You don't know what you've got till it's gone

It's possible to take the country's emotional temperature simply by trawling the Net, crunching the numbers and voila, coming up with some key words. This is pretty much what Google's "hot trends" does on a daily basis, but it's not the only one.

China's top search engine, Baidu, has its own "hot query" engine and this also lists the most popular searched items.

It's a fact worth noting because sometimes it's hard to imagine living without something, or someone, until you do, and then you realize you didn't need it or them in the first place. The opposite is also true. In the words of the song: "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."