Joan's Personal Encounter With A Tsunami

Joan's Personal Encounter With A Tsunami

With reference to the latest earth movements in the Indian Ocean, Joan would like to share with everyone her own personal encounter. It is horrifying to see the large numbers of deaths in South/Southeast Asia to gigantic waves and not directly to the 8.9-9.0 earthquake.

With improvements in technology and superior warning systems, earthquakes are no longer as deadly as before. Even a 9.0 earthquake would not be able to topple a tall building with strong foundation. Sadly the bulk of the deaths from these earthquakes are of poor rural peasants who, well, are rather neligible to the authoritites who do not try to save them cos they are seen to them as a waste of resources. Personally, I think there might even be a conspiracy theory in Indonesia. The epicentre of the earthquake is nearest to Aceh and as we all know, the Indonesian government isn't on that good terms with the Acehnese hence I am thinking that perhaps there might be a conspiracy theory that the authorities are holding back aid and relief to the Acehnese in hope that more of them (especially the extremists) would die and create less trouble for them.

*Disclaimer: This is JOAN'S random thoughts and should carry NO weight AT ALL.*

Other than the earthquakes, this massive movement of the earth crust brought along another disaster, tsunamis. Some call them tidal waves, but I don't think they are really caused by tides as we know that tides are caused by gravity and some weird relationship of the sun and moon and god knows what, so in here I shall call them tsunamis. At this point in time, 22 000 people from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Somalia have been accounted dead. Many more are still missing, which technically means dead but without the locating of their bodies yet.

This brings back to my point. Singapore is much much nearer to the epicentre of the earthquake than India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Somalia, yet we are not much affected by these movements. Yes, there were little shakes in some parts of the island, but not more than a wriggle and definitely no tsunamis and we are talking about an ISLAND surrounded by water very near to the epicentre. Why so? Thank god we are lucky.

Joan examined the map of the region and came to a conclusion that Sir Stamford Raffles indeed had great foresight. Singapore is surrounded by much larger land masses of islands like Sumatra, the Mainland, Java, Kalimantan and because of these blocks created by the land masses, there is a limit to the formation of large waves. Sri Lanka and India are unprotected by any land masses and are open to the vastness of the Indian Ocean. There is adequate, more than adequate length for killer waves to gather.

However, before we can smirk at the dead Indians, we must also beware of the deadliness of tsunamis too cos if the epicentre was not north of Sumatra and say north of Java, between Sumatra and Kalimantan, then Singapore is dead. Singapore is so tiny that I think one tsunami is enought to sweep up to Bishan.

*At this point, Joan looks out of her window, there is a black out at the car park outside her house. She knows that beyond the carpark is a cluster of low lying houses, then an expressway, and then after that lies the sea. A small tsunami is adequate to drown her if she's caught unawared. The night does looks quite scary*

Enough of that before I freak out.

When Joan was reading the papers about the tsunami and watching the news about it, she had a sense of deja vu. Somehow, she felt that she had experienced it before...

This brings us back to where she had started, "Joan's encounter with a tsunami"...

It was a couple of years back but not too long ago, say maybe when I was 17 or 18 (if you don't know, I'm closing on 20 now) when I had this very vivid dream. So vivid was the dream that I can remember it until now.

The scene was West Coast of the US, on board a luxury liner. The time was late morning. We were having a scumptous buffet spread for brunch on board the luxury liner. It wasn't exactly a cruise, but more of a private ship that ferried people to this offshore ship building area where I held an inspection job. I had just finished inspecting a number of ships. I can't remember who I was with, but I was definitely with a preteen boy among others. He could be my brother or my son or just somebody I know, anyway, the thing was that I was extremely concerned about him. Everything was going along fine. The feeling was something like on board Titanic before disaster struck, everyone was merry. Then suddenly, the ship took a dive and started speeding up. I saw a huge wave rising from behind the ship going to crash into us. The ship was racing with the wave, whichever reaches the shore first would be the winner. I grabbed the hand of the boy with me as tightly as he permitted as we ran up the shore. The gigantic wave about five stories high and was crashing fast into the streets. I had to run as quickly inland as possible with the boy still with me.

I can't remember what happened after that, but it was night already. I was safely in a warm house with heating facilities. The boy was upstairs sleeping and I was downstairs peering out of the window. The weather outside seemed to be very cold as my window was pretty much fogged up. People were streaming the streets, pushing and shoving.

Then I can't remember much liao. After that, I remembered that I too took the streets but as a voluntary relief worker. I was helping to direct the people to a safe place to rest. The boy wasnt with me at this time. The streets were all wet, and everyone was wet and hungry.

That's it...

It's very saddening to think that so many people have died. Okay, if you ask the urbanised Joan who she's sad for, it's actually the tourists in Thailand that she's most sad for. Tourists were there cos they wanted to escape the cold dry winter back in their homeland and NOT get into a cold WET journey of struggle for survival in a foreign land. Really, you can call Joan a bourgeois or a racist or whatever you want, but really, I don't really give a damn shit about the deaths of those pathetic Indian peasants. The world has too many peasants and this little deaths don't really cost us a lot. ha!

Okay... Really, nobody deserves to die, but if you're dead, then it's only your fate to blame. Even as I'm writing out this piece the death toll is still rising.

*Joan scrolls up and alters the death figures that she gave previously*

hai...

Wonder what the world is up to now?

It's saddening to know that the next most important news next to this earthquake/tsunami is about Ukraine opposition leader kena poisoned by his government, like what the?!

I think the only happy news now is that Meeting the Fockers set a new Christmas box office record. Diaoz... Maybe you guys don't know why I diao is that I have this adverse thing about Ben Stiller. Not just because he's a Jew, but more so I dislike his based humour. The Stephen Chow kinda humour... Yucks!

*Joan just heard that a very sad news*

*she is in no more mood to talk about tsunamis or earthquakes or Ben Stiller or even the pathetic salesman she met today*

Will talk about pathetic salesmen another time ba...