Do You Remember?

It is Boxing Day today... a day when most other people like me would just pass off as the day after Christmas.

It was a dull day as I headed back to office gearing towards the Annual Audit that will take place in a few more days.

Then I came across a 2 part mini-series over HBO titled "tsunami: the aftermath" starring Toni Collette. However, it was just a portrayal of part of the sufferings of the people affected by the catastrophe. The film was apparently shot at locations in Thailand's Kao Lak & Phuket area that were devastated by the 2004 Asian Tsunami; a disaster that happened exactly two years ago today, 26-Dec-2004, Boxing Day.

Picture taken at Ao Nang, Krabi Province, Thailand by David Rydevik from Stockholm, Sweden and has been released into the Public Domain by its creator.

As we all know, the magnitude of the catastrophe was beyond anything we could ever comprehend with. An estimated 230,000 people of various nationalities lost their lives; while millions of survivors were displaced and left with nothing but chaos and destruction. Although the film was about the Thai-tourist regions, the hardest hit was the Indonesian province of Aceh which was the closest to the epicenter of the massive 9.3 Richter Scale quake that caused the tsunami and accounted for almost 170,000 lives that had perished.

Till today, many are still trying to rebuild their lives; coping with the loss of loved ones. There are even reports that aid have been misused and the people who need them the most do not get them at all.

So, while we enjoy our festivities... let us also reflect upon the suffering that these survivors are enduring; pray for them and hope that such catastrophe do not happen again.



"Do You Remember?" was a hit song by Phil Collins in 1990, taken from his 4th full-length solo album titled "...But Seriously".