Saturday, January 2, 2010

Welcome to a new decade

Unbelievable, we are writing a new decade. It has been 10 years since the computer panic due to the change from 1999 to 2000 and as it turned out it was unfounded. Now we can also ask ourselves, what was significant for the last decade. The 80s and 90s certainly had their specifics, but what made 2000 to 2009 special? And how should we call that decade? Eighties, nineties... all clear but what do we do with two zeros? Some suggestions are "Ohs" (00s), two-thousands (2000s), the noughties (derived from "nought", a word used for zero in many English-speaking countries)... mmmh they all don't sound too catchy.

What comes to my mind first of all when I think of the "noughties" are the big fear of terrorism attacks (Al-Qaeda), discussions about sustainability in particular of energy resources and the credit crunch. It was also the decade of natural disasters, in my opinion, thinking of the tsunami in Thailand and hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. When I look at this spontaneous list it looks like a pretty dark decade. However, it also had good outcome with the election of the first African American president in the US and the first female chancellor in Germany.

Doing some research I found out, that we also celebrated the first landing on Mars and we deprived Pluto of his title "planet" and replaced it by "dwarf planet". How sad is that after being known for a planet for 76 years?

The rise of social networks became also kind of important. Nearly everyone I know is either on facebook, studivz, myspace, twitter or has at least one own blog.
What else happened? Oh yeah, animal originated diseases spread: mad cows disease, bird flu and recently the swine flu. It seriously seems like this was the decade of disasters.

Looking back at a decade always means to sum up the fashion and trends. I could not come up with anything significant, but wikipedia can :-) Here the fashion is just a very short list of crocs, ugg boots, skinny jeans and Fauxhawk hairstyles. That is bad, very bad. Crocs, seriously??? They don't even belong anywhere close to fashion!
In a separate article about fashion it even says, that the 00s did not have one particular style like the decades from the '40s to '80s, but rather a recycling of styles from past decades as also the 90s had. Sad, we couldn't even come up with anything original. How uncreative did we become or has everything honestly already been there? On the upside this also means, that we could forage our parent's closets and reuse their old stuff. We also revived the leggings, an item that so many of us swore to never wear again, ever! Well so much to that. Right now I have more leggings than tights and lazy days are simply made for a big jumper and leggings, like in the good old time in elementary school in the 80s. Otherwise the summary of fashion is rather characterless. It seems like everything was allowed, especially stuff that we did not like at all in the 90s. Tattoos and piercings were popular all the time, although the tramp stamp is now rather something to be ashamed of. No offence against anyone with a lower back tattoo meant!

For me the new year starts with some changes: new apartment and continuing my job hunt. I am just getting started with packing my stuff into boxes and reminisce about the past 2,5 years that I have been living in this room. It really feels like I have a special year ahead of me, everything new like the new flat, new age (yuck! why?!), so excited to see where everything goes.

Now I should finally get moving and get things done. Last I have another music recommendation: Mumford&Sons, a brilliant folk rock band from London. Enjoy!


2 comments:

  1. So sorry for being so mean but...the decade ends up in one year. When the 2010 is over the decade will finish... I like your post anyway!.David

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  2. That is not mean of you, but in my opinion it is actually not true. look at the 80s for example: the decade went from 1980 to 1989 and with 1990 a new decade started. this means that with 2010 the decade of the 10s starts. but feel free to disagree with me anyway, it's a free country :-)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000–2009

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