Wisdom comes with time...by Apollo

Happy New Year to all. The 2 Wise Men have been off for a few months, and apparently the world seems to be still moving along without any major catastrophes - although the results of the upcoming Canadian Federal Election may change my view on that. Before this resurrection post continues, a special shout out to The Traveling Chef and his Asian exploits. The mid-mid-life crisis...nice...we should all be so lucky, or foolish? haha...nah, we'll stick to lucky.

While Wongoz is continuing with his quest to better himself academically (and perhaps redeem his past efforts in academia), here's some upcoming events in 2006 that we're looking forward to:

1) The Election: We try and refrain from appearing overtly biased when we discuss topics in this forum, so rather than endorse any particular party or candidate, we'll be paying attention to the voter participation numbers instead. As we have already discussed in the last federal election, voter participation has been slightly rising as of late, and with a rather close vote and a potential minority government in the balance, it will be interesting to see how many Canadians decide to exercise their constitutional rights on January 23.

2) The 2006 Winter Olympics: The "citizens of the world" shall assemble once again beginning February 10, 2006 in Torino, Italy for the Winter Games. The Winter Games, being smaller and more manageable than the summer version, usually comes off less like a massive corporate sponsored event, and more like an athletic competition. This small Italian city, home of Juventus, will host the supposedly strongest Canadian team ever assembled. In anticipation of hosting the Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010, Canada has set a lofty goal of finishing in the top 3 in the overall medal standings. This ambitious goal, which has never been accomplished in the lifetimes of the 2 Wise Men, would hopefully harness the rare Canadian patriotism on display during the Olympics and lead to an even better performance in 2010. We shall see, however hopefully there will be more provocative stories to discuss than whether or not Bryan McCabe should have been named to the Team Canada Olympic Hockey Roster or not.

3) The 2006 FIFA World Cup: As in 2002, an Olympic Year also includes the largest, most-watched sporting event in the world - soccer's World Cup. When fans (and with some luck, the 2 Wise Men) arrive in Germany in June, the debate will rage on as to which nations will join heavy favourite Brazil in the knockout stages for soccer's most prestigious trophy. Hopefully by June, there will be far more analysis on this page than in the past 6 months as well.

A lot to look forward to, and in turn, a lot to talk about. We shall see if we can shake off our recent bout of laziness to share our thoughts more often.