Very significant events in life that happened in 2009?

In Nov of 2009, I bought my  first guitar. I am self learning Guitar now.
In 2001, while I was in med school, I had signed up for flute classes and i learned flute for a bit . This foray into Guitar reminded me of those flute learning days back then. Learning a new musical instrument-self learning at that, always allows you to open up a tiny window of your soul to the breezes and lets new winds blow in.A nice experience of self discovery and awakening your own soul.

I also met quite a few interesting people from quite a few countries from all around the world via TWITTER. Twitter was in  a way,exposing myself to the world and countries which I would otherwise have never gotten the  time to visit.
The quality of people on Twitter is quite to my satisfaction.
In my opinion >All smart professionals congregate on Twitter much more than any other social media networking site.Much  unlike ,say, Facebook or myspace or yahoo or msn or 43things or other such social media platforms.I have met more smarter people here than any other social media platform that i have given an honest try.
The average intelligence of people on Twitter is  much higher than even say LinkedIn social networking where interaction happens almost by area of expertise and profession.

I learned Portuguese from this kind lady on Twitter .She is a teacher from Portugal.Learning a new language from a native speaker is a great experience in itself, much like learning a musical instrument.
The Portuguese lessons had to stop though coz she was finding it too tough to make time for the elaborate lessons that she was giving me. But , us having attempted something like this, This online to and fro teaching and learning, was a great experience to be a part of .

I also had the good fortune of  being taught watercolor from a world class award winning watercolor artist.Again, we accidentally came across each other via Twitter thanks to me making a tweet about Watercolor technique.
This particular artist is From Australia  and he actually is my Godfather now.
He taught me watercolor basics.The 'basics' lessons  which when they come from a very talented artist  also have those tiny lil artist tricks and tips that an ordinary teacher wouldn't teach you.
He is a wonderful teacher and i am a very sincere student. And I am very thankful that i got this opportunity to interact with him on such a one-on-one basis. This is another reason why I don't really regret having signed up for Twitter .

So, yeah, Though i feel that i would have Focused more on my career based goals had I not gotten on Twitter, I am nevertheless very thankful for the experience.
I bought a guitar and  am still learning the basics, I learned a bit of  Portuguese, I learned watercolors>> all because of Twitter.
I met a lot of vegans on Twitter. Met a lot of environmentalists, writers, doctors, engineers and what not..Like I already said, It has been a social media year for me.. Met a lot of smart people..Felt more a part of society than ever before.

So, yes, 2009, was a big TWITTER YEAR for me.