and minutiae for my wandering mind. Let’s see what I can come up with.

As you, faithful reader, should know by now, in this momentous occasion of the end of the first decade of the 21st century I am bedridden and home alone (don’t feel so sorry though, I have a small but very gracious army of chocolate supplying, coffee making, small talk talking friends a phone call away, thank God). Anyway, this very peculiar situation I’m going through provides me with the perfect occasion to reminisce of New Year’s Eves of yore.

I could write about the 1980’s TVE specials, Martes y Trece’s Encarna and the empanadillas sketch and Sabrina's wardrobe malfunction, instant pop culture hits before youtube and its viral videos.

Or my first awkward New Year Eve's parties, boys with ill fitting suits and ties, girls in shiny shoulder padded numbers with big bows and bigger hair… Just me and my fashion impaired friends would give gofugyourself.com material for a year’s worth of bitchy posts. And no, luckily there are no pictures.

Or the realization, once in Marbella, that, apart from the inevitable and heavenly jabugo ham and Sanlúcar shrimps, one could have Korean bbq pork or chicken yakitori as part of the dinner’s menu (sacrilege!).

Or the Geneva year, with the Swiss un-joie de vivre, a bad flu and Dan’s ever-awesome food.

Or, most appropriately, my first holiday in NYC exactly 10 years ago. When the world was supposed to come down in flames because of the Y2K bug (what a great marketing strategy by the IT people); nobody had heard about Al Qaida; Eliansito and Marisleysis (God bless Cuban name creators) were all over the networks; an almost dead Apple computers had just launched these awesome turquoise eggs called iMacs; and the big hit online was Napster…

Who would have thought that in 10 years I’d be watching again the Times Square broadcast from my apartment in Midtown Manhattan. High on vicodin instead of Australian shiraz. With a broken leg instead of a party outfit. And with no hair left on my head but going wild in all the wrong places.

Oh well, too many things to write about and this damn block that just won’t leave me alone. So I think I’ll just let it be, close my eyes and party in my head with Dan, John and Chris like it’s 2000 and I am walking down Christopher Street for the very first time…