What was going on when I was born?

New York's subway riders can expect two to three years of ''frustration'' as major work on rebuilding the system gets under way, Robert R. Kiley, the chairman-designate of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said today. ''Users of the subway in New York City are facing very difficult circumstances, more than any others in the country,'' Mr. Kiley said in an interview. ''They're going to have to put up with rebuilding the system. It's going to be a frustrating two or three years.'' Outside the weathered gray-shingled house at Lambert's Cove on Martha's Vineyard, where he went to relax with his family this weekend, Mr. Kiley discussed some of the changes he envisions for the largest mass-transit and commuter-rail system in the country.

Swissair Flight 100 from Zurich was a quarter-mile from Kennedy International Airport. As it neared, Myron Shulman lifted his camera and began snapping pictures. ''This is going to be a good one, a really good one,'' he said, running down the sandy bluff for a better look. ''It's a beautiful thing to see.''

WANTED: President for large financial institution in Southeast. Must have exceptional economic skills and be a strong administrator. Will have opportunity to be regional spokesman and influence national economic policy. Incumbent's 1982 salary: $106,000. This advertisement has not been placed in any newspaper, nor is it likely to be. But it correctly describes the search under way at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. After only three years on the job, William F. Ford unexpectedly resigned late in August as president of the Fed of Atlanta to become president of the First Nationwide Financial Corporation in San Francisco at a substantial, though undisclosed, increase in compensation.

At least 19 people, including two leading advisers to President Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea and four of his Cabinet ministers, were killed Sunday when a bomb exploded as they prepared for a wreath-laying ceremony in Rangoon, Burma. Forty-seven people were wounded, many seriously. President Chun, who was on an official visit to Burma, escaped harm because his car was delayed in traffic. He arrived five minutes late at the site of the ceremony. By this morning no group had taken responsibility for the bombing. But President Chun blamed North Korea after returning to Seoul early this morning, cutting short what was to have been an 18-day trip to six Asian and Pacific countries. He arrived in Rangoon from Seoul on Saturday.

The president of Brazil's central bank is to meet here Tuesday with scores of American bankers in an effort to convince them to participate in a restructuring of Brazil's foreign debt. The official, Affonso Celso Pastore, is coming here because this is where the bankers are this week, at the annual convention of the American Bankers Association, and the athmosphere for agreement seems positive. Under the plan, approved in principle last week, the banks would lend Brazil $6.5 billion in new funds on which the country would not make principal payments for five years. In addition, the banks would postpone for five years the $5.5 billion in principal on old loans that is due next year.

The Economy Some business leaders favor big tax increases, if this reduces the Federal deficit. The executives say higher taxes are inevitable anyway, and they say that deficits must be reduced because they are keeping interest rates high. (Page D1.)

The crime with which the white prosecutor charged Loti Sikhakhana as he stood tautly in the dock before the white magistrate would have been no crime at all if he had been any other color than black: that he ''did wrongfully and illegally enter the prescribed area of Durban.'' A slightly built man of middle years, Mr. Sikhakhana was the fifth black to be arraigned on that charge in about 20 minutes. The others had all pleaded guilty and been given sentences ranging from ''five rands or five days'' - one rand is about 90 cents - to ''30 rands or 30 days.'' This accused was different because he resisted the attempt of the black interpreter, who translated his Zulu responses in a bored voice, to enter an automatic guilty plea. Yet he had to admit that only a month before he had been barred from the city for three years under section 29 of the Black (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, which gives the authorities arbitrary power to expel any black they class as ''idle or undesirable.''

As the bells of the St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church pealed, the sound reverberating off the tenements of central Harlem and carrying for blocks in the crisp air, the sanctuary filled to overflowing on a special Sunday. Parishioners of the church on 141st Street said they had come to pray for Terence Cardinal Cooke, with whom they had felt a closeness because of his visits to the church and because ''he made a difference in Harlem,'' in the words of one, Julia Caldwell. ''All the difference,'' said another, Sandra Johnson. ''He kept the Catholic schools in Harlem open,'' said Mrs. Johnson, who has a child in St. Charles Borromeo School. ''This kept families in the neighborhood, and this kept the community together. It may have been lost altogether without him.''

An article Friday about foreign and military aid incorrectly reported an action by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Government Operations. It increased military aid to Egypt to $1.315 billion.

The plan by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company to charge 75 cents for long-distance calls for directory information is the latest example of an idea that could radically change how telephone users pay for services. The idea is to charge separately for each component of service, so that those who use a particular service pay for it. It is similar to the process that took place during the oil shortage of the late 1970's when some gasoline stations began charging for road maps and for pumping air into tires. The changes are scheduled because of increasing competition in the telephone industry, spurred by the breakup of the Bell System scheduled for Jan. 1. This increased competition is ending the distortion of economics involved in setting fees for various telephone services that prevailed in the past, when the phone system was run as a monopoly of A.T. & T. The new directory assistance charge, which was announced last week and is to take effect on Jan. 1, would apply to 600 million interstate information calls each year now made at no charge by dialing the area code plus 555-1212.

Although they insist on spending reductions, some of the nation's leading business executives are saying that substantial tax increases are inevitable and even a good idea if they reduce the Federal Government's budget deficits. Several current and former chief executives of major American corporations, who concluded a three-day conference here on Saturday, said increased taxes would be preferable to budget deficits, which they believe are keeping interest rates unusually high given the drop in inflation. Irwin Miller, chairman of the executive and finance committee of the Cummins Engine Company said he has always been ready to support a tax increase. ''We need more revenue, enough to get the budget deficit down substantially,'' Mr. Miller said.

The morning had gone by with customers coming in and going out, asking for shampoo, shaving cream or a certain brand of lipstick. Some of the regulars had been in, and Silvia Gonzalez, behind the cash register as usual, had asked about mothers and fathers and how the children were doing. Most often, the language spoken was Spanish. With neat, dark hair and plain gold hoops in her ears, Mrs. Gonzalez had laughed and chatted and called to a baby named Pedro, who let out a gurgle and a smile at the sound of his name. She had sat as she usually does, half on, half off a stool, next to a glass case where the expensive perfumes are kept and near a small snapshot of the hardware store her husband, Antonio, used to own in Cuba.