Honestly , I expected the job to be more strenous and long .. but it was not . In fact , the whole bulk of the work were done by a group of 50 volunteers before us and groups of ladies. When the night group came , we were finished within 2.5 hours. So , were back to PJ before 9.30 . That was extremely fast. News travelled fast , and almost all the volunteers during my time there were somehow connected to each other. There were about 20-30 of us . It was good to work among friends.

But a lot of experience in getting the things sorted out. You could not image how terrible some of these donations are and probably from different milleniums. It is 'interesting' to see what one finds in the bags. And my mind was just playing a game of trying to imagine what/who the donors are. There are clothes that are very "chinese" , where they send their cheongsam and evening gown ( for wedding dinners) . I think one pack belongs to an Indian couple full of Sarees. And there are a lot of Ah Pek slacks. We were also debating whether the Indonesians would want to wear worn out undergarments. One can even find a "Guess kid" overall and a Hard Rock sweater in there. But I think the majority of donors are Chinese , by the look of the clothes. Note for donor- wash the clothes first.

But one observation is the Mercy staff ... I think they are paid to work . They just sat there and the volunteers do the work . I guess they are tired of all these. Some were even playing around diving into the clothes. And those in charge just went missing . Soon , the volunteers took over the task of organising and explaining to new volunteers. But the sheer physical and mental demands is evident , even working in a warehouse to sort out the packages. And they were there since last Friday . I think my worst impression came when we were going back , a seemingly "VIP" person came with his entourage. He just seemed 'cocky" and even angry initially when he saw that we left. But his look turned to surprise as I think one of his entourage told him that the work is done. Maybe he is just a local Datuk or something that comes to lend his 'support".

Subject: 26 Dis : Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah

Pada 26 Disember 1932 gempabumi berlaku di China membunuh 70,000 nyawa.

Pada 26 Disember 1939 gempabumi 7.9 Richter berlaku di Wilyah Erzincan, Turki membunuh 41,000 nyawa.

Pada 26 Disember 2003 gempabumi 6.5 Richter berlaku di Wilayah Bam, Iran membunuh 45,000 nyawa.

 Pada 26 Disember 2004 gempabumi berlaku di Sumatera membunuh 35,000 nyawa dan jumlahnya terus meningkat..

 Jangan kita lupakan ribut Greg di Keningau, Sabah juga berlaku pada awal pagi 26 Disember 1996 yang meragut beratus nyawa. Adakah  semuanya ini 'coincidental'? Bukankah pada malam sebelumnya iaitu 25 Disember di banyak tempat di dunia ini, ramai manusia yang lupa  daratan, mabuk dan berpoya-poya? Pada pagi 26 Disember 2004, di persisiran pantai timur selatan India diberitakan ada temasya memuja laut ketika tsunami melanda..

 Kita tidak mampu mencari jawapan atas apa yang berlaku tetapi sekadar menginsafinya sebagai peringatan.

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No offence , but pretty insulted by this e-mail's insinuation , both academically and spiritual sense. But as I was preparing an answer , I got another email that 'says it all" , from a newspaper in Britain. The challenge is how we respond ( to pray and care and give) than to find a convenient scapegoat with such writtings. And as a Christian , how I respond to the Achehnese ( Muslims ) , Sri Langkans and Thai ( buddhist ) irregardless of their belief but love for their lives. I think that is the appropriate response.

Btw , The great San Francisco Fire and Earthquake happened on 23rd April , which is also my birthday. See the connection? Do read the article below for an unbiased view of what it could be.  

