Happy New Year/Bonne Annee

That's what my mass text message said to everyone within my drunken digital path at the stroke of midnight. The bilingual message came first off because there were some French friends on the list, secondly because I was reading too much bilingual labeling, and also because it was a very multicultural night. I met up with Kel, John, and Susan at Merlin's - the popular bar at the base of Blackcomb Mountain, largely because they were only charging $5 for NYE festivities. Everyone else was charging $50-100. Funk dat.

The low price attracted a ready-to-party crowd from all over the world. There was my table full of Aussies. The French chicks who thought my accent was cute. The pile of Tex-Mex nachos bigger than my upper body. The British bloke who'd just come up from San Francisco after spending way too much money to watch cricket at my local pub. Every year our world gets smaller and smaller via technology, cheap transportation, and people's growing willingness to travel and meet each other, and that's what NYE came to mean to me.

I spent the evening with a load of people who'd convereged from numerous points of the world to share a party with everyone else - tons of beer, many shots, a great live band, and good vibes all around. Most of us hadn't even known one another a few days earlier. Once midnight came around and we did the countdown, exchanged greetings and kisses and group hugs, it really felt like a joyous occasion with friends, not an annual going-through-the-motions at a bar. It really kicked 2006 off on the right foot.

Happy New Year. It's gonna be a good one.