One year ago, we turned one. Our first birthday, yet with no cake, no en masse celebrations, no blowing of candles. March 2020: The Movie - Singapore as we had never known it; sans toilet paper, sans bubble tea. Warning: PG (horror).

April 2020, and the acronym "CB" took on a more official connotation, albeit with an undeniably similar message. Monitors were disassembled and reassembled from home, temporary offices were erected only to be torn down, and meetings were rescheduled, then rescheduled some more, then finally cancelled.

Daily routines were established: we woke up, travelled from bed to chair, then parked ourselves at our desks, as our confused pets clamoured for attention (and probably wondered why we had lost our jobs). Some semblance of structure came in the form of weekly Monday morning Zoom "fall-in" calls, with the That.Legal platoon in individual parade squares on our screens. Every morsel of social interaction was welcome, and anyone absent would be confined in office over the weekend. Oh wait.

As weeks morphed into months, KL Bak Kut Teh and Genting Highlands getaways seemed like a distant memory. So we did the next best thing to keep that dream alive - with the benefit of remote working arrangements, we expanded across the border.

And with that, the impossible dream became possible. No need for Zoom wallpapers of the Petronas Twin Towers - we now have a dear Malaysian colleague who reminds us daily that even if High Speed Rail tak boleh, That.Legal still boleh.

And so our humble team of 6 became a force of 10. Courtrooms were a squeeze, and a single Grab was no longer an option. With the concerted efforts of That.Legal apprentices and masters alike, the year culminated in multiple media articles, as well as a reported judgement, etched in the Singapore Law Reports for decades to come. The force was strong in all of us. This is the way.

2020 - a year of order amidst chaos, of silver linings amidst Dorscon Orange, of strength and grit and friendships and camaraderie amidst uncertainty. Because a virus we cannot control, but our resilience in the face of tribulations we can build, and build it we must.

And with that we say, 2021: The Movie - bring it on.