I had just woken up and, as usual, turned on the internet to see what had happened since I'd been asleep.
At first I thought they were running a 9/11 film. Then I slowly realized this was not New York and this was not 2001. This was now and this was Russia.
Maybe this has escaped the attention of many viewers because I do not think it was shown on the local news bulletins.
This was a Ukrainian drone running smack into a high-rise building in the city of Kazan in Russia, east of Moscow, some 1,000 kilometres away from its launch in the Ukraine.
At first I found it hard to believe - the internet today has become packed with fake news of all kinds.
At first there were so many shots of drones or planes hitting the high-rise that I began thinking this was a massive attack by. Ukraine. I started to believe this was a drone attack only when this news got confirmed by other news web-sites.
These later reports said no one had been injured in this attack, which I find rather remarkable in the circumstances.
The war in Ukraine is still going on. Russia has regained some of the territory it had earlier lost but the Ukrainian forces had some signal victories to report, including the death of so many Russian untrained soldiers and now also of imported soldiers from North Korea.
Within a day, however, this news item was sidelined by the news of what was called a terrorist attack in the Christmas market in the town of Magdeburg in Germany.
Magdeburg was previously known as one of the first cities that accepted Martin Luther and his version of Christianity.
The first reports showed people rushing away in a panic and spoke of some 50 victims. Now we know they were only five - tragic too but the initial news has been redimensíoned. Including a 10-year-old boy.
Subsequent investigations said the massacre had been carried out by a dissident psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who had long been investigated for anti-Muslim beliefs.
According to German law the name of the attacker has not been made public but the rest of Europe had the name of the attacker and even carried interviews with his neighbours.
Investigation of things found in his apartment shows a very muddled person who has become an Islamophobe and a supporter of the far-right AfD. How to square this anti-Muslim stance with the attempted mass murder is probably only for investigation.
It would also seem his ideal in life was to become famous and get people to speak about him.
And speak they did - but not in the way he intended them to do. By the next day there were demonstrations in the city beloved by Martin Luther calling for the forced deportation of all immigrants.
Things are getting hot in Germany: in less than two months there will be a keen general election in Germany.
This then is another example how one person can influence an entire country perhaps not in the way he intended.
Back to the rock we call home it would seem that none of these great events - the war in the Ukraine and xenophobia in general, not forgetting the situation in the Middle East - are of immediate concern to our country.
What continues to hold sway in our country, apart from the usual Christmas cheer, is the eternal tussle between the two main parties which is now going to be augmented, we are being told, with a new centre-left party.
My immediate reaction is that this will further split the Labour vote, already split between Robert Abela and Joseph Muscat while the Nationalist Opposition still does not seem able to make more people to believe in it.
We'll see. We have started the second part of the legislature.
And meanwhile in this wind-swept microcosm of microcosms, some balconies do not have Christmas lights and even those that do have are facing problems we know nothing of.
Maybe hidden conflicts, maybe money problems, maybe health problems.
We must not forget them.
Meanwhile, Happy New Year to all my readers.
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