High Rise

Tsunami

My dad and I were watching video footages of the Indian Ocean tsunami which struck the globe last December 2004. I would not have recalled much about this if not for a single, vague memory of watching over and over again people scrambling around and running far away from the shore of Phuket to any high grounds that they could possibly go to quickly. Also toss in the fact that the tragedy happened a day after Christmas. Because of that memory, I thought Thailand got the hardest hit among all of the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean; it was Indonesia that got the worst hit.

The Indian Ocean tsunami is known to be one of the deadliest natural disasters recorded in history and the deadliest tsunami that had ever occurred by far. It killed over 230,000 people in fourteen countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India among others, and had caused permanent damage to cities and peninsulas greatly hit by its force and building - high waves.

Here are some of the before and after tsunami photos (aerial view) of the greatly hit city of Indonesia, Banda Aceh, the capital of the Aceh province that sent chill down my spine:

This is Meulaboh still located in Aceh province

And this is Meulaboh one year after the tragedy and has not yet recovered even then. The town, which had a small population of 120,000, was struck by seven waves instantly killing a third of its populace.

I shuddered while watching and looking at the videos and photos. This is ten times worse than what had transpired recently in Fukushima, Japan in terms of casualties and the wideness of its scope. But still, lives taken away are still lives gone, however small in number they are.

I fear being in the middle of a water body. Not that I do not know how to swim but I could not help but think about the unknown vastness present beneath me. I’d rather be standing on top of a tall building, looking down than be swimming in the ocean. At least they can still find my body when I fall down from a building!

Naku, seeing how the waves swept the people away worsen the irrational fear.

We already had two tsunamis and this century is just starting. Add to it the fact that one of these tsunamis also caused Fukushima’s nuclear power plant to spontaneously explode, causing twenty times worse danger to the people who survived and are still living there as well as the generation that will follow as compared to the Chernobyl disaster.

Thinking

I have been thinking a lot these past few months. Mostly about mundane things that are every day seeping and crawling in in my mind. On how little or how far I had climbed on my life’s ladder. Some about my current standing in life, in terms of every single aspect that I could think of and how I could better improve myself on each one of those. Little on the doubts and fears that have been clouding my mind then which further fuelled my psychotic imagination and concretized my typical standing. I’d like to think little though these two, doubts and fears per se, literally took the space that should had been reserved and took up by creative juices and optimism which I miss now more than ever. Few on an unequal list of good times and bad times. And a lot of snippets of randomness and ideas longing to be freed. Replaying and forwarding each and every single thoughts, again and again. But never playing. 

I really have been replaying memories a lot, been playing events that is still bound to happen. I have been defining my future based on what I perceive not on what I believe lately, been thinking a lot really. But then I stopped. Is it all there is in my life and dreams? Is my life meant to be spent just sitting still and wandering inside? Are my dreams meant to be contained only inside this small squishy and intestine-like thing of a brain rather than out playing and standing out amongst us? Are they?

But of course I know the answer. So I got off my chair and hit play.