Day 335: Shock Waves

The earthquake and tsunamis that caused devestation in several Asian countries on Boxing Day may have happened over two weeks ago, thousands of kilometres from where I live (and even from where I was in the Philippines when it struck) but its shockwaves are still felt today. Korea may not have been affected directly, but the disaster sent panic ripples throughout the expat community here.

Thailand is, by far, the single most popular destination for foreign teachers here. On any given holiday there are literally thousands of expat teachers down there on vacation. This past Christmas was certainly no different. I myself had five friends who were down in Thailand when the disaster struck. And everyone here knows *somebody* who was in that country when the ground started shaking and the waves started rolling in. Since returning to Korea, there has been a constant buzz in the air about the disaster. Everyone is checking with everyone else in their social networks to see if anyone knows of anyone who was swept away. It's been an ongoing 'buddy-check' to make sure that everyone made it back, and meanwhile every teacher has been bracing for the expected tragic news that a friend of a friend or whatever didn't make it.

Luckily for me, my five friends were okay, and I haven't heard of a loss yet in my social circles. I'm really thankful for that.

I'd like to take a moment to thank all my family and friends for all the concern you guys had for my safety. When I found out about the quake and tsunamis, to be honest, I never even thought that anyone was going to worry about me. I was just so shocked about it myself, and was so far away that it never even registered that friends and loved ones back home might be worrying about me. Since returning I've had a constant stream of emails from people 'checking in' to see if I'm alright, and many of such sheer joy that I'm okay! Even people that I haven't heard from in over six months have been emailing me! Wow! Thank you everyone so much for all your concern and love. It made me realize how lucky I am to have so many people I care about in my life, and I truly appreciate all your (unnecessary) worrying. Scotty's alright!

I'm still dumbfounded over the death and devestation. The death toll is just below 169,000 now....that's more than my entire home city. Unimaginable. That quake was unbelievably strong. It was so strong that not only did it cause the North Pole to move about an inch to the southwest (the North Pole!!?? Do you realize how far away that is!!??) but it threw off the Earth's rotation that day in such a way that December 26th, 2004 was actually about half a second shorter than normal. Holy fuck! That kind of power is truly incomprehensible to the human brain.

My friend sent me a link to a rather horrifying website. It contains photos of Banda Aceh, the area in Indonesia that suffered the greatest damage, before and after the tsunamis. It's pretty fucking shocking, let me tell you. Have a look, the photos speak for themselves:

http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/2.html