2006 was a great year.  Personally, it was the year in which I:

• February:  Went snowboarding for the first time
• February:  Reached 22, predictably enough
• May:  Saw Girls Aloud (yes, really, and they were surprisingly good)
• June:  Bought by first power kite
• July:  Left my first full time job (as it was only a years placement)
• July:  Travelled around Europe.  We started with France and travelled on to Switzerland..
• August:  We carried on traveling, including going white water rafting in the Swiss Alps, which I would highly recommended.  Afterwards we saw Italy, Austria, Hungry, parts of Slovakia (quickly), the Czech republic, Germany (again) and Poland
• September:  Made my own honey, for the first time
• September:  Started my fourth (and final) year at University
• October:  Bought my first DSLR, which takes lovely photos
• December:  Saw The Fratellis and Kasabian
• December: Ended the year in style.  As a penguin.

For me, the year will be remembered as the year in which we saw the Italians win the World Cup 5-3 on penalties, the continuation of the Iraq war, and North Korea playing with missiles.

The Internet continued to become increasingly important in peoples lives: Google became a verb and bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, MySpace continued to grow almost exponentially and by the beginning of 2007, BT had connected over 10 million customers in the UK to broadband (out of the 60 million population).

It was also the year in which many long awaited objects arrived: Microsoft finally released Vista (to business customers), the PS3 finally turned up (to very little fanfare) and more importantly, so did the Wii (to a tremendous amount of good publicity).

It was a great year, but who knows what 2007 has in store for us all.  Goodbye 2006.