What was going on when I was born?

President Reagan met today with Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Robert C. McFarlane, the national security adviser, to discuss how to revive arms control talks with the Soviet Union. This was the first detailed discussion Mr. Reagan has had on foreign affairs since his re-election last Tuesday. Administration officials said the emphasis was on relations with the Soviet Union over the next four years and, in particular, on how to revive the suspended talks. Mr. Reagan said throughout the campaign and in his first news conference after his victory that he planned to give the highest priority to seeking arms reductions with the Soviet Union. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said before the session that no decisions were expected from the meeting. Rather, he said, ''it was an opportunity for them to brief him on the direction of their thinking, and at some time in the future he would give them directions.''

THEIR numbers having grown from only a handful a decade ago to more than 250 now, citizen-run nursing-home-information organizations throughout the country are acting as consumer watchdogs and public advocates for the more than 1.4 million elderly residents in America's long-term-care facilities. Staffed primarily by volunteers, and independent of both government and the health-care industry, these citizens' organizations have gained new prominence as the nation's population grows older. Experts say their importance may increase as rising numbers of the elderly compete for beds in good-quality homes, as the cost of care in those institutions spirals higher. In a number of states, the groups' activities have brought them into confrontations with nursing-home operators and regulatory agencies. While some citizens' groups have sued to force nursing homes to comply with state laws, other organizations have been sued, in turn, by the nursing homes they've criticized.

An article in Business Day on Saturday about Intelsat, the satellite communications consortium, misidentified the director general. He is Richard R. Colino.

An article in Business Day on Oct. 25 about the Control Data Corporation misstated its involvement in the disk drive business. The company has announced that it will stop making disk drives for large I.B.M. computers.

The fire started in the basement of the East Harlem apartment building, and by the time the firefighters brought it under control yesterday morning, 58 more families had been added to the growing list of poor people in New York who have no homes and little chance of finding them soon. ''I don't know where I'm going to go,'' said Eva Green, who is 73 years old and had spent the last 10 years living in the walk-up building at 80 East 116th Street, near her friends and just up the street from the market and the stores that sell just about anything she could need. Miss Green and her neighbors - 94 men and women and 54 children - gathered anxiously yesterday morning in the basement of St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church at 113 East 117th Street, waiting to find out from the Red Cross where they would be sheltered that night, tonight and on subsequent nights. 'No Housing for the Poor' ''The sad fact of life is that these people have now joined other homeless people looking for housing that for the most part doesn't exist in this city,'' a Red Cross spokesman, Fred Yaeger, said yesterday. Most of the families had been placed temporarily in tourist-class hotels in midtown by the end of the day, he said.

The Greek Government announced tonight that it had decided to purchase 40 American F-16G jet fighter planes and 40 French Mirage-2000's to meet the needs of its air force over the next decade. Officials said negotiations would proceed on details of the additional services offered by the successful bidders - the General Dynamics Corporation makes the F-16's and Dassault makes the Mirages - before the signing of a contract. The long-awaited announcement, made after more than two and a half years of talks, means that the Greeks rejected the F-18 fighter, manufactured by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. Several months ago the Government committed itself to the French aircraft and rejected the Tornado fighter-bomber produced by Panavia, a European consortium of British, West German and Dutch concerns.

A package of New York State tax changes focusing on income-tax cuts has been drafted by a panel appointed by Governor Cuomo. ''The leading opportunity for tax reform may lie in the personal income tax,'' according to a draft statement by the group, the Governor's Council on Fiscal and Economic Priorities. The report, prepared by a subcommittee headed by James D. Robinson 3d, the chairman of Shearson/American Express, and Felix G. Rohatyn, a partner in Lazard Fr eres & Company, will go to the Governor this weekend. It is likely to be a key element in tax- change proposals that are expected to preoccupy the 1985 session of the State Legislature.

''WE were thinking of starting a family and the studio next door became available,'' said Stephen Newman. ''We realized we could use the extra space for the extra person.'' Mr. Newman and his wife, Catherine, bought the 300-square-foot studio next to their 725-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side in June 1983. Several months after the purchase, the couple, both lawyers, learned that Mrs. Newman was pregnant. There would be room for the baby. Undecided about what to do with the studio and unsure about how to find a designer, the couple waited a number of months, and finally, on a friend's recommendation, hired the New York architectural firm Keenen/ Riley to integrate the two apartments. By the time the architects were engaged, the child was only six weeks away. The architects sketched fast; the contractors had slightly more than a month to do what was in fact a major renovation. On June 29 the polyurethane was drying on the hardwood floor when Daniel Newman, 8 pounds 10 ounces, was born. The apartment was finished the day before mother and child returned from the hospital. Daniel never heard a hammer.

WERE it not for the old shop sign in front of Valley House Antiques in Locust Valley, L.I., the little turn-of-the-century cottage could easily be mistaken for a private home. The windows are chintz-curtained and a cluster of Victorian needlepoint-upholstered chairs stands around the entry-hall fireplace. The living room is furnished with an eclectic clutter of chairs, tables, paintings and bibelots, and in the dining room a Regency table is set with antique Wedgewood for a dinner party for eight. Everything visible is for sale. Valley House is one of a growing number of shops in Manhattan and in suburban communities that are run by people who have discovered that their taste and style in decorative objects can mean good business and who can create a homelike atmosphere in which to display their wares artfully. Bargain prices are not the rule in these shops but the owners also have the talent of discovering unusual and one-of-a-kind pieces.

In the last two years, the Columbia Savings and Loan Association of Beverly Hills nearly quintupled in size, swelling to $4.9 billion in assets, from $1 billion at the end of 1982. It often paid top dollar to attract funds quickly. An hour's drive to the south, Butterfield Savings of Santa Ana grew even faster. The thrift institution, which a real estate syndication company acquired last year, deployed a telephone sales force offering high rates to attract large deposits from across the country. By July 1, its assets had jumped to $677 million from $156 million a year earlier. The two institutions have exploited California's liberal thrift industry regulations - more liberal than those in most other states - to put the new deposits into loans and investments unrelated to the industry's traditional business of lending on single-family residential housing.

With joyous ease and the sureness of experience, two space-walking astronauts captured a second wayward satellite today and hauled it into the cargo bay of the shuttle Discovery for the dramatic completion of the first salvage operation in space. ''We have two satellites latched in the bay,'' Capt. Frederick H. Hauck of the Navy, the commander, radioed to Mission Control when the job was done, and a ''super job'' it was, Mission Control told the astronauts. The space shuttle Discovery, carrying the two salvaged satellites, was scheduled to end its eight-day mission with a landing Friday morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Swift, Smooth Operation The two space walkers, Dr. Joseph P. Allen and Comdr. Dale A. Gardner of the Navy, could hardly believe how much easier it was, following modified procedures, to retrieve Westar 6 than it was to haul in Palapa B-2 on Monday.

Because of editing errors, a dispatch from Omaha on Friday, about the convictions of three men charged with helping a fugitive who killed two United States marshals, misidentified the appeals court and one defendant. The ruling was by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The defendant was Scott Faul.