As of right now,
114,000 people have died because of the earthquake and tsunami floods. And its quite likely that that number would rise as more bodies begin to get washed up onto the shores. "The hunt for survivors is drawing to a close." Television screens are filled with pictures of beach shores lined with corpses, traumatised survivors; the aftermath of this disaster. Lives of millions were changed instantly that fateful day as countries declared a state of disaster. Yet, in the nearby island of Singapore, life goes on just as though nothing happened. Sure there are the news reports on television, newspapers, and the efforts of getting donations but that's about it.
The nonchalance of Singaporeans really sucks. I'm not saying that i'm not guilty of it, but its sort of like, "nobody cares, why should I?" Maybe because the disaster didn't affect Singapore directly, so naturally we wouldn't really care about it. Take this for an example. In a huge, crowded shopping mall, the fire alarm sounds. What does everybody do? Rush to the nearest exit? Quite the contrary. Carry on shopping, eating, chatting like the alarm wasn't even there. If a car alarm sounded in a car park, would passerbys actually go and check to see if everything was alright? Doubtful. Sad but true.
Guess what? Just in the duration of typing this post, the death toll has risen to
119,000. While one guy is sitting down, sheltered, typing away at his keyboard, 5,000 people more were found dead. Quite a statistic, you think?
As Singapore parties the year away, and celebrates the arrival of 2005 with dancing, shouting, games and booze, families of the 119,000 mourn their losses. They probably care more about how many seconds of 2004 are left than how many lives are left to be saved. "Life can be really unfair..." That's probably what those affected are feeling right now. They have to suffer all this shit, while others just party on like nothing happened. How they would wish they could swap places.
And by the way, its now up to
123,000, and i've got a feeling its not going to stop rising just yet.
[EDIT]
I just saw something that really, really disgusted me. I saw a poll being taken. The question was, "Will the Asian earthquake and tsunami disaster hurt tourism in Asia more than SARS did last year?" Seriously, at a time like this, should we really care about how this will affect tourism? Like, who gives a fuck about tourism when there are lives at stake? I don't know... Maybe tourism really is
that important. But to me it isn't. Worse still, about 1,500 people have already voted on that poll. I couldn't even bring myself to
think about what i'd put as my answer. Disgusting, absolutely disgusting.
nick had nothing better to do at
1:08 AM
