Dear friends,

Happy New Year!

As we step into the new year, I wish to express my gratitude to
everyone for your participation and contribution in 2007. Special
thanks has to go to Nina. She has been very helpful in going through
the sutta translation exercises I post, and often offering corrections
and advices to me and other members. I also like to thank Florent for
contributing his solutions to The New Pali Course Part II. Florent is
posting the Pali-English answers, while I am posting the English-Pali
answers. We have agreed to check each other's answers, but I have yet
to do that. Many members have also been contributing to the group in
one way or another, such as Ven. Yuttadhammo, Ven. Pesala, Ven.
Kumara, Dmytro, Gunnar, Piya, John Kelly, Lennart, Jim Anderson, Kare,
among many others. Names not in any order.

Thank you all, and I look forward to your continuing contribution to
the group, and to the study and learning of Pali anywhere, just drop
us a line about what you are doing.

2007 has been a successful year for the group. Our membership has
grown steadily beyond the 900 mark. We called 2007 "Back to the
Basics" year, and we have completed The New Pali Course Part I. We
have also started The New Pali Course Part II in 2007, which we will
continue and finish in 2008. We have also commenced the group study of
Warder's Introduction to Pali, and covered a good third of the book,
mainly based on previous answers posted by John. And I am sure we are
ready to move on in 2008.

In 2007, there has been some developments on the web-front. New
materials have been added to the site. The redevelopment of the
homepage has also reached its final phase. From going to the drawing
board in mid-2006, to conceptualisation, content development, design,
and research, we will soon see a new homepage for tipitaka.net. This
will be the major change since 2005. The current homepage -
http://www.tipitaka.net - was designed in early 2005. So, this will be
a significant change, since the web has changed so much over the last
three years. Some of the changes can now be viewed on CommunitySpace -
http://www.tipitaka.net/community/

Major developments will take place over the next six to eight weeks,
and continue throughout the year. I hope to be able to provide a
glimpse of the new homepage when I put up the year's plan in a few
weeks' time. Thank you.

I wish everyone a successful 2008.


With metta,
Yong Peng.