The end of this year

It's almost there. Today is the 31st December 2021, and what has happened during 2021? For me, nothing particularly good, except for some of the things I looked up - like a new albatross hatched in February - there's a bit of a tale to that. This is the end of the second year of the pandemic life under COVID-19. It has affected me too often, and although I have had two vaccinations (AstraZeneca) I have not (yet) had the third one. Do I need that? 

2021 with a few things that happened is laid out here for readers.

January: 6 January 2021 was the worst of much of 2021, as the QAnon followers attacked the Washington USA Capitol, and tried to express its significance to them. The majority of the world saw it as a stupid crime during which some people were killed. This event won the PolitiFact 2021 Lie. In the next few months severe reaction by the government and police changed the act from the QAnon followers: hundreds went to court and were jailed; Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram got rid of contacts who were identifying as QAnonners; some global authors got their history of QAnon published, including Van Badham from Australia, who wrote an excellent story of it; and, as we already know, Joe Biden was the elected USA President, not Trump.

February: a 70-year-old albatross in a wildlife refuge in the North Pacific Ocean had a chick, BBC was told by the US wildlife officials. "Wisdom", the albatross, had been identified in 1956 and was the oldest one the wildlife officials knew of.

March: On 13 March, McGowan, the Premier of Labor's party, lead the party back into West Australia with a bigger majority. Victoria, also a Labor state, had grown immensely with COVID-19 infection as reported in the Federal government Health department.

April: Queen Elizabeth's husband, Philip, died on April 9th. He was 99 years old. He'd been in hospital between February and March this year, and had a ""successful procedure" for a preexisting heart condition on March 3". 

May: USA President Joe Biden announces that his government was heading towards 70% vaccinations before 4 July. Australia didn't make this then, either.

June: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven resigned on 28 June after a non-confidence vote. Sweden had a temporary PM until November when the first-ever female prime minister, Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson, was elected. Within hours she resigned when her budget was rejected. I wonder if the Swedish politics would work in Australia?

July: In this month I discovered a New Zealand cop drama based in the TV town Brokenwood, titled The Brokenwood Mysteries. It had country music - which I normally don't like - but the series of this programme were well made, and watchable through ABC's iView.

August: While this month had horrifically hot temperatures around the globe ever since records started, bushfires also played their game. Guardian's article was about Hawaii's largest wildfire on record in South Kohala which was finally brought under control, but it had burned through 40,000 acres

September: The Conversation wrote an article about the earthquake in Melbourne on 22 September. Even though it was only a magnitude of 5.8 there was some damage. While Aus seems to be lucky not to have such heavier earthquakes, that brought memories of the New Zealand Christchurch earthquake in 2011, a 6.3 shock which caused so much damage and killed 185 people. This year, the worst earthquake which killed people was in Haiti, a 7.2 which killed 2,248; the worst one of magnitude this year was in July in Alaska, USA, where an 8.2 was in Aleutian Islands but no-one killed.

October: There was a Komatsu PC270 clearing the ground south of my unit from the debris from a demolition. So. Bloody. Noisy! The dude didn't even operate that digger well himself - maybe he'd only leased it. This noise went on into the first couple of weeks of November.

November: Broke my 7th rib on 13 November, falling off a chair I was standing on to try to stop my unit fire alarm beeping. Pain was around 6 then, I drove to Ipswich Emergency department and the pain got worse. I had the ribs x-rayed and they confirmed it was broken. Pain  was 10 most of the rest of that day - and I had to drive myself home! My daughter and her family came round and helped by vacuuming inside and mowing the outside, both which I couldn't have done. The rib was allegedly to repair itself within 6 weeks.

Later in this month my next door neighbour came to my unit and mowed the back lawn again! I am so grateful to those who helped meat the start of this six weeks! Love you all!

December: This is the end of 2021, yet it seems it seems not the end of the COVID pandemic. This year we saw two different viruses, the Delta and now the Omicron. Our borders were opened for overseas and interstate travellers for Christmas and holidays, but the Omicron has picked up - and is working fast. Still, the government has changed regulations, so I wonder how states will react to this? The UN WHO says that 2022 may be the end of the pandemic. Shall we watch and see?

Just after 6pm in Brisbane, Australia. I say to all the New Zealanders, have a very nice NYE. And to all in Australia, the same. Let's just all hope that our new year, 2022, will be better than the last two.