1. Oil reaches $100 a barrel.
2. Pakistan falls apart - martial law is imposed & assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
3. Burmese people rebel against the Junta.
4. Nicolas Sarkozy is elected French President.
5. Al Gore & the IPCC win the Nobel Peace Prize & the framework has been laid for a new global warming agreement after Kyoto.

Top 5 less important events

1. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows is released.
2. Windows Vista is launched.
3. Apple iPhone makes its debut.
4. Alan Johnston is kidnapped in Gaza.
5. Airbus A380 makes its maiden passenger flight.

Top 5 sporting events

1. South Africa beat England in the Rugby World Cup Final 2007 at Stade de France.
2. Kimi Raikkonen wins the Formula F1 championship, just one point ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
3. England are out of Euro 2008 finals.
4. AC Milan beat Liverpool in the UEFA Champions League Finals.
5. Man Utd win the English Premier League 2006-2007.

Top 5 movies (Hollywood)
1. Transformers
2. Ratatouille
3. 28 Weeks Later
4. The Golden Compass
5. The Bourne Ultimatum or I Am Legend (tied)

Top 5 movies (Bollywood)
1. Bhool Bhulaiyaa
2. Heyy Babyy
3. Dhol
4. Jab We Met
5. Taare Zameen Par

Top 5 songs
1. What I’ve Done - Linkin Park
2. Shadow of the Day - Linkin Park
3. Beautiful Girls - Sean Kingston
4. 1973 - James Blunt
5. What I Want - Bob Sinclar presenting Fireball

Top 5 songs (Bollywood)
1. Bhool Bhulaiyaa (Remix) - Bhool Bhulaiyaa
2. Tum Se Hi - Jab We Met
3. Labon Ko - Bhool Bhulaiyaa
4. Saathiya - Darling
5. Beete Lamhein & Mausam - The Train (tied)

Top 5 gadgets
1. iPhone
2. Nokia N95 8GB
3. Dell Latitude XT Tablet
4. Wii
5. Microsoft Surface

Top 5 cars
1. Audi R8
2. Lamborghini Reventón
3. Nissan GT-R Proto
4. Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano
5. BMW E92 M3

Top 5 games
1. Halo 3
2. Need for Speed - ProStreet
3. Call of Duty 4
4. Crysis
5. God of War II or Gears of War (tied)

2007 wasn’t a great year… for studies.

After an almost 10-month holiday, I joined the University of Mauritius. But before that there were the HSC results, in which I scrapped only a single B. Nevertheless, it was enough for me to grab a scholarship at UOM & enrol into the Mechatronics course. Everyone said it was the toughest course at UOM… & now I know why…

2007 - Year of blogging!
I started blogging not on dial-up… but on GPRS! Yes, just at the beginning of February, Cell+ GPRS was made free! & I managed to make it work on PC! It wasn’t the best of all connections - the 64kbps was highly unreliable & I had to permanently charge my mobile – but for someone who has used 12h of dial-up all his life, it was incredible!
Just like everyone else, I discovered the greatest online money-making machine - Google AdSense. I decided to setup a supposedly niche entertainmentech blog & try to get a few clicks. It wasn’t good enough - only 2-3 clicks per week (i.e. I used to click on my own ads).
But then Cell+ updated their network & GPRS was no longer free! I couldn’t keep up running my blog on dial-up… It was time to move on… to broadband!
Two weeks later I got my 128k unlimited connection… But it was the broadband that really revived my blogging! I started taking blogging seriously & it was then that I discovered the real pleasure behind blogging…
With 150 posts (this is the 151st), 249 comments & 39000 visitors, in over 7 months of existence… that’s not too bad. I also had Pagerank 3 but Google removed it after I signed up with PayPerPost.

2007 - Year of broadband!

