As we come to the close of the ‘Noughties’, it’s time to wish all my friends and family a happy New Year 2010.  I was reading the paper this morning, and I think this quote summed up the year perfectly:

“(2009 was) like shock therapy, where people really change when something bad happens to them,” said accountant Conrad Jordaan, 35, as he enjoyed cigarettes and coffee Thursday at an outdoor cafe in London. “It will be interesting to see if it changes peoples’ behavior long term.”

I was born in the seventies.  Gerald Ford was president, the Cold War was very much alive, and I remember Star Wars, the Rubiks Cube, and listening to the music that we call ‘classic rock’ today.  It was a transitional generation, moving out the troubles of the 1960s – racial tensions, the Vietnam war and a general feeling of rebellion, and into something different.  My parents owned a yellow station wagon with chrome bumpers and ‘woody’ side panelling, and my mother frequently dressed me in highly-flammable, brightly-coloured synthetic clothes.  I was part of the generation raised on Sesame Street.  The highlight of my week was eating sugary cereal and watching the cartoons on a Saturday morning, having transformed the sofa into a fort.

Roll on the heady 80s.  Hostile takeovers, shoulder pads, Reaganomics, dodgy hairdos and even dodgier music, this was the ‘Me, Me, Me!’ generation.  These were my formative childhood years, marked by some amazing inventions like the mainstream adoption of computers and the launch of the first space shuttle, but also by some big new threats: the escalating Cold War, the outbreak of AIDS, Nancy Reagan telling us to ‘Just Say No’ and the Columbia exploding and falling back to earth.  We bought our first VCR, and later, a CD player.  My mother bought her first cellphone, the size of a purse.

The 90s brought high school and college.  I left the US and moved to Europe.  I jumped on the internet superhighway in the early 90s when it was barely a two-lane road, and never looked back.  If I think about the inventions that had the most impact on my life, the internet is surely one of them.  I got my first job just as the whole world moved to casual dress Fridays.  I watched the Democrats get elected into the White House the first time I was old enough to remember.  I watched the US get involved in Iraq and OJ Simpson get acquitted.  The cellphone was still analogue, but it was now the size of a transistor radio.

I had just started my professional career as the ‘Noughties’ arrived, and everyone was looking for the next big thing.  Everyone you spoke to was an entrepreneur, ready to make a million on the internet. The stock markets shot up every day, and it seemed every idiot with a stockbroker was making a fortune. 

I was working in New Orleans on 9/11, and I saw the coverage of what was happening in New York from my hotel room.  I tried to call home to let people know I was okay, but the lines were blocked.  It was the first time I could remember having an overwhelming urge to jump on a plane and get straight home.

In my industry, we shed loads of jobs in the wake of the burst of the internet bubble.  Friends and family lost their jobs, but at least the payouts were good, severance packages generous.  People took six-month vacations and then picked up where they left off.  When the real estate bubble burst, more jobs were lost – but this time, without the generous severance packages and with unemployment rates still hovering near 10%, the short-term prospects aren’t great.

But we have our health and the prospect of a new decade ahead of us.  As we enter our ‘teens’, I think we’re due another transitional decade, influenced by the unbridled optimism of the 80s, the huge technical advances of the 90s, the geopolitical shifts of the Noughties, and the sobering reality and lessons of the last few years.  Each time I visit Asia, I’m aware that the world order is changing, and that the whole world is becoming more interconnected.

I’m excited by what the next 10 years have in store, and ready to face whatever may come.

Best wishes to you and yours for a very happy, health, safe and prosperous 2010!