Grief And Sorrow

70,000 ppl dead and the death toll expecting to rise sharply... What a tragedy for the SE Asian countries in the region. It's so unfortunate that 2004 is going to end on a sour note. Read from newspapers that it will cost billions of dollars and 5 years to rebuilt the houses destroyed by the tsunami. What about the enormous number of lives lost? Can we really count the cost of the damage? It's so depressing to see the news feed on the scenes of devastation and death. Some of the videos are damn shocking. I really hope the rescue workers can save as many ppl as possible and prevent the outbreak of any epidemic.

Besides the tsunami reports, the other reports that I see are from Iraq. What else? Stupid maniacs and extremists trying to wreck havok and destroy as many lives as possible in an attempt to sabotage the upcoming Iraqi elections. As if the death toll is not high enough...... Man what is the world coming to now? Sometimes I wonder whether we would die of a natural disaster or by fellow man. Those extremists should see the destruction and death caused by the tsunami and learn from it. Do they not know that human beings do not thrive when isolated from others? This reminds me of John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII...

"No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

I pray that as the new year comes, man will make peace with man; the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers, the Indonesian seperatists in Aceh and the Indonesian govt, extremists and American troops in Iraq and many more... Only when there is peace between fellow humans can we focus our efforts on minimizing the damage done by nature.