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I start with Arun Shourie's quotation as it summed up my attitude to life.
He wrote 'It's God's gift to have 365 uneventful days'.
Every day of our life is precious even if it is routine and unchanged. Still we do remember some days more than others and some events more. What are my important memories of 1999?

Movies

I saw 8 or 9 movies in theatres and a few on TV.
• Sixth Sense
• Sarfarosh
• Mein Azaad Hoon

Most Memorable Moments

• Standing as a proud father in Aarthi's school when she got the first rank
• Harish clearing his MCA in First class
• Amritha and I in the snow on top of Mt. Titlis
• Amritha and I on top of Eiffel Tower
• Eating dosa and onion bajji in Paris
• Travelling by carriage to Chennai
• Seeing my caption winning a prize in the caption contest in Sunday Midday ( My caption was for Sachin and was 'Good to be back , but my back better be good' )
• Positive reactions of Mukund (and others) to my gift to him.
• Receiving positive feedback about my home page from unknown persons (6 mails!)

Most Enjoyed Activities

• Putting together a presentation for Mukund for his marriage with his photos, travelogues, articles and e-mails.

• Crossword- I am not ashamed to say that I am a crossword-addict. 1999 saw me doing daily crosswords in The Economic Times, Express and Asian Age and completing them on many days. Downloading Sunday Hindu crossword from the net and solving it was also a pleasure.

• Surfing the net - In '99, railnet was commissioned and we could surf from home on railway phone without any payment. However, the speed was less. But it was a daily and a pleasant activity

• Cricket - Though India did not do well in the World Cup, many matches were very good. There are also good memories of Sachin's effort in Chennai, Kumble's 10-wicket haul, Ramesh's good performance, Lara's outstanding effort in West Indies etc. But the one which gave the most enjoyment to me was the amazing catch by Jonty Rhodes ( unfortunately I don't remember the match)

• Updating my home page after the visit abroad

• Playing Freecell and writing the notation for solving Game nos. 617, 1941 and 10692 (After this, I have stopped playing freecell. Now I play another card game called Golf)

• I have always enjoyed punning, laughing at myself and good-natured teasing of relatives. 1999 was no exception, I irritated my whole family, as usual, and I am proud of it!

Websites

• www.hungama.com
  I started visiting this site from August '99. In the last six months we received 4 mousepads, over 25 Audiocassettes, 4 T-shirts, a box of chocolates and 2 VCDs as prizes.
• www.samachar.com
  I read The Hindu everyday and other papers once a while. I also read Kausalya's articles a number of times, but was guilty of not sending feedback ( though I did it twice ).
• www.rediff.com
  I visit this often
• www.google.com
  I use this as my start-up page and is the only search engine that I use.
• www.hotmail.com
  Microsoft may be everyone's favourite whipping company, but almost everyone uses hotmail and can't deny it is very good
• www.bright.net/~mukundtn
  This is Mukund's Homepage. I went through it completely when I prepared the gift for his marriage and really enjoyed it

Most Enjoyed Authors

• 1999 saw me reading two authors in a big way - Dick Francis and Sue Grafton. I enjoy the style of both. I continued to enjoy John Grisham.

Most Enjoyed mails

• Mukund's description of life in Australia of his grandparents
• Learning from Hema about Jagan's success
• Mukund's humour to Aarthi that ' too much of Jiddu is not gooddu '
• Spate of mails after Aarthi's success
• Prasad's mail Chgo99#25 asking for recipes and presenting Freecell Hall of Fame
• Aarthi's poem-mail on 31-12-99
• Hema's mail about throwing her PC into the Bay of Bengal ( and regret that she didn't do so )

Favorite TV programmes

• Suhasini's serial based on Sujatha;s story ( Tamil - on SUN TV )
• Balachander's serial (Tamil- originally on SUN TV and later on RAJ TV)
• Master Mind Quiz on BBC
• Bourn-vita Quiz on ZEE TV
• Movers and Shakers on SONY TV. Though I didn't see it initially, I found ( and still find )Sekhar Suman's imitations of Laloo, Rabri, Sonia and Vajpayee hilarious.
• And my eternal favourites - Hum Paanch and Antakshari on ZEE TV. Antakshari is perhaps the only programme in which you won't see a single bored face or anybody yawning.
• The silver jubilee celebration of Padayappa on SUN TV. Though the actor I admire most is Kamal, I like Rajni as a person and he came out very well in this function.
• The only New Year Eve programme I liked was India-1999 on Star News

Interesting persons

• The two boys from Pondichery who helped me and Amritha to go from airport to the hotel in Paris
• The young driver of the bus in which we travelled from Zurich to Berlin
• My General Manager ( boss) whose exacting standards and his quest for more and more information on Budget taught me a lot during the year.
• Mr. Ratnam, my PA, whose range of contacts amazes me. (He was present as we came out of the plane , i.e., before the Immigration counter to receive me and Amritha)
• Arun Nair, my PA who is easily the most sincere employee I have seen in my entire service
• Sheila, the hostess on the Air India flight who kept me posted of the no-confidence motion throughout our flight from Mumbai to Paris.

Music Director

• Though I am not a connoisseur of music, I think 1999 belonged to A.R.Rehman. His music was good even in flop films. I think Taal was his best in '99.

National Events that influenced me

• Kargil Conflict - a number of good things came out of it, though there was a lot of lives lost. India became more cohesive and it was good to see Tamil Nadu raising Rs. 10 crores for PM's Fund. It was also the first TV war for India and I like millions of Indians knew Maj. Ahuja and others, Tiger Hill etc.

• Though I missed the voting on Vajpayee's no-confidence motion, many spoke well in the debate.

• And the elections. I couldn't vote as I didn't know where my vote was to be cast. But it was interesting and there was a keen contest among Laloo Yadav, T.N.Seshan, G.V.G.Krishnamoorthy, Jayalalitha and Subramaniam Swamy for the 'National Joker 1999' title. In my view, Swamy won it.