TSUNAMI (26.12.2004)

Earthquakes led 18th-century thinkers to ask questions we shy away from

Martin Kettle

Tuesday December 28, 2004

The Guardian

The modern era flatters itself that human beings can now know and shape almost everything about the world. But an event like the Indonesian earthquake exposes much of this for the hubris that it is. Perhaps we have talked so much about our civilisation's potential to destroy the planet that we have forgotten that the planet also has an untamed ability to destroy civilisation too. Whatever else it has achieved, the Indian Ocean tsunami has at least reminded mankind of its enduring vulnerability in the face of nature. The scale of suffering that it has wreaked - 20,000 deaths and counting - shows that we share such dangers with our ancestors more fully than most of us realised.An entirely understandable reaction to such an event is to set one's face against any large questions that it may raise. But this week provides an unsought opportunity to consider the largest of all human implications of any major earthquake: its challenge to religion. A few days after the 9/11 attacks on New York, I had dinner with the Guardian's late columnist Hugo Young. We were still so close to the event itself that only one topic of conversation was possible. At one stage I asked Hugo how his Catholicism allowed him to explain such a terrible act.I'm afraid that's an easy one, he replied.We are all fallen beings, Hugo declared, and our life in this world is a vale of tears. So some human beings will always kill one another. The attack on New York should therefore be seen not as an act of God, but as an act of fallen humanity. Then he paused, and added: "But I admit I have much more difficulty with earthquakes."

Earthquakes and the belief in the judgment of God are, indeed, very hard to reconcile. However, no religion that offers an explanation of the world can avoid making some kind of an attempt to fit the two together. And an immense earthquake like the one that took place off Sumatra on Sunday inevitably poses that challenge afresh in dramatic terms.

There is, after all, only one big question to ask about an event of such destructive power as the one that has taken place this week: why did it happen?

As with previous earthquakes, any explanation of this latest one poses us a sharp intellectual choice. Either there is an entirely natural explanation for it, or there is some other kind. Even the natural one is by no means easy to imagine, but it is at least wholly coherent.The tsunami took place, say the seismologists, because a massive tectonic rupture on the sea bed generated tremors through the ocean. These unimaginable forces sent their energy coursing across thousands of miles of water, resulting in death and destruction in a vast arc from Somalia to Indonesia.

But what do world views that do not allow scientists undisputed authority have to say about such phenomena? Where do the creationists stand, for example? Such world views are more widespread, even now, than a secularised society such as ours sometimes prefers to think. For most of human history people have tried to explain earthquakes as acts of divine intervention and displeasure. Even as the churches collapsed around them in 1755, Lisbon's priests insisted on salvaging crucifixes and religious icons with which to ward off the catastrophe that would kill more than 50,000 of their fellow citizens. Others, though, began to draw different conclusions. Voltaire asked what kind of God could permit such a thing to occur. Did Lisbon really have so many more vices than London or Paris, he asked, that it should be punished in such a appalling and indiscriminate manner? immanuel Kant was so amazed by what happened to Lisbon that he wrote three separate treatises on the problem of earthquakes.

Our own society seems to be more squeamish about such things. The need for mutual respect between peoples and traditions of which the Queen spoke in her Christmas broadcast seems to require that we must all respect religions in equal measure, too. The government, indeed, is legislating to prevent expressions of religious hatred in ways that could put a cordon around the critical discussion of religion itself.Yet it is hard to think of any event in modern times that requires a more serious explanation from the forces of religion than this week's earthquake.Voltaire's 18th-century question to Christians - why Lisbon? - ought to generate a whole series of 21st-century equivalents for all the religions of the world. Certainly the giant waves generated by the quake made no attempt to differentiate between the religions of those whom it made its victims.Hindus were swept away in India, Muslims were carried off in Indonesia,Buddhists in Thailand. Visiting Christians and Jews received no special treatment either. This poses no problem for the scientific belief system. Here, it says, was a mindless natural event, which destroyed Muslim andHindu alike.A non-scientific belief system, especially one that is based on any kind of notion of a divine order, has some explaining to do, however. What Godsanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves,struggling for life? From at least the time of Aristotle, intelligent people have struggled to make some sense of earthquakes. Earthquakes do not merely kill and destroy. They challenge human beings to explain the world order in which such apparently indiscriminate acts can occur. Europe in the 18th century had the intellectual curiosity and independence to ask and answer such questions.But can we say the same of 21st-century Europe? Or are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things?