The Year That Was

IT was a year defined by all that was uttered and denied, the comments and cries both tragic and heroic. There were occurrences that escaped words: the aftermath from days of decimation, the passing of a saint among men. Throughout the modern world, it was a time of mourning and of remembrance, of testament and terror. Closer to home, turmoil trapped our thought balloons as we struggled to believe that such strangeness was real. There was a wiretapped conversation-balancing on the tightrope between the legal and the criminal-a televised apology that fostered neither forgiveness nor fancy, and a brightly-hued house that captured the imagination of voyeurs and televiewers.

It was a year of the ambiguous, of heroes and heels, a year redeemed by men and women who broke sports records and showed the world that we're also capable of greatness, given half a chance.

- Ruel S. De Vera, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, 1 January 2006