New Years Eve 2000

03/09/2000 English German

Edition # 20
San Francisco, 03-09-2000

Personalized License Plates A New Kind Of Calendar Crazy About Sneakers Schafkopf in the Valley Internet Connection in the Space Age Electric toothbrush New Year's Eve 2000 Photo News Mayoral Elections And Same-Sex Marriage Presidential Elections Benetton and the death penalty Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire? About Visa and Green Card

New Year's Eve 2000

Figure [1]: Year 2000 fireworks in San Francisco ...

Angelika Enough with the commercial chatter! Here comes Angelika: Surely you've already heard that San Francisco was also spared from the predicted catastrophes and entered the new millennium well (including the narrators). Due to the astronomical prices everywhere and the announced crowds, Michael and I stayed at home for our traditional fondue in cozy togetherness. It was lovely! At midnight, we could watch the gigantic fireworks from our window (with the music "I Lost My Heart in San Francisco" playing in the background, of course). The whole city was glowing.

It's pretty clear that we can never move out of our apartment because the view from our window is simply priceless. It was also funny when, at 11 PM, our Mexican neighbor rang the doorbell with his daughter and a canister of tequila in tow to toast with us. He had smuggled the plastic container in his suitcase from Mexico, where he was on a home vacation with his family. Michael was initially worried about going blind from the moonshine, but -- as you can see -- we survived the wonderfully smooth tequila just fine. On New Year's Day, Michael was on call for AOL in the morning, meaning he had to be reachable by phone to log into the company via our home computer in case any Y2K problems would arise. But, surprise, surprise, nothing happened, and no one needed the top hacker. As compensation, there was an extra day off, which we will use in March for a long weekend. Hooray!

Figure [2]: ... from our living room.

Regarding New Year's Eve: The New Year's Eve surprise package was won by Martin Weishaupt. He managed to solve the November quiz question, "How do you say 'thank you' in Tahitian?" Many of you guessed "merci" because Tahitians speak French as an official language -- but we were looking for the expression in the native language: it's "mauruuru," as you can find out with a quick internet search. We warmly congratulate the lucky winner!