The days of calamities

First, the Godfather of Soul died. Yes, the great James Brown died of pneumonia at the age of 73. Even at the end, he was ready to go and sing for the New Year's Eve bash. What a guy. I told my parents about this during dinner on that day and their response was mild to say the least. I was thinking that James Brown was their 'era' and maybe they'd give a little more response. Heh.

Then today came, with a humongous earthquake in Taiwan with a monstrous 7.1 on the Richter scale! 2 people died and some submarine data cables were damaged. Instead of fearing for the lives of the people there, people are whining on why the international links are down due to the earthquake damaging the data cables. The problem is big as this means that Asian countries will have very high pings and packet losses to US and European hosted websites. However, this episode just teaches me how dependable are we on this 'technology'. Reading the forums of Lowyat.net, I can see that most of them are complaining as if the problem was solely on a local internet provider's fault. Not that it is not warranted but fortunately this time, it was not their fault at all. I have always thought that most of the forumers who frequently post at that forum are rather childish and it is even more so now.

The thing that we should learn from this is that technology, no matter how much we depend on it, must never cloud our empathy toward human lives. Times such as theses, we should sit down and pray and hope that tomorrow, we are much better than today. We must always remember that technology is there to aid us ... and never to let it control our lives (which seems to often happen now).

I'm not saying I'm a perfect individual but its something to be aware to be imperfect and strive to be perfect rather than not doing anything at all.

UPDATE: So according to sources, the repairs will take about 3 weeks. Although the ships will reach the point where the cable was damaged in 3 days. Thats the bad news. The good news is that the tsunami alert has been taken down by most countries. Just hoping that there are no more quakes occuring in this timeline. In the meantime, any internet activities is going to be a pain.