From an estimate of 5000 deaths on Sunday, people all over the world are waking up to the news that the worldwide death toll stands at a staggering 23 thousand... and is rising yet.

My family is following the news closely, as we're still in shock at how close a call it was for us... and for our relatives. My grandparents who live in Penang, were fortunately only inconvenienced by power shortage. My aunty, in her flat along the Tanjung Bungah stretch, is well and helping with the relief aid workers at the churches and hospitals. On the evening when the news reached us, we were frantically calling another aunty, who's family was due to drive up to Penang from KL, that same day. By a stroke of luck, they postponed their beach holiday because my cousin's husband fell sick. My uncle who we believed to have been in Phuket at the time, finally rang us yesterday to say he didn't make the trip. And now that we've accounted for all that we can account for... there's only so much we can do as we watch the news on CNN or BBC and pray for them.

And I don't like the stand that is being taken. The fingers that are being pointed. The slam on the warning systems and weather stations and governments. How easy it is for affluent nations to talk and experts to give their advice when all that we can say, poor developing nations that we are, is that we have no money to buy all the latest meterological equipment they say we should have. We in the Indian Ocean region have never experienced anything like this before. In fact we have often comforted ourselves knowing we are out of the Ring of Fire. How could we prepare for what we do not know?

Perhaps it is a way of bringing the world together again, as we mourn with others in their grief. Perhaps... it's incredibly idealistic, but it's not the time to be cynical now.

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