Monday 17 July 2006

Indonesian Tsunami

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5186844.stm

Another tsunami has hit Indonesia. Thank goodness it's nothing like the Boxing Day tsunami but the reuslt of the 7.2 earthquake were still bad enough to kill over a hundred people. My thoughts go out to those affected. On a purely personal level (and generally that's what it comes down to) I've had a couple of people get in touch with me to ask if this affects my plans, the answer to which is no. Indonesia is a big country and this has struck the south coast of Java, which I didn't plan to visit anyway. It's worth noting at this point that Java seems to be the epicentre of H5N1 infection of humans, which had kind of put me off anyway even though I hadn't planned on stroking any chickens anyway. Honest.

Still, on the subject of travel plans I'm glad I didn't stick with my original plan of flying to Turkey and then overlanding it to Egypt via Syria, The Lebanon and Jordan. In retropsect it looks like South East Asia was defintely the right choice even with my soft spot for the Middle East.

On the preperations front the packing process has not gone that well. Looks like the fins will be going in their own sperate bag. So much for my lessons learnt after Africa in which I resolved to only carry a 45l rucksack when travelling, although if you took away the dive gear that'd be easy. I'm hoping that it won't all be too much to lug about but we'll just have to see.

Last note is finishing work on Wednesday. With this being a major break away from work I had planned to finish at 12 and go down the pub for a going away drink with friends from work. Alas, I've now got an interview for the FT Tele team lead role at 2 on the Wednesday afternoon. This leaves three options: forget going for a drink, go and only have a non-alcoholic drink or go and just have "the one". Yeah, right, like that's going to happen. I might see if anyone fancies a drink after work instead but it's not likely to be the same.

In some ways this entry seems a bit selfish. A lot of people have died, far many more are wounded and/or homeless and I'm wittering about going for a drink. Such is the nature of man I guess: as William Hazlitt wrote “The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings”.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home