Nature shows it's power :(

As we near 100.000 casualties from sunday's seaquake/tsunami disaster it seems safe to say that this is the biggest disaster in our recorded history.

Even though I keep seeing it over and over on tv and in newspapers it's still difficult to grasp the enormity of what happened last sunday.
Thai tv is not shy about showing the misery in all it's glory, so I've seen it all, decaying bodies floating in sea or lying in the streets, the mass graves with dozens of bodies, the video images of the flood sweeping away people desperately trying to keep above water...
I see it all, but it's just too big, too horrible to comprehend, 100.000 persons wiped away, whole villages, whole islands even, wiped clear.

Here in Thailand there will be three days of mourning for the victims, who include also a young prince, one of the King's grandsons who died last sunday.. at least nature holds no prejudices I guess, anybody can die.

Still alive

We just returned this morning from a week vacation in Chiang Mai and didn't hear anything about this huge earthquake and tsunami's until I started reading my email a while ago and read the questions from friends and family if I was ok.

So in response, yes I am fine and in fact didn't know anything had happened.

More about our holiday and many many photos from Chiang Mai later.

Christmas time is coming?

It feels very strange to see Christmas and New Year coming closer and closer.. all the major stores here in Bangkok have christmas trees and lights everywhere while at the same time outside it is still close to 30 degrees and always sunny.
Yesterday I sat down and started preparing my christmas cards to send and that turns out to be quite difficult when there's hardly any end-of-year atmosphere around. :/

Meanwhile jobhunting is also not going very well, most of the English language schools are not recruiting at the end of the year, apparently it's a slow time for them, so it will probably be January before I can get work.

Oh well, time for some rest and maybe time to learn some more Thai...