Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 34 seconds
I’ve never really celebrated new year. When I was really young I remember we once spent new year in Egypt and my parents went to a family new year’s party and left me to spend the night with my grandma. All i remember was watching Gone with the Wind on TV (and no details from there).
As I got older, i couldn’t join my friends’ new years parties because, you know, midnight? Curfew? I never had a strict curfew in college but lots of people drive drunk on new year’s eve, so i wouldn’t have wanted to risk it.
My most memorable new year was DEC 31, 1999: the turn of thr millennium! My friend and colleague Mohamed and I were afraid of the Y2K bug messing up our Compiler Design course, and it was Ramadan. He came over for iftar then we connected his computer (can’t remember why mine wasn’t good for what we were programming), and worked and backed up all our stuff up until 11:55pm. The crossed our fingers. At a few mins past midnight, i honestly cannot remember if he was gone, or if we tried to boot things up. In all cases, nothing went wrong with computers or anything (i do suspect the y2k compliance stuff might have helpes important systems that stored 2-digit dates, i don’t know. Never researched it
After Mohamed left, i spent some time with my mom watching a Jean-Michelle Jarre concert on TV that was done by the pyramids and many of my friends were attending.
It was a funny new year because people were going to tarawee7 prayers (extra prayers done collectively in mosques or at home during Ramadan at night) then going off to parties (where there was often alcohol, though i doubt most people would drink during Ramadan if they’d just been praying; u never know, though).