I WAS amused when, last week when the country celebrated New Year, I discovered that some people literally went to different heights just to see what they believed was the first sunrise of a new millennium. Some went to Mt. Apo, the country's highest mountain, to see the sunrise of Jan. 1, 2000. Others went to Pusan Point, the easternmost part of the country, to be the first to witness that sunrise.

Rarely do I see the sun rise, for--as nocturnal creatures like myself would agree--the first meal of the day is usually brunch or even lunch, and not breakfast in the morning. However, I did see the sun that morn when I arose, yet the smell of gunpowder and the haze of merriment dashed with some pyrotechnic byproducts blocked both the usual scent of morning air and the view from my bedroom.

And I was not surprised at what I saw. It was the same sun I had been seeing every morning. It burned its hydrogen core into helium--as it had been doing so for the last 4.7 billion years--and casted its rays over Metro Manila like a gilded net. And then I realized that it would continue doing so for the next five billion or so more years--long after I had gone into eternal, blissful rest. The sun had been burning way before any life existed on this planet, and it continued doing so regardless of whatever concepts of time and space were determined by human beings. It continued to burn for all of us that morning of Jan. 1, regardless of wherther or not we accepted the year 2000 as the turn of the next millennium. And it will continue doing so long after the Y2K bug has laid itself down on the prairie.

I do not wish to spoil or belittle the efforts of those who exerted effort to see the sunrise of Jan. 1, but to me the whole celebration was meaningless. It was just another year ahead of us. It was not something that would change the age we live in. We are the ones in charge of that department, not the calendar.

And, for me, it was not the start of a new millennium.

I remember as a boy when the year 1979 bowed out to welcome 1980, I was wide-eyed with wonder as my father replaced our calendar to reveal that it was the start of a new decade. It was a momentous event for me, being given the privilege to live in a new decade. Many years later, I still have not lost my childhood, and I would have celebrated the coming of the year 2000 were it not for the conviction that the new millennium actually starts on 2001. The eyes through which the boy inside me viewed the world had been turned into the eyes of a jaded, cynical newspaperman (or newspaperperson?) who simply couldn't figure out why so many people fell for the Year 2000 marketing machine.

First there was Y2K merchandising. There were Y2K shirts, hats and even small figurines--mascots, if you may--which proudly declared that it was a "Y2K Hug" or a "Millennium Hug." For the New Year, why don't you give your loved ones a Y2K Hug which costs "only" $10? I was actually expecting a local clone maker to come up with a PC with "Y2K-Compliant" as a brand name. ("Is your PC Y2K-compliant, miss?" "Of course it is! It says so on the casing!")

There were the millennium parties in Makati and simulcast celebrations all over the world. Some people made a lot of money during the midnight rollover from Dec. 31, 1999 to Jan. 1, 2000.

And then there was the Y2K bug. Granted, some people made money out of the bug, but let us not belittle the efforts of the IT personnel, the programmers and the Y2K staff of the misson-critical companies. I admit that I was one of those who said that the Y2K bug will disappear with a whimper--which it did--but I was the same guy who told you to keep batteries, food and cash handy, not to cause panic but just to be prepared.

Nothing happened during the Y2K rollover because the companies which survived it spent a lot for Y2K remediation. As simple as that.

It is grossly unfair for anyone to open his or her mouth and declare that the Y2K bug was a hoax after the rollover date. I have read some appalling declarations from so-called experts denouncing the Y2K bug as a sham as if it were non-existent. Well, haven't you considered that those companies beat the bug, that's why nothing happened? Where were these people during the height of the scare? Where were they during all the action? And now, after the rollover, some idiot would just open his or her mouth and conclude that the Y2K was a hoax because his microwave oven still worked the next morning?

At the same time, let's not scare the pants off each other by saying that the bug will still bite by this date or that date. Otherwise, this whole issue won't end. Let's take the necessary precautions, and proceed one day at a time.

That is also how the sun shines, the same sun I'm sure I'll see again tomorrow.

And so the sun will also rise ever brighter, I am sure, for Ace Sterling Medina and Alyce Paggabao Medina, who recently joined God's database of married couples. Congratulations to you both. Ace is a good friend of Special Sections reporter Joey Alarilla. I also remember Ace when Joey and I were fellow Special Forces cadets about a decade ago. We were the guys who were running around UP Diliman almost butt-naked and playing war games every Friday night.

Ace and Alyce were married Dec. 9 at the Immaculate Conception Parish in the Philippines, but now they're back in Florida. Let's hope--for your sake, Alyce--that Ace learned well the Special Forces lessons of night operations so that he would apply it to marital maneuvers in the dark.