That’s the best thing that has happened in 2007 for me - I got a broadband unlimited connection! Although 128kbps is actually the minimum broadband speed in the world, it’s the best I could afford (although it’s still a bit tough on the income, with a Rs. 1000+ telephone bill). Actually it was a battle between My.T or Wanadoo ADSL? My.T was 256kbps at the same price but the speed wasn’t constant - so I opted for a connection that is much more reliable.
A 700MB DVD-RIP movie takes 15 hours to download… it’s not that fast, but I’m happy with what I have. (However powering up my PC for 18 hours a day does have its toll on the electricity bill…)
& it was also the year when I managed to use a 512kbps connection… at UOM. Top speed 70KB/s.

2007 - Harry Potter & the iPhone

2007 was supposed to be the year where book seven, the Deathly Hallows would bring to an end the epic Harry Potter series. The book was OK, it wasn’t the baffling ending everyone expected… but the entire spotlight was stolen by Apple’s iPhone. Love it or hate it, the iPhone is the product of the year. & I also think it’s the flop of the year. If Americans weren’t so Apple-crazy, I bet the iPhone would have been just another product…

2007 - Windows Vista?

If there was anything that was second to the iPhone this year, in terms of hype, it would have been Windows Vista. There goes another flop product… Microsoft focused more on eye-candy, & less on system compatibility, system stability & usage. The result - a Windows that can only be installed when SP2 is released!

2007 - Year of inflation!
No, I’m not talking about Zimbabwe’s 10000% inflation, but of inflation in Mauritius. Oil prices have reached record highs, meaning every other commodity has increased - bread, transport, gas, etc. There have been shortages (or “pénuries”) of essential things like milk, processed seeds, iron bars (essential for the booming construction industry). Although everywhere around the world, prices are following the same trend, but Mauritians have been the hardest hit. With the ongoing drought, vegetable prices will definitely increase next year & there is an incoming flour shortage & price hike.
Everything is getting expensive & we’re getting poorer…

2007 - Year of Global Warming

With the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Al Gore & the IPCC, the global warming cause has been given a huge boost this year. Yes, everyone is now aware of how an inconvenient truth global warming is… but are we really doing anything to tackle it? Just as the Bali conference clearly showed, we are just laying a timeframe to reduce this & that… but no carbon emissions reduction has actually been implemented? & btw all those extreme climatic conditions like hurricane Dean, tropical cyclone Sidr & floods in Europe have not been caused by Global Warming… as we all know, they are just natural disasters.

MMVII - the year of violence

If there’s one thing that is in “vogue” this year, it’s not the iPhone, but suicide bombing. More than any other year, 2007 has been among one of the bloodiest of all. Suicide bombings, booby-trapped cars, massacres & shootings. The Virginia Tech massacre was well publicised but let’s not forget the one that happened in Finland as well. African countries are still in war, the situation in Iraq & Afghanistan has deteriorated, riots everywhere, uprisings & political crackdown, assassination, bombings in major cities… either way violence has increased & the security situation has worsen everywhere in the world.
For Mauritius, it’s NO COMMENTS.

All ends of the years seem to repeat themselves. In 2004, there was the Indian Ocean tsunami. In 2005, riots in Australia & the Chad-Sudan war. In 2006, 11 bombs detonated in Bangkok. & this year, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by a suicide-bomber….
A perfect end of year without any deaths? Dream on…

What to expect of 2008?
Apart from more violence, I’ll prefer focusing on the more positive things… 2008 will be the International Year of Planet Earth, but I don’t predict any important step will be taken towards combating Global Warming.

There will be the Euro 2008 & Beijing 2008 Olympics - I’m sure the number ‘8’ will be very lucky to the Chinese.
2008 will also be the year of Russian & US Presidential Elections… In Russia I expect a one-man-show… but in the US, I hope history will be made - either the first black president or a woman president! Either way, they’ll definitely be more environmentally-conscious that the current president…

2007 is over. Let’s now welcome 2008!

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
- Albert Einstein