The Big Wave

I checked out the front page of the New Straits Times today, even though I have yet to get over the unfamiliarity of it being shaped to fit a tabloid format rather than the broadsheet I have grown up with for the past twenty and more years of my time being. That being as it had been printed out so as a broadsheet for more possibly one hundred and fifty years.

Though the word today is not on how newspapers ought to look and present themselves, but rather the words that were printed on the headlines. It certainly caught my attention:

Tsunami
The Next Big One


Who could forget less than three hundred and sixty-five days ago when waves spread all over the Indian Ocean and swamped especially Indonesia, reports coming in all over the place that eight thousand had died, then ten thousand, fifty thousand until at last a couple of months before, the final tally being that of two hundred thousand who had succumbed to the waves, and all that in what, mere minutes?

Some places, completely devastated by the effects of the tsunami waves, who most had thought would exist only in the Pacific Ocean, notably Japan, or the States? Who both had considerable warning enough concerning natural disasters.

And then something happens in the Indian Ocean, which hasn't happened since Krakatoa blew its top and wiped off a number of towns from the face of the earth. Likewise to happen the same time last year, and already they say that the likelihood of such a recoccurence is possible.

And that the epicentre won't be by the side of Indonesia, but rather a little bit north. IF you could consider one thousand kilometres as a little, though, in the middle between Acheh, Peninsular and of course Phuket.

In short? A disaster never seen before on Malaysian shores, and that's enough to get most people shaking in their boots as it is. We shall see. I'm not going anywhere near the beach for the next few weeks, just to be on the safe side. Not that I was planning it in the first place, but its good to make some precautions first, neh?