It's that time again. The last days of the year, when many of us begin setting positive goals for the coming 365 days, things like taking up yoga, eating right, quitting smoking and reading at least one book a week. Others among us have been planning New Year's Eve celebrations since Dasain and Tihar came to an end.

We at Nepali Times have also been bitten by the New Year's bug and are discussing our various plans. Some of us are planning a wild time party hopping, enjoying loud music and dancing the night away. Others will escape to warm tropical places and return with enviable tans. There are still others who plan to order in pizza and enjoy a movie marathon, while some of us are just glad to be away from the billboards, lights and loud music.

You'll even find some people so sick of everyone turning the day into such an event that they are going to sit back in a reclining chair at home, in front of a kerosene heater, wearing mittens and ear plugs, to read a good book and drink lots of hot chocolate.

If some of you get new clothes for New Year, we at Nepali Times are getting a new office at Hattiban. A whole year of planning and anticipation is over and the moving process has begun. Issue 280, the first of 2006, will be put together at our new sunny office. Our team is keenly looking forward to spending the cold winter working under the sun- with plenty of breaks for football matches and potluck lunches. But that is not all we are looking forward to. Throughout 2005 the pages of this newspaper have seen many gruesome and disturbing headlines about crackdowns, clampdowns and shutdowns.

So in 2006, we would like the world to unfold in such a way that we can write headlines like the following. Please do all you can to help.

'King Gyanendra, parties and Maoists hold talks'
'Peace breaks out'
'Nepal U-19 win ICC World Cup'
'Nepal voted the best travel destination'
'Miss Nepal crowned Miss World 2006'
'Traffic flows smoothly, no accidents reported'
'New species of fish discovered in Bagmati River'